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More "Withering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ridged fallows, Darrell would sometimes pour forth his whole soul, as a poet does to his muse; and at Fairthorn's abrupt interruption or rejoinder, turn round on him with fierce objurgation or withering sarcasm, or what the flute-player abhorred more than all else, a truculent quotation from Horace, which drove Fairthorn away into some vanishing covert or hollow, out of which Darrell had to entice him, sure that, in return, Fairthorn would ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Has the withering blight known as Bolshevism any such redeeming traits to its credit account? The consensus of opinion down to the present moment gives an emphatic, if summary, answer in the negative. Every region over which it swept is blocked with heaps of unsightly ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... She was possessed of a certain amount of dry humor, greatly appreciated by the form en bloc, though each quaked privately lest, through some unlucky slip, she might find herself the object of the smart but withering satires. Despite her strictness, "Bunty" was popular. She was an admirable tennis player, and a formidable champion in a match "Mistresses v. Girls." Her strong personality fascinated Winona, who would have done much to gain her approval. So far, however, she was entirely on ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... was withering in her disapproval, and this time Mrs. Corbin touched Miss Matoaca's foot. "I suppose you allude to the streets of Yorkburg, the schools, and library—and some other things. All these Western and Northern ideas which Mary Cary has brought back are very distasteful to the Virginians of historic ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... silence Cambyses raised his eyes, fixed a withering look on his fettered brother, and said in a dull hollow voice: "High-priest, tell us what awaits the man who deceives his brother, dishonors and offends his king, and darkens his own ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... present the mimic semblance to the multitude. It was they who became in England as elsewhere the purveyors of charms and the organisers of pious frauds, while the learning for which their Order had been famous was withering away into the yellow leaf of scholasticism. The Friar in general became the common butt of literary satire; and though the populace still remained true to its favourite guides, a reaction was taking place in favour of the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... countenance! Her eye glared out, and was fixed on the vacant wall, as if a spirit had arisen before her, and arrested her regard. There was a spirit there. It was the form of the young Augustus, whom she saw withering and wasting in his dungeon; a dungeon which would deliver him up only to the scaffold. After the events which had occurred all idea of a union with Augustus, presuming that his life should be spared, had been resigned. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... inflated I've a withering reply, And vanity I always do my best to mortify; A charitable action I can skilfully dissect; And interested motives I'm delighted to detect. I know everybody's income and what everybody earns, And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns; But to benefit humanity, however ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Hebrew, Italian, Spanish were at his command. He might, had France been at peace with herself, have appeared in literature as a somewhat belated Ronsardist; but his hereditary cause became his own. While still a child he accepted from his father, in presence of the withering heads of the conspirators of Amboise, the oath of immitigable vengeance. Pursuits, escapes, the camp, the battle-field, the prison, the court made up no small part of his life of vicissitude and of unalterable resolve. He roused Henri ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... you had lost your greedy grief, Content to see from afar, You would find in your hand a withering leaf, In your heart ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... extent and precision of political knowledge, an irresistible energy of argument, and such power of elocution as struck his hearers with astonishment and admiration. It flashed like the lightning of heaven against the ministers and sons of corruption, blasting where it smote, and withering the nerves of opposition; but his more substantial praise was founded upon his disinterested integrity his incorruptible heart, his unconquerable spirit of independence, and his invariable attachment to the interest and liberty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third—for I recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking up behind the signs, and over the lampposts,—that my respected acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Acadia. Circumstances soon after induced him to remove the settlement he had commenced there, across the bay to Port-Royal; the island was neglected by succeeding adventurers, and his labors were suffered to fall into ruin. Time had already laid his withering finger upon the walls, and left his mouldering image amid the fair creations of the youthful world. Fragments, overgrown with moss and lichen, strewed the ground; the creeping ivy wreathed its garlands around the broken ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... quarters, until quite a number may be before the Staff. They are fought all round the Table, and, unless obviously and strikingly good, are probably rejected or attacked with the good-humoured ridicule and withering scorn distinctive of true friendship and cordial intimacy. Then is each fully and formally debated, every tussle advancing it a stage, and none finally accepted until all the others have fallen in the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... through the night under the shrinking moon, with the tsa behind him and the pearl-grey road withering away into the level distance ahead, it happened that the two women of whom he must have had some thoughts during that lonely ride met ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... of the rebels who had suffered death, and of those more unfortunate men who were withering under the tropical sun, was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of greedy informers. By law a subject attainted of treason forfeits all his substance; and this law was enforced after the Bloody Assizes with a rigour at once cruel and ludicrous. The brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Charlotte de Bourbon, to be denounced for moral delinquency by a lascivious, incestuous, adulterous, and murderous king? With horrible distinctness he laid before the monarch all the crimes of which he believed him guilty, and having thus told Philip to his beard, "thus diddest thou," he had a withering word for the priest who stood at his back. "Tell me," he cried, "by whose command Cardinal Granvelle administered poison to the Emperor Maximilian? I know what the Emperor told me, and how much fear he felt afterwards for the King and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bay, their naval host Did many a Roman chief and Asian King[15.B.] To doubtful conflict, certain slaughter bring: Look where the second Caesar's trophies rose![147][16.B.] Now, like the hands that reared them, withering: Imperial Anarchs, doubling human woes![ez] GOD! was thy globe ordained for such to win ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... north winds has begun to blow to-day, shiveringly. It looks as if there had been a visitation of the tax-gatherer in the Amlaki groves,—everything beside itself, sighing, trembling, withering. The tired impassiveness of the noonday sunshine, with its monotonous cooing of doves in the dense shade of the mango-tops, seems to overcast the drowsy watches of the day with a pang, as of some ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... that he had small expectation of finding fruit, and that even before he reached the tree with its early leaves he felt a likeness between it and the nation of hypocrites whose fate was so clear in his mind. The withering of the fig-tree set his disciples thinking; and Jesus showed that it was an object lesson, promising that the disciples, by the exercise of but a little faith, could do more, even remove mountains,—such mountains ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... out. Seated in a porch of the church, not knowing in what direction to look for the apparition he hoped to see, and desirous as well of not seeming to be on the watch for one, he was gazing at the fallen rose-leaves of the sunset, withering away upon the sky; when, glancing aside by an involuntary movement, he saw a woman seated upon a new-made grave, not many yards from where he sat, with her face buried in her hands, and apparently weeping ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... own funeral: he, the injured husband, lies in his coffin with a gentle smile on his lips, and she, pale, tortured by remorse, follows the coffin like a Niobe, not knowing where to hide herself to escape from the withering, contemptuous looks cast upon her by ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... warm weather closed in, in the summer of 1604, the malaria in the Tower began to affect Raleigh's health. As he tells Cecil, now Lord Cranborne, in a most dolorous letter, he was withering in body and mind. The plague had come close to him, his son having lain a fortnight with only a paper wall between him and a woman whose child was dying of that terrible complaint. Lady Raleigh, at last, had been able to bear the terror of infection no longer, and had departed with little ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... theologian, the author of "True Christianity," a work which, in Germany and elsewhere, has contributed to infuse a new spirit of life into the profession of the Christian religion, which seemed withering away under the influence of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and gladioles make up bright mounds Of flowers, with juniper and aniseed; While sage, all newly cut for this great need, Covers the Persian carpet that is spread Beneath the table, and so helps to shed Around a perfume of the balmy spring. Beyond is desolation withering. One hears within the hollow dreary space Across the grove, made fresh by summer's grace, The wind that ever is with mystic might A spirit ripple of the Infinite. The glass restored to frames to creak is made By blustering wind that comes from neighboring ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Dick Hunt, mebbe you know more'n I do about it," retorted Jimmy, with withering sarcasm, little suspecting how much more his brother did know. "Mebbe you heard what Nan said to ma ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... my life," he said falteringly, but it seemed to him that every nerve and muscle in his frame was withering through fear. His tongue felt clumsy and thick and his knees were quivering ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... withering sarcasm. He answered, evenly, "Looks that way. I suppose they figure a man ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... and fades behind us, until at last it disappears, hidden by a line of sandhills—the first wave, as one might say, of this waterless sea—and we are now mounted into the kingdom of the dead, swept at this moment by a withering and almost icy wind, which from below one ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... gazabo! We'll just freeze onto him till the sheriff heaves in sight. Gee! There'll sure be something stirring when we tell him who this Dunk person really is! And you say he was in with the Old Man, once? Oh, Lord!" He looked with withering contempt at Dunk; and Dunk's glance flickered again and dropped, just as his hand dropped to the ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... of day-life, the only ones that attract the attention of the searchers, do not reach beyond the grave and end with the withering of the body. But the manifestations of sleep, yet unexplored and unmeasured, begin where the eyes are shut, the ears do not hear, the skin does not feel, and extend into the regions concerning which we want enlightenment as much as ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... landing boats, subjected to the terrible fire of the Turkish guns, were having a bad time. The towing ropes of three of them were cut by the fire and the boats drifted helplessly about under the withering rain of bullets that rapidly wiped out their cargoes of men. But despite these mishaps the First and Second Brigades were hurried ashore to support the Third. Soon, in the face of terrible difficulties including ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... fiery winds of Desolation flow; Father of vengeance, that with purple feet Like a full wine-press tread'st the world below; The embattled armies wait thy sign to slay, Nor springs the beast of havoc on his prey, Nor withering Famine walks his blasted way, Till thou hast marked ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... was at length manifest. The man came hurrying and a little breathless, with his salver, at once apologetic and triumphant. My ice was half liquid. Had I not the right to reproach him, in the withering, contemptuous tone which correct diners have learned to adopt toward the alien serfs who attend them? I had not. I had neither the right nor the courage nor the wish. This man was as Anglo-Saxon as myself. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... turned the body over again, And said, while he rose upright, "May the brand of Cain, with its withering stain, On the murderer's forehead light, For he never was slain on the open plain, Nor yet in ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the camp as possible, and there await the first discharge of firearms from the dell, when I was to rise, advance upon the camp, utter a terrific shout when within fifty yards, rush forward to within twenty-five yards, halt, pour in one withering volley of blank cartridge, and charge without giving ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... have chosen. You have chosen. And yet it is not too late. Repent and cast these men in prison and it may not be too late. The gods have never wept. And yet when they think upon damnation and the dooms that are withering a myriad bones, then almost, were they not divine, they could weep. Be quick. Repent ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... scene of action and are within thirty paces of the cemetery wall, when from behind it rises a battalion of men in the green uniform of the Santee Rangers and pours a withering fire into the ranks. The shock is too great to withstand, and the red-coats stagger away with broken ranks, leaving many dead and wounded on the ground. Lord Percy is the coolest of all. He urges the broken columns forward, and almost alone holds the place until the infantry, a hundred yards behind, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... past and present obnoxious and withering system, will not only continue to drive thousands of industrious farmers and tradesmen from the country, but will prompt thousands more, before they will sacrifice their property and expatriate themselves, to advocate constitutionally, openly, and decidedly, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... advanced impetuously in counter-attack. But the Xth Soudanese, panting yet unconquerable, responded to the call of their two white officers, and, crowning the little dunes behind which they had sheltered, met the exultant enemy with a withering fire and ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... he said, abruptly, "your doll-baby face does your intelligence an injustice—Miss Smith, I apologize." And before the astonished and indignant Alicia could summon a withering retort, he added heartily: "This whole place is quite the real thing, you know—almost too good to be true and too true to be good. Would you mind telling me how you happened to think of letting me in ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... swear, and don't ever get frightened because I am out of sight." Then she cast one withering glance at Rhodes, adding,—"and if you engage range bosses like this one no one on Granados will ever get out ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... witness brought up on the defence out of his senses, and make him give evidence rather against than for the prisoner; and it is not only witnesses that he bullies, but his very brethren of the gown. The barristers themselves who are opposed to him, at any rate, the juniors, are doomed to bear the withering force of ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... who for some reason was entitled to their pity. And in this she was correct. They did pity her, for they remembered another gentle woman, whose brown hair had turned gray, and whose blue eyes had waxed dim beneath the withering influence of him she called her husband. She was dead, and when they saw the young, light-hearted Matty, they did not understand how she could ever have been induced to take that woman's place and wed a man of thirty-eight, and they blamed her somewhat, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... outraged if a woman appears unveiled beyond the walls of the harem; in America a sentiment no less arbitrary presumes to mark out for her the precise boundaries of womanly propriety; and she who ventures to step beyond them, must do it at the peril of encountering low sneers, coarse allusions, and the withering imputation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... breathed, the spirit they imbibed. That it was fatal to the finer graces of character goes without saying. Doubtless, in quiet and secluded nooks, there were many human wild flowers that had not lost their primitive freshness and delicacy, but they did not flourish in the withering atmosphere of the great world. The type in vogue savored of the hothouse. With its striking beauty of form and tropical richness of color, it had no sweetness, no fragrance. Many of these women we can only consider on the worldly and intellectual ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... fig-tree in the courtyard, his grave was waiting for him. It had been dug in the night by unwilling hands; and tears had fallen on the spade. As he passed he looked down, smiling, at the black pit and the withering grass beside it; and drew a long breath, to smell the scent of ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning, not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitually unites the absolutely local and individual with the greatest wildness and mysticism. In the midst of the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... o'er the cultured lawns and dreary wastes 200 Retiring Autumn flings her howling blasts, Bends in tumultuous waves the struggling woods, And showers their leafy honours on the floods, In withering heaps collects the flowery spoil, And each chill insect sinks beneath the soil; 205 Quick flies fair TULIPA the loud alarms, And folds her infant closer in her arms; In some lone cave, secure pavilion, lies, And ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the subsoil is fertile and furnishes a sufficient amount of water, destroying the surface roots is no handicap whatever. On the contrary, in times of drouth, the deep-lying roots feed and drink at their leisure far from the hot sun or withering winds, and the plants survive and arrive at rich maturity, while the plants with shallow roots wither and die or are so seriously injured as to produce an inferior crop. Therefore, in the system of dry-farming ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... not shudder on hearing M. Leroux exclaim, "There is neither a paradise nor a hell; the wicked will not be punished, nor the good rewarded. Mortals! cease to hope and fear; you revolve in a circle of appearances; humanity is an immortal tree, whose branches, withering one after another, feed with their debris the root which is always young!" Where is the man who, on hearing this desolate confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that I am only an aggregate of elements organized by an unknown force, an idea realized for a few moments, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... With one withering glance at Beverly, the teachers, and all concerned, Miss Woodhull remarked scathingly: "If you were capable of such expedition in worthier causes you would lead the school," and glancing neither to the right nor left, swept ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... imagination that go to the making of a great artist. Even among the men of the day, corrupted and distracted as they are by foreign innovations, could real strength be found? Alas! Art was surely doomed, and his own life,—the life of the last great Kano, futile and perishable as the withering flowers ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... and unreturning hours, This Sun-Dial was placed among the flowers, Which came forth in their beauty—smiled and died, Blooming and withering round its ancient side. Mortal, thy day is passing—see that flower, And think upon the Shadow and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... together! In an old German story a pair of lovers about to part chose each a tree, and by the tree of the absent one was the one left to know of his wellbeing or the reverse. In time his tree died, and she, hearing no news of him, pined away, her tree withering with her, and both dying ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... care, and without disappointment. But a young man had now spoken to her, to Linda,—had spoken to her words that she did not dare to repeat to any one,—had spoken to her twice, thrice, and she had not rebuked him. She had not, at least, rebuked him with that withering scorn which the circumstances had surely required, and which would have made him know that she regarded him as one sent purposely from the Evil One to tempt her. Now again had come upon her some terrible half-formed ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... lorette who did not love to gamble. She stopped a passing gentleman and borrowed the money; the other saw it transferred to Pisgah, with an expression of contempt, and, turning to a friend, called him aloud a withering name. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... condescending patronage. When we want a type of genuine manhood, let us leave the lighted hall, where gilded folly revels, let us leave the solemn chamber of science and of art, men have chilled it with the foul and withering breath of infidelity and materialism, let us leave the busy arena of commerce, men are gloating over gain and gold in their hidden corners; let us rest with that sturdy, active, middle-class, where the mechanic's ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... been agitated and has become to us a second nature; that Palestine demands back again her sons. We only ask a summons from these Powers on whose counsels the fate of the East depends to enter upon the glorious task of rescuing our beloved country from the withering influence of centuries of desolation and of crowning her plains and valleys and mountain-tops once more, with all the beauty and freshness and abundance of her pristine greatness." I say it is for the Jews to be ready against such a crisis in diplomacy. I ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... Her green and white and red Are hope and light and life, inviolate Of any latter fate. Fly, O our flag, through deep Italian air, Above the flags that were, The dusty shreds of shameful battle-flags Trampled and rent in rags, As withering woods in autumn's bitterest breath Yellow, and black as death; Black as crushed worms that sicken in the sense, And yellow as pestilence. Fly, green as summer and red as dawn and white As the live heart of light, The blind bright womb of colour unborn, that brings Forth ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of these much-besung ladies were no young brides, but mature and withering matrons. A troubadour attached himself to a lady as he attached himself to a seigneur, and, as a client of both, fawned on and flattered both. I cannot refer to Petrarch, for I believe his Laura was not a married woman, and the Platonism of his ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... death, the finger was upon him. While they watched he became an effigy, the hideous face of a fantasy of smoke against the night sky, with a formless hand lifted from among the delicate laces in farewell. There was no death—the horror was that there was no death. Only this curse of age drying and withering ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... was formed, a society which was followed during the succeeding, and they the worst, years of the Revolution, with new societies of unwonted energy and union, all aiming, and aiming successfully, at the propagation of the gospel of Christ, both at home and abroad. What withering contempt did the great Head of the church thus pour upon the schemes of infidels! And how did He arouse the careless and instruct His own people, by alarming providences, at a season when they greatly needed such a stimulus."—"Historical ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... one withering glance at the young man and then turned her back full upon him. He was not worth noticing. Besides he was to be pitied, for he evidently ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... indulging in vices that are held by mild moralists to be excusable in youth who are employed in sowing wild oats, but which are universally admitted to be disgusting in those upon whom age has laid its withering hand. Yet this vicious and ignorant old man had more to do with bringing about the fall of Napoleon than all the generals and statesmen of the Allies combined. He had energy, which is the most valuable of all qualities in a military leader; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... rid of these pestilential English spies, only then will the entire League of the Scarlet Pimpernel become a thing of the past when its whilom leader, now thought akin to a god, will have found refuge in a suicide's grave, from the withering contempt of ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of yours," said his friend, glancing at him. "If he had been a countryman of mine there would have been less marvel. But here is none of the sadness of decay none of the withering if the tokens of old age are seen at all it is in the majestic honours that crown a glorious life the graces of a matured and ripened character. This has nothing in common, Rossitur, with those dull moralists ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... when he makes his appearance on some giddy height on a burning and tottering house, and is cheered enthusiastically by the crowd, that his courage is most severely tried. It is when he has to creep on hands and knees through dense smoke, and hold the branch in the face of withering heat, while beams are cracking over his head, and burning rubbish is dropping around, and threatening to overwhelm him—it is in such circumstances, when the public know nothing of what is going on, and when no eye sees him save that of ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... angel finished speaking, when a dark form rose suddenly near that heavenly being; and Wagner had no difficulty in recognizing the demon. But the enemy of mankind appeared not armed with terrors of countenance, nor with the withering scorn of infernal triumph; for a moment his features denoted ineffable rage—and then that expression yielded to one of the profoundest melancholy, as if he were saying within himself, "There is salvation for repentant man, but none for me!" ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... between his home and himself, how seductive soever be the experiences of book-makers and poetic pedestrians. One hour's contemplation of poverty in foreign lands will line the boy's face with the wrinkles of years, and burn into his soul that withering dependency which will rankle long after his ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... venerable Kanwa has sent me by these hermits?— Perchance their sacred rites have been disturbed By demons, or some evil has befallen The innocent herds, their favorites, that graze Within the precincts of the hermitage; Or haply, through my sins, some withering blight Has nipped the creeping plants that spread their arms Around the hallowed grove. Such troubled thoughts Crowd through my mind, and fill ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... umbrellas duly restored. As he entered a street car, with the unwrapped umbrellas tucked under his arm, he was horrified to behold glaring at him the lady of his morning adventure. Her voice came to him charged with a withering scorn: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... cleverness and conventional good-temper is more withering to the soul of the artist than the blindest bigotry which has the recklessness of genuine passion ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... their inappropriate exteriors, afford so much disappointment to the reader. 'To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it is some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what "seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering population essay'—'to expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find—Adam Smith'—those, indeed, are doleful and dispiriting experiences, to which the unsuspecting student ought not in enlightened times to be subjected. ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... besides that this glassy mythus belongs to an aera fifteen years earlier than Coleridge's, so as to justify a shadow of scepticism, we really cannot find, in such an escapade under the boiling blood of youth, any sufficient justification of that withering malignity towards the name of Pitt, which runs through Coleridge's famous Fire, Famine, and Slaughter. As this little viperous jeu-d'esprit (published anonymously) subsequently became the subject of a celebrated after-dinner discussion in London, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... "Tools!" repeated Cunningham with withering scorn; "we have all the tools we shall need. See this," and he produced from his pocket a nodule of a dull, reddish-yellow colour, of irregular shape, and about the size of a small egg. "I picked this out of the soil with my fingers. And there is plenty ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... eyes peered out like gleaming lights from beneath their overhanging brows. "No; you ought not to have attempted it," he answered, withering her with a glance. "You might have let the thing fall on the patient and killed him. As it is, can't you see you have agitated him with the flurry? Don't stand there holding your breath, woman: ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... of man, there will remain still some chrysanthemums about which something could be written, two stanzas on the 'shadow of the chrysanthemums,' and the 'dream about chrysanthemums' must be tagged on as numbers ten and eleven. While the last section should be 'the withering of the chrysanthemums' so as to bring to a close the sentiments expressed in the foregoing subjects. In this wise the fine scenery and fine doings of the third part of autumn, will both alike be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... domesticated civilization in the most thickly- populated workshop in Europe, counting every blade of grass and every kernel of wheat and making its pleasures go a long way at small cost; a hothouse of a land, with the door about to be opened to the withering blast of war. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Rattlesnake interfered with by the cranks of some hidin' horse thief or retired road agent," said Mosby, "we might as well invite the hull of Joaquin Murietta's gang here at once! But I suppose this is part o' Bulger's particular 'business,'" he added, with a withering glance at Briggs. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... fell beside me. I felt myself dying. I thought of those I loved, and fainted whilst searching with a withering hand for my ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... private malice. They occasioned mortality of greater or less extent in man and beast. They blighted the opening prospect of a plentiful harvest. They covered the heavens with clouds, and sent abroad withering and malignant blasts. They undermined the health of those who were so unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were notorious two or three centuries ago for the power of the "evil eye." The vulgar, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... are!" says he, giving her a loving little shake. "I declare, you were well named. The swift transitions from the tremendous 'Barbara' to the inconsequent 'Baby' takes but an instant, and exactly expresses you. A moment ago you were bent on withering me: now, I ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... battle for their creed. Of all evils, torpor is the most deadly. Give us paradox, give us error, give us what you will, so that you save us from stagnation. It is the cold spirit of routine which is the nightshade of our nature. It sits upon men like a blight, blunting their faculties, withering their powers, and making them both unable and unwilling to struggle for the truth, or to figure to themselves what ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... she dared to remain young and handsome, while she, the empress, saw that she was growing old, and her charms were withering; and Catharine hated Elizabeth because the latter denied her a right which the empress daily claimed for herself—the right to choose a lover, and to love him as long as he pleased her. She hated Elizabeth because the latter surrounded ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Secession the love of union had come to be so strong that thousands of men gave up their lives for it as cheerfully and triumphantly as the martyrs of older times, who sang their hymns of praise even while their flesh was withering in the relentless flames. In 1783 the love of union, as a sentiment for which men would fight, had scarcely come into existence among the people of these states. The souls of the men of that day had not been thrilled by the immortal eloquence of Webster, nor had they gained the historic ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... run along the line. Moments are ages now. Seconds are years. How fast men live when everything is at stake! Ah! but how fast they die down in that ravine! Up, down, across, through, over it, drive the withering blasts, cutting, tearing, sweeping through the column, which shakes, wavers, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... man, in accents wild, Cried,'Sal! turn back and nurse our child!' She bent on him a withering look, Her bony fist at him she shook. And screeched, 'Ye brute! ye think I'm flat To mend your clo'es and nurse your brat? Nurse it yourself; I'll change the plan, When I am made a congressman— Woman's Rights and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... whether it mayn't be so. Anne, dear, you've got such a nice, pretty body, why have you such a withering contempt for it? It behaves so well to you, too. That's more than I can say of mine; and yet, I believe I shall quite miss it when it's gone. At any rate, I shall be glad that I was decent to the poor thing while it was with ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... "Never did that before," gurgled out of his net, just as we were dropping off once more; but a withering request from the Dandy to "gather experience somewhere else," silenced him till dawn, when he had the wisdom to rise ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... poetry and all deep and earnest thoughts. He did not read on like a machine, without pausing to make remark or criticism, but his beautiful, eloquent commentaries came in like the symphonies of an organ. He drew forth the latent enthusiasm of Helen, who, forgetting herself and Mittie's withering accusations, expressed her sentiments with a grace, simplicity and fervor peculiar to herself. At the commencement of the evening she generally took her sewing from the basket, and her needle would flash and fly like a shooting arrow, but gradually her hands relaxed, the work fell into her ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... under a withering glance from EMILY who has taken up the iron and is slamming it down on the net.] Her'll remember, very like, how 'twas when her left—some fourteen year ago. And her'll have her eyes on Gran'ma's chair, ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... Hurrah! But, suddenly, there is a halt and an outcry of dismay, and an overthrow worse than the Red Sea tumbling upon the Egyptians. Shadow of grave-stones upon finest silk! Wormwood squeezed into impearled goblets! Death, with one cold breath, withering the leaves ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... opened again and another figure appeared, a brisk figure, at which the dead leaves of the porch bestirred themselves in vague, uneasy rustlings. Uncle Buzz stepped meekly aside and Mrs. Mosby—Aunt Loraine—joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance. She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched and streaked with a chestnut red, colour ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... may be said to be the bread of the common people, requires to be planted but once. The stem bears freely, like the banana of the same family, at the end of eight months, and then withering to the ground renews itself again from the roots. Sweet potatoes once planted require care only to prevent their too great luxuriance, and for this purpose a plough is passed through them before the wet season, and as many of the vines as can be freely plucked up are ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... I muttered, mirth immediately withering upon me, "and you'll know him better. To save time: will you mention anything you can think of ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... man could only buy a coat of arms—a stag, a gate, a wolf's head, or a sausage—he became thereby a nobleman, boasted of his high descent, and was regarded by the public as a saint. For such "nobility" Peter had a withering contempt. He declared that nobles of this stamp had no right to belong to the Christian Church. They lived, he said, in flat opposition to the spirit of Jesus Christ. They devoured the poor. They were a burden to the country. They did harm ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... every limb of her, bud of her, pore of her?— don't call these things, kisses— mouth-kisses, hand-kisses, elbow, knee and toe, and let it go at that— disappear and promise what you'll never perform: we've known you to slink away until drought-time, drooping-time, withering-time: we've caught you crawling off into winter-time, try to cover what you've done with a long white scarf— your own frozen tears (likely phrase!) and lilt your, I'll be back in spring! Next spring, and you know it, she ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... always knew the ground to their immediate front; whereas we, their assailants, had to grope our way over unknown ground, and generally found a cleared field or prepared entanglements that held us for a time under a close and withering fire. Rarely did the opposing lines in compact order come into actual contact, but when, as at Peach-Tree Creek and Atlanta, the lines did become commingled, the men fought individually in every possible style, more frequently with the musket clubbed than with the bayonet, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... garden spot, Came snow on mere and wold, Came the withering breath of white robed death, And the once warm earth ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... respecting them. Some, among whom are Dr. Priestly and Mr. Jessop, upon practical and scientific observations, attributed them to lightning, but their experiments did not prove altogether satisfactory. Drs. Wollaston, Withering, and others, who had duly examined these spots, ascribed them to the growth of fungi, which opinion seems undoubtedly the best.—The rings vary in size and shape, some having seven yards of bare, with a patch of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... turned towards them, a little drooping, his hands in their own natural position on breast and neck. A faint pink-tinted wrapper lay in soft folds about him, with its white frills at neck and wrists,—on his breast a bunch of the first snowdrops spoke of the "everlasting spring, and never withering flowers!" ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... many professedly Christian parents. There is no time for God's Word or earnest prayer with and for the children. There is often little if any religious instruction or Christian example. The little ones breathe in a withering, poisonous, materialistic atmosphere. The germs of the divine life, implanted in baptism, either lie dormant, or are blighted after their first manifestations. They grow up with the idea that the great object of life ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... blows or likewise abates; the falling thunderbolt at your command moves back to the clouds. Oh, I implore you, who in the air can keep up the beneficent dew or let it pour its welcome freshness on the withering plant, impart fresh vigor to my old limbs. See me; I am dying; revive my drooping energy; stretch ye out your arms to me, touch ye those livid features of mine, and the spell of your hands will cause my wrinkles ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... was summoned canorously to the reading of the Law—'Shall stand Simeon, the son of Nehemiah'—and he arose and solemnly mounted the central platform, his familiarity with the due obeisances and osculations and benedictions seemed a withering reply to the libel. When he descended, and the Parnass proffered his presidential hand in pious congratulation upon the holy privilege, all the congregants who found themselves upon his line of return shot forth their arms with remorseful eagerness, and thus was Simeon ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Fantails: their tail-feathers are fixed in a radiating position, but they can depress and elevate them. I remember in a pigeon-book seeing withering contempt expressed at some naturalist for not knowing this important point! Page 111 (156/2. The reference is to the original little green paper books in which the lectures first appeared; the paging in the bound volume dated ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Imperialists among Republicans. However, a second and third blast were better gauged, and these carpeted the new alley-way with Republican bodies. Also, the Imperialists were re-forming, and under a withering fire the little band of victors had to draw back ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... that at the end of the present century no writer of the first class will be still alive. They think that the Muse of Literature may transfer herself to other countries less dried up or worn out than our own. They seem to see the withering effect of criticism on original genius. No one can doubt that such a decay or decline of literature and of art seriously affects the manners and character of a nation. It takes away half the joys ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... her father a withering glance, and broke her silence. "That isn't true," she declared. "I wanted the apples. Father has been standing here the whole evening holding onto my hand so I shouldn't go ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... toward our guns. Darkness was falling; but the field where the batteries were planted was so level that the gunners could do wonderful execution. And this they did. The Rebel charge had just commenced when our guns simultaneously opened with a withering fire, which cut down whole ranks of living flesh like grass. As one line of embattled hosts melted away, another rushed forward in its place to meet the same fate. Three successive and desperate charges were made, one of them ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... is carried open to the grave by four of the dead child's young companions, a fifth walking behind with the ribboned coffin-lid. I have often seen these touching little parties moving through the bustling streets, the peaceful small face asleep under the open sky, decked with the fading roses and withering lilies. In all well-to-do families the house of death is deserted immediately after the funeral. The stricken ones retire to some other habitation, and there pass eight days in strict and inviolable seclusion. On the ninth day the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... o' loyalty 's beginning for to fa', The bonnie white rose it is withering an' a': But I 'll water 't wi' the blude of usurping tyrannie, An' green it will grow in my ain countrie. It 's hame, and it 's hame, hame fain wad I be, An' it 's hame, hame, hame, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... cannonading, to allow time for the arrival of re-enforcements which came not, he led the charge. The attack was disordered by the uneven ground, the fences and the ravines; and it was broken by the granite front of the English (three-fourths of them Americans) and their long-reserved and withering fire. The undisciplined Canadians flinched from that certain death; and Wolfe, advancing on them with his grenadiers, saw them melt away before the cold steel could reach them. The two leaders faced each other, both equally undaunted and alert; it was like a duel between them; no opening was ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Men must be dying, withering like stubble in the blue-white flames, whenever they caught them. And yet, under that play of colors, Jim could see the vast host crawling forward ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... everywhere in woods and swamps, we are reminded of the fall, both by the richly spotted Sarsaparilla-leaves and Brakes, and the withering and blackened Skunk-Cabbage and Hellebore, and, by the river-side, the already ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... ye?" he yelled with withering scorn. "Sons of pigs who root in the dung of this Foreign Devil's land, or men of the Dragon's blood? Are ye the scum of the Yangtze River or honourable descendants of the Hairy Rebels? Would ye avenge your brothers who have choked to death in the breath of the stink-pots ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... hills are of frequent occurrence here, and at times they do much mischief. If the flames are once fairly kindled in dry weather, they will spread in all directions as the wind varies, burning sometimes for weeks together, until they have swept over miles of woodland, withering the verdure, destroying the wood already cut, and greatly injuring many trees which they do not consume. Several years since, in the month of June, there was quite an extensive fire on the eastern range of hills; it lasted for ten days or a fortnight, spreading ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... use no reproach, no word of withering scorn, in thus addressing his enemy. He even spoke in German, to spare the fallen man's shame in the gipsy's presence. He had the horse in readiness for its master, and bade the fiddler help him lift the injured rider ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... She glanced at him again, swiftly. No, he was too beautiful to be penned up in an office from nine to six-thirty every day of his life. On the other hand her feminine intuition appreciated keenly the withering criticism of Higgins. Ever since Paul had first told her of his engagements at the Life Schools she had shrunk from the idea. It was all very well for the boy; but for the man—and being younger than he, she regarded him now as a man—there was something in it that offended ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... responsive voice was heard at every close: And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair;— And longer had she sung:—but with a frown Revenge impatient rose: He threw his blood-stain'd sword in thunder down; And with a withering look The war-denouncing trumpet took And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe! And ever and anon he beat The doubling drum with furious heat; And, though sometimes, each each dreary pause between, Dejected Pity at his side Her soul-subduing voice applied, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... in the inadvertence of my bewildered mind, to address you once more by the title of husband; but that holy name must hereafter perish on my lips, and be banished like a withering curse from my heart. Yet it was that alone which, holding a sacred charter over my bosom, bound me to the cheerful endurance of many a bitter hour, ere I knew that through him who bore it, a descendant of the house of Percy would be banded ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... If that were so, good-bye to her dreams. If she were no more to him than that there was no hope left in her life. For Keith might ply from port to port, seeing in her only one girl for his amusement; but he had spoilt her for another man. No other man could escape the withering comparison with Keith. To Jenny he was a king among men, incomparable; and if he did not love her, then the proud Jenny Blanchard, who unhesitatingly saw life and character with an immovable reserve, was the ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... raised, by a signal appointment of Providence, to the highest eminence.—EVE was accessary to the ruin of man—MARY instrumental in the birth of him who came as the Restorer and Saviour of mankind—EVE beheld the fatal curse first take effect, in overcasting the heavens with clouds, in withering the blossoms of paradise, envenoming the spirit of the animal creation, disordering the human frame, and ultimately destroying it, and introducing all the nameless diversities of wo which fill up the tragedy ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... are holding the men well in hand, so as not to come to a charge in that broken country, and withering the crowd with their fire to make ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... hymn. But, oh, the little land of peace and love That those night-loving wings had poised above,— Where was it gone? Lost, lost forevermore! Only a cottage, dull and gray, In the cold light of dawn, With iron bars across the door: Only a garden where the withering heads Of flowers, presaging decay, Hung over barren beds: Only a desolate field that lay Untilled beneath the desolate day,— Where Eden seemed to bloom I found but these! So, wondering, I passed along my way, With anger in my heart, too deep ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... M. Panpan, time rolled on, and little Louis was born. This might have been a blessing, but while family cares and expenses were growing upon them, Panpan's strength and energies were withering away. He suffered little pain, but what there was seemed to spring from the old wound; and there were whole days when he lay a mere wreck, without the power or will to move; and when his feeble breath seemed passing away for ever. Happily, these relapses occurred ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... less is it commonplace sulkiness, that utters itself in her features; it is rather bitter and crushing disappointment. She looks as if she were on the point of letting something slip away from her which she has not the strength to hold fast—as if something were withering between ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... figure was at length manifest. The man came hurrying and a little breathless, with his salver, at once apologetic and triumphant. My ice was half liquid. Had I not the right to reproach him, in the withering, contemptuous tone which correct diners have learned to adopt toward the alien serfs who attend them? I had not. I had neither the right nor the courage nor the wish. This man was as Anglo-Saxon as myself. He had, with all his deference, the mien of the race. When he dreamed of paradise, he probably ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... attractive, began to be obvious to Eleanor, who, night after night, at the dinner table, watched the smiling, shining, careless thing—Youth!—sitting there on Maurice's right, and felt herself withering in the dividing years. As a result, the annoyance which, when Edith was a child, she had felt at her childishness, began to harden into irritation at her womanliness. "I wish I could get her out of the house!" she ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... frailties and all the fallabilities of poor human nature; the pope might canonize them, and the priesthood bow submissively to their spiritual guidance, still they remained for all that but mortals of dust and clay, and their bulky tomes yet retain the swarthiness of the tomb about them, the withering impress of humanity. Such being the case we, who do not regard them quite so infallible, feel no surprise at a circumstance which sorely perplexed the monks of old, they unchained and unclasped their cumbrous "Works of the Fathers," ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... descriptions of action, so completely hide the actual feelings of the men engaged that the inexperienced may be pardoned the thought, that, having donned the insignia of a soldier, a man instantly becomes filled with martial ardor, and eager to face the most withering fire of musketry or artillery. But the reality is far different; very few men are so constituted, or are so reckless of their lives, that they can listen to the unearthly screech of the shell or the crash ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... beyond what a fit of indigestion would have caused. A lady all in white, and without her head, was what she deposed and adhered to, supported by a consciousness of the secret sympathy of her mistress under the withering scorn with which Miss Pole regarded her. And not only she, but many others, had seen this headless lady, who sat by the roadside wringing her hands as in deep grief. Mrs Forrester looked at us from time to time with an ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... drew back and looked at Harris for a second or two with an expression of the most withering haughtiness. Then, without a word she turned her back on him. The inspector infuriated, muttered in his ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... dear Mrs. Chalmers. I assure you the whole circumstance is unfortunate. But you are so palpably in the wrong that I cannot interfere—(Margaret turns from him in withering ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... must he gain. This fragile youth, untried and delicate, unknowing in the ways of this strange world, where every step is danger, how much hardship, how much peril, what withering disappointment, what dull care, what long despondency, what never-ending lures, now lie in ambush for this gentle boy! O my countrymen, is this your hope? And I, with all my lore, and all my courage, and all my deep intelligence ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... maiden sorrowed As the months and years sped onward; Till at last the Princess Abbess, Filled with pity, told the Baron: "On our soil your child no longer Thrives as heretofore, but slowly Her poor heart from grief is withering. Change of air oft worketh wonders. Let me take then Margaretta With me to the Holy City, Where in spite of age I'm going; For, in Chur the wicked bishop Threatens to deprive our convent Of our fairest Swiss possessions, And ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... bad, O'Brien," said another scribe mournfully. "Forgive him, Senator. I will have something to say to him later." Withering glances were cast at the unlucky one, who seemed about to sink under the table, and the wind outside howled dismally, and rattled ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... whichever way the eye turned, whatever direction the imagination took, the conviction forced upon the mind was, that you were in an inheritance, and that what the wisdom and energy of one generation had gathered together, succeeding generations had not yet scattered to the winds by the withering blast of infinitesimal division. With the imagination thus forcibly filled with home and its associations, you involuntarily feel disposed to take a stroll on the lawn; but on reaching the door, your ears are assailed by wild shouts of infantine laughter, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year; It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir— It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would to-day pour out a fiery streak of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Hawkes, "This did not succeed when tried with cows' milk." He also gives as another name, Yorkshire Sanicle; and says it is called earning grass in Scotland. Linnaeus says the juice will curdle reindeer's milk. The name for rennet is earning, in Lincolnshire. Withering also gives this note: "Pinguis, fat, from its effect in CONGEALING milk."—(A.) Withering of course wrong: the name comes, be the reader finally assured, from the fatness of the green leaf, quite peculiar among wild plants, and fastened ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... thirty!' and running over to the glass, draped in green cut-paper, which adorned the mantelpiece, Lucy stood before it examining herself in an agony. And, indeed, there was a change. A touch of some withering blight seemed to have swept across the whole dainty face, and taken the dewy freshness from the eyes. There was fever in it—the fever of fret and mutiny and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... But why, when occasion appeared, should it not have its place? Why might not the Lord, consistently with his help and his healing, do that in one instance which his Father is doing every day? I refer now, of course, to the withering of the fig-tree. In the midst of the freshest greenery of summer, you may see the wan branches of the lightning-struck tree. As a poet drawing his pen through syllable or word that mars his clear utterance or musical comment, such is the destruction ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... on the meeting. Some of the members looked at each other and showed signs of hysterics. Mrs. Blanderocks flashed a withering glance at the corner, but rose to ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... Miss Jerusha, with a sharp look over her spectacles, "tisn't proper for boys to talk so; what do you do all day long?" she asked, turning back to Polly, after a withering glance at Joel, who ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... Prexy did was to look at me in that calm, withering, pitying way he has, and then say in that solemn voice of his: 'Ah, Hatfield, I presume you are going in for vivisection?' Say, you could have floored me with a feather. That's the kind of a man Dr. ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... on the road, and if he don't slip you one with a shovel for your withering ignorance he'll tell you just what I'm telling you now. Yes, you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... Spantz gave him a withering look, as much as to say that he was a fool to ask such a question in a place so public. Without replying, he got to his feet and made ready to ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... in," Cassy in reviewing the situation subsequently commented. But at the time she said nothing. She merely looked. Her rage was gone, her anger spent. Only disgust remained. It was that which her face expressed. It was withering. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... appreciation of its powers. Instead of flying straight before it, and being inevitably overtaken, she ran at once to the river and galloped madly down the shallow margin. Before the flames were actually upon her, she was beyond the zone of their fury. But she felt the withering blast of them, and their appalling roar was in her ears. With starting eyes and wide, palpitating nostrils, she ran on and on, and stopped only when she sank exhausted in a rude cove. There she lay with ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... rich and fertile must be reinforced with friendship. It is the sap that preserves from blight and withering; it is the sunshine that beckons on the blossoming and fruitage; it is the starlight dew that perfumes life with sweetness and besprinkles it with splendor; it is the music-tide that sweeps the soul, scattering treasures; ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... latter was undoubtedly an able debater, he lost ground from his impetuosity of temper—an infirmity to which Dr. Buchanan never gives way. In all circumstances he is cool, calculating, unruffled; he measures the full meaning and effect of every sentence; he can be fierce and withering, and still maintain a calm and composed demeanour. The gladiatorial conflicts in which these two combatants took part were often a source of rare amusement even outside the pale of the Presbytery, and, inasmuch as they were both well fortified with ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... our nuptial hour Draws on apace; four happy days bring in Another moon; but, oh, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame or a dowager, Long withering ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Two per cent. of the soldiers get a fortnight's leave of absence and a free pass; and there is joy in peasant homes over peasant charcoal pans. The dusky shades of evening are stealing over olive grove and withering vineyard, and every house lights up its tiny oil lamp, and every image of the Virgin is illuminated with a taper. In Eija, near Cordova, an image or portrait of the Virgin and the Babe new-born, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Dynamic was the word I used," replied Professor Zepplin, casting a withering glance at ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... audacious enterprise appear to him. Then quickly changing from doubt to fury, he struck his brow with his iron glove, saying that as the queen defied him he would make her tremble even in her castle and in her lover's arms. He threw one withering look on Marie, who interceded tearfully for her sister, and pressing Robert's hand with warmth, vowed that so long as he lived Louis should never be ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... look at an ordinary tree to see the same thing going on. Each little leaf on a tree may very naturally have sufficient consciousness to believe that it is an entirely separate being maintaining itself in the sunlight and the air, withering away and dying when the winter comes on—and there is an end of it. It probably does not realize that all the time it is being supported by the sap which flows from the trunk of the tree, and that in its turn it is feeding the tree, too—that ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the men, having fed and watered their horses, took what rest they might in patches of burning shadow within the wall. Though the sun-saturated masonry breathed fire, it served to shelter them from the withering wind that scours the Border at this ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... to break over the desolate hills, the fun began. From three sides the Indians poured into the camp a withering fire. As a result the entire command became panic stricken. Seven men were knocked down, almost at the first fire, and it has always been a matter of surprise to me that Hasbrook, old campaigner as he ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... because she dared to remain young and handsome, while she, the empress, saw that she was growing old, and her charms were withering; and Catharine hated Elizabeth because the latter denied her a right which the empress daily claimed for herself—the right to choose a lover, and to love him as long as he pleased her. She hated Elizabeth because the latter surrounded her with ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... diem!"—'Tis a mournful story, Thus in the ear of pensive eve to tell, Of morning's firm resolves, the vanish'd glory, Hope's honey left within the withering bell And plants of mercy dead, that might have bloomed ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... you will never let despair get the upper hand of you. If it does you may as well die; yes, you may as well. And I entreat you not to lose your entire faith in humanity. There is nothing like that for withering up the very core of the heart. I tell you, humanity and nature have so much in common with each other that if you lose part of your pleasure in the latter; you will see less beauty in the trees, the flowers, and the fields, less grandeur in the mighty mountains and the sea. The seasons will ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... though bare and withering like the scathed oak, was inexpressibly welcome to one who so deeply suffered from the crimes of duplicity. Williams soon recovered his strength under the care of his dear old master; and though the mountain cottage ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... It was one of those tense moments which every man experiences when he sees a withering frost slowly gathering over the fondest hopes of a lifetime. The family of Rincon, aristocratic, intensely loyal to Church and State, had willingly laid itself upon the sacrificial altar in deference to its honored traditions. Custom ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... oration over the body of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and taking the War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It was not with me then, as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions, and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... mischief, mischief, And a nine-times killing curse, By day and by night, to the caitive wight Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door, And shuts up the womb of his purse; And a mischief, mischief, mischief, And a nine-fold withering curse,— For that shall come to thee, that will render thee Both all that thou fear'st, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Across a sky as clear as crystal a series of young clouds were chasing each other, putting out the stars for a moment as they scurried playfully along. It was a joy to be alive and fit and careless. Summer was lying in wait for spring, and autumn would lay a withering hand upon summer, and winter with its crooked limbs and lack-luster eyes was waiting ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... curse of the ages. No man suffering from her withering, blighting touch can be in harmony with the best. Socialism tackles the master job of abolishing it. Not by any fantastic plan of redistribution but by giving to the creator all that he creates and to the social charges, pensioners and cripples an assurance ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... that fine turf which seems like down upon the earth, or of that enameled lawn which announces a brilliant fertility; but instead an interlacement of hard and thorny herbs which seem to cling to each other rather than to the soil, and which, successively withering and impeding each other, form a coarse mat several feet thick. There are no roads, no communications, no vestiges of intelligence in these wild places. Man, obliged to follow the paths of savage beasts and to watch constantly lest he become their prey, terrified by their roars, thrilled by ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... modest Rose, whose blushes speak The ardent kisses of the Sun, Off'ring a tribute to her Cheek, Droops, to perceive its Tint outdone; Then withering with envy and despair, Dies on her Lips, and leaves ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... historic production, the scanty fruit of a long and laborious life, I have failed to gratify the dainty palate of the age, I can only lament my misfortune, for it is too late in the season for me even to hope to repair it. Already has withering age showered his sterile snows upon my brow; in a little while, and this genial warmth which still lingers around my heart, and throbs, worthy reader, throbs kindly toward thyself, will be chilled for ever. Haply ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... in its every detail. Then I touched upon beer, the British bruiser, “gentility-nonsense,” the “trumpery great”; then upon etymology, traced hoity-toityism to toit, a roof,—but only to have my shallow philology dismissed with a withering smile. I tried other subjects in the same direction, but with small success, till in a lucky moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett. There is a very scarce eighteenth-century pamphlet narrating ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Dunstable's table with its racked countenances, and its too ample supply of pencils and paper. A deadly crime! When Lady Dunstable, on the stroke of midnight, swept through the rooms to gather her guests for bed, she cast a withering glance on Doris ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... in tones of withering and unfathomable contempt, "my milk! Do you think I'd look at the beastly stuff when I'm out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We're all Christians in this room, though perhaps," he added, glancing around at the reeling crowd, "not strict ones. Finish my milk? Great blazes! ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... dry weather and withering sun had caused the dead boughs to shrink and to break beneath the great weight of the nest that rested upon them. The eagle's nest was in ruins. It had fallen upon the lower boughs, and two young half-fledged eaglets were to be seen hanging helplessly on ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... estimation. In this he was mistaken; for, no sooner had he made her thoroughly cognizant of the fact that he was not an innocent, but a willing, instrument in the abduction of poor Kate, than she sprang to her feet, and with a glance the most withering, and full of unconquerable hate and aversion, without a single other word, left the apartment and ascended to that of ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... monotonous path lengthening out before them, with neither great joy to lighten it, or great sorrow to darken it, the same commonplace cares and duties until the end. 'This is doing us no good,' they think; 'life is slowly withering, zeal is gone. A flower cannot bloom in the desert! Let me go to ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... though, Connie. I used to pine sore fur the country; but it have come hover me lately that in winter it 'ud be dull—scarcely any flowers, and no birds singing, nor nothink. Now, in heaven there's no winter. 'A land o' pure delight,' the hymn calls it, 'and never-withering flowers.' So you see, Connie, heaven must be a sight better than the country, and of course I'd rayther go there; only I'm thinking as 'tis sech a ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... great, and even more insupportable. There was a certain moisture and softness about the high temperature at Colombo, which we had experienced a month before; while here there was a dry, burning directness of the sun's power which was absolutely withering. As we passed over the road, swayed hither and thither upon the backs of the huge animals, it was amusing to watch the gambols of the wild monkeys in the trees, and to observe the flocks of wild peacocks in the open fields, both monkeys and peacocks ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... This dessication or withering takes place everywhere; but in some places the surplus of fruit, which the tree is unable to nourish, is alone subject to it. In others, as Araquita and Caucagua, it withers in proportion to the northerly rains. An unsuitable soil occasions another kind of decay. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... thou life-repressing north, Ye withering east winds too; But come, thou all-reviving west, Breathe soft thy genial dew. Till at the last, in peaceful age, This lovely flow'ret shed Its last green leaf upon my grave, Within the vale ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... age, when we pursue no more— Fruit dies upon the withering tree: Hark! some one rapped upon my door. Nay, open not. 'Tis not for me— Or else the doctor calls. Not yet Must I expect his studious bow. Once I'd have called, "Come in, Lizzette"— Alas, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... O angel, are there, The myrrhic rapture of young hair, The lips of lust; And all the stenches of dust, Even the palm and the fingers of a hand burnt bare With a curling sweet-smelling crust, And the bitter staleness of old hair, Powder on a withering bust ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... Lavengro and strove to deserve it" was cut down to "when I became a student." When he wrote of Cowper in the third chapter he said, to justify Cowper's melancholy, that "Providence, whose ways are not our ways, interposed, and with the withering blasts of misery nipped that which otherwise might have terminated in fruit, noxious and lamentable"; but he substituted a mere "perhaps" for the words about Providence. In the description of young Jasper he changed his "short arms like" his father, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the whole length of the street; then passed out into the dreary, deserted looking Crescent, where the trees were already beginning to fade; not, however, into the bright autumn tint of country woods, but into a premature withering, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... unworthy aims. In its old age there is nothing genial or lovely, and in its death one could almost believe that soul as well as body perishes. Simplicity improves in mind as it grows old in body. There are no wrinkles on the brow of its sunny spirit; there is no withering of its intellect. Its life, in time, is a perpetual advance in all that is gracious and intelligent,—a steady ripening for eternity,—and its death is but a birth into a ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... long the gale had blown he could not tell, Only the world had changed, his life had died. A moment now was everlasting hell. Nature an onslaught from the weather side, A withering rush of death, a frost that cried, Shrieked, till he withered at the heart; a hail Plastered his oilskins with an ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... had lost your greedy grief, Content to see from afar, You would find in your hand a withering leaf, In your heart ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... just dry so." Both drank, then settled back on their heels for a moment's conversation. "Awful weather," said the blue scout. "Didn't know there could be such withering heat! And malaria—lying out of nights in swamps, with owls hooting and jack-o'-lanterns round your bed! Ain't you folks ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... but folded her arms and looked at her "friend." Mrs. Toomey had the physical sensation of shrivelling: as though she were standing naked before the withering heat of ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... stream Hellespontine, Which from the mythical tomb of the godlike Protesilaus Rose sympathetic in grief to his love-lorn Laodamia, Evermore growing, and when in their growth to the prospect attaining, Over the low sea-banks, of the fatal Ilian city, Withering still at the sight which still they upgrow to encounter. Ah, but ye that extrude from the ocean your helpless faces, Ye over stormy seas leading long and dreary processions, Ye, too, brood of the wind, whose coming is whence we ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... perfused with a beautiful blush, fairy food, too beautiful to eat,—apple of the Hesperides, apple of the evening sky! But like shells and pebbles on the sea-shore, they must be seen as they sparkle amid the withering leaves in some dell in the woods, in the autumnal air, or as they lie in the wet grass, and not when they have wilted and ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... conductors and elevators of sap; and nothing can be more injurious than to take them away from the fruit at the very time when they are most needed. The consequence of such an unwise course will be the wilting and withering of the bunches, and, should they ripen at all, they will be deficient in flavor. Good fruit must ripen in the shade, only thus will it ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... one o'clock on an intolerable day peculiar to the Dakota plain. A frightfully hot, withering, and powerful wind was abroad. The thermometer stood nearly a hundred in the shade, and the wind, so far from being a relief, was suffocating because of its heat and the dust ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... upon her countenance! Her eye glared out, and was fixed on the vacant wall, as if a spirit had arisen before her, and arrested her regard. There was a spirit there. It was the form of the young Augustus, whom she saw withering and wasting in his dungeon; a dungeon which would deliver him up only to the scaffold. After the events which had occurred all idea of a union with Augustus, presuming that his life should be spared, had been resigned. How could he, on whom the maxims of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... knew it, and sickened under it as under an evil influence. He was very angry with her—she was fully conscious of that—unjustifiably, unreasonably angry. More than once, when Mr. Granger was especially attentive, she had encountered a withering glance from those dark gray eyes, and she had been weak enough, wicked enough perhaps, to try and make him perceive that Mr. Granger's attentions were in no way pleasant to her. She could bear anything better ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... "green fat" and their wives without tortoise-shell combs. It will serve them right. Such destitution in these—and, be it noted, in many other matters—will deservedly fall upon those who ignorantly, wilfully, and contentedly neglect to take steps to understand and to control the withering blight created by modern man wherever he ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... flank of the defenders. They saw the tall figure of Timmendiquas, a very god of war, leading on the Indians, with his fearless Wyandots in a close cluster around him. Colonel John Durkee, gathering up a force of fifty or sixty, charged straight at the warriors, but he was killed by a withering volley, which drove ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a spell had loosened them, down came a little shower of withering rose-leaves from the Maypole. Alas for the young lovers! No sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion than they were sensible of something vague and unsubstantial in their former pleasures, and felt ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with the parts still spread about the floor. Elihu Titus told Sharon the boy was only playing with them. Sharon said he was glad they could furnish amusement, and mentally composed the beginning of what would be a letter of withering ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... welded into the past, My love of you with the purple Indian dusk, With its clinging scent of sandal incense and musk, And withering jasmin flowers. My eyes grow dim and my senses fail at last, While the lonely hours Follow each other, silently, one by one, Till the ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... to their work, strained in their yokes and dragged the plow point through the bosom of the earth, been half so genuine and deep. It was good to be alive, to sleep, to eat, to toil! Cities had lost their charm. David's sin was no longer a withering and blasting, but a chastening and restraining memory. His clearing was a kingdom, his cabin a palace, and he was soon to have a queen! He had reserved his sowing for the last day of his self-imposed seclusion, which ended with the month ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... satisfaction when it occurred to him that he ought to offer some to his neighbor, who very coolly declined. "You think it unhealthful to eat that?" inquired the German in polite astonishment. "Unhealthful?" exclaimed the Hidalgo, with a withering look and a gasp for a more adequate word; "No, sir: I think it an ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... some one to play who has the instincts of a gentleman. Pa will be greatly annoyed when he hears how our pleasant evening has been spoiled, and by an unknown farm-hand at that." She emphasised "farm-hand" and cast a look of withering ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... spare from his ordinary work to soothe and enlighten the suffering youth. But it became clearer every week that nothing would avail to entice the torn roots of his being to clasp again the soil of the world: he was withering away out of it. Ere long symptoms appeared which no one could well mistake, and Lingard himself knew that he was dying. Wingfold had dreaded that his discovery of the fact might reveal that he had imagined some atonement in the public confession he desired to make, and that, when he found it ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... elm, and beech—had been marked out for destruction: in some cases because they had been scorched and riven by lightnings, and were an eyesore; in others, because time had