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More "Shorten" Quotes from Famous Books



... more. But they tell the tale That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel fishers shorten sail— For the signal they know will bring relief; For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom hulk that drifts alway Through channels ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... the physical conditions surrounding them. If they are kept in water or in proximity to water and in a moist atmosphere they have a tendency to lay their eggs earlier and a comparatively high temperature enhances the tendency to shorten the period of gestation. If the salamanders are kept in comparative dryness they show a tendency to lay their eggs rather late and a ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... know the source of our sorrows and feel the guilt of our sins, this does not make our burden lighter or shorten the path of our pilgrimage. We are confronted by the problem of labor and suffering as soon as we enter the world. No one is entirely exempted; and, strange as it is, we see that it frequently happens, that ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... from the earth. Will they learn all the ways of all the stars in their little time? It took Enoch two hundred years to learn to interpret the will of the Voice. When he was a mere child of eighty, his babyish attempts to understand the Voice were more dangerous than the wrath of Cain. If they shorten their lives, they will dig and fight and kill and die; and their baby Enochs will tell them that it is the will of the Voice that they should dig and fight and kill and ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... which I was unwilling to give up. 'Why, Sir, (said he,) there is no doubt that not to drink wine is a great deduction from life; but it may be necessary.' He however owned, that in his opinion a free use of wine did not shorten life[477]; and said, he would not give less for the life of a certain Scotch Lord[478] (whom he named) celebrated for hard drinking, than for that of a sober man. 'But stay, (said he, with his usual intelligence, and accuracy of enquiry,) does it take much wine ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Frederick, and Napoleon, have all thought well of books, and have even composed them. Nor is this extraordinary, since they are but the depositories of maxims which genius has suggested, and experience confirmed; since they both enlighten and shorten the road of the traveller, and render the labor and genius of past ages tributary to our own. These teach most emphatically, that the secret of successful war is not to be found in mere legs and arms, but in the head that shall direct them. If this be either ungifted by nature, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... taken Berber. Dongola was at their mercy. I thought the best chance would be to go down with them, as far as they went, and then to slip away. In this way I should shorten the journey I should have to traverse alone; and, being on the river bank, could at least always obtain water. Besides, I might possibly secure some small native boat, and with the help of the current get down to Assouan before the Dervishes ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... contraction; shortening &c. 201; compression &c. 195. V. abridge, abstract, epitomize, summarize; make an abstract, prepare an abstract, draw an abstract, compile an abstract &c. n. recapitulate, review, skim, run over, sum up. abbreviate &c. (shorten) 201; condense &c. (compress) 195; compile &c. (collect) 72. Adj. compendious, synoptic, analectic[obs3]; abrege[Fr], abridged &c. v.; variorum[obs3]. Adv. in short, in epitome, in substance, in few words. Phr. it lies in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... coorse; but widout extravagance; as asy an' light on a poor man as you can. You could shorten it, sure, an' lave out a grate dale that 'ud be of no use; nu' half the paper 'ud do; for you might make the clerks write close—why, very little 'ud be wanted if you ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... obliged to relinquish, a long repining expectant being eager, by entering it, to bequeath to another the anxiety and suspense he had suffered himself; though probably without much impatience to shorten their duration in favour of the next successor; but the house of Mrs Charlton, her benevolent friend, was open for her reception, and the alleviating tenderness of her conversation took from her all wish ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... or is there—if I deceive myself, tell me so, and shorten my pain—is there not, or is there, hope that, finding himself in this new position, and becoming sensitively alive to the awkward burden of explanation, in this quarter, and that, and the other, with which it would load him, he avoided the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... such refuges as the ship's architecture afforded, or submitted to be pushed and twirled about by the surging throng when they got in its way. She pitied these in their affliction, which she perceived that they could not lighten or shorten, but she had no patience with the young girls, who broke into shrieks of nervous laughter at the coming of certain young men, and kept laughing and beckoning till they made the young men see them; and then ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... through the iron bar A. They pass more easily through iron than through air; and will choose iron by preference. The attraction exercised by a magnet on iron may be due to the effort of the lines of force to shorten their paths. It is evident that the closer A comes to the poles of the magnet the less will be the distance to be travelled from one pole to the bar, along it, and back to ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... a sort of delicious agony we do not need to shorten it. Good-bye, Prue," he cried, catching one of Prue's curls in his fingers as he passed. "You will be a school-girl with a shawl strap of books, by and by, and you will put on airs and think ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... in two modes: 1. Physically; since they diminish the number of births, and shorten the term of the life of all. 2. Intellectually; since, in a moral, and particularly in a religious community, they postpone marriage, by causing individuals to decline its responsibilities until they feel that they are competent to meet the charges and cares of a ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... during this year (1877-78), which was characterized by many changes regarded then as radical, though they do not strike one so nowadays. A still more revolutionary step was taken by throwing open more than half the courses to free election, permitting some students to shorten their time in college, and enabling others to enrich their course with other than the prescribed studies, heretofore compulsory and admitting ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... horribly scared. That last word or two had really expressed my terror. I desired nothing but to get the whole thing over. My hand shook so as I turned to load the first musket that I had twice to shorten my grasp of the ramrod before I could insert it ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... of the Ministry has not been impaired, and its self-conceit perilously tickled, by the long exercise of absolute power in face of a Parliament of poltroons. And, lastly, I will abandon my old argument that the discussion of peace terms might shorten the war, without any risk of prolonging it. And still I very strongly hold that peace ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... idea of seeing William Allen, I was about to go to the wharf-boat and wait there for the five o'clock boat. But she urged me to take dinner with them, as I would have plenty of time. After dinner they directed me across a pasture-field that would shorten the half-mile. Just out of sight of the house I met William Allen, with his wife and little girl of ten years. As they were so well described by John—or Felix, as he was here known—I recognized them, and gave the message from their ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... where the joke comes in. I read that same article, which was mighty interesting too. It went on to state that some smarties are not content with getting the regular bounty. They grow a gray cat that looks on the order of the wild article—shorten the tail, draw out the claws, and then send in the skin, claiming the six dollars that is paid for each bobcat actually slain within the ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... machine; and we hear the humanitarians telling us, indignant and grieving, that he actually must stand in that nice, warm, dry room every day, safe from storms and wild beasts, and with nothing to do but fill cans; and at once we groan: "How deadly! What montonous toil! Shorten his hours!" His work would seem blissful to super-spiders,—but to us it's intolerable. "Grind and confinement?" That's the strong ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... which filled him when, a little while after, he sprang right across the snowdrift to shorten the way, and knocked at Barbara's door. He must have some one to tell it to—that Mrs. Holman had acquiesced in Silla's having in this way promised herself ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... speak for you and shorten our mutual distress. First, however, I must make my own position plain. I—love your daughter, Mr. Parker." The declaration came at great cost, the speaker turned away to hide his emotion. "I think—I hope she is not indifferent to me. I would give my life to marry her and, God ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... know something of the remedy;—having sure information as to the ringleaders, we are enabled at once to read their motives in the past, to anticipate their policy in the future;—having the persons indicated, those who first incited or encouraged the felonious agents, we can shorten the course of public vengeance; and in so vast a field of action can give a true direction from the first to the pursuit headed by our Indian police. For that should never be laid out of sight—that against rebels whose least offence is their rebellion, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... line roughly coinciding with that of the Caledonian Railway from Carlisle by Carstairs to Glasgow. Their failure or omission to hold the south-west weakened the left flank and rear of their position on the Wall of Pius and helped materially to shorten their dominion in Scotland ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield

... on board, we made sail down to Amsterdam. The people of this isle were so little afraid of us, that some met us in three canoes about midway between the two isles. They used their utmost efforts to get on board, but without effect, as we did not shorten sail for them, and the rope which we gave them broke. They then attempted to board the Adventure, and met with the same disappointment. We ran along the S.W. coast of Amsterdam at half a mile from ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... then, in the first place, that the mind will tend to shorten any period of future time, and so to antedate, so to speak, a given event, in so far as the imagination is able clearly and easily to run over its probable experiences. From this it follows that repeated forecastings of series of events, by facilitating the imaginative process, tend to beget ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... molested by the ships-of-the-line, so long as they minded their own business,—an immunity which of course ceased if they became aggressive. Saumarez was urged to return her fire. "No," he replied, "let her alone; she will get bolder and come nearer. Shorten sail." She did draw nearer, and then the Orion, swinging sharply towards her, let drive her broadside of double-shotted guns. All the masts of the unlucky frigate went overboard, and she shortly sank, nothing but her ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... progress. O Lord! from the depths of my heart I would implore Thee to aid me in all good intentions. My heart overflows with its fulness of gratitude for what Thou hast done for me, and I know Thou wilt not shorten Thy hand. Thy beauty, Thy loveliness, O God! is beyond our finite vision, far above our expression. Lord, all I can utter is, Help ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... between stations, the movement of the engine would impart an added resistance against the pull of the solenoid by the tension spring, which would shorten up the arc and dim ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous

... from Taiyueanfu to Hwochow is accomplished in five stages, and nothing will induce the carter to shorten or change them, though hours may have been wasted in some narrow gully where, spite his warning yells, his cart met another at a point where advance or retreat on either side were alike impossible. After fierce recriminations the two men ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... hands in both his, as he answered, 'There is nothing to be anxious about, my darling, at present. I shall need care and nursing, perhaps. They give me hope that time will outgrow the mischief, but perhaps it may shorten my life. I tell you this because I want you to see what is before us. I have no right to expect you to link your life with mine under these circumstances, and your guardian is very doubtful as to the wisdom ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... violence from without. The sacerdotal money-changers and sellers of doves in the Temple were not the "oppressors of Israel." Israel was called on to suffer under Roman rule, and the righteous to endure violence at the hands of the wicked, for that was the will of God, who in his own good time would shorten the evil days. But the manipulation of the sacrificial system as a means of plundering the pious was a sin of Israel itself, against which, protest and force were justified. What the heathen and the ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake

... was of those who do not give up until the struggle is over. Besides, he had his faithful revolver. He could end his life at any moment and shorten the torture. He had found sufficient ham to last for two meals, and when that had been eaten and the last drop of water drunk he began to suffer the tortures of hunger and thirst. And now, like a caged beast, he paced up and down his prison. His mind went back to stories he ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre

... said, 'I DO like him.' Moreover, I privately made Martyn understand that if he told her what had been said about the white-satin lady, he would never be forgiven; the others would be sure to find it out, and it might shorten ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... we're going to have a rough spell of it, Jonathan," said Davy, as he moved away from his companion in obedience to the skipper's order, "All hands shorten sail!" and stationed himself at his post by ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... one of these points again 20 minutes 23-1/4 seconds before it has really completed a revolution, i.e. before the true year is fairly over. This slow movement forward of the goal-post is called precession—the precession of the equinoxes. (One result of it is to shorten our years by about 20 minutes each; for the shortened period has to be called a year, because it is on the position of the sun with respect to the earth's axis that our seasons depend.) Copernicus perceived that, assuming the motion of the earth, a clearer ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... this point the second episode, telling the descent of the Entailed Hat from Raleigh to Anne Hutchinson, is omitted, to shorten ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... Prefacing, next it added; "he, of whom Thy kindred appellation comes, and who, These hundred years and more, on its first ledge Hath circuited the mountain, was my son And thy great grandsire. Well befits, his long Endurance should he shorten'd by thy deeds. "Florence, within her ancient limit-mark, Which calls her still to matin prayers and noon, Was chaste and sober, and abode in peace. She had no armlets and no head-tires then, No purfled ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... is exterminated or left behind in the race for life. Now, I ask, Did this process take place when Darwinism supplanted the traditional theory of the fixity of species? Surely it is clear that it is only in the rarest cases that false or inadequate ideas on such subjects have any tendency to shorten life or weaken health. Bishop Wilberforce was killed by a fall from his horse, not by the triumphant dialectic of Professor Huxley. Sir Richard Owen lived to a patriarchal old age, and did not disappear ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley

... is not our wonder excited rather by the points of resemblance than of difference that are to be found between them? Take the skeleton of a man; bend forward the bones in the region of the pelvis, shorten the thigh bones, and those of the leg and arm, lengthen those of the feet and hands, run the joints together, lengthen the jaws, and shorten the frontal bone, finally, lengthen the spine, and the skeleton will now be that of a man no longer, but will have become that of ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... scope of Medical Jurisprudence is much wider than that of Medical Law. It embraces many subjects of which human laws take no cognizance, and in particular such vicious actions as do not violate the rights of others, but are injurious to those only who practise them. They undermine the health and shorten the lives of the guilty parties, and bring in their train diseases the most destructive and often the most incurable. It is the physician's beneficent task to lessen the weaknesses and sufferings of the body, and to ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... has travelled in Guyenne must be familiar with the article of household furniture just described. Every young wife piously provides herself with one, together with a warming-pan; for the old domestic ideas are religiously handed down here from mother to daughter. But I must shorten this 'journey round my room,' so little in the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... two Frenchmen were asleep in the cabin. 'I went softly aft into the cabin, and put my back against the bulkhead, and took the iron crow and held it with both my hands in the middle of it, and put my legs to shorten myself, because the cabin was very low. But he that being nighest to me, hearing me, opened his eyes, and perceiving my intent and upon what account I was coming, he endeavoured to rise to make resistance against me, but ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... usual preparations for departure, the brushing of hats, the changing of coats, went on in all the ministerial offices. That precious thirty minutes thus employed served to shorten by just so much the day's labor. At this hour the over-heated rooms cool off; the peculiar odor that hangs about the bureaus evaporates; silence is restored. By four o'clock none but a few clerks ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... ta think 'at tha could shorten 'em a bit? It luks to me as if it 'll do if them gets shortened, Sally! get up! Are ta baan to sit thear all th' day? Go an' borrow yond butcher's saig, an' then ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... grinned, with a wink at the surveyor, as the engineer decided, after trying, that he had better shorten the straps a hole. Abe silently assisted him in adjusting them. Then—swinging into his saddle—the surveyor said to his employer as the horses moved ahead: "Good-by, sir. Wire ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... had traversed the valley, and to avoid a dangerous morass stretching across its lower extremity, and shorten the distance—for the ordinary road would have led them too much to the right—they began to climb one of the ridges of Pendle Hill, which lay between them and the vale they wished to gain. On obtaining the top of this eminence, an extensive view on either ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... that was quite enough to satisfy my most ardent longings. Moreover I seemed able to step on it, to lengthen or shorten it, to make it assume strange grotesque shapes; in a word I could play with it. This I could not do with such objects as trees, house, barn and fences; or rather there was no such response from them ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... Shorten the bridle (the bit should be a thick plain snaffle) so that the reins, when laid loose on his withers, come nearly straight. This is best done by twisting the reins twice round two fore-fingers and passing the ends through in a loop, because this knot ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... the father, smoothing, with his trembling hands, the soft hair that lay on either side of her forehead. "May God reward thee, and in His infinite mercy shorten ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... allow this base newspaper slander to shorten your stay here, Mr. Winkle?' said Mrs. Pott, smiling through the traces ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... fine run down Channel. On her passage a sudden squall struck her; the watch on deck flew aloft to shorten sail. Peter, who was aft, lay out on the mizen top-gallant-sail yard, and taking the weather earring, succeeded, with Owen Bell and two others, in handling the fluttering sail. As he reached the deck the captain called ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... four feet, to bear the girthing of a roller, to be led, &c." But if all this useful preliminary education, in which climbing through gaps after an old hunter, and taking little jumps, be omitted, then the Rarey system comes in to shorten your ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... risk attached to the operation. For that very reason, and although his opinion had not been asked, he agreed with Sergeant Stimson that the whisky-runners would attempt the passage. They were men who took the risks as they came, and that route would considerably shorten the journey it was especially desirable for them to make at night, while it would, Shannon fancied, appear probable to them that if the police had word of their intentions they would watch the bridge. Between it and the frozen ford the stream ran faster, and the ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... the afternoon to blow harder and harder; and by nightfall—you know it gets dark as soon as the sun goes down in those latitudes—we had to shorten sail so much that the Cranky Jane was staggering along at the rate of nearly fourteen knots an hour with reefed top-sails and jib and ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson

