|
|
|
More "Well-nigh" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hours in such acute mental torture as well-nigh drove her crazy. After a sleepless night, she rose early, wild with excitement, dying to start on her journey, terrified lest further obstacles lay in her way. She rose before anyone else in the house was astir, so frightened was she, lest she should miss the ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that was well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty of the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made them the objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,—the House of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in that mansion, ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... fell [from heaven], and these (i.e. his children, and his brethren, and the maiden) came into the fire which fell with it. I myself was not with those who were burnt in the fire, and I was not in their midst, but I [well-nigh] died [of grief] for them. And I found a place wherein I buried them all together. Now, if thou art strong, and thy heart flourisheth, thou shalt fill both thy arms (i.e. embrace) with thy children, and thou shalt kiss thy wife, and thou shalt ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... unconcernedly remarked that it was put there by some foolish gunner, and was not intended for him. He said, however, that he wanted the matter kept quiet, and admonished us to say nothing about it. We all felt confident that it was an attempt to kill him, and a well-nigh successful one, too. The affair was kept quiet, in accordance with his request. After that, the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... by this reminiscence had well-nigh made Bean forget the dog. Once he had made people afraid. The world had trembled before him. Policemen had been ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... were old and the Latin was in an ancient cramped hand while the impression of the seal was well-nigh obliterated. When sufficient time had elapsed for the Russian to make a complete mental note of their appearance, Josef drew the papers away from him, refolded them carefully and ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... doubt that I had ever been fully conscious before. I had lived till now in a paradise of vivid sense-impressions in which all thoughts came to me saturated with emotion, and in that mental state reflection is well-nigh impossible. Even the idea of death, which had come as a surprise, had not made me reflect. Death was a person, a monstrous being who had sprung upon me in my flowery paradise and had inflicted a wound with ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... well-nigh incredible feat, and she held her breath as one stone followed the other. It seemed to her incredible and impossible, because Stafford's figure was slight and graceful, and he performed the feat with the apparent ease which he had learnt ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... of lemonade and pastries, the hostess requested her guests, several being well-nigh torpid, to attend to a song by Mr. Pumpherston. No one (excepting his wife) wanted to hear it, but the Pumpherston song had become traditional with the McOstrich entertainments. One could not have the ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... the Tallapoosa and Athens wire, I never thought to meet you as a live gorilla; but here I am. After the war was over and the Government discharged so many telegraph operators, it was hard scratching for a while; and after you and I left the Decapolis office, I was well-nigh broke more than once, only a few cents standing between me and beggary. But I kept a stiff upper lip and struggled up to Cincinnati, where I met with Coriander. He was out there with his menagerie and ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... had never occurred to her that local criticism was certain to follow the appearance of a local writer; and she shrank from it with morbid and exaggerated disgust. Even if all had been well, if Roland had been beside her, their notices would have been well-nigh intolerable to her. She could not have endured being stared at and pointed out in the streets of her own little town. But now Fame had come to her with broken wings and a cracked trumpet, and she shuddered at the sound of her own name harshly ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... through the fringe of grasses at the top of the ridge, feeling that now indeed our cup of danger well-nigh was full. For some moments I lay examining the camp, seeking to divine the intent of these people, whom I supposed to be Sioux. The size of the encampment disposed me to think that it was a hunting party and not an ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... looked for thee before, Though what should a woman compass, she one alone and no more, When all we shielded Volsungs did nought in Siggeir's land? O yea, I am living indeed, and this labour of mine hand Is to bury the bones of the Volsungs; and lo, it is well-nigh done. So draw near, Volsung's daughter, and pile we many a stone Where lie the grey wolf's gleanings of what was ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... marvel how it can be that it has not fallen down and has not thrown out cracks. The reason is that this edifice is round both without and within and built in the shape of a hollow well, and bound together with the stones in a manner that it is well-nigh impossible that it should fall; and it is assisted, above all, by the foundations, which have an outwork three braccia wide outside the tower, made, as it is seen, after the sinking of the campanile, in order to support it. I am convinced ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... by gout from taking that species of exercise while he was alive. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, I think, as I approach this spot; but I do not say so, for I am well-nigh speechless with the cold: yes, the cold. It is only my teeth that chatter. What a scream that was! There it comes again, and there is no doubt this time as to who is the owner of that terrified voice. Mrs. B.'s alarms have ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... use for him, a something which he alone could do, and he patiently awaited the Lord's orders. Now he knew that his special work had been put ready to his hand—the deliverance of these two little ones. And although the call to action did not sound until his sands of life were well-nigh run, the answer "Ready!" rang none ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... smaller men, also, but admirable soldiers of progress in their degree, had passed away. The gallant host had done its work. The ground was ploughed, the seed was sown, and the harvest was sure. Famished as they were, and well-nigh desperate at times, the men of the Revolution nursed the crop as a sacred legacy, shedding their blood like water to fructify the soil in ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... of Dumbarton, which was held for Queen Mary by her faithful partisan, Lord Flemyng. On this, Cuthbert Langston asked whether he had heard any tidings of the imprisoned Queen, and he answered that it was reported at Leith that she had well-nigh escaped from Lochleven, in the disguise of a lavender or washerwoman. She was actually in the boat, and about to cross the lake, when a rude oarsman attempted to pull aside her muffler, and the whiteness of the hand she raised ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... evident from these words that each of the speakers was satisfied as to the identity of the one that had fired the well-nigh fatal shot. Gleeson named ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... what the conditions may be, and to follow them. Though in their eyes a glass of beer is quite right and proper when taken as any self-respecting man should take it; though they know that cleanliness is an expensive virtue which can be required of few; though they realize that saving is well-nigh impossible when but a few cents can be laid by at a time; though their feeling for the church may be something quite elusive of definition and quite apart from daily living: to the visitor they gravely laud temperance and cleanliness and thrift and religious ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... thus he, thinking, A little bird, quick drinking Among the crowfoot tufts the river bore, Was tangled in their stringy arms, and fluttered, well-nigh sinking, Near him, ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... filled by about the same crowd which had been present the Friday evening preceding, and of whose conversation on that occasion, some account was given. But the temper of the gathering a week before had been gloomy, foreboding, hopeless and well-nigh desperate; ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... mind—pray for me. You may never learn how right and how wrong you have been to-day; but you cannot be wrong in praying to God for me, for He has vexed me with all His storms, all His waves have gone over me, and I am well-nigh overwhelmed. My only hope is in the mercy of one who has never yet showed mercy either to you ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... imagined myself charged. I refused to read; for to read veiled charges and fail to assert my innocence was to incriminate both myself and others. But I looked with longing glances upon all printed matter and, as my curiosity was continually piqued, this enforced abstinence grew to be well-nigh intolerable. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... off again to plunge in the thick of business. It was supposed the fur company and the concessions ruled most of the bargain-making, but there were independent trappers who had not infrequently secured skins that were well-nigh priceless when they reached the hands of the Paris furrier. And toward night, when wine and whiskey had been passed around rather freely, there were broils that led to more than one fatal ending. Indian women thronged around as well, with ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... see where to steer," Russ exclaimed, when they had paused in their yelling, well-nigh exhausted, "it wouldn't be so bad! But I can't see a thing. It's getting darker every minute. I never ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... against church-going and church people generally. Few dared mention a clergyman in his presence, for his open and successful warfare with the minister of his own parish had been going on for years and had become well-nigh traditional. Looking at him, however, as he sat in his favourite corner of the "Trusty Man's" common room, no one would have given him credit for any particular individuality. His round red face expressed nothing,—his dull fish-like eyes betrayed no intelligence,—he appeared to be nothing ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... perfidiously with me and lure me into these desert mountains, and what wilt thou do with me?" When he heard her words, he hardened his heart and said to her, "O pestilent baggage, wilt thou bandy words with me?" So saying, he took the whip and brought it down on her back, till she well-nigh fainted. Then she bowed down and kissed his feet; and he left beating her and began to revile her, saying, "By my bonnet, if I see or hear thee weeping, I will cut out thy tongue and thrust it up thy kaze, city strumpet that thou art!" So she was silent and made him no reply, for the beating ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... poor crippled boy, teaching him the way of life and sowing the seed which now was bearing fruit. Nor did he regret having accepted Wilford's invitation to dinner, as by this means he saw the home which had well-nigh been little Katy Lennox's. She would be sadly out of place here with these people, he thought, as he looked upon all their formality and ceremony and then contrasted it with what Katy had been accustomed to. Juno would kill her outright, was ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... past her mother with the fleetness of a fawn, calling as she did so, "I'm coming, coming!" In the next instant the wondering woman saw her child running, as only an Indian can run, by the side of a jet-black pony whose coat was flecked with foam, and whose breath was well-nigh spent. As they came nearer into the pathway of light that the pine blaze sent forth from the open door, something that looked like a pennon of gold streamed out, and a clear but rather shaken voice cried, "Lula, Lula, I've kept my promise; I've kept ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... the quaggas that they were well-nigh surrounded by strange enemies. But one course appeared open to them—the way they were wont to go; and barking with affright, the whole drove dashed up the bank, and crowded on towards ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... very dear sir," cried the Colonel, well-nigh hysterical with wonder and delight, "I insist on your coming down at once from that tree and partaking of luncheon with me. I have some excellent '49 port, and we'll discuss the two subjects together. Really, it is very remiss of me not to have suggested your coming ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... family, her husband to care for as he hasted away early to his work, and her children to make ready for school. There were other household duties which filled the poor, weak woman's hands, until her strength was well-nigh utterly exhausted. And she had not gone through it all that morning in a sweet, peaceful way. She had allowed herself to lose her patience, and to grow fretful, vexed, and unhappy. She had spoken ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... they could obtain the dresses of gentlemen, they should less likely be suspected while travelling, at all events, than if they disguised themselves as countrymen, as their dialect and appearance would at once show that they were strangers. The long summer's day was well-nigh closing in when they reached a hilly district, where they hoped to ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... fortune-seekers set eyes on the pony-chaise than off they set in a scamper, strangely forgetful of what had passed. It was wonderful to see how nimble Alan was in spite of his wounded leg; and with what ease Owen and Amy ran along with that heavy load of gold, which before had well-nigh weighed them ...