robbed them of their glory, withering their long, desolate arms, and bestowing on their crowns that lusterless, scanty foliage which has a mournful meaning, like the thin white hairs on the bowed head of a very old man. At this distance from the house I could freely indulge my propensity for singing, albeit in that coarser ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... my sweet charity-blossoms, that unfolded such a little time ago, when Sophie was reading to me? Surely the time of withering had not come so soon? An untimely frost must have withered them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... don't wonder you feel uneasy on our account considering that we have never enjoyed the advantages their social standards offer. We trust, however, for the sake of old friendship, that you will overlook our shortcomings. A lesson in manners might not be lost on us," she added with a withering glance and tone that would have reduced any other man to a ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... blood-curdling tale of Boer treachery and cowardice. He tells how the enemy held out the white flag to coax our men to stop firing. Then, in awe-inspiring tones, he sobs forth a tale of dark and dismal war, how our soldiers respected the white flag and rested on their arms, only to be mowed down by a withering rifle fire from the canaille who represent the enemy in the field. Having got so far, he does not feel justified in stopping until he has thrown in some flowery language concerning a Boer cannonade upon British ambulance waggons, full of wounded; from that he drifts by easy and natural stages to ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... and the poor girl had lost a worshipper. The golden image with the feet of clay might arise in a prophet's dream, but it could never abide in such a lover's. Her glance was powerless now. Alas, for the withering of such a dream! Perhaps she deserved nothing else; but our deserts, when we get them, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... from my hair when I went back to my room last night. Did you take it, dear? If so, do not cherish it. I hate to think of anything withering on your breast. My love is deathless, James, and owns no such symbol as that. But perhaps you are not thinking of my love, but of my faults. If so, let the flower remain where you have put it; and when you gaze on it say, "Thus is it with the ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... collars, and incense and altar-genuflections wouldn't count for a tikkie. Oh! it's been a sore with me this many a year, but when I saw him to-day I said, 'Thank God I never had a child!' Because to have seen a boy or girl grow up and wither away as that beautiful young fellow is withering, is a thing that a mother must shudder to look back upon, even when she has found her lost one ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Johnson and Dr. Rudolph spent the night at timber-line in a pit dug in the snow to obtain protection from a gale, at the temperature of 5 deg. Fahr. below zero, and fought their way to the summit. But so withering was the gale at that altitude even at mid-day, that a precipitate retreat was made to avoid freezing. The faces of the climbers showed plainly the punishment received. Three days later Dr. Church attempted to rescue the record just as the storm was passing. He made his way in an impenetrable ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... in "Masterman Ready" and "Treasure Island," you see,' explained Jack, proudly. 'And it's pierced for musketry, too; we could open a withering fire on besiegers before ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... on a fondness which suddenly became a withering droop of the eyes: "Don't mince your smile so, grannie dear, I can ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... alternating gloom and glow until shrouded and dimmed in an orange tawny haze of infinite distance. In the immediate foreground of this majestic display, like a handful of rose-leaves fallen out of heaven, small clouds floated directly downward, withering to blackness as they neared the earth and lost the dying fires. Beneath the splendor of the sky the land likewise flamed, the winding roadways glimmered, and many pools and ditches reflected back the circumambient glory ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... suppose too," she continued with withering scorn, "that was why the gay cavalier kissed your hand. I saw him through the window. So touching! That's what you were plotting when I found you in the garden. Page Hanaford was in it too; I saw it in his face. I hate him! I hate everything! Oh!" she cried, with a sudden outburst of passion, ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... Jones cast a withering glance at the speaker, which softened from indignation to injured innocence in so dramatic a manner that Hal almost felt sorry he had spoken. Then he silently turned and resumed his ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... If it goes on, my aunt will have an administration as important as that of a European state. Oh! you are happy here, you people; you are busy. I amuse myself! And if you knew how it wearies me! I am withering, consuming myself, I am longing ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground: Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise. So generations in their course decay, So flourish these, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... not but feel sorry for the valiant savages who, under so awful a fire, still pressed forward to certain death; their numbers withering away at every step, until they dwindled to nothing, only to be replaced by a fresh band, which darted forward to meet a similar fate; and yet, when he remembered the wholesale slaughter at Metemmeh, the annihilation ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... hedge; their leaves were of a golden colour, and as lively as the yellow blossoms could have been in the spring. Afterwards we saw many laburnums in the woods, which we were told had been 'planted;' though I remember that Withering speaks of the laburnum as one of the British plants, and growing in Scotland. The twigs and branches being stiff, were not so graceful as those of our garden laburnums, but I do not think I ever ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... London, and the whole of her glittering toilette apparatus lay about on the marble dressing-table. The atmosphere of the room was almost oppressive for the rich odors of perfumes in bottles whose gold stoppers had not been replaced. A bunch of hot-house flowers was withering upon a tiny writing-table. Two or three handsome dresses lay in a heap upon the ground, and the open doors of a wardrobe revealed the treasures within. Jewelry, ivory-backed hair-brushes, and exquisite china were scattered here and there about the apartment. George Talboys saw his bearded ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... he put into those two words was more withering than a whole philippic against redemption by creature comforts. And feeling it dart into her, Barbara closed her lips tight. He had dropped her wrists, and again, begun pacing up and down; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... just freeze onto him till the sheriff heaves in sight. Gee! There'll sure be something stirring when we tell him who this Dunk person really is! And you say he was in with the Old Man, once? Oh, Lord!" He looked with withering contempt at Dunk; and Dunk's glance flickered again and dropped, just as his hand dropped to the ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... friend, that you are only pointing your own unimportance? If your father was Governor of the State, what right have you to use that fact only to fatten your self-conceit? Take care, good care; for whether you say it by your lips or by your life, that withering response awaits you—"then what are you?" If your ancestor was great, you are under bonds to greatness. If you are small, make haste to learn it betimes, and, thanking heaven that your name has been made illustrious, retire into a corner and keep ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... more, redoubled her tenderness. And this wan idyll of theirs, as nearly incorporeal as though she were indeed an ethereal visitor, took on a new pathos which was accentuated by the withering of the flowers in the garden, the first hints of ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Mandy so far forgot herself as to address her as Viney Raymond, the new free woman's head went up and she said with withering emphasis: ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... helpless hands were frozen: For she, the woeful mother, had gone mad, And laid it down, regardless of its fate And of her own. Yet had she many days Of sorrow in the world, but never wept. She lived on alms; and carried in her hand Some withering stalks, she gathered in the spring; When they asked the cause, she smiled, and said, They were her sisters, and would come and watch Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke Of her deceiver, father, mother, home, Or child, or heaven, or hell, or ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... me every day That all my bloom has pas past away. "Behold," the pretty wantons cry, "Behold this mirror with a sigh; The locks upon thy brow are few, And like the rest, they're withering too!" Whether decline has thinned my hair, I'm sure I neither know nor care; But this I know, and this I feel As onward to the tomb I steal, That still as death approaches nearer, The joys of life are sweeter, dearer; And had I but an hour to live, That ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Sammies swept over the first line of German trenches. The Boches had deserted them in the face of a withering rifle and machine-gun fire. ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... the Latin subjunctive. Youths cannot get at the Aeneid, the spirit and majesty of it, I mean, owing to the pestilential numbers of grammatical reminiscences recalled by almost every line. When once you begin to set examination papers on a subject, the romance seems to evaporate. There is something withering about test-questions. This modern disease of grammatical annotation, engendered largely by prosaic examiners, who have published grammars, is spreading to the English Classics, and we may soon expect Burns to furnish a text for exceptional scansion, bob-wheel metrics and general philological catechising. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... with that restraint which is put over the feelings by a strong nature, and yet can not hide that consuming passion which underlies all the words, and makes them burn with intensest heat. Here the hot fire of his indignation seemed to be expressed in a blighting and withering power; and Hilda shrank within herself involuntarily in fear, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish were at his command. He might, had France been at peace with herself, have appeared in literature as a somewhat belated Ronsardist; but his hereditary cause became his own. While still a child he accepted from his father, in presence of the withering heads of the conspirators of Amboise, the oath of immitigable vengeance. Pursuits, escapes, the camp, the battle-field, the prison, the court made up no small part of his life of vicissitude and of unalterable resolve. He roused Henri of Navarre from the lethargy ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... I saw their round, red cheeks grow thin and white, their delicate nerves lose tone and tension, their brains become feeble and flabby, their minds flutter out weakly in muslin and ribbons, their vanity kindled by injudicious admiration, the sweet child—unconsciousness withering away in the glare of indiscriminate gazing, the innocence and simplicity and naturalness and child-likeness swallowed up in a seething whirlpool of artificialness, all the fine, golden butterfly-dust of modesty and delicacy and retiring girlhood ruthlessly rubbed off forever before girlhood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... counterparts or equals in the women of the sixteenth century; and Jeanne d'Albret, in a remarkable letter to Theodore Beza, notes with joy a precocious piety,[385] which, there is reason to fear, was not hardy enough to withstand the withering atmosphere of a court like that with which he was now making ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... was reached, and here the men halted and awaited the enemy with another battalion who were already holding this wood of six or seven acres. When the German troops arrived they may have expected to meet no great resistance. They met a withering fire, which caused them bloody losses. The Canadians had assembled at various points, which became strongholds of defense with machine-guns and bomb stores, and the men held their fire until the enemy was within close range, so that they worked ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... figure appeared, a brisk figure, at which the dead leaves of the porch bestirred themselves in vague, uneasy rustlings. Uncle Buzz stepped meekly aside and Mrs. Mosby—Aunt Loraine—joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance. She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched and streaked with a chestnut red, colour ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... said Mammy, with an air of withering contempt. "There, now, you done woke up your little brother," she said, when, the nose being blown, she again returned to trying to jolt baby Joe to sleep. "He jest had ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... intentions of the writer are by no means clear, the allegory being frequently involved and contradictory. The beauty of the poem lies in its detached passages, its occasional poetic touches, its graphic pictures, biting satire, and withering denunciation of fraud, corruption, and tyranny. The measure adopted is the unrhymed alliterative, characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon literature, and which had long been disused, but which retained its hold on the affections of the common people, who were of Anglo-Saxon stock. In the extracts we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... everlasting spring abides, And never withering flowers: Death like a narrow sea divides This ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... us, for they were always ready, had cover, and always knew the ground to their immediate front; whereas we, their assailants, had to grope our way over unknown ground, and generally found a cleared field or prepared entanglements that held us for a time under a close and withering fire. Rarely did the opposing lines in compact order come into actual contact, but when, as at Peach-Tree Creek and Atlanta, the lines did become commingled, the men fought individually in every possible ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... are excellent!" said Jaspar, with a withering sneer. "But suppose I should grumble at ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... seas seeking the golden clime it needs and instinctively knows of. But she did not repine. And she was able to fill her life, to be strongly interested in people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to her, and was drawn, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the least possible manipulative skill, it will yet find interpreters. It is the soul that looks out with burning eyes through the most gross fleshly filament. Whosoever should portray truly the life and death of a little flower—its birth, sucking in of nourishment, reproduction of its kind, withering and vanishing—would have shaped a symbol of all existence. All true facts of nature or the mind are related. Your little carving represents some mental facts as they really are, therefore fifty different true stories might be read from it. What your work wants is not truth, ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... guess he is; that is, ef you call three, four, five millions well off. I don't know how it strikes you" (with a withering sarcasm), "but I call Arthur ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... tyranny of Spain or Naples or Austria; but everything indicated a movement toward it. Those six years which comprised the reign of Charles X. were a period of reaction,—a return to the Middle Ages in both State and Church, a withering blast on all noble aspirations. Even the prime minister Villele, a legitimatist and an ultra-royalist, was too liberal for the king; and he was dismissed to make room for Martignac, and he again for Polignac, who ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... forgiveness. But the rust of disappointment has dried up his better nature; his heart is wrung with the shafts of ingratitude—all the fierce passions of his nature, hate, scorn and revenge, rise up in the one stormy outburst of his soul. He casts upon her a look of withering scorn, the past of that life so chequered flashes vividly through his thoughts, his hate deepens, he hurls her from him, invokes a curse upon her head, and shuts her from his sight. "Mine will be the retribution!" he says, knitting ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... colonel, writhing in the grasp of the men who held him, "are you going to allow a senseless, wounded man to be murdered before your eyes? Oh, how could anybody ever mistake you for a gentleman for an instant?" he added, with withering contempt; and then turning his head toward the fierce soldiery, "Stop, stop, you ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... o'clock she heard Mrs. Morrison's voice below, in altercation apparently with him. At this time she was crying again; bitter, burning tears; those scorching tears that follow in the wake of destroyed illusions, that drop, hot and withering, on to the fragments of what was once the guiding glory of an ideal. She was brought so low, was so humbled, so uncertain of herself, that she felt it would bring her peace if she might go down to Mrs. Morrison and acknowledge all her vileness; tell her how wrong she had been, ask ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... parent-forms. Negative results are not of much value; but Reisseck, Caspary, and myself, tried in vain to cross C. laburnum and purpureus; when I fertilised the former with pollen of the latter, I had the nearest approach to success, for pods were formed, but in sixteen days after the withering of the flowers, they fell off. Nevertheless, the belief that C. adami is a spontaneously produced hybrid between these two species is supported by the fact that such hybrids have arisen in this genus. In a bed of seedlings from C. elongatus, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... A deadly, withering attack on Christian Science enfilading its every position. Mr. Wyckoff's searching analysis of the pretensions, errors, follies, and non-sense of so-called Christian Science should prove as convincing as ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Plato has been largely responsible for the hue and cry against the poet throughout the last two millennia. Various as are the counts against the poet's conduct, they may all be included under the declaration in the Republic, "Poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of withering and starving them; she lets them rule instead of ruling them." [Footnote: ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... two," the words were withering with oppression. Subconsciously he felt the load that crushed her spirit. It was as if the burden had been shifted; he sensed the weight of an ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... prince's first speech swept like a hurricane over a garden in June—withering, blasting, uprooting. He began by denying, absolutely, that the great victory of 1813 which expelled for Prussia the French invaders was based on so low a consideration as the promise of a paper Constitution. Not at all! It was an exhibition ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... the most thickly- populated workshop in Europe, counting every blade of grass and every kernel of wheat and making its pleasures go a long way at small cost; a hothouse of a land, with the door about to be opened to the withering blast of war. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... couldn't. Neither could I. An hotel indeed!"