... part of the mother. At present the only act for which men are held irresponsible—for our practice amounts to that—is the act for which, above all others, they should be held responsible. A large amount of the money now spent by men on alcohol and tobacco, and other things which shorten their lives, and are needed only because they create a need for themselves, is really required for the interests of the race. Such is the double destruction worked by the alcoholic form of this waste that if the average ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... then jump by. Still the horse was not running fast. He wasted the value of his legs by jumping high in the air like a goat, instead of running with his belly against the earth like every other sensible horse whose business is to shorten distance. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... of the lifeless posture varies greatly on the same day, under the same atmospheric conditions and with the same subject, though I cannot fathom the causes which shorten or lengthen it. How to investigate the external influences, so numerous and often so slight, which intervene in such a case; above all, how to scrutinize the insect's private impressions: these are impenetrable mysteries. Let us confine ourselves ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... that the plan I propose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and national prosperity, and perpetuate both indefinitely? Is it doubted that we here—Congress and Executive—can ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... of you are asking, 'Live? Die? What does all this mean? When we die we shall die, good or bad; and in the meantime we shall live till we die. And you do not mean to tell us that we shall shorten our lives by our own tempers, or our tale- bearing, though we might, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley

... wonderful manner. My father, Lejoillie, Tim Flanagan, and two or three others, made preparations, under the superintendence of the second mate, for lowering a boat, every man of the crew being required to shorten sail. The helm was put down, the yards braced up, and the ship quickly brought to the wind. I was going to assist in lowering the boat, when the captain called me aft, and told me to keep an eye on Mr. Rochford ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... curse. They have their tales to compare together; their unhallowed secrets to disclose. The masters and the mistresses pass by them in review, and little deem they how oft the malignant glance or the malicious whisper follow their airy steps. To shorten such tedious hours, the servants familiarise themselves with every vicious indulgence, for even the occupation of such domestics is little more than a dissolute idleness. A cell in Newgate does not always contain more corruptors than a herd of servants ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... from the mutable, happy days of love. Still, when the hour of departure came they had garnered enough to sweeten all the after-straits and stress of time. September had then perceptibly begun to add to the nights and shorten the days, and her tender touch had been laid on everything. With a smile and a sigh the Rawdons turned their faces to their pleasant home in the Land of the West. It was to be but a short farewell. They had promised the Squire to return the following ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr

... off the road to ride straight across the country. It would be rough going for the aviator, but it would shorten the journey ten or twelve miles, which meant a good deal to Johnny's ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... good service I had done in the convict ship would count for something, and probably induce the governor to shorten my term of probation, I began now to think of applying for the indulgence. This idea I shortly after acted upon, and drew up a memorial to the personage just alluded to; saying nothing, however, of my innocence of the crime for which I had been transported, knowing that, as such an assertion would ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... the fluid extract or tincture of aconite, or veratrum to moderate the pulse by controlling the accelerated and unequal circulation of the blood. It is a simple treatment, but if judiciously followed, it will often abort a fever, or materially modify its intensity and shorten ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... from Grimm it has been the aim to simplify, to shorten, and to eliminate all objectionable qualities; as, for instance, the cruel step-mother element to be found ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie

... in the extreme, and every man on board knew that prudence required sail to be taken in and preparations made for the reception of the tornado. The captain was on deck, but the boatswain unfortunately remarked, "That squall looks like an ugly customer, sir, and it will soon be necessary to shorten sail." ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... request of Elizabeth a safe-conduct. The English princess promptly replied, that the queen had only to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh, and she should obtain not merely a safe-conduct but free permission to shorten the fatigues of her voyage by passing through England, where she should be received with all the marks of affection due to a beloved sister. By this answer Mary chose to regard herself as insulted; and declaring to the English ambassador in great heat that nothing vexed her so much as ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... lunatics under the guardianship of the Lord Chancellor has yet to be attained," and he quoted Master Barlow's evidence before the Dillwyn Committee of 1877: "I am a great advocate for a great reform in lunacy (Chancery) proceedings; I would facilitate the business of the procedure in the office and shorten it in such a way as to reduce the costs." Various important suggestions will be found in the evidence given before the above Committee by the present Visitors and an ex-Visitor, Dr. Bucknill, who has also, in his brochure on "The Care of the Insane, and their Legal Control," ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... so blind is the capitalist class that it does nothing to lengthen its lease of life, while it does everything to shorten it. The capitalist class offers nothing that is clean, noble, and alive. The revolutionists offer everything that is clean, noble, and alive. They offer service, unselfishness, sacrifice, martyrdom—the things ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... destroys the body, but finds itself precisely as much alive mentally as before. It had an appointed life-term determined by an intricate web of prior causes, which its own wilful sudden act cannot shorten. That term must run out its appointed sands. You may smash the lower half of the hand hour-glass, so that the impalpable sand shooting from the upper bell is dissipated by the passing aerial currents as it issues; ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... Cossinius stopped, and, while he was waiting for criticism of what he had said, Vitulus' freedman, coming into town from the gardens [of his master] turned to us and said, "I was on my way to your house to invite you to come early so as not to shorten the holiday." ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... motionless on the glassy sea. I observed with some satisfaction that the squall was bearing down on the larboard bow, so that it would strike the vessel in the position in which she would be best able to stand the shock. Having done my best to shorten sail, I returned aft, and took ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... project was, to shorten discourse, by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because, in reality, all things imaginable are ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... compelled to suffer his sentence, but memorials, signed by 11,000 persons, asking for his release, were sent to the Home Secretary from every part of the country, and a crowded meeting in St. James' Hall, London, demanded his liberation with only six dissentients. The whole agitation did not shorten Mr. Truelove's sentence by a single day, and he was not released from Coldbath Fields' Prison until September 5th. On the 12th of the same month the Hall of Science was crowded with enthusiastic friends, who assembled to do him honor, and he was presented with a beautifully-illuminated ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... excitement as the race went on. The long main boom of the Royal James skipped through the spray and her mainsail was wet to the second line of reef points, but Herriot held her square on the course and Bonnet smiled grimly ahead, with a look that meant he would run her under before he would shorten sail. Hand over hand they overhauled their rival, until once more the tiny figures of men were visible over her rail. A little knot of them were gathered aft, busy at something. Bonnet seized his glass and ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... height should be given to the heel only, and not to the sole of the foot also. The modern high-heeled boot is, in fact, merely the clog of the time of Henry VI., with the front prop left out, and its inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten the steps, and consequently to produce that want of grace which always follows ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... you shorten your line. Six seconds later your flies fall skilfully just upstream from where last ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... was compelled to tell them that she was not coming to get me, and even pretended to be afraid of her approach, which pleased them much, as they appeared determined I should never leave them. At dusk she was so near the land, that I saw them shorten sail, and fondly anticipated the hour of my ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay

... the four strengthen the resolution; while yet there is a danger, on the other hand, that the encouraged and morbid feeling may weaken or bias the understanding, or that the over shrewd and keen understanding may shorten the imagination, or that the understanding and imagination together may take place of, or undermine, the resolution, as in Hamlet. So in the mere bodily frame there is a delightful perfection of the senses, consistent with the utmost health of the muscular system, as ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... depths the glittering city and green pastures lie like Atlantis, between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten their grey shadows upon the plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with the morning light, upon the broad ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... more time and a higher toll than any of us wanted. Unemployment is far too high. Projected Federal spending—if government refuses to tighten its own belt—will also be far too high and could weaken and shorten the economic ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... not be thrown away upon me. I the rather would press this, as I am uneasy for your uneasiness; for Mrs. Jewkes acquaints me, that you take your restraint very heavily; and neither eat, drink, nor rest well; and I have too great interest in your health, not to wish to shorten the time of this trial; which will be the consequence of my coming down to you. John, too, has intimated to me your concern, with a grief that hardly gave him leave for utterance; a grief that a little alarmed my tenderness for you. Not that I fear any thing, but ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... that open and those that close the glottis; (2) those which regulate the tension of the vocal bands. The latter include the (a) crico-thyroids, which tense and elongate them, (b) thyro-arytenoids, which relax and shorten them. The crico-thyroid may be considered the most important muscle of phonation, because it is so much used and so effective. By its action the cricoid is pulled up in front and down behind, so that the arytenoids are drawn back, and thus the vocal bands ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... and of grace Are put beneath thy power; Then shorten these delaying days, And bring the ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts

... it. The electric fluid could not have seemed more tireless or iron more insensate. But now, when the hardship was somewhat relaxed, he was forced back on the perception that he was faint and hungry His speed slackened; his shoulders sagged; the long second wind, which had lasted so well, began to shorten. For the first time it occurred to him to wonder how long ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... gaol him now, and settle up ovens and spits and all sorts in the cell, wouldn't he, to shorten the day, be ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory

... would shorten the war, perpetuate peace, insure this increase of population, and proportionately the wealth of the country. With these we should pay all the emancipation would cost, together with our other debt, easier than we should pay our other debt without it. If we had allowed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... never will try it. I am quite sure that Mary does not expect any such thing, and that she is willing to wait. If I can shorten the term of waiting by hard work, I will do so." The decision to which Phineas had come on this matter was probably made known to Mrs. Flood Jones after some mild fashion by old Mrs. Finn. Nothing more was said to Phineas ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... even my mother, wishes me forth. I took in my wallet five hundred thalers, and fared like the peasant I seemed to be, down the Rhine, now on one side, now on the other, until I came to the ancient town of Castra Bonnensia of the Romans, which name the inhabitants now shorten to Bonn. There I found the Archbishop in residence, and not at Cologne, as I had supposed. The town being thronged with soldiers and inquisitive people of Cologne's court, I returned up the Rhine again, remembering I had gone rather far afield, and although you may not believe it, I ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... often, while not ready to go further; and that, much as he was in love—proportionately, that is, to his faculty for loving—he dare not do. But for the unconventionality of the Raymounts he would have reached the point long before. He began, therefore, to lessen the number, and shorten the length of his appearances in ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... made to work. From that time there were but two businesses aboard—from the pump to the helm. The gale lasted two days and a night, the brig running under close-reefed topsails, we being afraid to shorten sail lest we might be overtaken by some pursuing vessel, so strong was the terror of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... to go wi' me. But he was ahind with his farm work, an' I wasna needin' him. Twa folk may shorten a lang day to ane anither, but it's no ay done to edification. But the warst o' a' was coming hame ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... Lady Madeleine made little objection to Violet joining the party, as after the exertion that Miss Fane had been making, a drive in an open carriage might be dangerous: and yet the walk was too long, but all agreed that it would be impossible to shorten it; and, as Violet declared that she was not in the least fatigued, the lesser evil was therefore chosen. The carriages rolled off; at about halfway from Ems, the two empty ones were to wait for the walking ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... only for death to relieve their sufferings, confessed to anything and everything that would satisfy the inquisitors and judges. All that was needed was that the inquisitors should ask leading questions(251) and suggest satisfactory answers: the prisoners, to shorten the torture, were sure sooner or later to give the answer required, even though they knew that this would send them to the stake or scaffold. Under the doctrine of "excepted cases," there was no limit to torture for persons accused of heresy or witchcraft; ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... bands and seams. People were still spinning and weaving, though the mills that were to lead the revolution in industries had come in. The Embargo was taxing the ingenuity of brains as well as hands, and as more of everything was needed for the increase of population, new methods were invented to shorten processes that were to make New England the manufacturing center of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... stalks of the gramina, for we had been obliged to pull off our boots, the soles having become too slippery. On declivities devoid of shrubs or ligneous herbs, which may be grasped by the hand, the danger of the descent is diminished by walking barefoot. In order to shorten the way, our guides conducted us from the Puerta de la Silla to the farm of Gallegos by a path leading to a reservoir of water, called el Tanque. They missed their way, however; and this last descent, the steepest of all, brought us near the ravine of Chacaito. The noise of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... sometimes necessary to shorten a rope temporarily and not desirable to cut it, and the sheep-shank knot solves the problem. It is used by the sailors, who do not believe in cutting ropes. It will stand a tremendous strain without slipping, but will loosen when held slack, ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... sister, I have to think. In that case, her wish is to be present. Your lordship will shorten the number of minutes for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... not far away where, by George's consent, the mail-carrier left letters when bad weather made it desirable to shorten his round. ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... under another name; he has caused himself to be elected consul for ten years! Ah, he will know how to shorten these ten years, just as he knew how ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... effort to move away, or, indeed, to pretend not to have seen her, but stood looking at her as though he had the right to do so, and as though she must know he had that right. As she came towards him the Princess Aline did not stop, nor even shorten her steps; but as she passed opposite to him she bowed her thanks with a sweet impersonal smile and a dropping of the eyes, and continued ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis

... the other,' said Anne; 'if she does not whine, he will not teaze. But had I not better finish my letter to him, and tell him he must shorten his ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... them, "There, you are on your paws once more; may you walk long in this valley of tears!" When he saw a poor man dying of hunger, he gave him all the pence he had about him, growling out, "Live on, you wretch! eat! last a long time! It is not I who would shorten your penal servitude." After which, he would rub his hands and say, "I do men all ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... attending a Farewell Reading. As they entered the room, each person received a printed slip of paper, on which was read, "The audience are respectfully informed that carriages have been ordered tonight at half-past nine. Without altering his Reading in the least, Mr. Dickens will shorten his usual pauses between the Parts, in order that he may leave York by train a few minutes after that time. He has been summoned," it was added, "to London, in connection with a late sad occurrence within the general ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... rather less than the sum I had made out to be the single fare to Shaphambury. Still deliberate, I went back to the Public Library to find out whether it was possible, by walking for ten or twelve miles anywhere, to shorten the journey. My boots were in a dreadful state, the sole of the left one also was now peeling off, and I could not help perceiving that all my plans might be wrecked if at this crisis I went on shoe leather in which I could only shuffle. So long as I went ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... will keep to my matter. But, gentlemen, having now shown you, as I think, enough of this first meeting between the murdered person and the prisoner, I will shorten my tale so far as to say that from then on there were frequent meetings of the two: for the young woman was greatly tickled with having got hold (as she conceived it) of so likely a sweetheart, and ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... All the celestials parted mourning then, Pierc'd with our human miseries more than men: Ah, nothing doth the world with mischief fill, But want of feeling one another's ill! With their descent the day grew something fair, And cast a brighter robe upon the air. Hero, to shorten time with merriment, For young Alcmane and bright Mya sent, Two lovers that had long crav'd marriage-dues At Hero's hands: but she did still refuse; For lovely Mya was her consort vow'd In her maid state, and therefore not allow'd To amorous nuptials: yet fair Hero now Intended ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... corner, and sometimes Frank consented to go all the way around, chatting breathlessly as he trotted along behind. At other times he was prevailed upon to bring to me a cookie and a glass of milk, a deed which helped to shorten the forenoon. And yet, notwithstanding all these ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... where she devoutly kissed the stigmata; then, leaving her slippers at the foot of the scaffold, she nimbly ascended the ladder, and instructed beforehand, promptly lay down on the plank, without exposing her naked shoulders. But her precautions to shorten the bitterness of death were of no avail, for the pope, knowing her impetuous disposition, and fearing lest she might be led into the commission of some sin between absolution and death, had given orders that the moment Beatrice was extended on the scaffold ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... pass through Ruwe, which is an important center of gold production in the Katanga, and connect up with the Katanga Railway just north of Kambove. It is really a link in the Cape-to-Cairo system and when completed will shorten the freight haul from the copper fields to London by three thousand miles, as compared with ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... tradition among them, which had been altered from age to age according to the fancies of the reciters. They said that there came anciently from the north, a man who had no bones or joints, and who was able to shorten or lengthen the way before him as he thought fit, and to elevate or depress the mountains at his pleasure. By this man the ancient Indians were created; and as those of the plain had given him some cause of displeasure, he rendered their country sterile and sandy as it now is, and commanded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... cases do occur when warning given by a friendly and neutral Power—by a Power which is well known to have no interest of its own to serve, by a Power desiring nothing more than the restoration of peace, and that that peace shall be permanent—may do something to shorten the duration and limit the extent of a war that might otherwise spread over the greater part of Europe. As to the state of affairs at the present moment—for that, I apprehend, is the practical question on which the House wishes an answer from me, I wish ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... qualification, and into England's mood of ceaseless effort and anxiety there has come a sudden relaxation, a breath of something canning and sustaining. What your action may be—whether it will shorten the war, and how much, no one here yet knows. But when in some great strain a friend steps to your side, you don't begin with questions. He is there. Your cause, your effort, are his. Details will come. Discussion will come. But there is a breathing space first, in which feeling ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the wire rigging and trimming the cargo, the shifting of which had nearly sent her to the bottom. I went with the boat to lend a hand, and the second mate of the brigantine told me that the young captain had refused to listen to the mate's suggestion to shorten sail, when the officer told him that the wind would certainly come away suddenly from the N.E. The consequence was that a furious squall took her aback, and had not the jibboom—and then the upper spars—carried away ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... and patrons of humanity. There are to whom the garden, grove, and field Perpetual lessons of forbearance yield; Who would not lightly violate the grace The lowliest flower possesses in its place; Nor shorten the sweet life, too fugitive, Which nothing less ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... plunge into the calyx until after a protracted course of circuitous buzzing and much prefatory waste of time: and this with all the insect's credit for industry. So over-perverse a traveller, so ultra-dilatory a bee as the author of Modern Painters, must shorten his journey, must leave much honey unfilched. He is as the army which commences in orderly retreat and ends in rabble-like riot and demoralization, gaining a place of safety at last, with the sacrifice of much baggage and treasure. So, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... Fred's more correct eye, for instance, would be invaluable to Jack Bedford, the ex-sign-painter, who was struggling with the profile of the Gladiator; or Margaret, who could detect at a glance the faintest departure from the lines of the original, would shorten a curve on Oliver's drawing, or he in turn would advise her about the depth of a shadow or the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... And presently, against the white lather of the lake, I thought I caught sight of a black nose pushed out beyond the land. Another moment, and the tug itself was bobbing in the open. Barely had she reached the deep water beyond the sands when her length began to shorten, and the dense cloud of smoke that rose made it plain that she was firing. At the sight I reflected that I had been a fool indeed. A scant flue miles of water lay between us and her, and if they really meant business back there, and they gave every sign of it, we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... carry out his instructions to the letter. I won't say, however," continued Mr. Girdlestone, "that circumstances might not arise which might induce me to shorten this probationary period. If my further acquaintance with you confirms the high impression which I now have of your commercial ability, that, of course, would have weight with me; and, again, if I find Miss Harston's mind is made up upon the point, that also ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... corruption makes this waye, And with no tarde pace. Where shall I hyde mee! Whether shall I fly to Palestra back And with this sadd relation kill her quite That's scarce recovered! rather, you hy powers, Then to prolonge our griefes, shorten our ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... has said, to shorten the proceedings as much as possible," began Inglewood, "I will not read the first part of the letter sent to us. It is only fair to the prosecution to admit the account given by the second clergyman fully ratifies, as far as facts are concerned, that given ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... were near where a lot of the Boers were making for their mounts to get them away. One big fellow was leading his pony, and as poor Roby was straggling blindly about, this Boer ran at him, holding his rein in one hand, his rifle in the other, and I saw him shorten it with his right to turn it into a club to bring it ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... Cyrus Garst has a general admiration. He has always agreed with them famously—save on one point; and he has never had to shorten his wanderings for fear of lengthening their fees. For Cyrus has a millionnaire father in the Back Bay of Boston, who is disposed ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... the new machine had been tried. Everything had succeeded to his heart's desire. The worthy man was triumphant. It seemed to him that he had paid a debt, by giving the house of Fromont the benefit of a new machine, which would lessen the labor, shorten the hours of the workmen, and at the same time double the profits and the reputation of the factory. He indulged in beautiful dreams as he plodded along. His footsteps rang out proudly, emphasized by the resolute and happy trend of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Sakr-el-Bahr. "He'll not swim far in any case. But we will shorten his road for him." He snatched a cross-bow from the rack about the mainmast, fitted a shaft to it ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... he approaches along the interminable road, that now rises over a hill and now descends into a valley, observes it from afar, his view uninterrupted by wood, but the vastness of the plain seems to shorten his step, so that he barely gains on the receding roofs. The hedges by the road are cropped—cut down mercilessly—and do not afford the slightest protection against wind, or rain, or sleet. If he would pause awhile to rest his weary ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... spring, and give them the advantage of a fallow, by throwing up the ground in a ridge. Scatter over it a very little rotten dung from a melon bed, and afterwards turn it twice during the winter. Examine the flowering shrubs, and prune them. Cut away all the dead wood, shorten luxuriant branches, and if any cross each other, take away one. Leave them so that the air may have a free passage between them. Sift a quarter of an inch of good fresh mould over the roots of perennial flowers, whose ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... properly speaking, recognizes himself only in his defects: and the public interests itself sooner for a faulty individuality than for that which is produced or amended according to a universal law of taste. Rhythm lay yet in the cradle, and no one knew of a method to shorten its childhood. Poetical prose came into the ascendant. Gessner and Klopstock excited many imitators: others, again, still demanded an intelligible metre, and translated this prose into rhythm. But even these gave nobody satisfaction, for they were obliged to omit and add; and the prose original ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time that they shorten the superstructure. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... there! hark! hark!— [CAL., STEPH. and TRIN. are driven out. Go charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them Than pard ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... chases. Why should rain to-day Bring rain to-morrow? Python's foe Is pleased sometimes his lyre to play, Nor bends his bow. Be brave in trouble; meet distress With dauntless front; but when the gale Too prosperous blows, be wise no less, And shorten sail. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... quite abreast of their landing and within a league of it; and yet she showed no signs of an intention to abate her speed, nor did any one appear at the gangway to speak to them. At length a hoarse call was heard on deck, and the ship began to shorten sail. Her fore-course was hauled up, and the spanker was brailed; then the royals were clewed up and furled; the topgallant-sails followed; and presently the Proserpine was reduced to her three topsails and jib. All this, finished just ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... an inch thick, is held at the centre between the finger and thumb. On sweeping a wet woollen rag over one of its halves, you hear an acute sound due to the vibrations of the glass. What is the condition of the glass while the sound is heard? This: its two halves lengthen and shorten in quick succession. Its two ends, therefore, are in a state of quick vibration; but at the centre the pulses from the two ends alternately meet and retreat from each other. Between their opposing actions, the glass at the centre is kept motionless: but, on the other hand, it is alternately ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... Galors is galloping after Isoult, let us turn to that unconscious lady who hides her limbs in a pair of ragged breeches, and her bloom under the grime of coal-dust. Her cloud of hair, long now and lustrous, out of all measure to her pretence, she was accustomed to shorten by doubling it under her cap. An odd fancy had taken her which prevented a second shearing. If Prosper loved her she dared not go unlovely any more. Her hair curtained her when she bathed in the brook and the sun. Beyond doubt it was beautiful; it was Prosper's; ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... chilly as we ascend, and more than once we sigh half dubiously for the bright parlor left behind at Luz. We move leisurely, almost reluctantly, on, not in haste to reach the climax of this unhospitable avenue; but the four miles shorten themselves unexpectedly, and it seems but a short walk before we are in sight of the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... nearer, and have done with it, in the words which He addressed to the betrayer, 'That thou doest, do quickly,' as if He were making a last appeal to the man's humanity, and in effect saying to him, 'If you have a heart at all, shorten these painful hours, and let ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... essential point. The door was lofty and opened upon the farmyard, through which there was a kind of thoroughfare, very seldom used, it is true, and at each end of it there was a gate by which wayfarers occasionally passed to shorten the way. There we sat without speaking a word, shivering with cold and fear, listening to the clock which went slowly, tick, tick, and occasionally starting as the door creaked on its hinges, or a half-burnt billet fell upon the hearth. My sister was ghastly white, ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... started, to tell the whole tale of the Angelic Maid and all the things which she accomplished, and all that we who companied with her did and saw, both of success and of failure. But now my brain and my pen alike refuse the task. I must needs shorten it. I think my heart would well nigh break a second time, if I were to seek to tell all that terrible tale which the world ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... twenty or thirty miles between Newcastle and London, is now thought to be a matter of so much importance as to justify one or more independent lines, which, despising intermediate cities and their traffic, still hold their even course as the crow flies, from point to point, and thereby shorten the transit from the south to the north of England by—it may be—the matter of an hour. We did not use to be quite so chary of our minutes: nor, though fully aware of the value of time, did we ever bestow the same regard upon the fractional portions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... condition of affairs when forty-nine long days had crept by. As to the brightness of the immediate future no misgivings existed. The days would soon shorten to their normal duration, and be all the happier for the antecedent gloom. Relief could not in the nature of things be very far away. Ah, no; it never was; that was the pity of it—the irritant destined to deepen our disgust—to nourish our discontent. At Mafeking they ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... fleet were, and Captain Cox, and Mr. Pierce the Surgeon; the last of whom hath been in the House, and declared that he heard Brouncker advise and give arguments to Cox: for the safety of the Duke of York's person to shorten sail, that they might not be in the middle of the enemy in the morning alone; and Cox denying to observe his advice, having received the Duke of York's commands over night to keep within gun-shot (as they then were) of the enemy, Brouncker ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... in my walk, and I found that it was later than I had imagined when I paused to turn back. I fancied I could make a round; I had enough notion of the direction in which I was, to see that by turning up a narrow straight lane to my left I should shorten my way back to Tours. And so I believe I should have done, could I have found an outlet at the right place, but field-paths are almost unknown in that part of France, and my lane, stiff and straight as any street, and marked into terribly vanishing perspective by the regular row of poplars on each ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... for their happiness following them, loving words ringing after them. Relatives, friends, and servants had crowded round them; and Lillian's courage gave way at last. She turned to Lionel, as though praying him to shorten ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... at it rapturously. It had been a straight, long gown, and all Phyllis had needed to do was to drape it with the net ripped from the other dress and shorten and cut it into fashionableness. It was charming—springlike and becoming, and, best of all, strictly up ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... my body. I spent a month very much out of spirits and very much tired of myself. During the last eight or ten days I have felt much better. My visit to our friends the Beaumonts did me a great deal of good, and I owe a grudge to the Academy for forcing me to shorten it. ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... from Avignon to l'Isle. They covered the nine miles between the two places in an hour. During this hour Roland, as he resolved to shorten the time for his travelling companion, was witty and animated, and their approach to the duelling ground only served to redouble his gayety. To one unacquainted with the object of this drive, the menace of dire peril impending ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... will certainly suffer, Mrs. Truax, if you let the hot sun glare upon them so mercilessly." And, turning, we saw madame's smiling face looking from her casement with a meaning that struck us both dumb and led me to shorten our walk lest my interest in the romance then going on should be suspected and ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... hands, that the distresses of our author helped to shorten his days, and indeed, when his extraordinary merit is considered, he had the hardest measure of any of our poets. It appears from different accounts, that he was of an amiable sweet disposition, humane and generous in his nature. Besides the Fairy Queen, we find he had written several ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... "The proposed Emancipation would shorten the War, perpetuate Peace, insure this increase of population, and proportionately the wealth of the Country. With these, we should pay all the Emancipation would cost, together with our other debt, easier than we should pay our ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... received from God, done for him, and where thou hast also been wanting. This will beget praise and humility, and put thee upon redeeming the day that is past; whereby thou wilt be able, through the continual supplies of grace, in some good measure to drive thy work before thee, and to shorten it as thy life doth shorten; and mayst comfortably live in the hope of bringing both ends sweetly together. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... had fallen now, and there was only enough breeze to stir the delicate-stemmed leaves. Any one who had been sitting in the house all day would have been glad to walk now; but Adam had been quite enough in the open air to wish to shorten his way home, and he bethought himself that he might do so by striking across the Chase and going through the Grove, where he had never been for years. He hurried on across the Chase, stalking along the narrow paths between the fern, with Gyp at his heels, not lingering ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... might anticipate, after the contents of the womb are expelled the ligaments hang loosely from its sides, very much as sails hang when a breeze dies down. Immediately after delivery, therefore, the ligaments give the womb little or no support; eventually they shorten and tighten, readily accommodating themselves to the existing conditions. Until the accommodation is perfected, it is especially desirable to permit no pressure which might push the womb backward. It is for this reason that many obstetricians object to the time- honored custom of applying a ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... volunteered the maestro. That is the Italian for Hedwig, or Hadwig, you know. But we should shorten it and call her Gigia just as though she were Luisa. Nino does not think it so pretty. Nino was silent. Perhaps he was always shy of repeating the familiar name of the first woman he had ever loved. Imagine! At twenty he ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... not lying in this bed this night. Yes, you may call me a foolish woman; but no, Mr. Caudle, no; it's you who are the foolish man; or worse than a foolish man; you're a wicked one. If you were to die to-morrow—and people who go to public-houses do all they can to shorten their lives—I should like to know who would write upon your tombstone, 'A tender husband and an affectionate father'? I—I'd have no such falsehoods told of you, ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold

... hundred sons, but cannot kindle An atom of their ancestors from earth. The victims are not equal; he has seen His sons expire by natural deaths, and I My sires by violent and mysterious maladies. 280 I used no poison, bribed no subtle master Of the destructive art of healing, to Shorten the path to the eternal cure. His sons—and he had four—are dead, without ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... this cast you down, continued she, I am not easily disheartened; and if your patience does but hold out, I am hopeful I shall compass my end. To shorten my story, said the young man, this good procuress made several attempts on my behalf with the proud enemy of my rest. The fret I thereby underwent inflamed my distemper to that degree that my physicians gave me quite over; so that I was looked on ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... the torture, "Ah!" cried Tibe'rius, "how has that man been able to escape me!" When a prisoner had earnestly entreated that he would not defer his death: "Know," said the tyrant, "I am not sufficiently your friend to shorten ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... the sun, or towards a blazing fire, or towards a cow, or towards a regenerate person, or on the road, become shortlived. At daytime both calls of nature should be answered with face turned towards the north. At night, those calls should be answered facing the south. By so doing one does not shorten one's life. One that wishes to live long should never disregard or insult any of these three, however weak or emaciated they may appear to be, viz., the Brahmana, the Kshatriya, and the snake. All three are endued with virulent poison. The snake, if angry, burns the victim ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... made Mr. Eden very ill. He went up to him and said, "My poor fellow, I am very sorry for you; but discipline must be maintained, and you are now suffering for fighting against it. Make your submission to the governor, and then I dare say he will shorten your punishment as far as he ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... take a finite time before they end in death. The earlier parts of these changes can be ruled out in the same way as we can rule out the process by which the arsenic was acquired. Proceeding in this way, we can shorten the process which we are calling the cause more and more. Similarly we shall have to shorten the effect. It may happen that immediately after the man's death his body is blown to pieces by a bomb. We cannot say ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... of living, ways into which parents and teachers can lead the young, which, if faithfully followed, will allow the potencies of Man's higher nature to evolve themselves with what we, with our limited experience, must regard as abnormal celerity, and which will therefore shorten appreciably Man's journey to his goal?[39] And if there is a directer path to spiritual maturity than that which is ordinarily followed, is not ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... it was almost intolerable; then he went to Ginger, who was impatiently jerking her head up and down against the bit, as was her way now. She had a good idea of what was coming, and the moment York took the rein off the terret in order to shorten it she took her opportunity and reared up so suddenly that York had his nose roughly hit and his hat knocked off; the groom was nearly thrown off his legs. At once they both flew to her head; but ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... work, I undertook to make a road across the coast mountains from King's Valley to the Siletz, to shorten the haul between the two points by a route I had explored. I knew there were many obstacles in the way, but the gain would be great if we could overcome them, so I set to work with the enthusiasm of a young path-finder. The point at which the road ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... "There wait they within that would snare me; There whet they their swords for my slaying. My bane they shall be not, the cowards, The brood of the churl and the carline. Let the twain of them find me and fight me In the field, without shelter to shield them, And ewes of the sheep should be surer To shorten the ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... he's as big and husky as any two of mine!" said she, reassuringly. "I guess you do jest about right. But, Shandy, you've got to shorten him." ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... It is very slow work. A good half-hour elapses before the tiny cavity is large enough to admit a pin's head. I wait longer still. Then I lose patience; and, fully convinced that the Bee is trying to open the store-room, I decide to help her to shorten the work. The upper part of the cell comes away with it, leaving the edges badly broken. In my awkwardness, I have turned an elegant vase ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... passage in the teeth of the trade-wind. It was a long voyage, and his people were reduced to the last extremity, even threatening to eat the Indians who were on board. One night, to the surprise of all the company, the Admiral gave the order to shorten sail. Next morning, at dawn, Cape St. Vincent was in sight. This is a remarkable proof of the care with which his reckoning must have been kept, and of his consummate skill as a navigator. On his third voyage he decided, for various reasons, to make further discoveries nearer ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... Curing those problems has taken more time and a higher toll than any of us wanted. Unemployment is far too high. Projected Federal spending—if government refuses to tighten its own belt—will also be far too high and could weaken and shorten the economic ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... New England quartermaster in charge of railroads in Tennessee, who tried to introduce this principle during the war. The result was discouraging. He succeeded in telescoping two or three trains every day. He seemed to think that the easiest way to shorten up a long train and get it on a short siding was to telescope it. I have always thought that if that man's attention had been turned in an astronomical direction, he would have been the first man to telescope the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... him no extraordinary prospects, either of worldly happiness, or of long days: and he hopes, that you, who have been supposed to have contributed to the lengthening of your grandfather's life, will not, by your disobedience, shorten your father's.' ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... it is thought desirable to shorten the words of | administration on Christmas-day Easter-day, and Whitsunday, or | on special occasions approved by the Bishop, or in the case | of the pressure caused by large and unexpected numbers, the | Priest, having first said the whole words of administration | (in the ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... day was divided into unequal hours. The clock invented by Ctesibius, of Alexandria, 136 years B.C. was so contrived as to lengthen or shorten the hours. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various

... misery to his fellow creatures; he is one of the instruments of the anger of the Almighty, a scourge in the hand of Providence to chastise a land whose wickedness had become intolerable. For the elect's sake, and there are a few even in Spain, may it please the Lord to shorten the affliction of these days, or ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... bottom a fine dark sand. The Discovery did not get in till two o'clock in the afternoon, when Captain Clerke informed me, that he had narrowly escaped being driven on the S. point of the harbour, his anchor having started before they had time to shorten in the cable. This obliged them to set sail, and drag the anchor after them, till they had room to heave it up, and then they found one of its palms ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... stream, rushing down and falling over huge rocks, rendered the only available one any thing but easy. At times we were up to the arms, then crawling out and stealing with care over wet and slippery stones, now taking advantage of a few yards of dry ground, and ever and anon swimming a pool to shorten an unpleasant climb. In this manner we advanced about half a mile, when the fall became visible; thick trees and hanging creepers intervened; between and through the foliage we first saw the water glancing and shining in its descent. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... important local gains, the great western offensives have been failures. Champagne was a failure, the Calais drive was a failure, Verdun was a failure, and the drive on the Somme has only bent the lines. The Germans may shorten their lines because of a lack of men, but I firmly believe that neither their line nor the Allies' line will ever be broken. What will be the end if the Allies cannot wrest from Germany, Belgium and that part of northern France she is holding for ransom—to obtain good terms at ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... ignorance of comparative distances; they could not, or rather they would not, adopt as a standard the two short hours' march between the Port and the inland Fort of El-Wijh. When, however, the trick was pointed out to them, they at once threw it aside as useless. No pretext was too flimsy to shorten a march or to cause a halt—the northerners did the same, but with them we had a controlling power in the shape of Shaykh Furayj. And like the citizens, they hate our manner of travelling: they love to sit up and chat through half the night; ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... manner of cutting up, or, as it is called, dressing the carcase. In London this process is very simple, and as our butchers have found that much skewering back, doubling one part over another, or scoring the inner cuticle or fell, tends to spoil the meat and shorten the time it would otherwise keep, they avoid all such treatment entirely. The carcase when flayed (which operation is performed while yet warm), the sheep when hung up and the head removed, presents the profile shown in our cut; the small ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... hear the humanitarians telling us, indignant and grieving, that he actually must stand in that nice, warm, dry room every day, safe from storms and wild beasts, and with nothing to do but fill cans; and at once we groan: "How deadly! What monotonous toil! Shorten his hours!" His work would seem blissful to super-spiders,—but to us it's intolerable. The factory system is meant for ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... cozy corners and unexpected nooks and crannies for holding pieces of statuary and collecting dust. If a woman could be the "& Company" of every firm of architects, there would be an evolution in home building which would lengthen the lives and shorten the labors of "lady-managers" in many lands. When that comfortable wish becomes a reality, let us hope that "Let there be light" will be printed in large black letters across the space to be occupied by each closet in every house plan, for ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... under the effects of that which another man could bear without much distress. I maintained that it was wicked, a sin against human nature, to take a well man, put him in a place that should destroy his health, and, very possibly, shorten his days, by engrafting on him some incurable disorder. Some, on the other side, urged, that as we were in the power of the British, we should not be uncivil to them; and that our rejection of the ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... stretched out, and join it to another in the same direction, which is to double the length of that straight line; or else join another with what inclination it thinks fit, and so make what sort of angle it pleases: and being able also to shorten any line it imagines, by taking from it one half, one fourth, or what part it pleases, without being able to come to an end of any such divisions, it can make an angle of any bigness. So also the lines that are its sides, of what length it pleases, which joining again to other lines, of different ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... The underbrush hid him from the speakers, and he was too far off to hear a word. It seemed to him that Elizabeth wished to shorten the interview, for soon Edmonson with another of his inimitable bows retired and she passed on. As Stephen caught sight of her face he saw that it was troubled. "He shall not persecute her," he said to himself. Nancy had gone on while Edmonson was speaking to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... "You don't mean," he whispered, with a look of terrified suspicion, "that you would ever lay hands on yourself, and shorten your life ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... the magicians, by their spells, cause thunder in the skies unknown to Jupiter; that they tear the moon from her sphere, and precipitate her to earth; that they disturb the course of nature, prolong the nights, and shorten the days; that the universe is obedient to their voice, and that the world is chilled as it were when they speak and command.[174] They were so well persuaded that the magicians possessed power to make the moon come down from the sky, and they so truly ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... already in great part Romanized the south province, produce their effect likewise in the north; but, like a genuine statesman, he sought to stimulate the natural course of development and, moreover, to shorten as far as possible the always painful period of transition. To say nothing of the admission of a number of Celts of rank into Roman citizenship and even of several perhaps into the Roman senate, it was probably Caesar who introduced, although with certain restrictions, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... polish which the perfection of art gives to each commodity; but this circumstance ought not to appear strange, if we consider that, entirely devoid of all methodical instruction, and ignorant also of the importance of the subdivision of labor, which contributes so greatly to simplify, shorten, and improve the respective excellence of all kinds of works, the same natives gin and clean the cotton, and then spin and weave it, without any other instruments than their hands and feet, aided only by the course and unsightly looms they themselves construct ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... and I did not part so soon. Time flew, and we seemed to shorten the night—"noctem vario sermone," as sayeth Virgil of poor Dido, who must have found the conversation considerably flag with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... to shorten, Edwards and I began to plan our escape. We had the maps, the one he had bought at Vehnemoor and the one I had made. We had the compass, which we had kept hidden in a very small crack in the sloping roof of the hut, and the Red Cross suits had come, and were ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung

... Grace Cunningham did not recall them, but only wrote and told Horatia that she must shorten her visit if she was ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... impatient to shorten a scene which she had neither strength of mind to endure nor to prevent, rose to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... done well, my friend," said the master. "Spare not sail or oar now, but make Byzantium without looking into any wayside port. I will increase your pay in proportion as you shorten the time we are out. Look ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... were now to be seen coming on rapidly; but presently, the squall proving too strong for them, they all came fluttering up into the wind and began to shorten sail. ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... less than the sum I had made out to be the single fare to Shaphambury. Still deliberate, I went back to the Public Library to find out whether it was possible, by walking for ten or twelve miles anywhere, to shorten the journey. My boots were in a dreadful state, the sole of the left one also was now peeling off, and I could not help perceiving that all my plans might be wrecked if at this crisis I went on shoe leather in which ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... Du ersparst mir die Krucke; meaning that the contents of the letter can but shorten his declining years, and so spare him the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... little Pilgrim said. And it was nothing to her that the air was less bright there, for her mind was full of light, so that, though her heart still fluttered a little with all that had passed, she had no longing to return, nor to shorten the way, but went by the lower road sweetly, with the stranger hanging upon her, who was stronger and taller than she. Thus they went on, and the Pilgrim told her all she knew, and everything that came into her heart. And so full was she ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant

... tables that, of any hundred living persons under like conditions, five will reach a given age, not simply because that proportion have reached it in times past, but because that fact shows the existence there of a particular proportion between the causes which shorten and the causes which prolong life to ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... whistle, after his fashion, and he walked away from the females, with the air of a man who wanted room to think in. Half a minute later, he called out—"Stand by to shorten sail, boys. Man fore-clew-garnets, flying jib down haul, topgallant sheets, and gaff-topsail gear. In with 'em all, my lads—in with everything, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... the rope, and tried to shorten his suspense by pushing the boat towards the water; but his strength was insufficient. He could not move it. He would have to ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... to replace another that has fallen out. We should furnish a large shield to prevent it being swallowed. We can try the method of weaning the baby from the comforter by tying a ribbon to it and to the child's bodice. The system is gradually to shorten the ribbon until it becomes too short for the baby to suck in comfort. It will then gradually grow away from ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... likely to be vexed than he is," Captain Vere said, "for it will give him all the more time for the studies in which he is wrapped up. Besides, it will be a real service to the boys. It will shorten their probation as volunteers, and they may get commissions much earlier than they otherwise would do. We are all mere children in the art of war; for truly before Roger Morgan first took out his volunteers to fight for the Dutch there was scarce a man ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... Master Barlow's evidence before the Dillwyn Committee of 1877: "I am a great advocate for a great reform in lunacy (Chancery) proceedings; I would facilitate the business of the procedure in the office and shorten it in such a way as to reduce the costs." Various important suggestions will be found in the evidence given before the above Committee by the present Visitors and an ex-Visitor, Dr. Bucknill, who has also, in his brochure on "The Care of the Insane, and their Legal Control," advocated ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... the remainder were so far from having reached their places that De Vaudreuil, commanding the rear division and last engaged, states that the line was formed under the fire of musketry. The English, on the contrary, were in good order, the only change made being to shorten the interval between ships from two to one cable's length (seven hundred feet). The celebrated stroke of breaking through the French line was due, not to previous intention, but to a shift of wind throwing their ships out of order and so increasing the spaces ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... emancipation would shorten the war, perpetuate peace, insure this increase of population, and proportionately the wealth of the country. With these we should pay all the emancipation would cost, together with our other debt, easier than we should pay our other debt without it. If we ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... be in continuall feare and agonie; for no man did ever more distrust his life, nor make lesse account of his continuance: Neither can health, which hitherto I have so long enjoied, and which so seldome hath beene crazed, [Enfeebled.] lengthen my hopes, nor any sicknesse shorten them of it. At every minute me thinkes I make an escape. And I uncessantly record unto my selfe, that whatsoever may be done another day, may be effected this day. Truly hazards and dangers doe little or nothing approach us at our end: And if we consider, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... she preferred to keep a serious countenance, partly because she did not feel the least seriously. She was instantly resolved not to let this letter accomplish anything more than Dan's temporary abasement, and she would have preferred to shorten this to the briefest moment possible. She liked him, and she was convinced that Alice could never do better, if half so well. She would now have preferred to treat him with familiar confidence, to tell him that she had no idea ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the family lives in the house where the death occurred until a human sacrifice has been made. During this period they live very quietly, eat poor food, wear old clothing, and abstain from all amusements. If their wealth permits, they may shorten the period of mourning by making a special sacrifice, but in most cases the bereaved will wait until the yearly sacrifice when they will purchase a share in the victim and thus remove the taboo. Following the offering, the old house is abandoned and is allowed ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole

... source of our sorrows and feel the guilt of our sins, this does not make our burden lighter or shorten the path of our pilgrimage. We are confronted by the problem of labor and suffering as soon as we enter the world. No one is entirely exempted; and, strange as it is, we see that it frequently happens, that those are most afflicted who ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... and because the winde was good and conuenient, we sayled all day and all night without staying, and the next day we came to the middle of Brions Island, which we were not minded to doe, to the end we might shorten our way. These two lands lie Northwest, and Southeast, and are about fiftie leagues one from another. The said Island is in latitude 47 degrees and a halfe. Vpon Thursday being the twenty sixe of the moneth, and the feast of the Ascension ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... sport—pig-sticking, peacock-shooting, paper-chases, all the delights of an Indian life. But now, vegetating on a slender pittance in the semi-slumberous idleness of Les Fontaines, he had nothing to do and nothing to think about; and he was glad to shorten his days by dozing away the fresher hours of the morning, while his wife toiled at the preparation of that elaborate meal which he loved to talk ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... "I'm going to shorten things up and use the space control," Arcot said. "The gravitational field of the sun will drain a lot of our energy out, but so what? Lead is cheap, and before we're through, we'll have plenty or I'll ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... pp. 150-162; Taylor, Medical Jurisprudence, fifth edition, pp. 44, 98 et seq.; L.M. Allen, "Prolonged Gestation," American Journal Obstetrics, April, 1907). It is possible, as Mueller suggested in 1898 in a These de Nancy, that civilization tends to shorten the period of gestation, and that in earlier ages it was longer than it is now. Such a tendency to premature birth under the exciting nervous influences of civilization would thus correspond, as Bouchacourt has pointed out (La Grossesse, p. 113), to the similar ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... of the Ideal" for scientific breeding and thus shorten the time necessary for the triumph of a social reform. He counts one or two generations as sufficient. This is an enormous advance over Darwin's doctrine, but Christ's plan is still more encouraging. A man can ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... bear, said I, rising from my seat with a stern air, to see a reasonable creature behave so outrageously!—Will this vehemence, think you, mend the matter? Will it avail you any thing? Will it not rather shorten the life you are so desirous to have lengthened, and deprive you of the only opportunity you can ever have to settle your affairs for both worlds?—Death is but the common lot: and if it be your's soon, looking at her, it will be also your's, and your's, and your's, speaking ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... falls below zero one cannot touch steel tools with unprotected hands. After some trouble, Jim loosed the wire and then saw the broken ends would not meet. However, since the line curved, a post could be cut in order to shorten the distance, and he crawled back to the spot where he had left his ax. Had he not been used to the snowy wilds, he could not ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... will try it. I am quite sure that Mary does not expect any such thing, and that she is willing to wait. If I can shorten the term of waiting by hard work, I will do so." The decision to which Phineas had come on this matter was probably made known to Mrs. Flood Jones after some mild fashion by old Mrs. Finn. Nothing more was said to Phineas about a joint household; but he was quite ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... invalid—indeed, ordered by Sir Barnes to go home, and not to bother him. So at home Lady Anne remained, where the thoughts of the sufferings she had already undergone in that house, of Sir Barnes's cruel behaviour to her at her last visit, which he had abruptly requested her to shorten, of the happy days which she had passed as mistress of that house and wife of the defunct Sir Brian; the sight of that departed angel's picture in the dining-room and wheel-chair in the gallery; the recollection of little Barnes as a cherub of a child in that ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the strategical relations of the Cavalry Masses to the rest of the Army there arises no particular reason to endeavour to shorten their trains. If the heavy baggage of a Cavalry Division is two and a half or five kilometres in length it is tolerably immaterial, but it is imperative, as we have seen, that they should be able to move and get out of the way. Hence, it is not the number of waggons which ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... two deserted at Juan Fernandez with the idea of playing Robinson Crusoe, though they'll very soon get sick of that, and five others are too sick to come on deck. Three days ago we were caught in a gale, and before the hands could shorten sail the topmasts were carried over the side, so you'll understand that we want all the help we ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... A Scout should never cut rope unless absolutely necessary. To shorten a guy rope on tent or marquee, gather the rope in the form of two long loops and pass a half-hitch over each loop. It remains firm under a good strain and can ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... seated she went on with her story. She had no occasion to shorten it, for she saw that her employer ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot

... for myself, I confess, I am for knocking him on the head at once. Until this event, so long wished for by all the friends of Enlightenment and Progress, shall have happened, there will be no possibility of a Reform which will lessen the needless expense and shorten the unjustifiable delay which our present system of legal procedure occasions; a system which gives to the rich immeasurable advantages over poor litigants; and amounts in many cases not only to a perversion of justice but to a denial of ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... shorten the route and save the forces one day's march, we were, for several days, working on a mule path "cut-off" ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith

... selfishness of her father, nor indeed had desired to realise it. It was sufficient that he had died satisfied in seeing her married to a great noble, and that she had been able, in his last days, to relieve him from the distress of debt and embarrassment which had doubtless contributed to shorten ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... been easy for Scott to march on the city that night, or next morning, and seize it before the Mexicans recovered from the shock of their defeat. Anxious to shorten the war, and assured that Santa Anna was desirous of negotiating; warned, moreover, by neutrals and others, that the hostile occupation of the capital would destroy the last chance of peaceable accommodation and rouse the Mexican spirit to resistance all over the country, the American general ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... must not blame the Commune for the sad disappointment of this long delay, it would be impossible to shorten it. One thing, which is less impossible, is to indemnify the administration of the Mont-de-Piete for this gratuitous restitution. Citizen Jourde, delegate of the finances, says, "I will give 100,000 francs a-week." Without ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... come to Thee, my God, for these So very many meeting hindrances, That slack my pace, but yet not make me stay? Who slowly goes, rids, in the end, his way. Clear Thou my paths, or shorten Thou my miles, Remove the bars, or lift me o'er the stiles; Since rough the way is, help me when I call, And take me up; or else prevent the fall. I ken my home, and it affords some ease To see far off the smoking villages. Fain would I rest, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... thirteenth of October, within twenty days we came in sight of land; and we should have seen it in fourteen or fifteen days, if the ship Capitana[284-2] had been as good a sailer as the other vessels; for many times the others had to shorten sail, because they were leaving us much behind. During all this time we had great good fortune, for throughout the voyage we encountered no storm, with the exception of one on St. Simon's eve,[284-3] which for four hours put us ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... their way to Innsbruck, like Huon of Bordeaux and Scherasmin on their way to Babylon. Berkley's self-assumed duty was to console his companion; a duty which he performed like an old Spanish Matadora, a woman whose business was to attend the sick, and put her elbow into the stomach of the dying to shorten their agony. ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... ah, that was quite enough to satisfy my most ardent longings. Moreover I seemed able to step on it, to lengthen or shorten it, to make it assume strange grotesque shapes; in a word I could play with it. This I could not do with such objects as trees, house, barn and fences; or rather there was no such response from them as from ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... were to pay a 100 Pounds for every Lie I give thee, as Men do Twelve-pence for every Oath they swear, I wou'd spend all the Thousands I am worth, in giving thee the Lie. 'Tis likely indeed, that such a brave Gentleman as Summerfield, that fought at Sea like a Dragon to save my Life, should shorten my Days on Land in ruining my Daughter; therefore once more ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris

... abatement of Mrs. Bennet's ill-humour or ill health. Mr. Collins was also in the same state of angry pride. Elizabeth had hoped that his resentment might shorten his visit, but his plan did not appear in the least affected by it. He was always to have gone on Saturday, and to Saturday ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... lay their eggs early or late, according to the physical conditions surrounding them. If they are kept in water or in proximity to water and in a moist atmosphere they have a tendency to lay their eggs earlier and a comparatively high temperature enhances the tendency to shorten the period of gestation. If the salamanders are kept in comparative dryness they show a tendency to lay their eggs rather late and a low ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... on towards the afternoon to blow harder and harder; and by nightfall—you know it gets dark as soon as the sun goes down in those latitudes—we had to shorten sail so much that the Cranky Jane was staggering along at the rate of nearly fourteen knots an hour with reefed top-sails and jib and main-sail ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson

... judge that if the four leagues of land which there are from Panama to this river were cut through, one might pass from the South Sea to the ocean on the other side, and thus shorten the route by more than fifteen hundred leagues; and from Panama to the Straits of Magellan would be an island, and from Panama to the New-found-lands would be another island, so that the whole of America ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... suggest themselves, for the cure of Parliamentary disorders, are, to shorten the duration of Parliaments; and to disqualify all, or a great number of placemen, from a seat in the House of Commons. Whatever efficacy there may be in those remedies, I am sure in the present state of things it is impossible to apply them. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... succeeded in reading some of the lines; and perhaps after a keener scrutiny the whole passage might become legible. But I have no doubt that the lines were cancelled by the author himself (Massinger?) in order to shorten the scene. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... we can; you must do the remainder. It's your work to send every breath as deeply as you can. Doc, release another tank of air. Are her feet warm, Granny? Let the nurse take your place now. And, honey, go to sleep! I'll keep watch for you. I'll measure each breath you draw. If they shorten or weaken, I'll wake you for more medicine. You can trust me! Always you can trust ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... my lord, I will keep to my matter. But, gentlemen, having now shown you, as I think, enough of this first meeting between the murdered person and the prisoner, I will shorten my tale so far as to say that from then on there were frequent meetings of the two: for the young woman was greatly tickled with having got hold (as she conceived it) of so likely a sweetheart, and he being once a week at least in the habit of passing through the street where she lived, she would ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... mercurius volatilis to be at length fixed, and the pernicious product received the name of aqua vitae—liquor of life; "A discovery concerning which," says a learned physician, "it would be difficult to determine, whether it has tended most to diminish the happiness, or shorten the duration of life. In one sense it may be considered the elixir of life, for it speedily introduces a man ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... which stopped a case of acute articular rheumatism. It cannot be stopped by bleeding, or sweating, or purging, by niter, by tartar emetic, by guaiacum, by alkalies, by salines, by salicylic acid, or by anything else. The physician can palliate the pain and perhaps shorten the attack, can control and perhaps prevent complications and stiffness of the joints, but he cannot arrest the disease. Where rest, proper diet, and warmth are enjoined, most cases will get well just as soon without as with the use of medicinal methods. ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... his son and continued: "The courtesy of the port does shorten things up a bit, and I have a man from the ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... produce so valuable to Great Britain. The same must be the practice in great part throughout Jamaica and the new settled acquisitions. They may feel a distress just short of destruction, but must divert for subsistence so much labor as, in proportion, will shorten their rich product."[114] ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... capital or industry; every movement that develops and diffuses the public intelligence and energy, is a bulwark more or less formidable against reaction. Nay, every circumstance that makes the public wiser, richer, or better, must shorten the career of arbitrary rule. The compulsion, which was and still is a necessary evil for the preservation of peace, must be withdrawn when peace becomes an instinct as well as a necessity. The existence of a stringent system will no longer be acquiesced in when the people shall have grown ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... I sing; its heavenly light That living sun conceals not from my view, But virtuous love therein revealeth true His holy purposes and precious might; Whence, as his wont, such flood of sorrow springs To shorten of my life the friendless course, Nor bridge, nor ford, nor oar, nor sails have force To forward mine escape, nor even wings. But so profound and of so full a vein My suff'ring is, so far its shore appears, Scarcely to reach it can e'en thought contrive: Nor palm, nor laurel pity prompts to gain, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... they visit, comfort, clothe, and frequently liberate, either by paying the fine imposed on them as the penalty of their offence, or by arranging matters with their creditors. With a wise charity they endeavor to simplify and shorten causes; and they employ a solicitor, who assists in settling disputes, and thus putting an end to litigation. This confraternity embraces the flower of the Roman prelacy, the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... seen without a glass, Which near the os petrosum pass; Thence to the neck; and moving thorough there, One goes to this, and one to t'other ear; Which made my grandam always stuff her ears Both right and left, as fellow-sufferers. You see my learning; but, to shorten it, When my left ear was deaf a fortnight, To t'other ear I felt it coming on: And thus I solve this ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... the whole mechanism, no less simple than that of the steel "cricket." The two muscular columns contract and relax, shorten and lengthen. By means of its terminal thread each sounds its cymbal, by depressing it and immediately releasing it, when its own elasticity makes it spring back into shape. These two vibrating scales are the source of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... gap however be too large for this, you will have to make a supplementary design to fill up the place. The same thing would be necessary in the case of your having to shorten a pattern. ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... changes to and from electric motive power will be made; and Newark, N. J. Many other places, including the seaside resorts on Long Island and in New Jersey, will feel the benefits of the direct tunnel railroad into and through New York City. The Glendale Cut-Off will materially shorten the route and running time from New York through the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles W. Raymond

... disadvantages under which they labor ... we can hardly expect will soon be removed," though he is persuaded that "this want of true sympathy, and this sense of degradation, must operate on their sensibility and unfavorably affect their physical, moral, and social condition, and shorten to them the duration of life" (pp. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... possibility of sitting down, but that matters not at all. It is all the stronger, and will send an arrow a good distance. I have got six arrows as you ordered me. They are regular arrows, but I made the man shorten them so as to suit the bow, and then repoint them. I have got them inside my doublet. I tied them together, made a hole in the lining under the arm, and ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... imagine what death could be like. The wealthy would have given all their money and all their goods if they could but shorten their lives to two or three hundred years even. Without any change, to live on forever, seemed to this ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... you do is to sit at home and criticise other people. In fact, you're a very ignorant old man, Baggs, and if you retired, you'd find life hang that heavy on your hands you'd hardly know how to kill time between meals. Then you'd get fat and eat too much and shorten your days. I've known it to happen, where a man who uses his muscles gives up work before his ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... hath some defence, Though beauty no remorse. All do not all things well: Some, measures comely tread, Some, knotted riddles tell, Some, poems smoothly read. The summer hath his joys, And winter his delights; Though love and all his pleasures are but toys, They shorten tedious nights. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... The storms that Jupiter Sweeps o'er the sky He chases. Why should rain to-day Bring rain to-morrow? Python's foe Is pleased sometimes his lyre to play, Nor bends his bow. Be brave in trouble; meet distress With dauntless front; but when the gale Too prosperous blows, be wise no less, And shorten sail. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... without a word of thanks or so much as a glance at her rescuer. This unmerited repulse, and the constraint occasioned by Cantapresto's presence, made the remainder of the drive interminable. Even the Professor's apposite reflections on rice-growing and the culture of the mulberry did little to shorten the way; and when at length the bell-towers of Vercelli rose in sight Odo felt the relief of a man who has acquitted himself of a tedious duty. He had looked forward with the most romantic anticipations to the outcome of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... to the mountains anticipating a visit of two weeks. His accident had resolved him to shorten it to the nearest day upon which he felt capable of making the trip out to the railroad. Yet, June had ended; July had burned the slopes from emerald to russet-green; August had brought purple tops to the ironweed, and ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... bears the same relation to the other solstice as the birthday of Christ, as if wishing to illustrate that other remarkable pronouncement of John, thus placed at the point where the days begin to shorten, concerning Jesus, thus placed where the days begin to lengthen, "He must increase ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... was her attention to Maria! Oppressed by a dead weight of existence, or preyed on by the gnawing worm of discontent, with what eagerness did she endeavour to shorten the long days, which left no traces behind! She seemed to be sailing on the vast ocean of life, without seeing any land-mark to indicate the progress of time; to find employment was then to find variety, the animating principle ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... Tyrant, there! hark! hark!— [CAL., STEPH. and TRIN. are driven out. Go charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... "And thereby shorten the term of your imprisonment by me! Your kindness emboldens me to make known my desire. I wish you would let me examine something that appears to be ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... Niggers sick in bed, One jumped up an' bumped his head. W'en de Doctah come he simpully said: "Jes feed dat boy on shorten' bread." ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley

... 29, 1914, to shorten this long line the Serbians decided to withdraw from Belgrade. A redistribution of the Serbian forces was then made as follows: the troops from the Kolubara retired to the heights about Sibnitza and the Belgrade ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... "Hands shorten sail and bring ship to an anchor!" shouted Adair soon afterwards, and the corvette brought up before a green slope, spotted with small whitewashed buildings, the hill becoming more rough and craggy till it reached an elevation ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... Hwochow is accomplished in five stages, and nothing will induce the carter to shorten or change them, though hours may have been wasted in some narrow gully where, spite his warning yells, his cart met another at a point where advance or retreat on either side were alike impossible. After fierce recriminations ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... and the houses are principally of wood, and ultra-French in appearance. The streets are narrow and not over clean. To reach the upper town you drive up a very precipitous road, or walk up a long flight of timber steps, which shorten the steepest portion of the way. The upper town is built on the acclivity and on the slopes of the hill- side, which slide down to the river St. Charles, to the north. The fire of 1845 improved the town, by clearing out miserable old wooden dwellings; ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... releasing the King of Scotland, had bound him by the strongest ties of gratitude and affection; his exertions were suddenly arrested by the sad news of the defeat of his forces at Baugy in Anjou, and the death, in battle, of his brother, the Duke of Clarence.[225] These tidings caused him to shorten his progress, and to return to his capital, where he arrived at furthest on the 1st ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... Romans generally dislike or even abhor the sea and sail it as little as possible, making our journeys as much as we can by land and as little as may be by water, choosing any detour by land which will shorten what crossings of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... supposed conditions may, however, be expected to arise. The commercial crises, the mightiest levers for all independent development of the proletariat, will probably shorten the process, acting in concert with foreign competition and the deepening ruin of the lower middle-class. I think the people will not endure more than one more crisis. The next one, in 1846 or 1847, will probably bring with ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... of this narrative), of their quitting the pursuit, when the general attention was fixed upon Oliver; and making immediately for their home by the shortest possible cut. Although I do not mean to assert that it is usually the practice of renowned and learned sages, to shorten the road to any great conclusion (their course indeed being rather to lengthen the distance, by various circumlocutions and discursive staggerings, like unto those in which drunken men under the pressure of a ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... which brought him out here. All this money was on board the Arethuse with him, and it is hardly necessary to say that it was all lost. I know that his grief over this, and the thought that he was leaving you penniless, did more to shorten his life than the sufferings which he had on the sea. He sank under it. He told me that he could not rally from it; and it was his utter hopelessness that made him give way so completely. So, my poor child, ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... always been sure of this: but I can assert it to you with more confidence now, seeing that every one else seems to agree with me, if I may judge by the general approval of this specimen of the long brush. Besides, such a method must shorten your labour, preserve the freshness of your eye and spirit, and also ensure the similitude of the sitter to himself by the very ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... seen much of life, and learnt to feel its hollowness, real childishness of thought and feeling is so refreshing, that they love rather to prolong the period than to shorten it. To Mr. Lee the little Lucy seemed so entirely perfect in her infantine simplicity and purity, that had he breathed a wish for the future, it would probably have been that she should always continue ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... Henry, confiding in the superior of numbers and discipline of his army, advanced upon Saxony, where Rodolph calmly awaited his approach. Each monarch well knew that the approaching contest would be decisive of his fate, and had omitted nothing to insure the victory. Anxious to shorten an interval of such painful suspense, they longed to meet, Henry stimulated by hatred and the memory of his recent defeats, Rodolph animated by a just ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... it. Nothing is better for drying than powder. And so, I shall wear my light blue dress this evening; blond powder will go with it exactly. My child, you are becoming foolish. I told you to shorten my bathing costume, by taking it up at the knees. Just see what it ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... this country is degenerating, and especially through the effect of that part of its constitution which is organized by the process of unceasing elections. The spirit of the age and country is to accumulate power in the hands of the multitude: to shorten terms of service in high public places; to multiply elections, and diminish executive power; to weaken all agencies protective of property, or repressive of crime; to abolish capital punishments and imprisonment for debt. Slavery, intemperance, land-jobbing, bankruptcy, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... clearly and convincingly that alcoholic liquors have a tendency to shorten life than the figures published by life insurance companies. A most interesting and valuable paper upon this theme was read before the Actuarial Society of America, in 1904, by Mr. Joel G. Van Cise, actuary of the Equitable Life ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... the old bridge sign. Out from Pentecost rings this word: "Let my followers all form in line, close ranks, and move out to a world conquest, and—keep step." That command of His will make a winning force so great as to shorten up the world's present calendars, and shorten up the world's pain, and lengthen out the new life that will come to untold numbers ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... all the four strengthen the resolution; while yet there is a danger, on the other hand, that the encouraged and morbid feeling may weaken or bias the understanding, or that the over shrewd and keen understanding may shorten the imagination, or that the understanding and imagination together may take place of, or undermine, the resolution, as in Hamlet. So in the mere bodily frame there is a delightful perfection of the senses, consistent with the utmost ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... about that place a while, and went back to the house in due time; and to shorten the tale, I shall tell that for many days it betid that we went every day to seek the golden cage, but after the first three days we ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... which would consist of a public procession with decorated cars containing the characters, accompanied by hobby horses, tumblers, and open air music. This is referred to in the next passage, where Theseus speaks of the masque as an 'abridgement' for the evening, that is, an entertainment to shorten the hours. The lamentable play of Pyramus and Thisbe follows, which, it will be noticed, has some of the main features ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor

... southward of Ushant before it changed, and then it gradually veered round until it came out strong from the north-west, when away we all went for Madeira, the slowest ships carrying every rag of canvas that they could stagger under, while the faster craft were unwillingly compelled to shorten down in order that all might keep together, while as for ourselves and the Astarte, the utmost that we could show, without running ahead of our station, was ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten their grey shadows upon the plain.... Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... agonizing pain came again. One of the doctors tried to raise her, but she sank back. "Only death can help me;" and as all watched in breathless silence, she leaned her head against the shoulder of a faithful attendant, murmured, "Lord Jesus, shorten it!" and with one ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... expostulated with him on the imprudence of again exposing himself to dangers which he had so very narrowly escaped, and perhaps even to new and still greater ones; he calmly replied, that a few inglorious winters of country practice at Peebles was a risk as great, and would tend as effectually to shorten life, as the journey which he ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... esteemed a very competent judge of what plays were proper or improper for representation. He wrote several letters to the manager of Drury-Lane Theatre, in favour of Thomson's Agamemnon, which notwithstanding his approbation, Thomson's friends were obliged to mutulate and shorten; and after all it proved a heavy play.—Though it was generally allowed to have been one of the best acted plays that ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... bad, I think, this time; but he gets worse and worse—always taking more and more o' them horrid drugs. It's no use trying to hide it: he'll drop off sudden one o' these days! I've heard say laudanum don't shorten life; but it's not one nor two, nor half a dozen sorts o' laudanums he keeps mixing in that poor inside o' his! The end must come, and what will it be? It's better you should be prepared for it when it do come, my lady. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... not often required now to reach and develop new tracts of land, except in large towns and cities; but they are frequently needed to shorten distances and to improve grades. Consequently the laws relative to the laying out, maintenance, and use of highways are of personal interest to every citizen, and many are also interested in the laws relating ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... us inactive while he thus exhorted us. On the contrary, he was posting us skilfully beside the trace like the shrewd old Indian fighter that he was, with a rare and practised eye to the maximum of cover with the minimum of thicket tangle to impede the rush or to shorten the sword-swing. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... the Jews; the entire superintendence was committed to a captain, who caused the gates to be opened and shut, and prevented any one from crossing the enclosure with a stick in his hand, or with dusty shoes, or when carrying parcels, or to shorten his path.[6] They were especially scrupulous in watching that no one entered within the inner gates in a state of legal impurity. The women had an ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... would have the other squadrons to make more sail, though he himself shorten sail, a white ensign shall be put on the ensign staff of the ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett

... children of Illusion went: Methinks with all this loss I were content, If the mad Past, on which my foot is based, Were firm, or might be blotted: but the whole Of life is mixed: the mocking Past will stay: And if I drink oblivion of a day, So shorten I the stature of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... with firmness that everything beside the legislative ticket was of minor importance to him. Similar propositions, presented by powerful men from all parts of the State with the plea that a compromise would "save the party," received the same answer.[1332] Meanwhile, he laboured to shorten the life of the Ring. To him Richard Connolly appealed for protection against Tweed's treachery, and at Tilden's suggestion the comptroller turned over his office to Andrew H. Green, thus assuring the protection of the records which subsequently formed the basis of all civil and criminal actions. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... itself at night. The sun sleeps each night beneath water, but it is so hot that it is soon dried when it comes out of its bed in the morning. This is the Great Spirit's doings, and not ours. The sun is his sun; the Indians can warm themselves by it, but they cannot shorten its journey a single tomahawk handle's length. The same is true of time; it belongs to the Manitou, who will lengthen or shorten it, as he may see fit. We are his children, and it is our duty to submit. He has not forgotten us. He made us with his own hand, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... and also there appeared, midway between the framing shadows, down at the lower end of the slender line of the cord, an exaggerated, wriggling manifestation like the reflection of a huge and misshapen jumping-jack, which first would lengthen itself grotesquely, and then abruptly would shorten up, as the tremors running through the dying man's frame altered the silhouette cast by the oblique sunbeams; and along with this stencilled vision, as a part of it, occurred shifting shadow movements of two legs ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... answered your letter for a time; and, at present, the reply to part of it might extend to such a length, that I shall delay it till it can be made in person, and then I will shorten it as much as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... through and discovered a fine amount of pastoral country, the leader found, much to his disgust, that the horses he had left to spell there had been used for kangaroo hunting, and were not in a fit condition to do much more work. This compelled him to shorten his trip and start towards the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... love is soa sincere, Noa risk can mak it falter, Soa put aside all daat an fear, An goa wi' me to th' altar I' one month's time my wife tha'll be,— Or less if tha'll but shorten it." "Well then," says Lizzy, "aw'll agree, Tha'st have ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... as an afflicted lover, he began to mourn his hard lot in soft and plaintive tones: "O lady Dulcinea, queen of this captive heart! Why hast thou withdrawn from me the light of thy countenance and banished thy faithful servant from thy presence? Shorten, I implore thee, the term of my penance and leave me not to wither in solitude ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... They were immediately copied for the actors, and multiplied by transcript after transcript, vitiated by the blunders of the penman, or changed by the affectation of the player; perhaps enlarged to introduce a jest, or mutilated to shorten the representation; and printed at last without the concurrence of the author, without the consent of the proprietor, from compilations made by chance or by stealth out of the separate parts written for the theatre; and thus ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... their master, and may carry off my trap and groom to parts unknown, while you are wasting paint and words. You are like the animals at the Park, that are good-natured only after they are fed. So shut up your old paint shop, and come along; we will shorten our ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... shall not ruin me! I have thought of a scheme. But first I must speak to my people—I shall have to shorten wages for a time." ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... close to the wind that it will strike her at the acutest angle possible without losing its pressure in the right direction altogether. The officer of the watch keeps one eye to windward, makes up his mind what sail he'll shorten, and then yells an order that pierces the wind like a shot, 'Stand by your royal halliards!' As the squall swoops down and the ship heels over to it he yells again, 'Let go your royal halliards, clew 'em up and make 'em fast!' Down come the yards, with hoarse roaring from the thrashing ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... ten would just go on girls of six and seven. Either French children are much stouter than English, or they wear thicker things underneath. Here again there was work to do—all the sleeves were much too long; my maids had to alter and shorten them, which they did ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... convinced that this at least will be an action which she would be most unlikely to do of her own free will. Forget any thing that she may have said, as she has really nothing whatever to do with it, and will certainly not recollect any thing about it. I write this note to shorten your anxiety, and to beg you to forgive me for the momentary unhappiness which my suggestion must have caused you. "Yours faithfully; ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle

... groaned the Elector; "they all long for the time when I shall be gathered to my fathers. They grudge me life, although, forsooth, it is no light, enjoyable thing to me, but has brought me trouble, deprivation, and want enough. But still, they grudge it to me, and if they could shorten it, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... does not prevail to the same extent as in the upper portion of the province. The French Canadians are not addicted to the vice of drinking ardent spirits as a people, although the lumberers and voyageurs shorten their lives very considerably by the use of whiskey. The lumberers, who are the cutters and conveyers of timber, pass a short ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... brother's time was taken up in going, when the evenings were clear, to the queen's lodge, to show the king, etc., objects through the seven-foot. But when the days began to shorten, this was found impossible, for the telescope was often (at no small expense and risk of damage) obliged to be transported in the dark back to Datchet, for the purpose of spending the rest of the night ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... journalists and the witticisms of pamphleteers? I can ask those whom I like to my house—why should I be forced into asking those whom I do not like? In fine, my good Pelham, why should I sour my temper and shorten my life, put my green old age into flannel and physic, and become, from the happiest of sages, the most miserable of fools? Ambition reminds me of what Bacon says of anger—'It is like rain, it breaks itself upon that which it falls on.' Pelham, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... permanent investment of capital or industry; every movement that develops and diffuses the public intelligence and energy, is a bulwark more or less formidable against reaction. Nay, every circumstance that makes the public wiser, richer, or better, must shorten the career of arbitrary rule. The compulsion, which was and still is a necessary evil for the preservation of peace, must be withdrawn when peace becomes an instinct as well as a necessity. The existence of a stringent system will no longer be acquiesced in when the people shall have ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... cried Sakr-el-Bahr. "He'll not swim far in any case. But we will shorten his road for him." He snatched a cross-bow from the rack about the mainmast, fitted a shaft ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... with the tendency which it reports will be cited as showing this need. Some of the schemes will spring from motives that are hostile to China. Some will be benevolently conceived in a desire to save China from herself and shorten her period of chaos and confusion. But the hope of the world's peace, as well as of China's freedom, lies in adhering to a policy of Hands Off. Give China a chance. Give her time. The danger lies in being in a hurry, in impatience, possibly ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... had endured for a time-shorten'd space, Like a day made of three, and the smile of her face Had been with me for joy,—when she told me indeed Her love was self-task'd with a work that would need Some short hours, for in truth 'twas the veriest ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... path across the peasants' fields. I allowed myself that privilege, because at that time I was still wearing my uniform with the brass buttons shining brightly. When I descended into the valley, I decided to cross the cemetery, and so shorten my way. The coach was far behind, and I was walking very slowly, that it might reach me at the other side of the cemetery. My path lay among the gravestones, some of them gray with age, dilapidated, bent forward, as if trying to ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg

... she said. "I know you must go, but the journey through Spain will be so pleasant, and we might make a compromise. I will shorten the journey if you will delay ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay

... get to Paris, buy a long necklace of jet beads, cut into facets, and shorten it so that it consists of seventy-five beads, of ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... and stretch to twice or three times their length, like a thread of india-rubber. At last, when over-taut, they loosen without breaking and resume their original form. They lengthen by unrolling their twist, they shorten by rolling it again; lastly, they become adhesive by taking the glaze of the gummy moisture wherewith ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... fact, Hosea," said the other, partially removing his mask, but as instantly replacing it. "It will greatly shorten our negotiations. Thou hast not that sack of the Jew ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... for at least a hundred and sixty years past, (1740-4:) For Sir Thomas Cavendish, in the year 1586, engaged off the south end of California a vessel bound from Manilla to the American coast. And it was in compliance with this new plan of navigation, and to shorten the run both backwards and forwards, that the staple of this commerce to and from Manilla was removed from Callao, on the coast of Peru, to the port of Acapulco, on the coast of Mexico, where it continues ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... opportunity of attending a Farewell Reading. As they entered the room, each person received a printed slip of paper, on which was read, "The audience are respectfully informed that carriages have been ordered tonight at half-past nine. Without altering his Reading in the least, Mr. Dickens will shorten his usual pauses between the Parts, in order that he may leave York by train a few minutes after that time. He has been summoned," it was added, "to London, in connection with a late sad occurrence within the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... the Saints are going to take pity on me and shorten one of these endless days with a nap. Nurse, have a care for these scrolls. And if it happen that the King's ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... Stampoff evidently meant to shorten his mustache by inches; and Julius Marulitch was waxen, and thereby rendered more than ever like ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and gray, brought a single book in which was the knowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he had no time to read ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... Grimm it has been the aim to simplify, to shorten, and to eliminate all objectionable qualities; as, for instance, the cruel step-mother element to be found ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie

... but the outer layers were opaque. When the huge ram disappeared from the glow of light it left a gaping hole where it had been. It was of material they had never seen and glistened with a brownish hue. It appeared to shorten and expand in diameter, each time it struck ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne

... as he had passed the preceding evening and night, and entered on the present morning, without interference, he began to understand that, though from some political motive they had deprived him of his liberty, they were far from wishing to shorten his days, and surrounded him, on the contrary, with cares, of which he had never before been the object. He had seen that the dinner of the day before was better than his ordinary dinner—that the bed was softer than his ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... the season, but sown thinly and once fairly rooted and kept free from dead flowers and pods, the vines will go on yielding quite through September, though on the coming of hot weather the flower stems shorten. ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... too far gone to feel the whip," Lutali was saying. "Clearly they are of no further use. You, Murad, shorten me the shadow of yonder dog. We ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... puma, American lion, Of the old house of Leo degenerate scion. The tapir, and also that excellent diver, Alligator, or Cayman, from Amazon river; And with him the Llama, whose sad trick of spitting Was thought by the company very unfitting. But, to shorten my tale, all the New World were there, From the tiny shrew mouse to the fierce grisly bear; Though it seems that the peccary was not invited, For he as a nuisance had just been indicted. From the Old World, the ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.