— The Nursery, July 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 1 • Various
... Harry had well-nigh dislodged Daisy by his vehemence in demonstrating that they were welcome to volunteer, but that the Channel Fleet would prevent the rifles from being seriously put to the proof—a declaration highly satisfactory to the ladies, and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Lilas's catastrophe Mrs. Knight was well-nigh delirious. It was not often that she could roll two such delicious morsels under her tongue, and she patently gloried in the opportunity for gossip. She ended a period of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... and prepares himself (for the journey): they depart with this equipment to Cruachan Ai:[FN57] and the people were well-nigh overcome with their consequence and appearance: their troop was great, goodly, splendid, compact: [fifty heroes, all with that appearance ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... lord, that what you have so graciously called my fiasco is well-nigh forgotten by this time, and wiser policy would ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... henceforth be multiplied incalculably; she durst not, as she valued her soul, so much as let his name enter her thoughts. And to guard against it, was there not a means offered her? The doubt as to what love meant was well-nigh solved; or at all events she held it proved that the 'love' of the marriage service was something she had never yet felt, something which would follow upon marriage itself. Earthly love had surely led Hubert Eldon to ruin; oh, not that could be demanded of her! What ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... pardon me! I knew not what I said; I am well-nigh crazy; I do believe you, I do indeed; forgive me, and think of the despair to which the loss of those papers reduces me. I have no copy, and with them my secret perishes. I am ruined—ruined irretrievably. The mine is known now only ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... who seemed highly pleased with his good manners. The chief then pointed to a shady spot, on which his attendants spread some carpets. Here we thankfully lay down, and I do not think I ever slept more soundly in my life, forgetting all the hardships I had gone through. When we awoke the sun was well-nigh dipping into the ocean, and the Malays had finished the repair of their boat. The old chief was, however, still seated on his carpet, with four or five other individuals, habited much in the same ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... braves, who attempted, to retard our advance by opening fire at long range from favorable places where they lay concealed. This fire did us little harm, but it had the effect of making our progress so slow that the patience of every one but General Rains was well-nigh exhausted. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... howled out Eglantine, now driven to fury—"YOU laugh at me, you miserable cretur! Take THAT, sir!" and he fell upon him with all his might, and well-nigh throttled the tailor, and pummelling his eyes, his nose, his ears, with inconceivable rapidity, wrenched, finally, his wig off his head, and flung it ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was the reply, "save in one particular, but there the difference is tremendous. Endowed otherwise like us, you are destitute of the faculty of foresight, without which we should think our other faculties well-nigh valueless." ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... is there not place for a hopeful thought, that if women have made so little comparative use of their well-nigh irresistible influence in setting a high standard and shaping men to a diviner and less animal type, it has been, as I have already said, chiefly owing to ignorance? The whole of one of the darkest sides of life has been sedulously kept from us. Educated mothers, till lately, have been profoundly ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... very limited extent of their shallow capacities lift them to be useful to whites, to raise cotton, gather rubber, fetch ivory, dig diamonds,—and let them be paid what men think they are worth—white men who know them to be well-nigh worthless. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Empire, unless it was in Asia, and were to some degree in use even as late as the ninth century; before and during the employment of vellum in the Caesarean school, and in localities where it was used in imitation of the mode of writing books which was brought well-nigh to perfection in ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... and justice of his appeal. But he put me off from time to time; persisted in looking upon me as a boy long after I had become acquainted with the penalties of the razor; and counselled me to be patient, till patience was well-nigh exhausted. The result of this treatment was that I became miserable and discontented; spent whole days wandering about the woods; and degenerated into a creature half idler and half misanthrope. I had never loved the profession ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... repeated that those confiscations and extortions were perpetrated upon Catholics as well as Protestants, monarchists as well as rebels; the possession of property making proof of orthodoxy or of loyalty well-nigh impossible. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as impersonal and detached as the details in ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Roger replied. "Their position was a terrible one and seemed well-nigh hopeless. I know that Cuitcatl regarded it as quite hopeless, and deems that all have fallen; but I do not think so. The passages to be crossed were of no great width; and though numbers may have fallen, I believe that some will have made their way ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... with, I was a king; king of all Caria, ruler of many Lydians, subduer of islands, conqueror of well-nigh the whole of Ionia, even to the borders of Miletus. Further, I was comely, and of noble stature, and a mighty warrior. Finally, a vast tomb lies over me in Halicarnassus, of such dimensions, of such exquisite beauty as no other shade can boast. Thereon ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... it until the close of the war. He spent the winter in Valley Forge, and once, in the darkest time, discovered Washington on his knees in a lonely thicket, praying aloud for his country. This gave him hope, when hope was well-nigh dead, and he followed his commander across the Jerseys, one of the two thousand who wrote in blood, from their shoeless feet, their protest against British rule on the soil ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... loyalty, the payment of imposts. Mr. Beauffet told me he was ordered to offer a glass of wine to the person who collected the income tax, and that the poor man was so overcome by a reception so unwontedly generous, that he had well-nigh fainted ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... it must be so; for while, on the one hand, his army was well-nigh exhausted, and was reduced to a state of such privation and distress as to make it nearly helpless, Saladin was established in Jerusalem almost impregnably. While the divisions of Richard's army had been quarreling with each other on the sea-coast, he had been strengthening the ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... absolute, overwhelming, which rushed upon him, had well-nigh led to an explosion of wrath, and perhaps some terrible scene which might have fulfilled some of old Sophy's predictions. This, however, would never do. Dick's face whitened with his thoughts, but he kept still until he could ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Emerson was essentially a prophet and theosophist, and not a man of letters, or creative artist. He could not have written a song or a story or a play. Arnold complains of his want of concreteness. The essay was his chosen medium, well-nigh the least concrete, the least literary of forms. And it was not even the personal essay, like Elia's, that he practised, but an abstract variety, a lyceum lecture, a moralizing discourse or sermon. ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... angry in her expression or manner. They went into the dining-room, and talked together much as usual during dinner. As soon as dinner was over, and the parlor-maid had gone out, having finished her ministrations, which to Dion that night had seemed innumerable and well-nigh unbearable, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... "The journey would be well-nigh impossible, I expect," Raed remarked. "On getting in from the coast, we should probably meet with no sea-fowl, no seals: in fact, I hardly know what we should be able to get for game. I have heard that caribou-deer ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... an international complication does not come from across the sea. The war spirit is well-nigh as rife in this country as at Barcelona and Cadiz. The great mass of the American people would welcome a controversy with any country, with or without good cause. "The glory of the young man is in his strength," and Uncle Sam is young and strong. He longs to grapple with ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of the name. In the register of his birth his name is entered, as are the births of his brothers and sisters, as 'Brunty' and 'Bruntee'; and it can scarcely be doubted that, as Dr. Douglas Hyde has pointed out, the original name was O'Prunty. {29} The Irish, at the beginning of the century, were well-nigh as primitive in some matters as were the English of a century earlier; and one is not surprised to see variations in the spelling of the Bronte name—it being in the case of his brothers and sisters occasionally spelt 'Brontee.' To me it is perfectly ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... stunning roar,—an involuntary gasp, a choking flood of water that came bellowing after them, and hammered them down into the black depths so far that the young man, though used to diving and swimming long distances underwater, had well-nigh yielded to the fearful need of air, and sucked in ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... endeavouring to strike its decisive blow on land! This double paradox will give much food for reflection to future historians. I am coming to the conclusion that without a complete knowledge of the facts it is well-nigh impossible to derive accurate deductions from History. It seems to me you can make History prove anything. To understand History in all its significance, one must be familiar also with literature, languages ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... evening, after his guest had gone, Gray took occasion deliberately to put himself in Mallow's way and to get into conversation with him. This was not a difficult maneuver, for it was nearly midnight and the lobby was well-nigh deserted; moreover, it almost appeared as if the restless Mr. Mallow was ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... office expenses, payments to Mrs. Slater and Mr. Pell, and the more or less constant inquiry from some of my moral (as I call them) creditors as to how soon I could commence making them monthly payments, my brain was well-nigh turned. ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... fisherman; "a short time ago it was only a point of land; but now, since the forest-stream and the lake have become well-nigh bewitched, things are quite ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... and austerities had well-nigh brought Bernard to the grave, when the good bishop, finding him inflexible, went to Citeaux, and, prostrating himself before Stephen Harding, begged and obtained leave to direct and manage Bernard for one year only. The young abbot obeyed his new director absolutely, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... dead'—rose up from every heart; the voice of an incredulous age proclaimed the coming end of paganism. The oracles were dumb." There was no vision in the land. All faith in a beneficent overruling Providence was lost, and the hope of immortality was well-nigh gone. The doctrines of a resurrection and a judgment to come, were objects of derisive mockery.[921] Philosophy directed her attention solely to the problem of individual well-being on earth; it became simply a philosophy of life, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Our allotted space is well-nigh exhausted, and we have only now reached the confines of CHINA!—a topic on which we had prepared ourselves for a very full expression of our opinions. We are compelled, however, now to content ourselves with a mere outline of our intended ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... arm, and he was beautiful, full fed from her breasts, formed large and fair, his hair already waved as by a court barber! Her eyes rested on him. Would all the weak and miserable of the world be well-nigh forgotten now? She raised them to me again—Basin eyes—all the weak and miserable of the world ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... known a few weeks of life when, by calendar, the summer was already come; it seemed as if the local weather god had incontinently pushed the season forward with august finger to bring it again into accord with more favoured lands to the south. For torrid heat fell suddenly upon them, heat well-nigh as unmeasured as was the winter's cold. The tops of the spruces and cypresses, forgotten by the wind, were utterly still, and above the frowning outline stretched a sky bare of cloud which likewise seemed fixed and motionless. From dawn ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... august member of the society was so happily disappointed by his concluding with leaving it an undamaged reputation, the whole story was not let out. In truth the society was at that moment in a state of indignation, and its reputation as well-nigh the last stage of disgrace as it were possible to bring it without being entirely absorbed. The Baronet, who enjoyed a good joke, and was not over-scrupulous in measuring the latitude of our credulity, had, it seems, in addition to the little affair with Mrs. Constance, been imprudent ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Novgorod, Moscow, and Jaroslaf. The increase in population together with the growing demand for lumber, have caused extensive clearings; but the area covered by the forests is so large, that the supply is well-nigh inexhaustible. ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... had now a heavy weight to deal with. Then the truth suddenly flashed on him, and he went to work and pulled and pulled till the perspiration rolled down him: the weight got heavier and heavier, and at last he was well-nigh exhausted: looking down, he saw in the moonlight a sight that revived him: it was as it were a great snake coming up to him out of the deep shadow cast by the tower. He gave a shout of joy, and a score ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... twines round the tall stems of the palms, and overspreads the light fronds like some green waterfall. Many of the larger trees are clothed with parasitic ferns; huge bird's-nest ferns grow in the forks of the branches, as do various orchids, the dainty children of the mist, so that the stems are well-nigh as green as everything else in that wilderness of lovely forms. It is a very inanimate paradise, however. I rarely see any birds or butterflies, only a few lizards and an occasional dragon-fly; and the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... tearful—"I offer my hand in penitent gratitude." John took it. "Yes, my dear boy, my feet had well-nigh slipped." ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... voice of merely human birth, E'en here, where shapes immortal throng'd, intrude? Yet ah! thou poorest of the sons of earth, For once, I e'en to thee feel gratitude. Despair the power of sense did well-nigh blast, And thou didst save me ere I sank dismay'd; So giant-like the vision seem'd, so vast, I felt myself shrink dwarf'd ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of a novice. After the ceremony the queen made inquiries touching this new Santa Cecilia; and who dost thou think she is? No; thou wilt never guess!