—with withering scorn—"And we with four empty bedrooms crying aloud at night because two of their fellows are occupied and they are left out in the cold! An hotel! I'd just like ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... with a withering look at Pons. "You may keep well for all the harm I wish you. When you can speak to me pleasantly, when you can believe that what I do is done for the best, I will come back again. Till then I shall stay in my own room. You were like my own child to me; did anybody ever see a child ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... I not only took him into my service, I made him my confidant and my friend—I loved him sincerely. And what is my reward? He is ungrateful, and he hates me with a perfect hatred; he is now sitting in his room and cursing his king, who has done nothing more than protect him from the withering ridicule which his childish and mad pursuit was about to bring upon him. Jordan, Jordan! kings are ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... he had to encounter in his endeavours to imitate Tacitus; and though he must have been thoroughly conscious that it was not in his power victoriously to surmount them, yet he cared not, for he did not fear detection, viewing, as he did, with such withering and lordly disdain the want of perspicacity which, in his fancy, characterized his species. He worked on, then, as best he could, with courage and confidence; every now and then doing things that never would have been done by Tacitus: the story, for example, of Sabina Poppaea in the ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... loyalty 's beginning for to fa', The bonnie white rose it is withering an' a': But I 'll water 't wi' the blude of usurping tyrannie, An' green it will grow in my ain countrie. It 's hame, and it 's hame, hame fain wad I be, An' it 's hame, hame, hame, to my ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... must ever have adorned and cheered the world; it naturally springs from the depths of a woman's soul. However dark and dismal society may have been under the withering influences of Paganism, it is probable that glorious instances could be chronicled of the devotion of woman to man and of man to woman, which was not intensified by the passion of love. Nevertheless, the condition of women in the Pagan world, even with ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... feature of the whole thing is that I like mushrooms all the better for the very reason that leads Mr. Chesterton to pour upon them his most withering and pitiless contempt. He hates them because they spring up in the night. Little Bethel is a 'monstrous mushroom that grows in the moonshine.' It is perfectly true that Little Bethel, like the mushrooms, flourished in ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... dogs," I heard in the most withering contempt, "I will see the Tuan Consul. Know he ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... machine, without pausing to make remark or criticism, but his beautiful, eloquent commentaries came in like the symphonies of an organ. He drew forth the latent enthusiasm of Helen, who, forgetting herself and Mittie's withering accusations, expressed her sentiments with a grace, simplicity and fervor peculiar to herself. At the commencement of the evening she generally took her sewing from the basket, and her needle would ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... made many observations, which, alas! strengthened her fears. She saw that the banks were too dry, and that the grass on the shore and the trailing plants on the rocks were withering away. She caused marks to be made along the borders, and examined them day after day, in all directions of the wind, at last the horrible idea became a certain fact,—that the surface of the ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... widow, her eyes flashing fire. "Go, heartless man! who dares to trifle thus with the feelings of a respectable and unprotected woman. Go, sir, you're only fit for the love of a—Dolly—Coddlins!" She pronounced the Coddlins with a withering sarcasm that struck the captain aghast; and, sailing out of the room, she left her tea untasted, and did not wish either of the military gentlemen ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... him a withering glance of scorn as rebuke to his unseemly levity, venturing to lurch a ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... eyes had been as bright as of yore they would have matched badly with your faded skin. The wrinkles which I notice on your forehead explain the increased fulness of your cheeks, and your throat in withering is elegant in decay. Thus the harmony shown by your features, even as they grow old, is the best ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... postman while Persis was busy with a fitting, gave Joel time to examine the mail and frame a withering denunciation of Mrs. Warren's plan. He sprung the same upon his sister with pyrotechnic effect ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... things that lay squirming and making such grimaces, as only very young babies can make, in the face of Mrs. Pimble. The alleged father stood there, chuckling over the smartness of his progeny. Mrs. Pimble darted one withering glance upon him, and walked away without another word. She roused old Dr. Potipher, and took him home with her. Well she did so, for Garrison was much worse than when she left him, and the doctor pronounced it a case of brain fever, which ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... green leaf o' loyaltie's begun for to fa', The bonnie white rose it is withering an' a'; But I'll water 't wi' the blude of usurping tyrannie, An' green it will grow in my ain countrie. Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be, O hame, hame, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... such as startled even itself. Of all branches of education, the science of gauging people and events by their relative importance defies study most insolently. For three or four generations, society has united in withering with contempt and opprobrium the shameless futility of Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. du Barry; yet, if one bid at an auction for some object that had been approved by the taste of either lady, one quickly found that it were better to buy half-a-dozen Napoleons or Frederics, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... opinions respecting them. Some, among whom are Dr. Priestly and Mr. Jessop, upon practical and scientific observations, attributed them to lightning, but their experiments did not prove altogether satisfactory. Drs. Wollaston, Withering, and others, who had duly examined these spots, ascribed them to the growth of fungi, which opinion seems undoubtedly the best.—The rings vary in size and shape, some having seven yards of bare, with a patch of green grass a foot broad in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... the man who does not shudder on hearing M. Leroux exclaim, "There is neither a paradise nor a hell; the wicked will not be punished, nor the good rewarded. Mortals! cease to hope and fear; you revolve in a circle of appearances; humanity is an immortal tree, whose branches, withering one after another, feed with their debris the root which is always young!" Where is the man who, on hearing this desolate confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that I am only an aggregate ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... was the more wonder to find how he seemed to raise up the audience with him, in breathless attention, as to a strain of sweet music, carrying them without thought of the scene, or of the speaker, to the lovely isles, and the inhabitants of noble promise, but withering for lack of knowledge; and finally closing his speech, when they were wrought up to the highest pitch, by an appeal that touched them all home; "for well did he know," said he, "that the universal ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... she said, with a withering shrug of her shoulders, 'that's wit, Mr. Fielding.' Repartee was not ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third—for I recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking up behind the signs, and over the lampposts,—that my respected acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt clothes—which he preferred from their not dirtying so easily with the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... a withering reply, And vanity I always do my best to mortify; A charitable action I can skilfully dissect; And interested motives I'm delighted to detect. I know everybody's income and what everybody earns, And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns; But to benefit humanity, however much I plan, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... he came planted in the spring, And had the sun before him of respect; We, set in th' autumn, in the withering And sullen season of a cold defect, Must taste those sour distastes the times do bring Upon the fulness of a cloy'd neglect. Although the stronger constitutions shall Wear out th' ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... horses and let them refresh themselves by rolling on the sandy soil, and graze after a fashion upon the coarse tufts of withering herbage which grew around. There was no water here; but this did not so much matter, for both they and we had drunk at a little muddy pool we found not more than an hour before. We were finishing our meal of the food that we had brought with us, which, indeed, we needed sorely after our sleepless ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... threw his tall body over the narrow table, and with two hands hovering above their shrinking heads, like eagles over a quarry, he cursed them by name, soul and body, in this world and the next. It was an age eloquent in curses; and this curse was so full, so minute, so blighting, blasting, withering, and tremendous, that I am afraid to put all the words on paper. "Cursed be the lips," he shrieked, "which spoke the lie that Margaret was dead; may they rot before the grave, and kiss white-hot iron in hell thereafter; ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as ever. So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed the outlines of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... with fruit, that has the smell of wine; a wood without fault, without withering, with leaves of the ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... another figure appeared, a brisk figure, at which the dead leaves of the porch bestirred themselves in vague, uneasy rustlings. Uncle Buzz stepped meekly aside and Mrs. Mosby—Aunt Loraine—joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance. She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... outdoors at the garden. Everything is withering. The moisture does not move through the earth to where the roots of the plants can reach it. Before everything withers completely, you rush to the switchboard and turn on the capillary ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... do not know what you are talking about," he finally blustered with withering contempt. "You are an Argentinian and do not understand the affairs ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... family; that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place; that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension,—nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependants to protect,—nothing but this could have thrown a brave ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... sat the wretched mother, gazing upon the still quivering remains. At intervals, she stooped down and kissed the pale, withering lips. She did not weep. I have said she was an Indian. They do not act as whites do; but, anyhow, her anguish was too keen to allow her tears to flow. She did not scream or call for help. It could be of no use now. It was too late. She knew there was no ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... find the yellow violet, and the wake-robin, and the pink lady-slipper, and the scarlet sage, and the fringed gentian. You will understand how the buds trust themselves to the spring in their unfolding, and how the blossoms trust themselves to the winter in their withering, and how the busy bands of Nature are ever weaving the beautiful garment of life out of the strands of death, and nothing is lost that yields itself ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... divided, her from us, considerably passed the line of demarcation. Lady de Brantefield, with all the pride of all the De Brantefields since the Norman Conquest concentrated in her countenance, threw an excommunicating, withering look upon the arm—but the elbow felt it not—it never stirred. The lady seemed not to be made of penetrable stuff. In happy ignorance she sat fanning herself for a few seconds; then suddenly starting and stretching forward to the front row, where five of her young ladies were ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... blasted oak, with a bundle of brushwood upon his shoulder. He was an honest-eyed, grizzled-haired old negro, who wrung his meagre living from a blacksmith's trade, bearing alike the scornful pity of his white neighbours and the withering contempt of his black ones. For twenty years he had moved from spot to spot along the turnpike, and he had lived in the dignity of loneliness since the day upon which his master had won for himself the freedom of Eternity, leaving to his servant ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... lady-doctor, turning uneasily away from the little things that lay squirming and making such grimaces, as only very young babies can make, in the face of Mrs. Pimble. The alleged father stood there, chuckling over the smartness of his progeny. Mrs. Pimble darted one withering glance upon him, and walked away without another word. She roused old Dr. Potipher, and took him home with her. Well she did so, for Garrison was much worse than when she left him, and the doctor pronounced ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... morning dawned after a restless, sleepless night. Phantoms of terror haunted her couch. The agonies of anticipated remorse had cast a withering shadow on her thoughts. She could not believe her own depravity in entertaining for a moment ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... troops reserved their fire, until the column was within fifty yards of them. Then they poured in a withering volley, and charged. The column fell back in disorder. General Floyd at once charged them, with five regiments of cavalry, sabred great numbers of them, and drove the remainder back in headlong rout. The whole British line then ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... I wept in manhood upon the grave, as I had in infancy upon the bosom, of my mother. Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother's tenderness while living! how heedless are we in youth of all her anxieties and kindness! But when she is dead and gone; when the cares and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts; when we find how hard it is to find true sympathy;—how few love us for ourselves; how few will befriend us in our misfortunes—then it is that we think of the mother we have lost. It is true I had always loved my mother, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... forces gives the historian an opportunity of dropping a withering sneer at an unfortunate man, so provincial in his notions as to suppose that a hundred pounds or two would be of any ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a vakeel, that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or round the factory to ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... graces to the throng displayed. Winona came the last, but as she stept Into the mystic ring one word, "Beware!" Rang out in such a tone of high command That all was still, and every look was turned To where the Raven stood; his stern eye burned, And like a flower beneath that withering glare She faded fast. No need that heavy hand To lead Winona from the joyous band; No need those shameful words that stained the air: "Let not the sacred circle be defiled By one who, all too easily beguiled, Beneath her bosom bears ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... civilization, on many more complex and civilized men she exerts an attraction of an almost reverse kind. She appeals by her fresh and natural coarseness, her frank familiarity with the crudest facts of life; and so lifts them for a moment out of the withering atmosphere of artificial thought and unreal sentiment in which so many civilized persons are compelled to spend the greater part of their lives. They feel in the words which the royal friend of a woman of this temperament is said to have used in explaining ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Quentyns—he turned round now and looked at his wife; his face was very cold, its expression carefully veiled. He was intensely anxious not to show even a trace of ill-temper. His words were guarded. "Is that your final decision, Hilda?" he said, and there was a fine withering sort of sarcasm in his voice. "Do you mean seriously to desert the husband you married not three months ago for the sake of a child's whim? Is that the way you ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... never been fully portrayed. No pencil is black enough to paint the picture and do it full justice. No tongue is eloquent enough to tell the sad, sad story in all its details. It has so spread itself as to compel us to style it a wide and verily a withering curse. It is the parent of many physical disorders, that begin with bleared eyes, a blistered tongue, general derangement of the stomach, paralysis of the nerves, and hardening of the liver; and to so great an extent it poisons the blood as to cause coagulation of the brain. ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... dangling from a short pole, fastened above the door. If Benedetta knew anything of the proverb that "good wine needs no bush," she had not sufficient faith in the contents of her own casks to trust to their reputation; for this bush of hers was as regularly renewed as its withering leaves required. Indeed, it was a common remark among her customers, that her bush was always as fresh as her face, and that the latter was one of the most comely that was to be met with on the island; a circumstance ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... but perforce (for what else could he do in the grasp of a man of twice his power?), to a brilliant and convincing summary of his character, terminating in a withering sketch of his personal ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... shudder on hearing M. Leroux exclaim, "There is neither a paradise nor a hell; the wicked will not be punished, nor the good rewarded. Mortals! cease to hope and fear; you revolve in a circle of appearances; humanity is an immortal tree, whose branches, withering one after another, feed with their debris the root which is always young!" Where is the man who, on hearing this desolate confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that I am only an aggregate of elements ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... his face into a very grave and confidential twist, when Mrs. Paget's equerry, the young gentleman before mentioned, offered his arm, and, giving Frank a withering look, warned the lady ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... those useless, personal prejudices, and galling hatreds against conspicuous sinners, not Sin—which so widely prevail among men of warped understandings and unchristian and uncharitable hearts. No; the superstitions and dogmas concerning Sin had not laid their withering maxims upon our hearts. We perceived how that evil was but good disguised, and a knave a saint in his way; how that in other planets, perhaps, what we deem wrong, may there be deemed right; even ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... unreachable superiority—in its completeness as a whole—that is not to be disturbed. Her delivery of 'Casta Diva' is a transcendent effort of vocalization. In the scene where she discovers the treachery of Pollio, and discharges upon his guilty head a torrent of withering and indignant reproof, she exhibits a power, bordering on the sublime, which belongs exclusively to her, giving to the character of the insulted priestess a dramatic importance which would be remarkable ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... was taken, and greater part of the day (except the time passed in the little Temple) was spent. Large branches of the palm and cedar, the willow, acacia, and the oak, cut so as to prevent their withering for the seven days, formed the walls of the tent; their leaves intermingling over head, so as to form a shelter, and yet permit the beautiful blue of the heavens to peep within. Flowers of every shade and scent formed a bordering within; and ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... were shouting themselves hoarse, while the red emblem of terror still waved lazily from the top of the barricade. The men manning the improvised defence kept up a withering fire upon the troops, who, in the open road, were afforded no cover. Time after time the place shook as those terrible bombs exploded with awful result, for the yellow-haired girl seemed to keep up a continuous supply of them. They were only seven ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... feelings by a strong nature, and yet can not hide that consuming passion which underlies all the words, and makes them burn with intensest heat. Here the hot fire of his indignation seemed to be expressed in a blighting and withering power; and Hilda shrank within herself involuntarily in fear, trembling at ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the difficulties—mud, disease, prejudice, famine—through which the writer brought her charge triumphantly to safety, and you will be inclined, with me, to throw your critical cap into the air and thank Heaven for such women of our race, which would be to invite, not unsuccessfully, some withering snub from the very lady you were endeavouring to praise. But that can't be helped. Meantime of her exploit and the book that recounts it I can sum up my verdict in the only Serbian that I have gleaned from its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... there, high crevices unstopped and widening every day, beams mouldering and tending downward. The Blind Girl never knew that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling off; the size, and shape, and true proportion of the dwelling, withering away. The Blind Girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board; that sorrow and faint-heartedness were in the house; that Caleb's scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... is unnecessary: I shall do it myself," said her father, with the same dryness of tone that always made Lesley feel as if she were withering ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... continuing and exaggerating the work of absolute monarchy; in preparing for a community of officials and administrators; in lowering the level of humanity; in reducing to sloth and brutalizing or blighting the elite of the families which maintain or raise themselves; and in withering the most precious of nurseries, that in which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dry, like sand she thought, and her mind felt dry too, as if insomnia was withering it up. She opened her lips to breathe in the salt freshness ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... who, forsworn, hath yielded up That promise to the deadly cup, And led her down from love and light, From all that made her pathway bright, And chained her there 'mid want and strife, That lowly thing,—a drunkard's wife! And stamped on childhood's brow so mild, That withering blight, a ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... detail, and trying the conclusions that had been drawn therefrom by the most rigorous and searching logic,—and then, assailing the credibility of the testimony brought forward to prove the habitual cruelty of his client, he gave utterance to a withering torrent of invective and sarcasm, in which the character of the main hostile witness shrivelled and blackened like paper in a flame. Then—having been eight hours on his feet—he began to avail himself of that last dangerous resource which genius only may use,—the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... dress appear luminous. Small and dainty, as if radiating a light of her own in the deep shade of the interlaced boughs, she resembled a good fairy, weary with a long career of well-doing, touched by the withering suspicion of the uselessness of her labours, the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... along the footboard, collecting tickets and identifying passengers. He was generally in fine trim on the way up, and took ample revenge for the insults of the departure. But it was supposed that Peter had taken Drumsheugh's withering sarcasm to heart, for he attached himself to the second that night, and was invisible to the expectant ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... that independent observers were beginning to bring out the same or similar facts. Mrs. Treat, of New Jersey, noticed the habitual infolding of the leaf in the longer-leaved species of sundew (American Journal of Science for November, 1871), as was then thought for the first time—Roth's and Withering's observations not having been looked up. In recording this, the next year, in a very little book, entitled "How Plants Behave," the opportunity was taken to mention, in the briefest way, the capital discovery of Mr. Darwin that the leaves of Drosera act differently ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the tent was drawn aside, and the huge form of Antiochus appeared, followed by the Queen's slave, her head bent down and eyes cast upon the ground. If a look could have killed, the first glance of Zenobia, so full of a withering contempt, would have destroyed her base kinsman. He heeded it but so much as to blush and turn away his face from her. Upon Sindarina the Queen gazed with a look of deepest sorrow. The beautiful slave stood there where she entered, not lifting her head, but her bosom rising and falling with ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... blighted face Wears desolation's withering trace; Long shall my memory retain Thy shattered huts and trampled grain, With every mark of martial wrong, That scathe thy towers, fair Hougomont! Yet though thy garden's green arcade The marksman's fatal post was made, Though on thy shattered beeches fell The blended rage of shot ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... telegraphy of their glances, than sit in a theatre or read an interesting book; but it is when they are active in war that the one privileged to observe them gets his real treat, always provided he can dodge the rain of blazing sparks and the withering hail of wrath that pours out on the offender. To watch them then requires real nerve, for it is only a nimble, stout-hearted, mail-covered individual that can sustain ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... whom friendship would be given but in kindly pity; to whom love—that blissful dream in which she had of late indulged—would be denied for evermore. How hard seemed her doom! If it were for months only, or even years; but, to bear for a whole life this withering ban—never to be freed from it, except through death! And her lips unconsciously repeated the bitter murmur, "O God! why hast ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... until the night of this last awful day, that a withering sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than the dim probability of dying so soon. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... not for the rejuvenating vitality poured into it by the youth it cynically despises? True wisdom, indeed, springs from the wide brain which is fed from the deep heart; and it is only when age warms its withering conceptions at the memory of its youthful fire, when it makes experience serve aspiration, and knowledge illumine the difficult paths through which thoughts thread their way into facts,—it is only then that age becomes broadly and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the body over again, And said, while he rose upright, "May the brand of Cain, with its withering stain, On the murderer's forehead light, For he never was slain on the open plain, Nor yet in the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning, not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitually unites the absolutely local and individual with the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... notwithstanding, and she knew it, and sickened under it as under an evil influence. He was very angry with her—she was fully conscious of that—unjustifiably, unreasonably angry. More than once, when Mr. Granger was especially attentive, she had encountered a withering glance from those dark gray eyes, and she had been weak enough, wicked enough perhaps, to try and make him perceive that Mr. Granger's attentions were in no way pleasant to her. She could bear anything better than that he should think her capable of courting this man's admiration. She ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... no doubt from consideration, they seemed to be much forgotten. The family was like an old thistle-head, withering on its wintry stalk, alone in a wind-swept field. All the summer through not a single visitor, friend or stranger, had slept in the house. A fresh face was more of a wonder to Cosmo than to desert-haunting Abraham. The human heart, like the human body, can live without much ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... nature; the pope might canonize them, and the priesthood bow submissively to their spiritual guidance, still they remained for all that but mortals of dust and clay, and their bulky tomes yet retain the swarthiness of the tomb about them, the withering impress of humanity. Such being the case we, who do not regard them quite so infallible, feel no surprise at a circumstance which sorely perplexed the monks of old, they unchained and unclasped their cumbrous "Works of the Fathers," and pored over those massy expositions ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the withering hand Of bigot power is on that hapless land; While, for the faith my fathers held to God, Even in the fields where free those fathers trod, I am proscribed, and—like the spot left bare In Israel's halls, to tell the proud ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of nearly twelve feet. Captain Dall applied a match to the tarry pieces of the long-boat, which had been placed at the foundation, and the flames at once leaped up and began to lick greedily round the timber, winding through the interstices and withering up the leaves. Soon a thick smoke began to ascend, for much of the timber in the pile was green, and before the sun had set a dense black cloud was rising straight up like a pillar and spreading out into the sky. As the fire gathered strength, a great tongue of flame ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... Chesnel, no one but you would think of such a thing!" she added, with a withering look; before such a look from a woman's eyes no mortal can stand. "There is but one crime that a noble can commit—the crime of high treason; and when he is beheaded, the block is covered with a black cloth, as ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... was one of those Spring evenings which you could not tell from an Autumn one except for a certain something in the air appealing to an undefined sense—rather that of smell than any other. There were green buds and not withering leaves in it—life and not death; and the voices of the gathering guests were of the season, and pleasant to the soul. Of course Nature did not then affect me so definitely as to make me give forms of thought to her influences. It is now first that ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... the story of the two brothers in Central America who, starting on their dangerous journey to the land of Xibalba, where their father had perished, plant each a cane in the middle of their grandmother's house, that she may know by its flourishing or withering whether they are alive or dead. Exactly the same conception occurs in Grimm's "Maehrchen," when the two gold-children wish to see the world and to leave their father; and when their father is sad, and asks them how he shall bear news of them, they tell him, "We leave you the two ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... time for the arrival of re-enforcements which came not, he led the charge. The attack was disordered by the uneven ground, the fences and the ravines; and it was broken by the granite front of the English (three-fourths of them Americans) and their long-reserved and withering fire. The undisciplined Canadians flinched from that certain death; and Wolfe, advancing on them with his grenadiers, saw them melt away before the cold steel could reach them. The two leaders faced each other, both equally undaunted and alert; it was like ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... her glittering toilette apparatus lay about on the marble dressing-table. The atmosphere of the room was almost oppressive for the rich odors of perfumes in bottles whose gold stoppers had not been replaced. A bunch of hot-house flowers was withering upon a tiny writing-table. Two or three handsome dresses lay in a heap upon the ground, and the open doors of a wardrobe revealed the treasures within. Jewelry, ivory-backed hair-brushes, and exquisite china ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... from one to another of the rest with a withering scorn.] Ha! Now you think you have conquered, do you? No, I'm not going to stay! Do you think your vile slander could influence me to give up my work? And neither shall you influence the life of my son. I leave him here. I must. But not to your tender mercies. No, no! Thank ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... Losses, misfortunes, poverty, want itself had overwhelmed them; his father's temper had become so soured, that the oldest friends of Francois Sarzeau declared he was changed beyond recognition. And now, all this past misfortune—the steady, withering, household blight of many years—had ended in the last, worst misery of all—in death. The fate of his father and his brother admitted no longer of a doubt; he knew it, as he listened to the storm, as he reflected ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Mrs. Harper cast a withering look of contempt at her husband, folded her arms and leaned back in her chair, more puzzled than ever at his ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... the atmosphere sometimes; sometimes a subdued, gray light is diffused everywhere. In the country, there is often, on these afternoons, a remarkable stillness in the air, amid which you can hear a withering leaf rustling down. I will not think that the time of bare branches and brown grass is so very near as yet; Nature is indeed decaying, but now we have decay only in its beautiful stage, wherein it is pensive, but not ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... from the wonderful tales which he relates! Niobe at the head of the canal, changing into stone! To be sure we should want a rock there. Then on one side Narcissus, gazing at himself in the clear pool, with poor Echo withering away in the grove behind! King Cygnus, in the very act of being metamorphosed into a swan, on the other! It would be so apropos, you know; a swan, and a canal, and king Cygnus! And then at the further end Daphne, with her arms and legs sprouting ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... vapid vacuity of the last years of my aunt Siddons's life had made a profound impression upon me,—her apparent deadness and indifference to everything, which I attributed (unjustly, perhaps) less to her advanced age and impaired powers than to what I supposed the withering and drying influence of the overstimulating atmosphere of emotion, excitement, and admiration in which she had passed her life; certain it is that such was my dread of the effect of my profession upon me, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... saw the rugged mountain start to life with armed men! Like a tempest down the ridges swept the hurricane of steel, Rose the slogan of Macdonald—flash'd the broadsword of Lochiel! Vainly sped the withering volley 'mongst the foremost of our band, On we pour'd until we met them, foot to foot, and hand to hand. Horse and man went down like drift-wood, when the floods are black at Yule, And their carcasses are whirling in the Garry's deepest pool. Horse and man went down before us—living ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... of color in the leaves at a time when they should be perfectly green indicates that the tree is not growing under normal conditions, possibly because of an insufficiency of moisture or light or an overdose of foreign gases or salts. Withering of the leaves is another sign of irregularity in water supply. Dead tops point to some difficulty in the soil conditions or to some disease of the roots or branches. Spotted leaves and mushroom-like growths or brackets protruding from ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... nectarine or apple on a tree stung in a single day; and in South Jersey the curculio has proved victorious in the struggle with man. Every year we see these trees white with blossoms, and as regularly every specimen of the fruit bearing the plague-spot—a tiny crescent-shaped wound in the cuticle—withering, fading and falling. We painfully gather up this fallen fruit by the bushel, burn it to destroy the grub of the curculio, and, hoping against hope, witness the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... that kills a' ither things, His withering touch 'twill brave, 'Twill live in joy, 'twill live in grief, 'Twill live beyond the grave! 'Twill live, 'twill live, though buried deep, In true heart's memorie— Oh! we forgot that ane sae fair, Sae bricht, sae young, could ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the wood, the general had enjoined his men to charge without a halt, in double time, and without firing. "Had these orders," says General Law, "not been strictly obeyed the assault would have been a failure. No troops could have stood long under the withering storm of lead and iron that beat in their faces as they became fully exposed to view from the Federal line."* (* Battles and Leaders volume 2 page 363.) The assault was met with a courage that was equally admirable.* (* "The Confederates ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... houses. On this day, however, their work of destruction was stopped. By the evening of the day, probably not finding sufficient drink in the cellars of the Dissenters, they had begun to break open and to destroy the houses of churchmen. They were busy in breaking open the house of Dr. Withering, at some distance from the town, when the words "light horse" sounded in their ears, and the whole mob melted away as if by magic; when the light-horse appeared, not a shadow of them could be found. In fact, the mob ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts of the heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes;—this nature bade not,—this ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... whose very life was bound up in his, his manner had in it a reserve that chilled her heart as if an icy hand had been laid upon it. She asked for no explanation of the change; but, as he grew colder, she shrunk more and more into herself, like a flower folding its withering leaves when touched by ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... odor and rustle at my back, That, silenced by my advent, finds once more, After an interval, his instrument, And tries once—twice—and thrice if I be there; And on the worn book of old-golden song I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold And freshen in this air of withering sweetness; But on the memory of one absent most, For whom these lines when they ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... can't tell whether it mayn't be so. Anne, dear, you've got such a nice, pretty body, why have you such a withering contempt for it? It behaves so well to you, too. That's more than I can say of mine; and yet, I believe I shall quite miss it when it's gone. At any rate, I shall be glad that I was decent to the poor thing ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... the Brussels carpet, and even the oilcloth around the toilette-table was remembered. They saw that the round table was covered with a red tablecloth, and that writing materials were there, a pair of stays, a pair of tan gloves, and some withering flowers. They saw the ball-dress that Lady Helen had worn thrown over the arm-chair; the silk stockings, the satin shoes—and a gleam of sunlight that found its way between the blinds fell upon a piece of white petticoat. Lady Helen lay in the bed, thrown back ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... head since I saw him last? The face that tried to smile at us from the pillow was strangely wizened and old. It was as though a withering blight had touched it. Only the eyes were the same. They glowed in the sunken face, beneath the shock of black hair, with a startling luster ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... followed. A parent warns his child of the ill effects that may be expected from the line of behaviour he is taking, and when those effects are realised, he says, "Well, what did I tell you?" and adds a grunt of withering contempt. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... and Isle of Foulness (rented in part by two of my credible parishioners, who attested it, having paid dear for the truth thereof); when an army of mice, nesting in ant-hills, as conies in burrows, shaved off the grass at the bare roots, which, withering to dung, was infectious to cattle. The March following, numberless flocks of owls from all parts flew thither, and destroyed them, which otherwise had ruined the country, if continuing another year. Thus, though great the distance betwixt a man and a mouse, the meanest ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... drains national resources to support standing armies, how it mocks all enterprises which do not receive imperial approbation, how everything is concentrated to reflect the glory of one man or family; how impossible, under its withering shade, is manly independence, or the free expression of opinions or healthy growth; how it buries up, under its armies, discontents and aspirations alike, and creates nothing but machinery which must ultimately ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... by our sins for judgment,—visible draughts and prognostics of it were to be read upon the condition and frame of all spirits and people, and then did our iniquities raise the storm of thy indignation, and that, like a whirlwind, hath blown the withering leaves off the tree, hath driven us out of our own land, and scattered us among strangers. Sin and uncleanness and the filthiness of our righteousness prepared us for the storm, made us light matter that could resist ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... end as the hotel-keeping ended. Wastefulness, cheap luxury, tawdry living, took the place of the old, frugal, simple life. But the mother went about with that unchanging sweetness of face, and a body withering about a fretted soul. She had no bitterness, only a miserable distress. But every slight that was put upon her, every change, every new-fangled idea, from the white sugar to the scented soap and the yellow buggy, rankled in the old man's heart. He had resentment both ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... weather closed in, in the summer of 1604, the malaria in the Tower began to affect Raleigh's health. As he tells Cecil, now Lord Cranborne, in a most dolorous letter, he was withering in body and mind. The plague had come close to him, his son having lain a fortnight with only a paper wall between him and a woman whose child was dying of that terrible complaint. Lady Raleigh, at last, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... willing to take its place beside Buddha under his Bo tree, and share the lowliness of his followers. This may be rather hard after the rapid success of Theosophy in India, where in four years from its foundation (1879) it counted seventy-seven flourishing branches; but these are withering away under the Blavatsky scandals, and if Theosophy is to live it must "take refuge ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... horrible task they did was when they hauled eighty poor French boys out to be shot for mutiny! Spies in Paris, working through the mistresses of the department heads, the sad strain of war upon the French economic resources, and the withering hand of winter upon the heart of France had achieved all but a victory for the forces of evil in ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... whereas he might hear and apprehend what they said, unseen of them, and heard one say to the other, "Listen, O my brother, to what my sire told me yesternight of the calamity which hath betided him in the withering of his crops before their time, by reason of the rarity of rain and the sore sorrow that is fallen on this city." Quoth the other, "Wottest thou not the cause of this affliction?"; and quoth the first, "No! and, if thou ken it pray tell it me." Rejoined the other, "Yes, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... fighting it and winning out. Heads that had drooped in discouragement were raised. The cattle keep increased, and with it came the farmer's wealth. Marl changes the character of the heath soil; with manure to fertilize it there was no reason why it should not grow crops—none, except the withering blast of the west wind. The time for Dalgas to preach tree ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... pipe-bowl glowing and blackening in time to his pulling at it, smoked on alone in the dusk. In the nibbling, iterative way of the old, he started a kind of reflection; but it was as if a harmattan had blown along the usual courses of his thought, drying up his little brooklet of recollection and withering the old aquatic star-flowers that grew along its banks. His mind, in its meandering among old images, groped, paused, fell pensive. His head sank lower between his shoulders, and the shoulders eased back against the wall behind his bench. When Jim ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... wife's criminal shapelessness and voluminousness of antediluvian, New-England swimming dress with a withering, contemplative eye. They had been married a sufficient number of years for him frankly ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... battle was already joined. The Spaniard had fired one single hasty shot which had gone wide, and now one of the corsair's grappling-irons had seized her on the larboard quarter, a withering hail of arrows was pouring down upon her decks from the Muslim crosstrees; up her sides crowded the eager Moors, ever most eager when it was a question of tackling the Spanish dogs who had driven them from their Andalusian Caliphate. Under her quarter sped ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... in her womanly dignity, Eve gave Cerizet a withering look and went upstairs again. At dinner-time she ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the sentence. I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,—"beauty, after all, as you didn't say just now.—Mr. Willoughby is in the garden. I must go before he comes in, or he'll make me stay. There are some to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... imagined his own funeral: he, the injured husband, lies in his coffin with a gentle smile on his lips, and she, pale, tortured by remorse, follows the coffin like a Niobe, not knowing where to hide herself to escape from the withering, contemptuous looks cast upon ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... question that civilization achieved most splendid triumphs, even under the influence of pagan institutions. But it was not paganism which achieved these victories; it was the will and the reason of a noble race, in spite of its withering effects. It was the proud reason of man which soared to such lofty heights, and attempted to secure happiness and prosperity. These great ends were measurably attained, and a self-sufficient philosopher might have pointed to these victories as both glorious and permanent. When the eyes of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... held an opinion, not altogether unfounded in human experience, that in course of time, when quite deserted by Patty Baxter, his heart might possibly be caught on the rebound. It was only a chance, but Lucy would almost have preferred remaining unmarried, even to the withering age of twenty-five, rather than not be at liberty to accept Philip Perry in case she ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... entered, fanning his hot brow. The leaves, on high, rustled like falling rain. The elms tossed their branches, striking one another in blind confusion. The long grass whispered as the breeze stirred it like the surface of an inland lake. Withering flowers gave up their last perfume, while a storm-cloud fled wildly across the heavens. Some of the restlessness of the external world disturbed that silent dark figure at the window; within him, conflicting passions jarred like ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... bud of her, pore of her?— don't call these things, kisses— mouth-kisses, hand-kisses, elbow, knee and toe, and let it go at that— disappear and promise what you'll never perform: we've known you to slink away until drought-time, drooping-time, withering-time: we've caught you crawling off into winter-time, try to cover what you've done with a long white scarf— your own frozen tears (likely phrase!) and lilt your, I'll be back in spring! Next spring, and you know it, she won't be the same, though she may look the same to you from ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... the mother curse of the ages. No man suffering from her withering, blighting touch can be in harmony with the best. Socialism tackles the master job of abolishing it. Not by any fantastic plan of redistribution but by giving to the creator all that he creates and to the social charges, pensioners and cripples an assurance of life ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... upon mules for the habitation of the planter. The sun had illumined the sky, but had not yet made his appearance, although the golden fringes upon the clouds, which floated in broad belts in the horizon, indicated his glorious yet withering approach. The dew moistened each leaf, or hung in glittering pendant drops upon the thorn of the prickly pears which lined the roads. The web of the silver-banded spider was extended between the bushes, and, saturated with moisture, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... finally drew out a goatskin bag. Hillyard, like other Englishmen, had been brought up in a creed which included the inefficiency of all Postmasters-general. A blight fell upon such persons, withering their qualities and shrivelling them into the meanest caricatures of bureaucrats. It could not be that the postal service was now to reveal resource and become the servant of romance. Yet the Arab drew forth a sealed envelope and handed it to Hillyard. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... The withering storm of bullets poured from the three magazines had no more effect in checking the dacoit rush than if the bullets had been drops of rain. The men actually struck dropped, of course, but their comrades were not in the least terrified by their fall. The short, broad, powerful figures rushed ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... was surely no one else's business to say a dissenting word. Percival might go home and lecture his own wife if he liked. 'It is a pity you and Gage are so worldly,' she said, in what was meant to be a withering tone. Audrey had never been so near ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... They appear in most cases to have been brought into action by the impulse of private malice. They occasioned mortality of greater or less extent in man and beast. They blighted the opening prospect of a plentiful harvest. They covered the heavens with clouds, and sent abroad withering and malignant blasts. They undermined the health of those who were so unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were notorious two or three centuries ago for ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my imagination I commanded rain to fall; and by comparing the time of my ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... appointment of Providence, to the highest eminence.—EVE was accessary to the ruin of man—MARY instrumental in the birth of him who came as the Restorer and Saviour of mankind—EVE beheld the fatal curse first take effect, in overcasting the heavens with clouds, in withering the blossoms of paradise, envenoming the spirit of the animal creation, disordering the human frame, and ultimately destroying it, and introducing all the nameless diversities of wo which fill up the tragedy of human life.—MARY ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... be a thousand times happier than we in civilized society who seek fortune and satisfy our caprices, our follies, in the midst of excitement and strong emotions, living in a continual fever of suspicion, jealousy and envy, accumulating perhaps riches but withering up the soul which cannot enjoy even for a day the supreme ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... entered the same door almost as hastily, but she was a stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such a withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of the Seven Arts slunk out and could be ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... would be; and there is a scene in which the royal birth of the "Red Eagle" is spoken of without concealment, and in which the admiral begs his "foster son" not to destroy, by such a marriage, the last hope that was withering on his father's foreign tomb. In his will Admiral Allen bequeathed his whole fortune to his eldest son, and only left a legacy of L100 to Thomas; so that it may reasonably be inferred that his displeasure had ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... of election arrived. It was no longer an individual struggle, but a party contest between the ins and outs. The question was, whether the withering influence of the overseers, the domination of the churchwardens, and the blighting despotism of the vestry-clerk, should be allowed to render the election of beadle a form—a nullity: whether they should ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... far better than that calm and withering heat—this rouses me," said Amine, as she cast her eyes up, and watched the forked lightning till her vision became obscured. "Yes, this is as it should be. Lightning, strike me if you please—waves wash me off and bury me in a briny tomb—pour the wrath of the whole elements upon this devoted ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... This will be an improvement upon my old reading of the part. She must be always merry and by turns scornful, tormenting, vexed, self-communing, absent, melting, teasing, brilliant, indignant, sad-merry, thoughtful, withering, gentle, humorous, and gay, Gay, Gay! Protecting (to Hero), motherly, very intellectual—a gallant creature and complete in mind ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... the country in ruin and desolation. Nor is this the only instance of the effect of free institutions on the Spanish race. In Old Spain the same experiment has been tried, and has produced the same result. Under their withering effect, the empire of Spain and the Indies has passed away; the mother country, torn by internal dissensions, has fallen from her proud estate, and can with difficulty drag on a precarious existence amidst all the tumult and blood of incessant revolutions. How long will it be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... A molten globe dropped through the branches of the poplar, and striking the hard surface of the road at a distance of fifty yards scattered itself like a huge ingot dropped from a blast furnace. Great clouds of dust descended and choked him. A withering heat enveloped him.... ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... insupportable. There was a certain moisture and softness about the high temperature at Colombo, which we had experienced a month before; while here there was a dry, burning directness of the sun's power which was absolutely withering. As we passed over the road, swayed hither and thither upon the backs of the huge animals, it was amusing to watch the gambols of the wild monkeys in the trees, and to observe the flocks of wild peacocks in the open fields, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... their full strength, the Indians, comprehending how small was the number, made a desperate charge from two sides, getting so near us that several of the soldiers were badly wounded by arrows. But the Indians were received with such a withering fire that they fell back in confusion, leaving twenty of their warriors on the ground. Another charge resulted like the first, with heavy loss to the redskins, which so discouraged them that they drew off and held a protracted council. After discussing ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... may be driven by bitter wrong into transcendencies of wrath and scorn. "Ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you." The old desert-prince will not succumb even in his worst extremity, and he lashes his tormentors with wild but strong bursts of withering satire. But Job was down, and his cool friends went on imperturbably, probing his weakness, sneering at his excuses, and, I suspect, rejoicing not a little in his wild outbreaks of pain and despair. The ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... company felt that way about it, for Dane was not popular. She gave no handle for an active grievance, to be sure. She wasn't superior in the sense in which Dolly used the word. She didn't look haughty nor say withering things to people, nor tell passionately-believed stories designed to convince her hearers that her rightful place in the world was immensely higher than the one she now occupied. One didn't hear her exclaiming under some bit of managerial tyranny, that ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... (p. 11.) The hopelessly corrupt moral state of the youthful Colossus, described with such sickening force and power by the great Apostle in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, cannot have occurred to Dr. Temple's remembrance, for he says nothing about it. Certain withering denunciations of "a wicked and adulterous generation[24];"—of "adulterers and adulteresses[25];"—"serpents," a "generation of vipers," which should hardly "escape the damnation of Hell[26];"—ought to have reached him with a reproachful echo; but he is silent about ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... he asked lightly. 'It ruins a complexion no less than before. Or does a complexion cease to count? Look!' He leaned forward. A pink carnation was in a glass in front of him, already withering from the heat. He touched the faded tips of the petals. 'That is the colour which conies ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... reluctant to abandon the hopes to which it had given birth, at the very moment they were plotting to obtain the scalp of the "medicine-man." The beloved "fire-water," that seduces so many to their destruction, who have enjoyed the advantages of moral teaching, and which has been a withering curse on the red man of this continent, still had its influence; and the craving appetites of several of the drunkards of the party brought them to the spot, as soon as their eyes opened on the new day. The bee-hunter could see some of this cluster kneeling on ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... the delightful phenomena which are observable at the commencement of the rainy season, (immediately following that of the withering hot winds,) the joy displayed by the peacocks is one of the most pleasing. These birds assemble in groups upon some retired spot of verdant grass; jump about in the most animated manner, and make the air re-echo with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... settlements; that her ports and rivers, instead of affording a shelter to the extensive commerce of China, should at this enlightened period of the world hold out only terror and dismay to the mariner; and that all that she should have acquired from the deadly vicinage and withering grasp of Dutch power and dominion has been the art of more speedily destroying each other, and rendering themselves obnoxious to the rest of mankind. Now that her destinies are transferred to the enlightened heads and liberal hearts of Englishmen,—now that her fortunes are embarked under ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
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