... Muscles do not shorten themselves all at once, but the contraction passes quickly over them in the form of a wave. They are usually stimulated by nervous action. The delicate nerve fibrils which end in the fibers communicate with the brain, the center of the will power. Hence, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... found him to be a very agreeable addition to our pic-nic excursions and other parties for pleasure and amusement. He paid marked attention to me from the time when we first became acquainted; and, to shorten my story, after an acquaintance of six months, he asked me to become his wife. I am now an old woman, Clara, and need not blush to tell you that I had learned to love him with a deep affection, and I yielded ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... deeper than most inside and out of government had predicted. Curing those problems has taken more time and a higher toll than any of us wanted. Unemployment is far too high. Projected Federal spending—if government refuses to tighten its own belt—will also be far too high and could weaken and shorten the economic ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... I myself look at it, there is no fault nor folly of my life—and both have been many and great—that does not rise up against me, and take away my joy, and shorten my power of possession of sight, of understanding. And every past effort of my life, every gleam of rightness or good in it, is with me now, to help me in my grasp of this art, and its vision. So far as I can rejoice ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... your pleasures? Do you think I would let you do that? No, indeed! Neither in this nor in anything else. I will not cut off your young life in any way, Imogene—not shorten it or diminish it. If I thought I should do that, or you would try to do it for me, I should wish ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... hard work and a very wide margin of sport—pig-sticking, peacock-shooting, paper-chases, all the delights of an Indian life. But now, vegetating on a slender pittance in the semi-slumberous idleness of Les Fontaines, he had nothing to do and nothing to think about; and he was glad to shorten his days by dozing away the fresher hours of the morning, while his wife toiled at the preparation of that elaborate meal which he loved to talk ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... maybe, laddie. See how they come up and turn over, and dive doon again. Canny kind o' fesh a porpoise, but they're much finer than these in the Clyde. I'm thenking, though, that we'll ha'e to shorten sail a wee. ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... a peculiarity not usually known. They stretch out and crook about here and there, penetrating the crevices of the soil wherever there is the least chance, and the matured portions begin to shorten, reminding one somewhat of an angleworm when one end has been stepped on. By this shortening process the top or crown of a dandelion or plantain is pulled down beneath ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... his which brought him out here. All this money was on board the Arethuse with him, and it is hardly necessary to say that it was all lost. I know that his grief over this, and the thought that he was leaving you penniless, did more to shorten his life than the sufferings which he had on the sea. He sank under it. He told me that he could not rally from it; and it was his utter hopelessness that made him give way so completely. So, my poor child, this is your present situation: your father's estates ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... the Marquis of S—-a; that is, the celebration of mass for the repose of her soul. M—— was observing to-day, that if this Catholic doctrine be firmly believed, and that the prayers of the Church are indeed availing to shorten the sufferings of those who have gone before us; to relieve those whom we love from thousands of years of torture, it is astonishing how the rich do not become poor, and the poor beggars, in furtherance of this object; and that if the idea be purely human, it showed a wonderful ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... if you journey our way," said Dorothy; and the great fellow shuffled up beside her, cap in hand, and it amused me to see him strive to shorten his strides to hers, so that he presently fell into ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... noon of the fifteenth of next March, the subscriptions of both those counties will be forfeited. Then Tandy will step in and offer the company that is building the line a much larger subscription of some sort from Paducah and from his Memphis road, as an inducement to shorten the line by taking it to ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... Authentic or not, I have preferred the story to Hohenlinden, as less hackneyed, for one thing, and, for another, less pretentious and rhetorical. The second (Gertrude of Wyoming, 1809) is truly one of 'the glories of our birth and state.' The third (idem) I have ventured to shorten by three stanzas: a proceeding which, however culpable it seem, at least gets rid of the chief who gave a country's wounds relief by stopping a battle, eliminates the mermaid and her song (the song that 'condoles'), and ends the lyric on as sonorous and romantic a word ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... not very much like Don Quixote's pranks, and therefore determined to shorten the ceremony and give him the order of knighthood at once before any one else was injured. Approaching him, therefore, he made apologies for the insolence of the base fellows who had thrown stones at him, and explained that it was not with his consent, and that he thought ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... The proposed emancipation would shorten the war, perpetuate peace, insure this increase of population, and proportionately the wealth of the country. With these we should pay all the emancipation would cost, together with our other debt, easier ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... to speak, But thunder, or to take into my throat The trump of Heaven, with whose determinate blasts 50 The windes shall burst and the devouring seas Be drunk up in his sounds, that my hot woes (Vented enough) I might convert to vapour Ascending from my infamie unseene; Shorten the world, preventing the last breath 55 That kils the living, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... Herodotus, by the Egyptians. For them nothing is too old, nothing is too new, for to their books of all others is applicable the saying of D'Alembert that the author kills himself in lengthening out what the reader kills himself in trying to shorten. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... on the average, remarkable for longevity, though they frequently shorten their lives by the intemperate use of strong drinks. Instances are not rare of Indians living to be 120 or 130 years of age, and retaining full possession of their bodily and mental powers. Stevenson ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... I'll shorten your nose! Sing, I say," repeated the woman, advancing the poker so as actually to ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... these men that Joel's moment came. Finch, on deck, shouted down to them.... Mark had decided to shorten sail, ease the strain on the old masts. Joel heard Morrell and Hooper go up ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams

... strength was soon followed by a terrible mortification which probably contributed to shorten Pitt's life. Melville, his tried supporter and intimate friend, was charged on the report of a commission with having misapplied public money as treasurer of the navy in Pitt's former ministry. It appeared that he had been culpably careless, and had not prevented the paymaster, Trotter, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... you have told me confirms me in an opinion which I have long entertained, that thieves' Latin is a strange mysterious speech, formed of metaphorical terms, and words derived from various ancient languages. Pray tell me, now, how the gentleman, your grandfather, contrived to shorten ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... pleas'd me:" thus the prompt reply Prefacing, next it added; "he, of whom Thy kindred appellation comes, and who, These hundred years and more, on its first ledge Hath circuited the mountain, was my son And thy great grandsire. Well befits, his long Endurance should be shorten'd by thy deeds. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... little boats would capsize if it were not for a balancing-board pushed out to windward, on which one or two, or sometimes three, men stand to act as a counterpoise, so that it may not be necessary to shorten sail. The Malays excel in boat-building, and rank very high in the art of shaping vessels which offer the least possible resistance to the water, and their boats fly over the surface of the sea in the most wonderful manner. If we except the rude tree-trunks ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... I. 'Then I may count on your silence? The poor chap is so powerfully set on crossing the Rockies and getting to close quarters with some real wickedness, that to tell him the truth might shorten the ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... verdant Island of La Pianosa. The peak of Monte Cristo reddened by the burning sun, was seen against the azure sky. Dantes ordered the helmsman to put down his helm, in order to leave La Pianosa to starboard, as he knew that he should shorten his course by two or three knots. About five o'clock in the evening the island was distinct, and everything on it was plainly perceptible, owing to that clearness of the atmosphere peculiar to the light which the rays of the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... lighten the burden of an idle hour of sickness or sorrow; if it may shorten the time of waiting, or distract the monotony of travel; if it may strike a key-note of common sympathy between its author and its reader, where the shallow side of nature is regretfully touched upon; if it may attract ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... the mischiefs of a lingering war, and to bring that, in which they were necessarily engaged, to a speedy conclusion; but they have been very unhappy in the event, whilst they have so much reason to suspect, that what was intended to shorten the war, hath proved the very cause of its long continuance; for those, to whom the profits of it have accrued, have been disposed not easily to forgo them. And your Majesty will from thence discern the true reason, why so many have delighted ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... old man, as he laboured under the weight of the colt, kept groaning, "O Allah! O Allah!" and, supposing him to be a dervish, the woman asked him to pray for the recovery of her child. In compliance, the old man said: "O Allah! I beseech thee to shorten the days of this poor child." "Alas!" cried the mother, "why hast thou made such a cruel prayer?" "Fear nothing," said the old man; "thy child will assuredly enjoy long life. It is my fate to have the reverse of whatever I pray for. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... should never cut rope unless absolutely necessary. To shorten a guy rope on tent or marquee, gather the rope in the form of two long loops and pass a half-hitch over each loop. It remains firm under a good strain and can be easily undone ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... said, had brought them quite abreast of their landing and within a league of it; and yet she showed no signs of an intention to abate her speed, nor did any one appear at the gangway to speak to them. At length a hoarse call was heard on deck, and the ship began to shorten sail. Her fore-course was hauled up, and the spanker was brailed; then the royals were clewed up and furled; the topgallant-sails followed; and presently the Proserpine was reduced to her three topsails and jib. All this, finished just as Cuffe reappeared ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... have said, the session was stormy. It was easy to see that these men had made up their minds to force words from Joan to-day which should shorten up her case and bring it to a prompt conclusion. It shows that after all their experience with her they did not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... fibres, attached by their extremities to the bones. When the fibres shorten themselves, the two parts into which the muscle is inserted are brought nearer; and, by this simple contrivance, all the motions of animals are performed, and their bodies carried from one ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... SO to shorten this tale, when Sir Tristram was arrived within the island he looked to the farther side, and there he saw at an anchor six ships nigh to the land; and under the shadow of the ships upon the land, there hoved the noble knight, Sir Marhaus of Ireland. Then Sir Tristram commanded his servant Gouvernail ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... Rio Temi forms coves, the forest is inundated to the extent of more than half a square league. To avoid the sinuosities of the river and shorten the passage, the navigation is here performed in a very extraordinary manner. The Indians made us leave the bed of the river; and we proceeded southward across the forest, through paths (sendas), that is, through open channels of four or five feet ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... hitch in starting from Bagnara. From the windings of the carriage-road as portrayed by the map, I guessed that there must be a number of short cuts into the uplands at the back of the town, undiscoverable to myself, which would greatly shorten the journey. Besides, there was my small bag to be carried. A porter familiar with the tracks was plainly required, and soon enough I found a number of lusty youths leaning against a wall and doing nothing in particular. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... said half apologetically, half comically. "You should see the inside. It's not so bad as it looks. I only wish I could take you that way, but the fact is it's somewhat out of the way to the railroad, and we must take the short cut if we want to shorten your father's anxiety. Do you feel able to ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... countenance, partly because she did not feel the least seriously. She was instantly resolved not to let this letter accomplish anything more than Dan's temporary abasement, and she would have preferred to shorten this to the briefest moment possible. She liked him, and she was convinced that Alice could never do better, if half so well. She would now have preferred to treat him with familiar confidence, to tell him that she had no idea of Alice's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... indeed, she was obliged to relinquish, a long repining expectant being eager, by entering it, to bequeath to another the anxiety and suspense he had suffered himself; though probably without much impatience to shorten their duration in favour of the next successor; but the house of Mrs Charlton, her benevolent friend, was open for her reception, and the alleviating tenderness of her conversation took from her ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... constitute a sound wave. Surely, if a condensation is not produced, there can be no sound wave! We have then no need to consider anything but the condensation or compression of the supposed air molecules, which will shorten the discussion. The property of mobility of the air and fluidity of water are well known. In the case of water, which is almost incompressible, this property is well marked, and unquestionably would be very nearly the same if water were ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... will be more easily broken. It should be remembered that the length of the finished tube must be exactly the same as that of the original piece, if the walls of the joint are to be of their original thickness. Therefore the pushing together during the two operations c and d must shorten the tube just as much as the final drawing (f to ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary

... Bring rain to-morrow? Python's foe Is pleased sometimes his lyre to play, Nor bends his bow. Be brave in trouble; meet distress With dauntless front; but when the gale Too prosperous blows, be wise no less, And shorten sail. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... and the various methods of forcing, as given under the different species. Early fruits are obtained by dwarfing, as given on that subject. Location, soil, and mode of cultivation, also, have much to do with it. Warm location, finely-pulverized soil, often stirred and kept moist, will materially shorten the time of the maturity of fruits and vegetables. Seeds imported from the North, where seasons are shorter, will mature earlier. Another means of hastening maturity is to plant successively, from year to year, the very first that ripens; this tends to dwarf in ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... capitulation, that they might retain one Lutheran preacher,(1) to teach these people in their language. This was granted then the more easily, first, because new troubles had broken out at Manhattan with the Indians, and it was desirable to shorten proceedings here and return to the Manhattans to put things in order there; secondly, because there was no Reformed preacher here, nor any who understood their language, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... a new vice and introduce it among his fellow creatures, even if it were to shorten their lives, would render a greater service to humanity than the man who found the means of securing to them ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... ever led by the star. Some distance away the Mule was bemoaning the presence of his heels and trying to rid himself of them by kicking a tree. The Hog was dividing his time between looking into a brook and rubbing his snout on a rock to shorten it. The Snake lay dead of its own bite. The Boy journeyed on, led by an ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... further; and that, much as he was in love—proportionately, that is, to his faculty for loving—he dare not do. But for the unconventionality of the Raymounts he would have reached the point long before. He began, therefore, to lessen the number, and shorten the length of his ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... with all earnestness to be sorry for our sins, and to do what we can to prevent these things, by falling upon our face in a way of prayer before God. If we would shorten such days, when they come upon us, let us be lovers of righteousness, and get more of the righteousness of faith, and of compliance with the whole will of God into our hearts. Then I say, the days shall be shortened, or we fare as well, because the more harmless and innocent ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... to let the curtain drop, and, as it fancies, end them. It destroys the body, but finds itself precisely as much alive mentally as before. It had an appointed life-term determined by an intricate web of prior causes, which its own wilful sudden act cannot shorten. That term must run out its appointed sands. You may smash the lower half of the hand hour-glass, so that the impalpable sand shooting from the upper bell is dissipated by the passing aerial currents as it issues; but that stream will run on, unnoticed though it remain, until ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... effort of impudence. The cunning rascal has so long been the keeper of Sir Arthur's purse, that it is supposed two thirds of the contents have glided into his own pocket. This is the reason of the delay on Sir Arthur's part, which at present I do not wish to shorten. That this son of a grub catcher, a Demosthenes though he be, should prevail on such a father, if he were to go down as I hope he will, is but little probable. However, should the least prognostic of such a miracle appear, I have my remedy ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... Itself? Or, since one day and the next are the same to such a prisoner, where does Time come in at all? Obviously, once the prisoner is habituated to his environment, once he accepts the fact that speculation as to when he will regain his liberty cannot possibly shorten the hours of his incarceration and may very well drive him into a state of unhappiness (not to say morbidity), events can no longer succeed each other: whatever happens, while it may happen in connection with some other perfectly distinct happenings, does ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... easier, nevertheless. A load has been removed from it. I thank you. What you have said will shorten my ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... life, she would put on her fat feet and contemplate with daily satisfaction. She became increasingly strengthened thereby in the conviction that the angels who had their hooks in Massa James's jacket were already beginning to shorten the line. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... pneumogastric nerve. I go off as blank and empty as the fish lakes on the moon. I supposed writers would say something in reference to the irritating influence of this disease on the nerves and muscles that would contract or convulsively shorten the muscles that attach at the one end to the os hyoid, and at the other end at various points along the neck, and force the hyoid back against the pneumogastric nerve, hypoglossal, cervical, or some other nerve that would be irritated by such pressure on nerves ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... slantwise into the exposed water vent, shattering the plates of the cell; no damage will show when you put the cap back on. Iron or copper filings put into the cells i.e., dropped into the acid, will greatly shorten its life. Copper coins or a few pieces of iron will accomplish ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... you.... I'm trying to believe it.... I want to.... There are many days to fill in when I am not with you. To fill them with such a belief would be to shorten them.... I don't know. I often wonder where you are; what you are doing; with what stately and beautiful creature you are talking, laughing, walking, dancing."—She shrugged her shoulders and gazed down at the dancers below. "The ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... straight strokes 1-1/2 or 2 in.) until the holes in the glass left by the grain emery are ground out; next use the finer grades until the pits left by each coarser grade are ground out. When the two last grades are used shorten the strokes to less than 2 in. When done the glass should be semi-transparent, and ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... and that one day it will all be over and He will receive them into Heaven. Their salvation is sure, and that thought makes them happy. If, therefore, you believe any of your friends are in Purgatory, you should help them all you can, and try by your prayers and good works to shorten their time of suffering. They will help you—though they cannot help themselves—by their prayers. And oh, when they are admitted into Heaven, how they will pray for those that have helped them out of Purgatory! If you do this great charity, God ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... rather stupid," said Gus, "to shorten the pleasantest month in the whole year. I would have clipped December ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... topsails and big squaresail set, and she stood across Channel, bounding lightly over the dancing seas. A craft with a fast pair of heels alone could have caught her. Her hardy crew remained on deck, for all hands might at any moment have been required for an emergency, either to shorten sail, or to alter her course, should a suspicious vessel appear in sight. All night long the lugger kept on her course, steering ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... eastward, and was for some time kept cruising among the Ionian Islands, and on the coast of Greece, carrying despatches from place to place. The wind had been from the northward, and the ship had been kept somewhat close in with the Greek coast, to shorten the distance to be run from one spot to another, when one of those severe gales, which in the winter season in the Mediterranean sometimes spring up suddenly, came on to blow. The corvette was caught on a lee shore and embayed. It was night. All hands were called. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... treat her a little kind, Martin, love or no—'tis little enough o' kindness she has known all her days; use her a little kinder, for 'tis in my mind you'll not regret it in after days! And talking o' tempest, I like not the look o' the sky—take you the tiller whiles I shorten sail and heed not ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... of outsiders with the criminals and invariably leads to bad results. Here the prisoners deal with none but their keepers; but what pleased me most was the admirable system of rewards and promotions for good conduct which has been established. Marks are given and worn upon the clothes which shorten one's sentence from one day up to several, and it is possible for a prisoner in this way to acquire marks enough to take as much as one tenth from his imprisonment. The best behaved of all can rise to the position of wardens. Several hundreds have reached this prize, and are distinguished by better ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... made a quick voyage to Calcutta. She rounded the Cape without encountering bad weather, and was only twice obliged to shorten sail during the whole passage. Stephen enjoyed his life exceedingly. He was in the first officer's watch, and became a great favourite with Mr. Staines. He astonished his fellow-apprentices, as soon as they were fairly on their way, by producing his quadrant and taking observations ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... over the side, than the captain gave orders to shorten sail. He took in royals and topgallant sails, furled the courses, trysail and jib, and double-reefed the topsails. They braced the yards a little to starboard, hauled the foretopmast staysail sheet well ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... sun by the drift was the first thing that called the captain's attention to the altered state of the weather, and he at once gave the order—"All hands shorten sail!" the mate rushing forwards to see ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... production model with a single large valve for each cylinder. This was done in order to shorten the development period, for it is easier to design a single valve which serves both the intake and exhaust functions than one valve for each function. Not only are there fewer parts, but more important, there are no heat-dissipating problems. ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer

... destruction of Jerusalem or to the end of the world. If it refers to the destruction of Jerusalem, the "elect," according to Biblical usage,(610) are the faithful Christian inhabitants of the Holy City, for whose sake God promises to shorten the terrible siege. If it referred to the end of the world, electi would indeed stand for praedestinati, but the context would not forbid us to interpret their predestination hypothetically, as merely indicating the immutability of the divine decree, which is not denied by the opponents ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... forest. As we proceeded, we came up with a countryman; who, enquiring where we were going, told us that, by striking a little out of the road, we might save half a mile. We had nine miles to travel, to the inn at which the stage coaches stopped; and were very willing, Clarke especially, to shorten the way. The countryman said he was going part of the road; and that the remainder was so plain it could not be mistaken. Accordingly, we ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... were called again. The wind was blowing half a gale, and the starboard watch had taken in the light sails. It was deemed advisable still further to shorten sail, and a reef was put in the topsails. The starboard watch then turned in, the port having the deck till four in the morning. The wind came in heavy gusts from the south-west, and shortly after midnight ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... were certainly written either by the great contriver in nodding moods, or by somebody else,—in fact no one can hope to understand mediaeval literature who forgets that no mediaeval writer could ever "let a thing alone": he simply must add or shorten, paraphrase or alter. I rather doubt whether the Great Unknown himself meant both the amours of Arthur with Camilla and the complete episode of the false Guinevere to stand side by side. The first is (as such justifications go) a sufficient justification ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... indispensable. That Lavengro would have profited by curtailment, I stated before its publication. The result has verified my anticipations, and in the present instance I feel compelled to make it the condition of publication. You can well imagine that it is not my INTEREST to shorten a book from two volumes to one unless there were ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... the night of 22nd May to the 22 May, opposite bank of the Seine. Next morning he sent up all the artillery together with the Flemish cavalry to Rouen, where, making what use he could by temporary contrivances of the broken arches of the broken bridge, in order to shorten the distance from shore to shore, he managed to convey his whole army with all ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... striking personality. Dark as a mulatto, and round-shouldered to the extent of some distinct deformity, he carried his eyes high under the lids, and shot his piercing glance from under the penthouse of a beetling brow; a lipless mouth was pursed in such a fashion as to shorten the upper lip and exaggerate an already powerful chin; and this stooping and intent carriage was no less suggestive of the human sleuth-hound than were the veiled vigilance and dogged determination of the lowered face. Such was ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... mistake not, before we get into Plymouth Sound we shall have a sneeze from the south-west. Fortunately we've got a harbour under our lee. We won't rouse up the captain, though, because he is tired after his swim and his anxiety about Master Jack, but I'll take leave to shorten sail in ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... in both his, as he answered, 'There is nothing to be anxious about, my darling, at present. I shall need care and nursing, perhaps. They give me hope that time will outgrow the mischief, but perhaps it may shorten my life. I tell you this because I want you to see what is before us. I have no right to expect you to link your life with mine under these circumstances, and your guardian is very doubtful as to the wisdom and expediency ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... three more were killed by the only whale we have yet taken, two deserted at Juan Fernandez with the idea of playing Robinson Crusoe, though they'll very soon get sick of that, and five others are too sick to come on deck. Three days ago we were caught in a gale, and before the hands could shorten sail the topmasts were carried over the side, so you'll understand that we want all the help ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... home, ostensibly to shorten Rosalind's visit to the doctor's mother, he had no intention of doing so early enough to allow of his rejoining his companions, however slowly they might walk. Neither did he mean to deprive old Mrs. Vereker of Rosalind ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... and good scholarship, neither the rules nor the lessons are allowed to be slighted; but as December days shorten, and December cold strengthens, even the most indolent pupil finds herself under a certain stress of occupation which she ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... to her, and I did. I am the one who gave her the morphine that killed her. I am going to leave Alton for good. My trunk is down at the station. I came to tell you that I gave her the morphine, and if I did wrong in helping God to shorten her sufferings, I am the one to be punished, and I stand ready to ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... are not here to sell butter; you are talking to a lady who never bargained for a thing in her life. The trade you run, old fellow, will shorten you by a head in a very few days"; and Corentin, with a friendly tap on the man's shoulder, added, "you can't keep up being a spy of the Blues and a spy of ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... star fall? It threatens nature, and the doom Will not be long before it come When stars do fail, 'tis plain enough, 475 The day of judgment's not far off; As lately 'twas reveal'd to SEDGWICK, And some of us find out by magick. Then since the time we have to live In this world's shorten'd, let us strive 480 To make our best advantage of it, And pay our losses with ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... bundle, and displayed them. 'Oh,' said she, 'they are long, aren't they! and I've just put my baby in short dresses.' If you could have heard the kind of helpless, dissatisfied tone in which it was uttered! I had half a mind to bundle them up, and take them back. 'You can shorten them,' I answered, 'and some of them will make two dresses.' 'Yes,' she answered reluctantly, 'only I should want something for yokes and sleeves.' Then her mother came to inspect them, and she was rather ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... my arrangements for quitting the neighborhood," said he, after a pause; "nor can I shorten the week longer which I had promised to spend with my very kind friend, the Warden. Yet your Lordship's kindness offers we a great temptation, and I would gladly spend the next ensuing ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... took his playthings with him. [4]His little lath-shield[4] he took, and his hurley of bronze and his ball of silver; and he took his little javelin for throwing; and his toy-staff he took with its fire-hardened butt-end, and he began to shorten the length of his journey with them. He would give the ball a stroke [LL.fo.62b.] with the hurl-bat, so that he sent it a long distance from him. Then with a second throw he would cast his hurley so that it went a distance no shorter than the first throw. ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... began to bite on one side he could hobble around the post to the opposite side. As the flames spread he would become very active, but each revolution around the post would shorten the slack of the wrist-cord. With the entire circle of fuel ablaze he would slowly roast. Black Hoof muttered some gibberish and ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... Pontremoli. Our halt retarded us, and night overtook us. In order to shorten the distance, my guides led me by a broad path which wound round the side of the mountain. The descent was so steep that our horses came down every moment, and we ourselves were obliged to slide along. I found myself at the foot of the mountain in a spot which was ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... I took pleasure, I was thy root." Such a beginning he, answering, made to me. Then he said to me: "He from whom thy family is named,[3] and who for a hundred years and more has circled the mountain on the first ledge, was my son and was thy great-grandsire. Truly it behoves that thou shorten for him his long fatigue with thy works. Florence, within the ancient circle wherefrom she still takes both tierce and nones,[4] was abiding in sober and modest peace. She had not necklace nor coronal, nor dames with ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... Jews; the entire superintendence was committed to a captain, who caused the gates to be opened and shut, and prevented any one from crossing the enclosure with a stick in his hand, or with dusty shoes, or when carrying parcels, or to shorten his path.[6] They were especially scrupulous in watching that no one entered within the inner gates in a state of legal impurity. The women ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... his son were walking the road together one day, and the Goban said to the son 'Shorten the road for me.' So the son began to walk fast, thinking that would do it, but the Goban sent him back home when he didn't understand what to do. The next day they were walking again, and the Goban said again to shorten the road for him, and this time he began ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory

... belongs the honor of the absolutely last engagement of the war. An objective had been set for the regiment on the morning of November 11th. General Vincendon heard of the hour at which hostilities were to end and sent an order to the regiment to shorten its objective. The order failed to arrive in time and ten minutes after the fighting was over Lieut. Colonel Duncan led the third battalion over the German line and captured a train of fifty ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... Presently, to shorten his road, he left the park, and took to a lane outside it. And here he suddenly perceived that he was on the borders of the experimental farm, that great glory of the estate, famous in the annals of English country life before ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... are quite superfluous for you, I beg you to consider them always at your disposal. The best person to safeguard your interests with the German Ambassadors in France and England will be Frau Grafin Schleinitz. Alter, shorten and improve anything you like in the Fantaisie on the Huguenots. Pieces of this sort ought only to be brought forward by super- eminent virtuosi—Sophie Menter, for instance. The transcriber then hardly serves as "Klecks." [Klecks is ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... To shorten the contest I said that I thought I could sleep very well upon the hay, though I certainly should have preferred sleeping in the house, but I was afraid they would quarrel on my account, which would have been to my injury; and, at all events, the hay-loft ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... momentous import, of the change of nature from sin to holiness, which has to be effected, what a baptism may I not have yet to be baptized with, and what perils to pass through! Oh, if it might please my heavenly Father to shorten and hasten the process, and deliver me from earth and its dangers into a changeless state of safety and peace in His dear presence! But I do believe He would rather be glorified by living Christians than by only dying penitents. A watchful, holy life is His delight. Oh that this high calling may ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... steel:"— His well-read friend, who next to speak began, Said, "That was Poetry, and nothing real;" A third, of more extensive learning, ran To Sir George Villiers' Ghost, and Mrs. Veal; Of sheeted Specters spoke with shorten'd breath, And thrice ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... number follows suddenly upon a lower; because the same string contains a figure of one value and another figure of but half that value. They prove only one thing: the marked tendency of the insect to shorten the distance between the party-walls as the work proceeds. We shall see later that the large cells are destined for the females and the small ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... toward the northeast. I cease to follow it. I go straight eastward, hoping to shorten the way and find the road beyond the hill. What is that I see through the trees? It looks like a man. It is a man, and in blue uniform. From mere habit I cock my rifle and hold it at the ready. I cannot see that he is armed. I go straight to him. ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... stout-hearted fellow, and as the men were collected together under the bulwark, he said, 'Well, this breeze will shorten our distance, at any rate, and if it holds we ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... parents and teachers can lead the young, which, if faithfully followed, will allow the potencies of Man's higher nature to evolve themselves with what we, with our limited experience, must regard as abnormal celerity, and which will therefore shorten appreciably Man's journey to his goal?[39] And if there is a directer path to spiritual maturity than that which is ordinarily followed, is not the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... not permitted to shorten the visit of the sisters to their old friend. Mr Millar went away rather reluctantly, alone, but the Winter had quite set in before they went home. Mrs Snow was well by that time, as well as she ever expected to be in this world, and she ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... in your wealth, in your health, in your strength, in your bodies, and in your loves. Ye are the flower and perfection of mankind. Let no plea shorten, by one instant, your pleasures. Death is the end of all things—of consciousness; of sensation; of happiness. Immortality is the dream of dotards. When ye can no longer enjoy, make ready for the grave; for the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... are young, and have as yet formed no prior attachments, for which circumstance thank heaven, and allow me to congratulate you for being so fortunate as to secure the heart and hand of Gerald Bereford. Do not imagine that it is our wish to shorten your stay in New Brunswick. You are at liberty to enjoy the companionship of your friend Mary till the years have expired, after which I think that my daughter will be anxious to see her only parent, ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... from the first that Vose Adams, in threading his way through the mountains, traveled a good many miles more than was necessary. It was quite likely that, if he could follow a straight line, he would shorten the distance one-half. Although this was impossible, the young man, nevertheless, was convinced that by changing the route, a good many miles could be saved: and it was in his ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... made when two Frenchmen were asleep in the cabin. 'I went softly aft into the cabin, and put my back against the bulkhead, and took the iron crow and held it with both my hands in the middle of it, and put my legs to shorten myself, because the cabin was very low. But he that being nighest to me, hearing me, opened his eyes, and perceiving my intent and upon what account I was coming, he endeavoured to rise to make resistance against me, but I prevented him by a blow upon his forehead which mortally wounded him.' ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... in their situation, were disdainfully rejected; yet one man of the garrison, named Juan Tapia, went over to the Araucanians by whom he was well received, and even got advancement in their army. As these terms were rejected, Cadeguala determined to endeavour to shorten the siege in a different manner. He presented himself one day before the walls mounted on a fine horse which he had taken from the governor, and boldly defied Garcia Ramon the commander of the garrison ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... to him. Similar propositions, presented by powerful men from all parts of the State with the plea that a compromise would "save the party," received the same answer.[1332] Meanwhile, he laboured to shorten the life of the Ring. To him Richard Connolly appealed for protection against Tweed's treachery, and at Tilden's suggestion the comptroller turned over his office to Andrew H. Green, thus assuring the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... laid open before his Eyes? The Truths he discovers there, are of infinite Service to him. He thereby cultivates and improves his Mind. He lives in Peace and Tranquility all his Days; he is afraid of Nobody, and he has no tender, indulgent Wife to shorten ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... h['o]nor['i]fic['a]bil['i] or as tud['i]nit['a]tib['u]s, but with the halves put together there would be a tendency to say h['o]nor['i]ficabilit['u]dinit['a]tibus. Thus there ought not to be much difficulty in saying C['o]nstant['i]nop['o]lit['a]ni, whether you keep the long antepenultima or shorten it after the English way; but he who forced the reluctant word to end an hexameter must have had 'Constantin['o]ple' in his mind, and therefore said Const['a]ntin['o]polit['a]ni with two false stresses. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt









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