"Dwindling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sighted them lying up among the rocks, and leaped after them. Penrun jerked up a pistol with trembling fingers and loosed its deadly ray. The huge spider stumbled and ploughed head-on among the rocks with a flurry of legs. It rose loggily, for its fierce energy was dwindling rapidly in the biting cold. Again the pistol crackled. The gigantic insect toppled over and rolled down the mountainside into ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat
... subsequently heard that our conquering troops were held back before a barricade actually composed of cornstalks and straw. Another opportunity was given us, and lasted during a whole winter, during which the dwindling and dismayed troops of Congress lay starving and unarmed under our grasp, and the magnanimous Mr. Howe left the famous camp of Valley Forge untouched, whilst his great, brave, and perfectly appointed army fiddled ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stand apart. That moment was over, and now he had bidden his wife good-by and was riding through the cold gray mist to do his weary, hopeless best for an obstinate, foolish, impracticable king, and to put some heart, if it were possible, into a dwindling handful of unprincipled, self-seeking, double-minded men. The day was full of omens, and they were all against him. Twice a hare ran across the road, and Grimond muttered to himself as he rode behind his master, "The ill-faured beast." As they passed through Glenfarg, a raven followed them ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... Plough Works were dry and dwindling when Stanley's father, seeking an opening for his son, put him and money into them. From that moment they had never looked back, and now brought Stanley, the sole proprietor, an income of full fifteen thousand pounds a year. He wanted it. For Clara, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... me—not from me," Richard repeated, but the power which had upheld him was dwindling fast. He knew, knew beyond question that in a few more moments the truth would be shaken out of him unless he could devise some means of slackening the strain. And ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... in his near approach to death, and with his earthly interest dwindling, Sir John had looked matters frankly in the face, and had been driven to the conclusion—a conclusion impossible to him in normal health—that he had got no more than he deserved. He realized that he had acted unworthily, if unconscious at the time of the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... 25, 1781, that Lord North got this news, taking it "as he would have taken a ball in his breast." He recognized at once that "all was over," yet for a short time longer he retained the management of affairs. But his majority in Parliament was steadily dwindling, and evidently with him also "all was over." In his despair he caught with almost pathetic eagerness at what for a moment seemed a chance to save his ministry by treating with the States secretly and ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... marshes with brown dots that were his cattle straying over them, and beyond these the home landing and the masts of the Golden Rose. The sun was near its setting; the men had left the fields; over all things were the stillness and peace, the encroaching shadows, the dwindling light, so golden in its quality, of late afternoon. When he crossed the bridge over the creek, the hollow sound that the boards gave forth beneath his horse's hoofs had the depth and resonance of drumbeats, and the cry of ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... wild pigeon, the pearl-bearing molluscs may be greatly diminished in numbers or even exterminated by the greed of man and his fearfully destructive methods of harvesting nature's productions. In fact, the fisheries have been dwindling in yield for some time, and most of the fine pearls that are marketed are old pearls, already drilled, from the treasuries of Eastern potentates, who have been forced by necessity to accept the high prices offered by the West for part of their treasures. In India, pearls ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... also depart. The night is fresh, silent, exquisite, the eternal song of the cicalas fills the air. We can still see the red lanterns of my new family, dwindling away in the distance, as they descend and gradually become lost in that yawning abyss, at the bottom of which ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... the doctor took his fee, gave the Captain's hand a cordial grip, expressive of sympathy and kindliness, and went his way, feeling assured that a good deal hung upon that little life which he had left slowly ebbing away, like a narrow rivulet dwindling into dryness ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... last of the dwindling pines behind, and pushed on along a slope that was strewn with shattered rock and debris which made walking arduous. Then they reached a scarp of rock ground smooth by the slipping down of melting snow, and when they had crossed that ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... prevented him from catching stray glimpses of his patent-leathered toes. Little BEN was not made for the country, that was certain. A life