—the once celebrated singer—the beautiful, the inimitable Beatriz Coello! Ah! you may well look surprised; when actresses turn nuns, it is well-nigh time for Calderon and Philip to turn monks. Now, you must know, Roderigo, that I, unworthy though I be, am the cause of this conversion. There is a certain Martin Fonseca, a kinsman of Lerma's—thou ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... As for me, feeling that I had nothing pleasant to say, I pretended to have the toothache as an excuse for not talking. Sick at heart, absent-minded, and feeling the effects of a sleepless night, I was well-nigh mad with love, jealousy, and despair. Mdlle. de la Meure did not speak to me once, did not so much as look at me. She was quite right, but I did not think so then. I thought the dinner would never come to an end, and I do not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... knowledge or the unified opinion on this subject to protect itself against the greedy lobby in this process of tax revision. And so, selfish commercial interests could get nearly what they asked for in Congress, and the politicians at Washington, who had come to have a well-nigh superstitious faith in the efficacy of very high protective duties, could quietly use the opportunity to raise the people's taxes ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... service, you were promoted to the rank of lieutenant for a deed of extraordinary gallantry. You had attacked and killed, with your own hand, six marauding soldiers; who had entered the chateau of Count Eulenfurst, well-nigh murdered the count, killed six of his servants, and were occupied in plundering the house. In token of his thankfulness, that the life of so distinguished and enlightened a nobleman had been saved by you; as well as of approbation for the gallantry of your conduct, his majesty ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... away from all this foulness! Would to God he could get away from it all! But they could not run away together, and so he, too, must stay to please her. It was not easy; it was no honour to serve such a fellow, as he had done now for well-nigh three-quarters of a year. But he was doing it to please Mikolai and her—yes, ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... the treasurer of which had levanted with the greater part of the capital. Here, too, was a memorandum of the sums sunk upon the Evening Star and the Providence, whose unfortunate collision had well-nigh proved the death blow of the firm. It was melancholy reading, and perhaps the last page was the most melancholy of all. On it the old man had drawn up in a condensed form an exact account of the present condition of the firm's finances. Here it is exactly word for ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shaken to its foundations. So the two great sections of the English people parted company, perhaps to their mutual profit. Certainly each government has now enough to do without solving the other's problems, and it is well-nigh impossible to conceive a state maintaining its equilibrium or its equanimity with two such partners as the British Empire and the United States struggling ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... southwest, through Treptow Gollnow and other wild little Prussian Towns is about 100 miles; from Landsberg south, 150: Friedrich himself is well-nigh 300 miles away; in Stettin alone is succor, could we hold the intervening Country. But it is overrun with Russians, more and ever more. A Country of swamps and moors, winter darkness stealing over it,—illuminated by such a volcano as we see: a very ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with a sigh, "I trust they're none the less safe for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me, well-nigh threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being drownded. Why, they might ha' been cast on a desert island, and wasted to skin an' bone, and got home again wi' the loss of half the wits they set out with. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... first to hear such further details as were allowed to circulate among the now well-nigh frenzied guests. No one knew the perpetrator of the deed nor did there appear to be any direct evidence calculated to fix his identity. Indeed, the sudden death of this beautiful woman in the midst of festivity ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... property of every sort, was destroyed to prevent capture by the Union forces. On every battlefield incalculable damage was done to woods, villages, farmhouses, and crops. Bridges were burned; cities, such as Richmond, Atlanta, Columbia, Charleston, were well-nigh destroyed by fire; thousands of miles of railroad were torn up and ruined. The loss entailed by the emancipation of the slaves, supposing each negro worth $500, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... fast approaching maturity, with no adequate provision for its payment. Some policy for dealing with this debt with a view to its ultimate collection should be at once adopted. It is very difficult, well-nigh impossible, for so large a body as the Congress to conduct the necessary negotiations and investigations. I therefore recommend that provision be made for the appointment of a commission to agree upon and report a plan ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Whereat the ring well-nigh breaks with applause, and the knowing ones nod one at another, and Heathcote leaps for joy and beams like the sun at mid-day as his hero returns to his knees and girds himself ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Gray, Esq. Wordsworth was justified in naming Gray a 'friend' of Burns. He was originally Master of the High School, Dumfries, and associated with the Poet there. Transferred to the High School of Edinburgh, he taught for well-nigh a quarter of a century with repute. Disappointed of the Rectorship, he retired from Edinburgh to an academy at Belfast. Later, having entered holy orders, he proceeded to India as a chaplain in the East India Company's ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... boy, "sometimes I've had the fellows hint to me that I had bats in my belfry; but sure not that many. Why, I reckon there must have been well-nigh a thousand ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... its true character, and Herschel was awarded the honor due to the author of a discovery of such importance. His diligence and pertinacity alone had enabled him to search out from among the multitude of stars thickly strewn over the firmament this unknown and well-nigh invisible planet which, during all the preceding years of the world's history, had eluded human perception. Men had been all unconscious of its existence as it had been slowly completing its circuits around the sun, obedient to the same laws as the other ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... when it is wanted," he said. "The coachman is pretty old now. He has been in the family well-nigh fifty years. He is all right behind the carriage-horses, he says, but he does not like trusting himself ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... assured, and a face as strikingly handsome as that of Harris was severely plain. Willett's eyes and hair were of a deep, lustrous brown, his eyebrows thick and heavily arched, his mouth soft, sensitive, with lips that were beautifully curved and teeth that were white and well-nigh perfect. His mustache, though long and curling, was carefully trained away so as to hide none of the charms that lurked beneath. He looked at once the knight of the ballroom and the battlefield, a man to make his mark in either contest, love or war, and make it he had. Life had been ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... sympathetic power, which was always the first title of Madam Urso—as of every great violinist—to the highest rank in her art. Her violin in these fine concerted pieces spoke with the same "golden mouth" as of old, commanding, inspiring, defying and pleading by turns. And in such music as that of the well-nigh incomparable "Tema con variazioni" of the Schubert quartette, the highest eloquence of the king of instruments is ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... complacent, musing upper thought in the mind and on the lips of the proletary as he wended his way through the quiet and well-nigh deserted streets to the older part of the town. How much it might have been modified if he had known that the man whose face Miss Farnham had seen at the window was silently tracking him through the tree-shadowed streets is a matter for conjecture. Also, it is ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Caesar restored and rebuilt the ruined city, than it sprang at once again into importance, and among the societies addrest in the Epistles of St. Paul, none seems to have lived in greater wealth or luxury. It was, in fact, well-nigh impossible that Corinth should die. Nature had marked out her site as one of the great thoroughfares of the old world; and it was not till after centuries of blighting misrule by the wretched Turks that she sank into the hopeless decay from which not even another ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... Hayti. There was an insurrection in 1796; and in 1831 again the Negroes of northwest Jamaica, impatient because of the slow progress of the emancipation, arose in revolt and destroyed nearly three and a half million dollars' worth of property, well-nigh ruining the planters there. The next year two hundred and fifty-five thousand slaves were set free, for which the planters were paid nearly thirty million dollars. There ensued a discouraging condition of industry. The white officials ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... Krabbetje, the Little Crab, born 1610, master-potter of Delft and Haarlem] did not trouble his head about that," said the Haarlem jar, proudly. "The Krabbetje made me for the kitchen, the bright, clean, snow-white Dutch kitchen, well-nigh three centuries ago, and now I am thought worthy the palace; yet I wish I were at home; yes, I wish I could see the good Dutch vrouw, and the shining canals, and the great green meadows ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... outlay soon exhausted the meagre resources of young Glazier and, at the end of the time mentioned, he went over into Rensselaer County, to look up a school, in order to replenish his well-nigh empty purse, and to enable him to continue in his efforts to acquire an education. It was a bright clear morning in November when he left his boarding-place on Lydius street in quest of his self-appointed work, and, crossing the Hudson on a ferry-boat, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... details. You invite me, by the part you take in what regards me, to open my heart to you. Alas, hope is well-nigh banished from it. Fortune, when she changes, is as constant in her persecutions as in her favors. History is full of those examples:—but I have found none equal to the one we now see; nor any War as ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... thought a moment. "He was a classic, you say, and his name was—Oh, yes, I know—Dante," he declared, with difficulty controlling the laughter that well-nigh convulsed him. "And you found Dante ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... would be greater than in allowing matters to remain as they are. It is certain that the house is watched. As you know, servants going in and out after nightfall have been rudely hustled and thrown down. Some have been beaten, and returned well-nigh stripped to the skin. I doubt not that these attacks were made in order to discover if they had anything concealed under their garments. Were Jethro to venture upon such an attempt he might either be attacked and the cat found ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... paid to children, but it is quite certain that a similar number of THE STUDIO could scarce have been compiled a century ago, for there was practically no material for it. In fact the tastes of children as a factor to be considered in life are well-nigh as modern as steam or the electric light, and far less ancient than printing with movable types, which of itself seems the second great event in the history of humanity, the use of fire ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... except by, those who are in immediate contact and know the responsibilities. Our tasks would be less difficult if we had only ourselves to consider, but so much of the world was involved, the disordered conditions are so well-nigh universal, even among nations not engaged in actual warfare, that no permanent readjustments can be effected without consideration of our inescapable relationship to world affairs in finance and trade. Indeed, we should be unworthy of our best ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... was well-nigh spent; his cave was near, Where he had spent so many weary years, And as he thither turned and upward climbed, The shepherd's little child who watched the flock His love had rescued from the bloody knife, Upon a rock that ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... Justice Chase? Would the recreancy of President Johnson to his own party and his hope of Democratic support find any considerable response? And aside from the issue of virtually repudiating the public debt, would the party now re-assert its hostile and revolutionary attitude towards the well-nigh completed work of Reconstruction? These various possibilities left a degree of uncertainty which surrounded the Convention with ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... could give a man—the most powerful editor in the Union, surrounded by friends and admirers, feared or courted by nearly everybody in public life, and in the full enjoyment of widespread popular confidence in his integrity. In six short months he was well-nigh undone. He had endured a humiliating defeat, which seemed to him to indicate the loss of what was his dearest possession, the affection of the American people; he had lost the weight in public affairs which he had built up by thirty years of ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... examining chaplain and theological professor, with the interludes of voyages which involved intense anxiety and watchfulness, as well as the hardships of those unrestful nights in native huts, and the exhaustion of the tropical climate. No wonder then that he was already as one whose work was well-nigh done, and to whom rest was near. And though the entrance into that rest was by a sudden stroke, it was one that mercifully spared the sufferings of a protracted illness, and even if his friends pause to claim for it the actual honours (on earth) ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and jaw beneath; life at the stroke Left him, and darkness overspread his eyes. So raged the battle like devouring fire. But Hector dear to Jove not yet had learn'd, Nor aught surmised the havoc of his host 820 Made on the left, where victory crown'd well-nigh The Grecians animated to the fight By Neptune seconding himself their arms. He, where he first had started through the gate After dispersion of the shielded Greeks 825 Compact, still persevered. The galleys there Of Ajax and Protesilaues stood Updrawn above the hoary Deep; the wall ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... inherited the problem? I had long ago thrown aside illusions and theories, and was willing to meet the facts face to face, and to do whatever in God's name a man might do towards saving the next generation from such a burden. But I felt the weight of twenty well-nigh hopeless years of thought and reading and observation; for the old difficulties remained and new ones had sprung up. Then I saw clearly that the way out of a century of blunders had been made by this man who stood beside me ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... by the Governor. As the special session had been called specifically for good roads, the State Equal Suffrage League intended to await the regular session of 1920 to press for action but to test the legislators a questionnaire was sent to them. Answers proved that it would be well-nigh impossible to obtain ratification at this time, even though substantial petitions from all sections of the State were shown to men representing the localities from which these came. Spurred on, however, by efforts of the National Woman's Party to secure action at any cost, the opponents succeeded ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the thought that, after what she had said that morning on the island, after she had forced on him, stripping it of the uttermost rag of disguise, the realization of how his position appeared to her, he should have come, under orders, to bring her back, was well-nigh unendurable. But to have met him, to have seen the man she loved plunging still deeper into shame, would have been pain beyond bearing. Better a thousand times than that this panic flight into the ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Up to this date, then, there could not have been any considerable falling off in the size of the gathering. Indeed, from my friend's observations upon the Belmont roost, to be mentioned later, it seems well-nigh certain that it was still upon ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... him as easy to manage as a kitten or as relentless as a panther, stalking his prey. She knew that it was in her power to say the word that would calm him until the return of his mother and his sister. And yet she found it well-nigh impossible to ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... a particular account of the names of the soldiers that were slain in the town, for many were maimed and wounded, and slain; for when they saw that the posts of Ear-gate did shake, and Eye-gate was well-nigh broken quite open; and also that their captains were slain, this took away the hearts of many of the Diabolonians; they fell also by the force of the shot that were sent by the golden slings into the midst of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the rocking horse couplets of Pope, and it is well-nigh unreadable to-day. It is doubtful if twenty-five people in our times have ever read it through. Even where the author essays fine writing, as ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... surrender reached England, the disappointment and chagrin were well-nigh universal. The British ministry were astounded by the unexpected tidings. Lord Germain announced the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... three days after this ridiculous scene, on a certain afternoon, when Adrian had been out for the second time, that the evil tidings came. Dirk had heard them in the town, and returned home well-nigh weeping. Elsa saw his face and knew ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... that democracy is for the nation a true embodiment of that life, and wears its characteristics upon its sleeve. In it the individual mingles with the mass, and becomes one with mankind, and mankind itself sums the totality of individual good in a well-nigh perfect way. In it there is the slow embodiment of a future nobly conceived and brought into existence on an ideal basis of the best that is, from age to age, in man's power. It includes the universal wisdom, the reach of thought ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... the small wiry ponies of the country, their servants clearing a way before them with their parangs as they advanced. Their route, for the most part, lay through jungle, in places so dense that it was well-nigh impossible for them to force a way through it. It was as if nature were doing her best to save the ancient city from the hand of the spoiler. At last, and so suddenly that it came upon them like a shock, ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... history, in these dread days, Is sore sore sad in the making; We are building the future with our dead, We are binding it sure with the brave blood shed, Though our hearts are well-nigh breaking. We can but pray that the coming day Will reap, of our red sowing, The harvest meet of a world complete With the peace of God's bestowing. So, with quiet heart, we do our part In the travail ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... poor children out into the air without exposing the dear innocents to reproaches, what a situation is ours, my dear heart! And when you think that I suffer not for myself alone, but have to tremble for the king as well, and for our friends who are with us, you will see that the burden is well-nigh unbearable! But, as I have told you before, you absent ones, you keep me up. Adieu, dear heart, let us hope in God, who looks into our consciences, and who knows whether we are not animated by the truest love for this land. ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... they discovered people still living! They are marvelously developed people, infinitely more advanced than the people of the earth, and enjoying a civilization that is well-nigh incredible. Among other things, they have learned how to visit other worlds without themselves leaving their planet. They do it by a kind of telepathy; they know all about us here on the earth; and they have accumulated data regarding the ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... gave orders for the horses to be cast into the sea, and, despite their masters' entreaties, favourite chargers of priceless value were slaughtered and thrown overboard. The famous breed of Spanish horses was well-nigh ruined. It was but one tragedy more. On the 2nd of November most of the troops were on board. Charles resolved to be the last to leave the strand; but the wind was getting up, the sea rising, and at last he gave the order to weigh anchor. Often is the story told in Algiers how the great ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... find a place for Dionea, and in this neighborhood well-nigh impossible. The people associate her somehow with the death of Father Domenico, which has confirmed her reputation of having the evil eye. She left the convent (being now seventeen) some two months back, and ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... shoes removed. The tools of his trade were placed before Simon, but he cast glances so piteous, first at his brother's feet, and then at the shoes, as again gave rise to an amount of merriment that surpassed all, my pages in particular well-nigh forgetting my presence, and rolling about in a manner unpardonable at another time. However, I rebuked them, and was about to order the sentence to be carried into effect, when the remembrance of the many pleasant simplicities which the smith had uttered ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... say, he used such fundamentally national words as occur only in the Old Church Slavonic, well-nigh untranslatable here, also ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... Friend, my Friend,—You behold before you a remorseful man! It is well-nigh a year now since I despatched some hurried rag of paper to you out of Scotland, indicating doubtless that I would speedily follow it with a longer letter; and here, when gray Autumn is at hand again, I have still written nothing to you, heard nothing from you! It is miserable ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable. I could not get away from men: their voices came through windows; locked doors were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, craving men glance jealously at me; weary, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... much-coveted point—the crown of the last ascent; and when he smelled fire and the savory odor of the jerked buffalo meat, it well-nigh caused him to waver! But he must not fail to follow the custom of untold ages, and give the game scout's wolf call before ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... there until the maid returned; and registered to the woman's credit the discreet soft closing of the front-door and afterward the well-nigh inaudible swish of the rear door of the dining-room as the maid ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... only, purely, merely; at least, at the least, at most, at the most; ever so little, as little as may be, tant soit peu[Fr], in ever so small a degree; thus far, pro tanto[It], within bounds, in a manner, after a fashion, so to speak. almost, nearly, well-nigh, short of, not quite, all but; near upon, close upon; peu s'en faut[Fr], near the mark; within an ace of, within an inch of; on the brink of; scarcely, hardly, barely, only just, no more than; about [in an uncertain degree], thereabouts, somewhere ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... monarch was in that disdainful mood which sometimes lasts him for months together. From those perilous heights came down a breath that chilled the air and tempered the sunshine falling upon Chamouni, now silent and deserted, for the season was well-nigh over. With the birds, their brothers, the summer tourists had flown southward at the rustling of the first autumnal leaf. Here and there a guide leaned idly against a post in front of one of the empty hotels. There was no ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... used to a life of ease, or easier, if she had wished to make it that, would find the life of the factory worker well-nigh unbearable. An emotional girl longing for the higher things of life would find factory life galling beyond words. It is to be regretted that there are not more educated and cultured people—that more folk ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... was the position of the human species in zoological classification. "It was a burning question in the sense that those who touched it were almost certain to burn their fingers severely." In the fifties Sir William Lawrence had been well-nigh ostracized for his book On Man, "which now might be read in a Sunday-school without surprising anybody." When Huxley submitted the proofs of Man's Place in Nature to "a competent anatomist, and good friend of his," asking him, if he could, to point ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... hence, would be the wife of one entirely unknown to me as yet, but destined hereafter to become a closer friend than even herself, more intimate than that unmannerly lad of seventeen, by whom I was collared in the passage, on coming down, and well-nigh jerked off my equilibrium, and who, in correction for his impudence, received a resounding whack over the sconce, which, however, sustained no serious injury from the infliction; as, besides being more than commonly thick, it was protected by a redundant ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... natural man, can be borne over the thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the tide of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to rise from reading Epictetus[185]or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet have borne it! Yet, even for the sage, this sense of labor and sorrow in his march towards the goal constitutes a relative inferiority; the noblest souls of whatever creed, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... It is well-nigh impossible for one who has played but a small part in a big engagement to give a coherent description of the whole. He can tell only of such happenings as came under his own observation. Of the broader issues and general ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... horrible. With the stare went the shuffling walk, the wagging jaw, the saying of words meaning nothing. On the wall of a building opposite the door of the restaurant hung a banner marked "Socialist Headquarters." There where modern life had found well-nigh perfect expression, where there was no discipline and no order, where men did not move, but drifted like sticks on a sea-washed beach, hung the socialist banner with its ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... forest, but without the power of penetrating into its recesses, which hung rich with heavy dewdrops, and were beginning on some of the trees to exhibit the varied tints of autumn; it being the season when Nature, like a prodigal whose race is well-nigh run, seems desirous to make up in profuse gaiety and variety of colours, for the short space which her splendour has then to endure. The birds were silent—and even Robin-redbreast, whose chirruping song was heard among ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... regret to say, that even Dr. Webster, with all his obligations and pretensions to literature, has well-nigh taken ground with Neef and Cardell, as above cited; and has not forborne to throw contempt, even on grammar as such, and on men of letters indiscriminately, by supposing the true principles of every language to be best observed and kept by the illiterate. What marvel then, that ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... day. But scarcely had day begun to dawn when I sallied forth, without either arms or guide, except a pocket compass, leaving my fellow-travellers to bring on the waggon as soon as they should arouse from their slumbers. This impatience had, however, well-nigh cost me my life; for having to wade through many miles of deep sand with a vertical sun over my head, I had not accomplished half the journey before my strength began to fail, and an indescribable thirst was induced. Nevertheless, ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... olden days of dalliance, When I wantoned with my fate; When I trifled with the knowledge That had well-nigh ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... wi' gulls and kittiewakes. What d'ye think they come ashore for except to escape having all the feathers blown out o' them? I mind a day like this when I was wi' Charlie Napier off Cronstadt. It well-nigh blew us under the guns of the forts, for all our engines ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... No. 10—a small marsh-surrounded knob in the Mississippi river—had been selected by General Beauregard, and fortified with all the appliances of his great engineering skill, until deemed well-nigh impregnable. It was looked upon as the key to the defenses of the river, and of the line of railroad communication between New Orleans and the West with the Capital. In the middle of March the Federal flotilla commenced a furious bombardment of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the Ocean service are heated with steam and lighted with electricity; all have pianos and a well-selected library. The beds on these boats are well-nigh perfect, woven-wire springs and heavy mattresses. They are kept scrupulously clean—the company is noted for that—and the steerage is as neat as ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... east and his waistcoat west, as far as he could hurl them, and it was plain he would have shouted had he been a complete mile from Saunders' room. Any less distance was useless for adequate expression. He struck Drumsheugh a mighty blow that well-nigh levelled that substantial man in the dust, and then the doctor ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... anything else in Europe. The influence of these things on Searle it charmed me to note. His observation I soon saw to be, as I pronounced it to him, searching and caressing. His almost morbid appetite for any over-scoring of time, well-nigh extinct from long inanition, threw the flush of its revival into his ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... John Carmichael drank ale, and talked with the guards, and waited;—and waited, and talked with the guards, and drank ale, until his patience was well-nigh gone. At last, just when the day was breaking, he went to the door of the ante-room to listen, and hearing nothing, he knocked, and receiving no answer, he unlocked the door and peeped in, not wishing to ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... description of the famous upper hall with the four-and-twenty windows is one of the most contused and incoherent parts of the Nights and well-nigh defies the efforts of the translator to define the exact nature of the building described by the various and contradictory passages which refer to it. The following is a literal rendering of the above passage: "An upper chamber (keszr) and (or?) a kiosk (kushk, a word explained by a modern ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... beauty, such an one as those Greeks carved in the statues of their god Apollo. Never, I think, was a man more beautiful in face and form, though in soul he was not great, as often happens to men who have all else, and well-nigh always happens to women, save myself and perhaps one or two others that history tells of, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... civilized Europe is still in a transition state about marriage; not only in practice but in thought. It is idle to speak with contempt of the nations where polygamy is an institution, or seraglios a custom, while practices far more debasing haunt, well-nigh fill, every city and every town, and so far as union of one with one is believed to be the only pure form of marriage, a great majority of societies and individuals are still doubtful whether the earthly bond must be a meeting of souls, or only supposes a contract of convenience and utility. Were ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... with well-nigh miraculous suddenness, the struggle was over and the insect had darted free. He saw her flash away, and found the ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... unenvious admiration as he gave Charley a hearty thump on the back that well-nigh drove the breath out of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... death-struggle prevails. The Screechers put on more wood, and place more weight on the safety-valve; she bounds ahead. Slowly, but surely, the "Burster" draws nearer. The captain of the "Screecher" looks wistfully at the fires, for the boilers are well-nigh worn out. The "Burster" is almost abreast. The enraged Kentuckians gather round the captain, and, in fury, ask—"Why don't ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... smoke without either; and the result is that those who smoke have little defense, in the general way, for their practice, while those who condemn the habit have far better grounds for their opposition than they have ever yet been able to explain. To those who do know why they use tobacco, it is well-nigh incredible that so many of their fellow-smokers should be ignorant of the properties, the uses, the abuses, of the weed they burn and the fumes in which they delight. Yet, even this is not so surprising as the fact that so few of those who smoke—smoke much, often and constantly—should ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... a man who used to make salts say that he spoiled a horse by carrying a bagful of the nearly dry extract thrown across the saddle. Some of the juice trickled out, and going under the saddle, not only took the hair off, but made terrible sores, which it was found well-nigh impossible to heal. The liquid corroded ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... slave-pen within the shadow of the capitol. Our national industries, by an impoverishing policy, were themselves prostrated, and the streams of revenue flowed in such feeble currents that the treasury itself was well-nigh empty. The money of the people was the wretched notes of two thousand uncontrolled and irresponsible State banking corporations, which were filling the country with a circulation that poisoned rather than sustained the life of business. The Republican party changed all this. It abolished the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... are thought well-nigh conclusive have already been presented for believing that the people of this tribe were mound- builders, and that they had migrated in pre-Columbian times from some point north of the locality in which they were encountered by Europeans. Taking ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... with which the Carnmore folk celebrated the Lord's day; but they scrupled not, on the other hand, to mend their garden-ditch or mould a row of cabbages on the Sabbath—a circumstance, for which two or three of the Carnmore boys were, one Sunday evening when tipsy, well-nigh chastising them. Their usual manner, however, of spending that day was by sauntering lazily about the fields, or stretching themselves supinely on the sunny side of the hedges, their arms folded on their bosoms, and their hats lying over their faces ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... there is one thing yet to be done in order that our country may come fully within the provisions of the well-nigh inspired expression of our forefathers, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The women of America pay taxes for the support of the Government, and their consent should ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... staccato in style, though even now less full than I should have liked to make it, had it been other than the work of an unknown writer telling the story of a small archipelago which is at once the most distant and well-nigh the youngest of English states. I have done my best in the later chapters to describe certain men and experiments without letting personal likes and dislikes run away with my pen; have taken pains to avoid loading my ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... her husband; but Jabez was now a man of five-and-forty, and had lately shown that, in some respects at least, he intended to have his way, while Zephaniah himself, though still erect and strong, was well-nigh eighty. ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... There was no pause then, no time for thought, no time for careful forming of words and letters. There was only the breakneck race between a bit of lead and an impassioned tongue; and when it was all over, there were only a well-nigh hopeless-looking mass of hieroglyphics in Daniel Burton's notebook—and the sweat of spent excitement on the brows of two youths and ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... on. The organist had wandered into a melody of Mendelssohn's, a strain whose dreamy sadness went straight to Robert's heart. He loitered in the nooks and corners of the church, examining the dilapidated memorials of the well-nigh forgotten dead, and listening ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... a gallant action," the captain said. "I should have thought it well-nigh impossible to swim in such broken water. I was astonished when ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... of the Tocsin consisted of Armitage, Kosinksi, and myself, with Short occupying the well-nigh honorary post of printer, aided by occasional assistance or hindrance from his hangers-on. But our staff gradually increased in number if not in efficiency; old M'Dermott was a frequent and not unwelcome visitor, and as time went on he gradually settled ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... the first to hear such further details as were allowed to circulate among the now well-nigh frenzied guests. No one knew the perpetrator of the deed nor did there appear to be any direct evidence calculated to fix his identity. Indeed, the sudden death of this beautiful woman in the midst of festivity might have been looked upon as suicide, if the jewel ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... witnessed on that eventful evening when they made their escape. He could see the rotund figure of the Landsturm sentry being heckled; the figure of the blustering sergeant who had cross-examined him so fiercely, and had well-nigh frightened him out of his senses; and before them a third individual—a shorter, shrivelled-up officer, risen from the ranks undoubtedly—that one who had leapt into the tunnel and had gone scrambling along to discover ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... with an air. It may have been an expression of her relief at having disposed of Jack Holton so quickly and effectively—he had vanished immediately after his interview with William in the bank—that her sleigh-ride and skating-party as originally planned grew into a function that well-nigh obscured Phil's "coming-out." It began with a buffet luncheon at home, followed by the ride countryward in half a dozen bob-sleds and sleighs of all descriptions. It was limited to the young people, and Phil found that all her friends were included. Ethel ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... into the courts and the square, to hurl down with his eloquence those emblems of terrorism, with which it was attempted to dishonor the Republic. But the vast and infuriated mass refused to listen, and drowned his voice in clamor and vociferation. At length, when well-nigh exhausted in defence of the emblem of a moderate Republic, he exclaimed: "The red flag has been nowhere except around the Champ-de-Mars, trailed in the blood of the people, while the tri-color has been around the world with our navy, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... of Margaret Henan's favourite brother; and from here and there, in the week that followed, I pieced together the tragedy of Margaret Henan. Samuel Dundee had been the youngest of Margaret's four brothers, and, as Clara told me, she had well-nigh worshipped him. He was going to sea at the time, skipper of one of the sailing ships of the Bank Line, when he married Agnes Hewitt. She was described as a slender wisp of a girl, delicately featured and with a nervous organization of the supersensitive order. Theirs ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... my brother's grace Till well-nigh fain to swear his folly's true, In sad dissent I turn my longing face [31] To him that sits on the left: "Brother, — with you?" — "Nay, not with me, save thou subscribe and swear 'Religion hath black eyes and raven hair': ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... not give you a particular account of the names of the soldiers that were slain in the town, for many were maimed and wounded, and slain; for when they saw that the posts of Ear-gate did shake, and Eye-gate was well-nigh broken quite open; and also that their captains were slain, this took away the hearts of many of the Diabolonians; they fell also by the force of the shot that were sent by the golden slings into the midst of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of government which adequately can not be appraised except by, those who are in immediate contact and know the responsibilities. Our tasks would be less difficult if we had only ourselves to consider, but so much of the world was involved, the disordered conditions are so well-nigh universal, even among nations not engaged in actual warfare, that no permanent readjustments can be effected without consideration of our inescapable relationship to world affairs in finance and trade. Indeed, we should be unworthy of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... place which displayed a well-nigh stoical indifference to the progress of the rebellion. If Oxford had a good deal of Jacobitism hidden decorously away in its ancient colleges, if there were a good many disloyal toasts drunk in the seclusion of scholastic rooms, there was apparently only a feeling of curious indifference at the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... toward Balin, and he arose and went against him; but Balan smote Balin first, and he put up his shield and smote him through the shield and tamed his helm. Then Balin smote him again with that unhappy sword, and well-nigh had felled his brother Balan, and so they fought there together till their breaths failed. Then Balin looked up to the castle and saw the towers stand full of ladies. So they went unto battle again, and wounded everych ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... just succeeded in raising a smile among his audience when he had a domestic altercation with Juno on the subject of the cook's accounts. The march past of the gods, Neptune, Pluto, Minerva and the rest, was well-nigh spoiling everything. People grew impatient; there was a restless, slowly growing murmur; the audience ceased to take an interest in the performance and looked round at the house. Lucy began laughing with Labordette; the Count de Vandeuvres was craning ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... opening sentence of his Across the World for a Wife, says, "It was a cold, dreary winter's afternoon, and by the time the hands of the clock on my mantelpiece joined forces and stood at twenty minutes past four, my chambers were well-nigh as dark as midnight." It is evident that the author here made a slip, for, as we have seen above, he is 1 min. 491/11 ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... a century the sluggish stream of life oozes by, bearing no hint of deeds, or faces,—that perchance shed glory, or perhaps lent gloom to the far past,—a past well-nigh forgotten and inurned in the gathering grey of time,—and suddenly without premonition, the slow monotonous current ripples and swells into waves that bear to our feet fateful countenances, unwelcome as ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... soul-contest,—care little whether their bodies fare ill or well. The Archbishop certainly did not belong to this latter class,—indeed he considered too much thought as mischievous in itself, and when thought appeared likely to break forth into action, he denounced it as pernicious and well-nigh criminal. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the Mataafas. This operation, covered by a terrific bombardment from the three ships of war, was forthwith begun; on its success was staked the hopes of the little clique who had so lightly adopted the cause of a divinity student of seventeen, against the vote and wish of well-nigh all Samoa. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... of sufficient heat no trouble should be experienced in March, and it is essential to sow very thinly for two reasons. Crowded seedlings are liable to damp off, particularly in dull, moist weather, and they are so fragile that it is well-nigh impossible to transfer them from the seed-pots until they are about an ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Mississippi. De Soto was buried beneath its waters; and it was down its muddy current that his followers fled from the Eldorado of their dreams, transformed to a dismal wilderness of misery and death. The discovery was never used, and was well-nigh forgotten. On early Spanish maps, the Mississippi is often indistinguishable from other affluents of the Gulf. A century passed after De Soto's journeyings in the South, before a French explorer reached a northern tributary of ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... walked back to town, and once upon the main street, took a new pair of gloves from his pocket, fitted them carefully, and directed his steps to the elegant residence, whose approach was well-nigh blocked up with carriages. This was the second time that he had been invited by the Hendersons, and he had almost determined to decline as formerly, but something in Irene's chill manner changed his resolution. He knew, from various circumstances, that the social edict against him ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... presume to describe the feelings of that shipwrecked sailor as he and his dog drank from the same cup at that sparkling crystal fountain? Delicious odours of lime and citron trees, and well-nigh forgotten herbage, filled his nostrils, and the twitter of birds thrilled his ears, seeming to bid him welcome to the land, as he sank down on the soft grass, and raised his eyes in thanksgiving to heaven. An irresistible tendency to sleep ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... thou do with me?" When he heard her words, he hardened his heart and said to her, "O pestilent baggage, wilt thou bandy words with me?" So saying, he took the whip and brought it down on her back, till she well-nigh fainted. Then she bowed down and kissed his feet; and he left beating her and began to revile her, saying, "By my bonnet, if I see or hear thee weeping, I will cut out thy tongue and thrust it up thy kaze, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... are chiefly third editions. He thought it absurd to worry over a first issue of Carlyle's French Revolution if it were possible to buy at moderate price a copy of the third edition, which is a well-nigh perfect book, 'good to the touch and grateful to the eye.' But this lover of books grew fierce in his special mania if you hinted that it was also foolish to spend a large sum on an editio princeps of Paradise Lost or of Robinson Crusoe. There are ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... the general at last gave orders to march to their assistance. When his force arrived within two miles of the scene of conflict, the cessation of fire showed that it was too late, and that Baillie's force was well-nigh annihilated. Munro retired to Conjeveram, and at three o'clock the next morning retreated, with the loss of all his heavy guns and stores, ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... heard —' here his voice fell weak, His strength was well-nigh sped, He gasped and struggled and tried to speak, Then fell in a moment — dead. Thus ended a wasted life and hard, Of energies misapplied — Old Bob was out of the 'swagman's yard' And over the ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... Then, after the laughter had subsided and all were silent again, Filostrato, whose turn it was to tell, began to speak on this wise: "It is a fine thing, noble ladies, to hit a mark that never stirreth; but it is well-nigh miraculous if, when some unwonted thing appeareth of a sudden, it be forthright stricken of an archer. The lewd and filthy life of the clergy, in many things as it were a constant mark for malice, giveth without much difficulty occasion ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... request. By this connection he would be entitled to visit her next day, and thus an avowed correspondence would of course commence. This plan was actually put in execution, and attended with a circumstance which had well-nigh produced some mischievous consequence, had not Peregrine's good fortune ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... after his guest had gone, Gray took occasion deliberately to put himself in Mallow's way and to get into conversation with him. This was not a difficult maneuver, for it was nearly midnight and the lobby was well-nigh deserted; moreover, it almost appeared as if the restless Mr. Mallow was seeking ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... John, of the sufferings which the people are undergoing is felt by us all; but I, for one, cannot agree to the proposal that we should give up our store of food. Owing to the number of us that have fallen, there are still well-nigh fifty pounds a man left, which will keep us in health and strength for another two months. Were we to give it out, it would not suffice for a single meal, for a quarter of the people assembled here, and would delay their death but a few hours; ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... Forest were of gentle blood, and their office was well-nigh hereditary. The Birkenholts had held it for many generations, and the reversion passed as a matter of course to the eldest son of the late holder, who had newly been laid in the burial- ground of Beaulieu Abbey. John Birkenholt, whose mother ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the letter on the floor, and stamped upon it with my feet. And was this the end of all? To have brooded and pined, and made myself miserable and well-nigh broken my heart day by day for a man that was to prove so utterly unworthy as this! To have been thrown over for a Lady Scapegrace! or, worse still, to have allowed even to myself that I cared for one who was ready and willing to be sold to a ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the spirit. He was named Kallikrates, a man of courage and of beauty, such an one as those Greeks carved in the statues of their god Apollo. Never, I think, was a man more beautiful in face and form, though in soul he was not great, as often happens to men who have all else, and well-nigh always happens to women, save myself and perhaps one or two others that history tells of, doubtless magnifying ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... speechless—well-nigh overcome, indeed, with the horror of this. He saw his friends appear from the wood on the other side of the house and he walked toward them like one in a dream. But still he clung to the surveyor's arm and forced ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... forsomuch as he is a Philosopher, with whom the favours or disfavours of fortune, and good or ill lucke have no place, and are not regarded by him; and puissances and greatnesses, and accidents of qualitie, are well-nigh indifferent: I deeme it very likely he had a further reach, and meant that the same good fortune of our life, which dependeth of the tranquillitie and contentment of a welborne minde, and of the resolution ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... daughter, there the son, To kneel in humble prayer to God, And those whose race is well-nigh run, Who ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... Douai held the family in a religious esteem that was well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty of the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made them the objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,—the House of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... and they were right well furnished for their journey, and were made welcome with much cheer and in all courtesy were received by King Harald. They related the tidings that Earl Hakon was in Denmark, and was lying sick unto death and well-nigh witless; and the further tidings that Harald the Danish King bade Harald Grey-cloak to him to take such fiefs as he and his brothers had held aforetime in Denmark, and to that purpose bade he Harald come to him in Jutland. Harald Grey-cloak laid ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... scheming to secure a costly extension of this branch railroad through a sparsely settled and thin-soiled region, in a way that would greatly enrich himself, because of his vast property holdings there. He had well-nigh persuaded a group of capitalists to undertake the extension when, acting cautiously as financiers must, they decided to ask Duncan to study the situation and make a report upon the project. He had already studied the question thoroughly during his stay ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... told me that he had reappeared, and soon I saw him alone, and well-nigh exhausted. A dozen strokes took me to his side, and then, half supporting him, I turned toward the vessel. The men flung us a rope, and willing hands hauled first Jose and then ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... almost distracted," Elsie said. "She loves you for both your own and your father's sake. Besides, as she repeated again and again, she was sorely distressed on his account, knowing his love for you to be so great that to lose you would well-nigh ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... a slight repast was placed before the Lady Augusta, who was well-nigh exhausted with the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... anxieties and austerities had well-nigh brought Bernard to the grave, when the good bishop, finding him inflexible, went to Citeaux, and, prostrating himself before Stephen Harding, begged and obtained leave to direct and manage Bernard for one year only. The young abbot obeyed his new director absolutely, and lived in a cottage ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... letters, and, lo and behold ye! such is the strange allure emanating from the hussy, that the resultant portrait is either that of a martyred Magdalene, or, at the very least, has all the enigmatic piquancy of a Monna Lisa... Not a slut, but what is a hetaera; and not a hetaera, but what is well-nigh Kypris herself! I know of but one depiction in all literature that possesses the splendour of implacable veracity as well as undiminished artistry; where the portrait is that of a prostitute, despite all her tirings and trappings; a depiction truly deserving to be designated a portrait: ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... least, at the least, at most, at the most; ever so little, as little as may be, tant soit peu [Fr.], in ever so small a degree; thus far, pro tanto [It], within bounds, in a manner, after a fashion, so to speak. almost, nearly, well-nigh, short of, not quite, all but; near upon, close upon; peu s'en faut [Fr.], near the mark; within an ace of, within an inch of; on the brink of; scarcely, hardly, barely, only just, no more than. about [in an uncertain degree], thereabouts, somewhere about, nearly, say; be the same, be ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... so hot, so hot; the earth was well-nigh parched up, and moreover the use of water was restricted in the town where the children lived. The flowers in the little garden were drooping for want of moisture, and the trees began to shed their leaves as if it were already autumn instead of July. The schools were obliged to ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... animated. He pursued amusement and business with equal earnestness. In his Farewell to the Court, which foreshadows the sentiment of this period, though probably written earlier, he mourns for his 'sweet spring spent,' his 'summer well-nigh done;' but he had energy for other matters than repining at 'joys expired like truthless dreams.' He built. He planted. He diverted himself with rural pastimes, especially with falconry. Throughout his career he always was ready for a hawking ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... insecurity, which was in the air, conspiring with what was of like tendency in himself, made of Lord UFFORD a central type of disillusion. . . . He had been amiable because the general betise of humanity did not in his opinion greatly matter, after all; and in reading these 'SATIRES' it is well-nigh painful to witness the blind and naked forces of nature and circumstance surprising him in the uncontrollable movements of his own so carefully ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... when the exhibition had well-nigh ended, the excitement of the spectators had cooled, and the sounds of instruments had died out there was heard proceeding from the gate, the slapping of arms, betokening might and strength, and even like unto the roar of the thunder. And, O king, as soon as this sound ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... sacrifice almost beyond his power. He knew that it was his duty to do everything he could to fulfil the conditions of Miss Farringdon's will; he also knew that he was compelled to do this at Elisabeth's expense and not at his own; and the twofold knowledge well-nigh broke his heart. His misery was augmented by his perception of how completely Elisabeth misunderstood him, and of how little of the truth all those years of silent devotion had conveyed to her mind; and his face was white with pain ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... dynamical aggregates, molA(C)cules organiques, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated "life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulA|, with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... Thirty-seventh is forward," "Flag of Forty-fifth is behind you," and so on, thus telling the men where to find their commands. It was really good work, I thought. A little before midnight—or it may have been much earlier, for I was well-nigh worn out—a halt was made at the crossroads which I afterward knew to be the crossing of the Ashcake and Richmond roads about a mile and a half southeast of Ashland. Here all the men could easily find their commands, and I knew ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... lanterns, some of us on one side of the hedge and some on the other. I left school when I was between fourteen and fifteen, and then came the great event and the great blunder of my life, the mistake which well-nigh ruined it altogether. My mother's brother had a son about five years older than myself, who was being trained as an Independent minister. To him I owe much. It was he who introduced me to Goethe. Some time after he was ordained, he became heterodox, and was obliged to separate himself from ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... intended that one could easily see he was enchanted with her. As for me, feeling that I had nothing pleasant to say, I pretended to have the toothache as an excuse for not talking. Sick at heart, absent-minded, and feeling the effects of a sleepless night, I was well-nigh mad with love, jealousy, and despair. Mdlle. de la Meure did not speak to me once, did not so much as look at me. She was quite right, but I did not think so then. I thought the dinner would never come to an end, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... beheld, "That twice two daughters, and a son were thine." Old Anius shook his head, begirt around With snowy fillets, as in grief, he said:— "No, mighty hero! not deceiv'd art thou, "Me hast thou seen of five the parent; now "Thou well-nigh childless see'st me: (such to man "The varying change of sublunary things) "For, ah! what can an absent son bestow "To aid me, who, in Andros' isle now dwells, "Where for his sire the realm and state he holds? "Delius on him prophetic art bestow'd; "And Bacchus, to my female ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... indifference on her husband's part, Ototachibana could not find it in her heart to leave him. But perhaps it would have been better for her if she had done so, for on the way to Idzu, when they came to Owari, her heart was well-nigh broken. ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... a sigh, "I trust they're none the less safe for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me, well-nigh threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being drownded. Why, they might ha' been cast on a desert island, and wasted to skin an' bone, and got home again wi' the loss of half the wits they set out with. Wouldn't that ha' been worse than being drownded right ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... King The lovely lass o' Inverness The merchant, to secure his treasure The more we live, more brief appear The poplars are fell'd! farewell to the shade The sun is warm, the sky is clear The sun upon the lake is low The twentieth year is well-nigh past The World is too much with us; late and soon The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man There be none of Beauty's daughters There is a flower, the lesser Celandine There is a garden in her face There's not a joy the world can ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... arm, Koku lifted the heavy shaft from Tom's legs. Then, gathering the lad up in his left arm, as if he were a baby, Koku staggered out into the fresh air, almost falling with his burden, as he neared Mr. Damon, for the giant was, well-nigh overcome. ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... iron hand of misfortune press hard upon you, and disappointments well-nigh sink your despairing soul'? Have courage! Mighty ones have been your predecessors, and have withstood the current of opposition that threatened to overwhelm ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... village, but in the sky the stars had almost vanished. He had not a half hour of leeway. He ran for the nearest corn-field—well-nigh stumbled upon a squaw sleeping out of doors in the midst of five children, but managed to leap them. ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... Saint Dunstan, the seed has been sown in good soil; only that, with speaking to him of mysteries through the whole night, and being in a manner fasting, (for the few droughts of sack which I sharpened my wits with were not worth marking,) my head is well-nigh dizzied, I trow.—But I was clean exhausted.—Gilbert and Wibbald know in what state they ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the three days, in which Rotgier had promised to return, passed by; then three and four, yet no retinue made its appearance at the gates of Szczytno. Only on the fifth day, well-nigh toward dark, the blast of the horn resounded in front of the bastion at the gate of the fortress. Zygfried, who was just finishing his vesper prayer, immediately dispatched a page ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... said enough for that night; to have said more would have injured his plan. Mr. Green and Sandy shook hands with their friend Robert, and, it being late, they bade him "good-by," and parted. Our hero was now left alone. Snuffing the candle, that had well-nigh burnt to the socket, he placed more fuel upon the fire, and, resting his hands upon his knees and his head upon his hands, he began to think over the sayings of ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... dark and they missed their mark, And, driven well-nigh to distraction, They lost their ways in a murky ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... in the extreme, for it made certain plans, which her fertile brain had begun to weave as soon as she had learned that her brother had returned without his wife, all the more complicated, if not well-nigh impossible. ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... hard put to it to keep from unrestrained merriment, and Tom, who found the affair more alarming as it progressed, would have preferred avoiding him altogether. He knew that Henry was calling him callow, a lightweight, charges well-nigh proved by his present undertaking, and to save himself from rout he had to remember that Henry was a heavy Grave man and that his own participation was only a question of common courtesy to a lady, anyway. Nancy had set her heart upon the thing, and he would ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... for all the pleasures of childhood, Meyer unites a wonderfully delicate sense of the artistic and picturesque. His fertility of invention seems well-nigh inexhaustible. He has given us cottage scenes and out-of-door life with impartial liberality, and has shown equal skill of treatment, whether he handles groups or ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... the Padstow Hobby-horse, the Towednack Cuckoo-feast, the Madron Dipping Day, the Troy May-dragon, and proved that the custom of ushering in the summer with song and dance and some symbolical rite of purgation was well-nigh universal throughout Cornwall. He followed the custom overseas, to Brittany, Hungary, the Black Forest, Moldavia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, the Caucasus. . . . He wound up by sardonically congratulating the worthy folk of Helleston: if the events ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the instant he saw his master down, and the buffalo turning to charge again, he sprang forward with a roar that would have done credit to his bovine enemy, and seized him by the nose. So vigorous was the rush that he well-nigh pulled the bull down on its side. One toss of its head, however, sent Crusoe high into the air; but it accomplished this feat at the expense of its nose, which was torn and lacerated ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... and the second summer with its toll of fever victims was well-nigh over. Autumn and renewed energy were at hand. All the land turned crimson and gold. At Jamestown building went forward, together with the gathering of ripened crops, the felling of trees, fishing and fowling, and trading ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... it has little meaning. I met a scholar-soldier in the South who had given expression to the sentiment of his race and generation in an essay—one might almost say an elegy—so chivalrous in spirit and so fine in literary form that it moved me well-nigh to tears. Reading it at a public library, I found myself so visibly affected by it that my neighbour at the desk glanced at me in surprise, and I had to pull myself sharply together. Yet the writer of this essay told me that when he gave it to his son to read, the young man handed ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Chakamdababelda, or whatever thy name may be; I will pay thee what thou askest!" cried out Thiuli-Kos, well-nigh howling with sorrow, at the idea of losing so ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... realized the fact. It was not every one in the neighborhood who had had the honor of being cursed by a murderer. As we alighted Terry stopped to ask him a few questions. The boy had told his story to so many credulous audiences that by this time it was well-nigh unrecognizable. As he repeated it now for Terry's benefit, the evidence against Radnor appeared conclusive. A full confession of guilt could scarcely have ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... cultured individual, used to a life of ease, or easier, if she had wished to make it that, would find the life of the factory worker well-nigh unbearable. An emotional girl longing for the higher things of life would find factory life galling beyond words. It is to be regretted that there are not more educated and cultured people—that more folk do not long ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... for each cow. A dairy of "pure Kerrys" gave an average of 488 gallons per cow, and another of the larger Irish breed gave an average of 583 gallons per head per annum. In the great London dairies, now well-nigh extinguished by the ravages of the cattle disease, these returns are greatly exceeded. The cows kept are large framed Short-horns and Yorkshire crosses, which, by good feeding, bring the returns to nearly 1,000 gallons per ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... too new and crude and awkward for that. It fitted loosely into its clothes, for its citizens had patterned it with regard for the future, and it sprawled over twice its legitimate area. But to its happy founder it seemed well-nigh perfect, and its destiny roused his maddest enthusiasm. He showed Dave the little red frame railroad station, distinguished in some mysterious way above the hundred thousand other little red frame railroad stations of the identical size and style; he pointed out the Odd Fellows ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... by fate. And a star fell [from heaven], and these (i.e. his children, and his brethren, and the maiden) came into the fire which fell with it. I myself was not with those who were burnt in the fire, and I was not in their midst, but I [well-nigh] died [of grief] for them. And I found a place wherein I buried them all together. Now, if thou art strong, and thy heart flourisheth, thou shalt fill both thy arms (i.e. embrace) with thy children, and thou shalt kiss thy wife, and ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... dead in the green grass. And Sir Gawain when he was ware of that was fain to forget all his pain. He arose from where he sat, and went towards his steed, and as he looked upon him his heart rose high within him, and he deemed that he was well-nigh healed. And even as he came Gringalet knew his lord, nor would flee from him, but came towards him, and for very friendship seized him with ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... the house." But was not this Menko a hundred times more culpable than a thief? It was more and worse than money or silver that he had dared to come for: it was to impose his love upon a woman whose heart he had well-nigh broken. Against such an attack all weapons were allowable, even Ortog's teeth. The dogs of the Tzigana had known how to defend her; and it was what she had expected ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... prayed for an autoharp! At this time my pocket-book was well-nigh empty, my husband having met with total loss in mining enterprises. I possessed exactly $2.50 on the day when we ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... partner of his treason was the ostensible friend and patron of the Philosopher. So nearly did these philosophic minds, that were 'not for an age but for all time,' approach each other in this point. But the protege and friend and well-nigh adoring admirer of the Poet, was also the protege and friend and well-nigh adoring admirer of the Philosopher. The fact that these two philosophies, in this so close juxta-position, always in contact, playing always into ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... O day and night! light once more waxing, Still on with courage high, tho' strength was well-nigh spent; Grim spectres of pursuit the wearied brain perplexing, Fear-fraught, but ever met with spirit dedolent. The landscape reeled, there came a sense of slumber, And myriad shadows rose and wanned and waned, And flitting ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... witnessed the opening of this institution. It was christened "Tillotson Institute." The age of "romance" in the education of the negro was well-nigh passed. The matter-of-fact brain of the late Rev. George J. Tillotson, of Wethersfield, Conn., formulated the plan, and his generous heart enabled him, with the aid of individual contributors and the American Missionary ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various
... 16th of June, 1722. The smouldering fires which had laboured in my breast for nine months burst into a flame which overwhelmed both Aurelia and me. I committed an unpardonable sin, I endeavoured to repair it with an act of well-nigh incredible temerity. What occurred on that night is, in fact, the origin of these Memoirs and their sole justification. The dawn of that momentous day found her a loving and honoured wife; and its close left her, innocent as she was, under the worst suspicion ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... The day was well-nigh gone when they came near to the greenwood tree. Even at a distance they saw by the number of men that Little John had come back with some guest, but when they came near enough, whom should they find but the Lord Bishop of Hereford! The good Bishop was in a fine stew, I wot. Up and down ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... the freedom of the colonies, that is, against the English, were so delighted with her courage that they added to this reward a cocked hat full of gold pieces, and christened her 'La Capitaine.' What befell her in after-years has never been told. She lived and died obscurely, and her name has well-nigh been forgotten in the land she served. But the memory of brave deeds can never wholly perish, and Molly Pitcher has won for herself a little niche in the temple of Fame, where her companions are fair Mary Ambree and ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... scorn and contempt by a cringing servility which made them crouch before the Papal chair and sue for favour and office. He warned them to prepare for a mighty outburst of German liberty, already well-nigh strangled by Rome. At the same time he denounced the vices of his own countrymen, particularly that of drunkenness, and the proneness to luxury and usurious dealing in trade and commerce, all of which, as we have seen, had been ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... astonished man, who was well-nigh deranged at the coolness of this reply,—'but how am I to do so if ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... singular and diabolical illusion. Poor country priest though I was, I led every night in a dream—would to God it had been all a dream!—a most worldly life, a damning life, a life of Sardanapalus. One single look too freely cast upon a woman well-nigh caused me to lose my soul; but finally by the grace of God and the assistance of my patron saint, I succeeded in casting out the evil spirit that possessed me. My daily life was long interwoven with a nocturnal life ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... few words, uttered with deep feeling, made it necessary for Clara to pause once more. So Thomas Bradly, seeing that her strength was well-nigh exhausted, simply expressed his hearty readiness to comply with her requests, and was rising to take his leave, when she signed ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... supper, a meal which revolted every sense, there had been as many hours to be got through with as he found wakeful, an empty stomach often adding to the number of them, and the only resource for passing the time had been reading, which had often been well-nigh impossible for sheer physical discomfort. As has been remarked, the winter climate of the middle portion of New York State is as bad as can be imagined. His light was a kerosene lamp of half-candle power, and his appliance for warmth consisted ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... rest of his days fighting wild men and hunting wild beasts in Kentucky, until both were well-nigh gone and the tamer life of civilization pressed closer about him. Then he set out for Missouri, where he found himself again in the wilderness, and dwelt there in his beloved solitude till he died. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... day I wandered about, hoping for news, but getting none. One man whom I accosted looked so hard at me when I questioned him about the Hall, that I gave him no time to answer, but slunk away to avoid him. At night, my patience came well-nigh to an end, and I resolved, come what would of it, to go to the park, if by chance I might meet Ludar there or at least ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... artium, a master-art, or, in depreciatory Platonic mood one might say, an artifice, or, cynically, a trick. The great sophist was indeed the Athenian public itself, Athens, as the willing victim of its own gifts, its own flamboyancy, well-nigh worn out now by the mutual friction of its own parts, given over completely to hazardous political experiment with the irresponsibility which is ever the great vice of democracy, ever ready to float away anywhither, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... his. Even now she wondered that they did so, that try as she might she could not deny him. His dominance over her was well-nigh absolute. Yet she was not angry. An instinct that she had felt before possessed her; the longing of the weaker for the stronger—the impulse to give him what he wished. Her whole womanhood went out to him, with an entire ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... on Melville the heaviest blow his affection ever received—the tidings of his nephew's death. James Melville died well-nigh broken-hearted; he had not been allowed to return to his own country and resume his charge of his poor seafaring folk, nor to join in France the exile who was so endeared to him. On his deathbed, and within a few hours of the end, when one who was ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... "Professor Owen had well-nigh exhausted the vocabulary of terms expressive of largeness by naming his successive discoveries ingens, giganteus, crassus, robustus, and elephantopus, when he had to employ the superlative Dinornis maximus to distinguish a species far exceeding in stature even the stately Dinornis giganteus. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... from ordinary life and experience, perhaps too trivial—may now test the present theory of the city, or amend it, by means of the ample illustrations of the processes and results of social life which are provided by his daily newspaper, and these on well-nigh all its ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... city life, which has allured thousands from the country, fascinating them from afar much as the gaudy colors and tinsel before the footlights dazzle the vision of a child; the rapid growth of the saloon, rendered well-nigh impregnable by the wealth of the liquor power; the wonderful labor-saving inventions, which in the hands of greed and avarice, instead of mitigating the burdens of the people, have greatly augmented them, by glutting the market with labor; the opportunities ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... signs of poverty, or at least of neglect, about the place that astonished him. Not only had the weeds been allowed to grow over the doorstep, but from the unpainted front itself bits of boards had rotted away, leaving great gaps about the window-ledges and at the base of the sunken and well-nigh toppling chimney. The moon flooding the roof showed up all these imperfections with pitiless insistence, and the torn edges of the green paper shades that half concealed the rooms within were plainly ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... aid in regard to obscure texts, but in the case of the Egyptian writing the only surviving native word-list is the Sign Papyrus of Tanis,* which is, unfortunately, of the Roman Period, when the original meanings of the signs had been well-nigh forgotten. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... bailiff glanced at his daughter in a furtive way every now and then, with an uneasy sense of this strange look in her face. Even in his brute nature there were some faint twinges of compunction, now that the deed he had been so eager to compass was well-nigh done—some vague consciousness that he had been ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Sancho Diaz, Count of Saldana, or Saldenha, Donna Ximena, sister of this virtuous prince, bore a son. Some historians attempt to gloss over this incident, by alleging that a private marriage had taken place between the lovers: but King Alphonso, who was well-nigh sainted for living only in platonic union with his wife Bertha, took the scandal greatly to heart. He shut up the peccant princess in a cloister, and imprisoned her gallant in the castle of Luna, where ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... the Khalif every night comes down the stream in his barge, and with him one crying aloud, "Ho, all ye people, great and small, gentle and simple, men and boys, whoso is found in a boat on the Tigris [by night], I will strike off his head or hang him to the mast of his boat!" And ye had well-nigh met him; for here comes his barge.' But the Khalif and Jaafer said, 'O old man, take these two dinars, and when thou seest the Khalif's barge approaching, run us under one of the arches, that we may hide ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... Phoenician race from the earliest ages. They had escaped the dangers of the rough Spanish coast, and gazed upon the spot where the Pillars of Hercules were the beacons of the early mariners. For many days they had lost sight of land, and, we may believe, had well-nigh despaired of finding a home in that far isle, to which some strange impulse had attracted them, or some old tradition—for the world even then was old enough for legends of the past—had won their thoughts. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... would fear to trust a double-faced but single-hearted dreamer, Pure of purpose, clean of hand, and clear of guile? "Life is well-nigh spent," he sighs; "you call me shuffler, trickster, schemer? I am old—when young men ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... had passed the little town of Stourcastle, dumbly somnolent under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher ground. Still higher, on their left, the elevation called Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow, well-nigh the highest in South Wessex, swelled into the sky, engirdled by its earthen trenches. From hereabout the long road was fairly level for some distance onward. They mounted in front of the waggon, and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... handsome iron gates, and has beautiful gardens in the rear extending in the direction of the River Marne. The existing firm dates from the year 1833, but the family of Mot—conjectured to have originally come from the Low Countries—had already been associated with the champagne wine trade for well-nigh a century previously. If the Mots came from Holland they must have established themselves in the Champagne at a very early date, for the annals of Reims record that in the fifteenth century Jean and Nicolas Mot were chevins of the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... of penetrating into its recesses, which hung rich with heavy dewdrops, and were beginning on some of the trees to exhibit the varied tints of autumn; it being the season when Nature, like a prodigal whose race is well-nigh run, seems desirous to make up in profuse gaiety and variety of colours, for the short space which her splendour has then to endure. The birds were silent—and even Robin-redbreast, whose chirruping song was heard among the bushes near the Lodge, emboldened by the largesses with which the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... space is well-nigh exhausted, and we have only now reached the confines of CHINA!—a topic on which we had prepared ourselves for a very full expression of our opinions. We are compelled, however, now to content ourselves with a mere outline of our intended observations on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... red in the face, and when I thought of the six broad-shouldered, raw-boned lads in the camp, and how easy they would have made these jumping villains fly like chaff if they only knew the fix I was in, I gave a frown that had well-nigh showed I was shamming. Hows'ever, what with shakin' a little more and givin' one or two most awful groans, I managed to deceive them. Then I said I was hunter to a party of white men that were travellin' from Red River to St. Louis, with all their goods, and wives, and children, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... wooden shoes removed. The tools of his trade were placed before Simon, but he cast glances so piteous, first at his brother's feet, and then at the shoes, as again gave rise to an amount of merriment that surpassed all, my pages in particular well-nigh forgetting my presence, and rolling about in a manner unpardonable at another time. However, I rebuked them, and was about to order the sentence to be carried into effect, when the remembrance of the many ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... but to read these first is merely to bewilder yourself utterly when you go to see the operas. I will dismiss, therefore, much of the prose with very brief notice, and some of it without any notice at all. It may be remarked that of all the commentaries I have waded through (and been well-nigh choked with), on the prose, there is, to my mind, only one worth reading, Mr. Ernest Newman's valuable ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... brief excitement as had been caused in St. Rest by the return of 'th' owld Squire's gel' and by the almost simultaneous dismissal of Oliver Leach, had well-nigh abated. A new agent had been appointed, and though Leach had left the immediate vicinity, having employment on Sir Morton Pippitt's lands, he had secured a cottage for himself in the small outlying hamlet of Badsworth. He also undertook some work for the Reverend 'Putty' Leveson ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... had known that danger was threatening them, and in 480 B. C. they learned that it was well-nigh at their gates. Xerxes, the "Great King," whose heralds when announcing a decree began with the words, "All people and nations and languages," whose resources both of men and of treasures were more than could be estimated, was gathering his forces to proceed against Greece; and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... she had said that morning on the island, after she had forced on him, stripping it of the uttermost rag of disguise, the realization of how his position appeared to her, he should have come, under orders, to bring her back, was well-nigh unendurable. But to have met him, to have seen the man she loved plunging still deeper into shame, would have been pain beyond bearing. Better a thousand times than that this panic flight into the ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... slacked and then tightened with a jerk as the doomed ship rolled to and fro in the seas. Once on board, he assumed command, the want of which, through the absence of the proper captain, had until then hampered and well-nigh paralyzed all effectual effort. When his well-known name was spoken, three hearty cheers arose from the troops on board, echoed by the thousands of spectators on shore; and the hope that revived with the presence of a born leader of men showed itself at once in the renewed activity and intelligent ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... river-boats blown from their moorings out upon a vast ocean, where such a typhoon is raging as no mariner who sails its waters ever before looked upon. If their beliefs change with the veering of the blast, if their trust in their fellow-men, and in the course of Divine Providence, seems well-nigh shipwrecked, we must remember that they were taken unawares, and without the preparation which could fit them to struggle with these tempestuous elements. In times like these the faith is the man; ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... rough stony bottom of the brook until the man's head was fairly crushed in by hoofs and stones. The negroes Joe and Sam were set to work digging a grave close to the brook, and the remains were soon after buried in this,—where they still lie, unnamed, and well-nigh forgotten. ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... this? What's this? What is it?" he asked sharply. "Hello! What? Mr Shushions!" He bent down and looked close at the old man. "Where you been, old gentleman?" He spoke loud in his ear. "Everybody's been asking for you. Service is well-nigh over, but ye ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... was better for me to give it up. And yet this seemed to me hard; for I had already discovered what my soul would become without prayer. Everything seemed full of trouble. I was like a person in the middle of a river, who, in whatever direction he may turn, fears a still greater danger, and is well-nigh drowned. This is a very great trial, and I have gone through many like it, as I shall show hereafter; [12] and though it does not seem to be of any importance, it will perhaps be advantageous to understand how the spirit ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... feather in her hat; nay, she gradually became the centre and impelling power of the bloody deed, perhaps only because her origin and existence remained a mystery. Many raised their voices in suspicion against Charlotte Arlabosse, but she was able to establish her innocence by well-nigh unassailable testimony; besides, she appeared too harmless and too much like a victim of Bastide's tyrannical cruelty, to answer to the demoniacal picture ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... 3: 8. "The wind bloweth where it listeth." Without pronouncing dogmatically, it must be said that the translation of Bengel and some others—"The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou hearest his voice"—has reasons in its favor which are well-nigh irresistible; e.g., If to pneuma here is the wind, it has one meaning in the first part of the sentence and another meaning in the second; and that meaning too, one which it bears in no other instance of the more than two hundred ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... excited by the proclamation. A war with Austria was, in itself, a serious undertaking; but if the latter had powerful allies, such as Russia, France, and Saxony—and it was well known that all three looked with jealousy on the growing power of the kingdom—the position seemed well-nigh desperate. ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... Paternosters, as you come to the Union Bank— And we dropped her in fourteen fathom; I pricked it off where she sank. Owners we were, full owners, and the boat was christened for her, And she died out there in childbed. My heart, how young we were! So I went on a spree round Java and well-nigh ran her ashore, But your mother came and warned me and I wouldn't liquor no more. Strict I stuck to my business, afraid to stop or I'd think, Saving the money (she warned me), and letting the other men drink. And I met McCullough in London (I'd saved five 'undred ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... him, and darkness overspread his eyes. So raged the battle like devouring fire. But Hector dear to Jove not yet had learn'd, Nor aught surmised the havoc of his host 820 Made on the left, where victory crown'd well-nigh The Grecians animated to the fight By Neptune seconding himself their arms. He, where he first had started through the gate After dispersion of the shielded Greeks 825 Compact, still persevered. The galleys ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... to make men stand fast in a marvel how it can be that it has not fallen down and has not thrown out cracks. The reason is that this edifice is round both without and within and built in the shape of a hollow well, and bound together with the stones in a manner that it is well-nigh impossible that it should fall; and it is assisted, above all, by the foundations, which have an outwork three braccia wide outside the tower, made, as it is seen, after the sinking of the campanile, in order to support it. I am convinced that ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... up, and poured into his unwilling ears a torrent of mingled fact and fiction, wherein floated side by side with Letty's name every bad adjective she could bring the lips of propriety to utter. Before he quite came to himself the news had well-nigh driven him mad. There stood his mother, dashing her cold hailstorm of contemptuous wrath on the girl he loved, whom he had gone to bed believing the sweetest creature in creation, and loving himself more ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Highlander sought to bend his mind to the realization that his days on earth were well-nigh ended, and that it behooved him to think on the morrow elsewhere. He had an old-fashioned religious faith presumed to be fitted for any emergency, but in seeking to recall its dogmas and find such consolation in its theories as might sustain a martyr at the stake, he was continually distracted ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... possible; but the child was of a naturally sweet disposition, and would not spoil. He was extremely amiable and gentle, yet bold as a young lion, and full of fun. I do not wonder that poor old Moggy was both proud and fond of him in an extraordinary degree. The blow of his removal well-nigh withered ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... that had come sweeping over Verdi well-nigh broke his proud heart. He was only twenty-six, but he had had a taste of life and found ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... him. He defeated their plan by hurling himself on the leader's shield, so that his weight bore him backwards and he could not use his weapon. The spears on the flanks failed for the same reason, and the two men posted there had well-nigh been the death of each other. The fourth, the one from the south, whose business it had been to support the priest, tripped and fell ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... if he ain't lying there dead—" a shudder passed through the little man; he was well-nigh dumb in his terror. "And I stumbled right on to him there on the floor!" ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... of disappointment. Bright hopes have darkened almost to the blackness of very despair. A brother whose conversion, (must I say apparent conversion?) has seemed to be unusually clear; whose walk as a Christian seemed, while he was with us, to be well-nigh perfect; whose spirit was singularly humble, devout and Christly; who was growing rapidly in knowledge of the word, and could already preach the word with power, goes back to his home in China. Sore pressure ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 2, February, 1889 • Various
... do his best. But even then—It was the girl's inflexible nature that made the matter so dangerous. He knew that she was inflexible, and he took a curious pride in it. He admired it. So must have been those calm-eyed, ancient ladies for whom other Ste. Maries went out to do battle. It was well-nigh impossible to imagine them lowering their eyes to silly revelry. They could not stoop to such as that. It was beneath their high dignity. And it was beneath hers also. As for himself, he was a thing of ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... the old brindle milker that unlatches his front gate to feed on the lawn, to the bull pup that pinches his legs when he calls on old Granny Brown. For miles around, every road, lane, by-path, shortcut and trail, is a familiar way to him. His practice, he declares, has well-nigh ruined him financially, and totally wrecked his temper. He can curse a man and cry over a baby; and he would go as far and work as hard for the illiterate and penniless backwoodsman in his cabin home as for the president of the Bank of ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... mine so completely as well-nigh to daze me with their glory. There was a quizzical uplift in ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... till daybreak, when we will explain the whole matter to him." Then he bade take Badr al-Din Hasan out of the chest, after loosing the fetters from his feet and stripping off all that was on him save the fine shirt of blue silk in which he had slept on his wedding-night; so that he was well-nigh naked and trouserless. All this was done whilst he was sleeping on utterly unconscious. Then, by doom of Destiny, Badr al-Din Hasan turned over and awoke; and, finding himself in a lighted vestibule, said to himself, "Surely I am in the mazes of some ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... wishes should be carried out, and that the marriage should be postponed until the troubles were over. Neither of them believed that John would fall in the struggle. They regarded his escape from Jotapata as well-nigh miraculous, and felt assured that God, having specially protected him through such great danger, would continue to do so ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... There he gave his name as Peter with the Golden Keys, and he placed himself behind the knights. First rode forth Sir Andrei Skrintor, and against him appeared the son of the King of England; and Andrei struck Henry so hard a blow that he was well-nigh thrown from his horse; whereupon Landiot, the King's son, rode out and overthrew Andrei Skrintor. When Prince Peter saw this he rode at Landiot, and cried with a loud voice: "Long life and happiness ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... the northern parts of North America, and the Great Snow Owls have scattered on their southward journey—when heavy snows have beaten down and covered the seed-stalks of weeds and well-nigh walled the little fur-bearing beasts into their holes—then in regions where March brings only storms of sleet to coat the tree-trunks and lock up insect food, a pair of strange birds are already building ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... death it was found that the names written by him on the two gates of the Emperor's palace Bi-fuku-mon, the Gate of Beautiful Fortune; and Ko-ka-mon, the Gate of Excellent Greatness—were well-nigh effaced by time. And the Emperor ordered a Dainagon [1], whose name was Yukinari, to restore the tablets. But Yukinari was afraid to perform the command of the Emperor, by reason of what had befallen other men; and, fearing the divine ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... score and ten, the psalmist saith, And half my course is well-nigh run; I've had my flout at dusty death, I've had my whack of feast and fun. I've mocked at those who prate and preach; I've laughed with any man alive; But now with sobered heart I reach ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