of Clubs and dinner-parties would have suited him to perfection. In his Club he could always pose before a select and, it must be added, a dwindling circle as a man of influence. "There is no Club, however watched and tended, but one dread bore is there." BEN might have developed into a prime bore, but as he was plentifully supplied with money and had a good cook and a pleasant wife, he would always ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... next come to Saturn. It is nearly as large as Jupiter, and has a huge ring of planetary matter revolving round it in addition to seven moons. Further and further we go, and the planets behind us are disappearing, and even the Sun is dwindling down to a mere speck; still we hurry on, and at last alight on another planet, Uranus, about sixty times larger than our Earth; we see moons in attendance, but they have scarcely any light to reflect; the Sun is only a star now; but we must hasten on deeper ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... was that they would move that day, and, without a word, he left his family in suspense. In the course of the forenoon he returned with a furniture van, and had so braced himself with opium that he was able to assist effectively, yet morosely, in the packing and removing of their fast-dwindling effects, for everything not essential had been sold. His wife and daughter did not remonstrate—they were too dispirited for that—but in dreary apathy did his bidding as far as their strength permitted, feeling meanwhile that any change could ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Good-bye!" He gave a tchk of the tongue, shook his reins, saluted with his whip; in true coachman's style, and away he went, taking the curve out of the square in a workmanlike fashion that fetched a cheer from the crowd. We heard the dwindling roar of the wheels upon the cobblestones until they died ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... after on that pious aspiration of her grandfather's old friend, but the ache and tedium of life did not return upon her. Her sense of duty and natural affection were very strong. She told herself that if it were her lot to watch for many years beside this dwindling flame, it was a lot of God's giving, not of her own seeking, and therefore good. The letters that came to her from Beechhurst and Caen breathed nothing but encouragement to love and patience, and Harry Musgrave's letters were a perpetual fount ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... forefathers, and a great deal wiser! "Such a craze, however, is too widely diffused, and falls in with too obstinate a preconception [17] in the human race, which has in every age hypochondriacally regarded itself as under some fatal necessity of dwindling, much to have challenged public attention. As real paradoxes (spite of the idle meaning attached usually to the word paradox) have often no falsehood in them, so here, on the contrary, was a falsehood which had in it nothing paradoxical. It contradicted all the indications of history and experience, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... large number of his most serious and affecting lyrics, most gravely perhaps in "The To-be-Forgotten" and in "The Superseded." This sense of the forlorn condition of the dead, surviving only in the dwindling memory of the living, inspires what has some claims to be considered the loveliest of all Mr. Hardy's poems, "Friends Beyond," which in its tenderness, its humour, and its pathos contains in a few pages every characteristic of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... an excessive modesty, without warrant in philosophy or nature, dwindling us in this country, drying us up in the viscera? Is there not a decay—a deliberate, strange abnegation and dread—of sane sexuality, of maternity and paternity, among us, and in our literary ideals and ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... looked back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still standing in the mud. The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy. They had the weary humility of the figures in Millet's ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... colours can we trace, Lost in the mazy distance of the race Till at Salara's far-off bridge descried, Like coursing butterflies, they seem to glide; Then, dwindling farther, in the lengthening course, Mere floating specks supplant both man and horse; Till, having crossed the Columbarium gray, They swerve, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... (depth) or to depth of exploitation Territorial sea: 12 nm Disputes: none Climate: predominantly Mediterranean; Alpine in far north; hot, dry in south Terrain: mostly rugged and mountainous; some plains, coastal lowlands Natural resources: mercury, potash, marble, sulfur, dwindling natural gas and crude oil reserves, fish, coal Land use: arable land 32%; permanent crops 10%; meadows and pastures 17%; forest and woodland 22%; other 19%; includes irrigated 10% Environment: regional risks include land-slides, mudflows, snowslides, earthquakes, volcanic ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... got a better idea of the land about the river. It was sere, the vegetation dwindling except for some rough spikes of things pushing through the parched ground like flayed fingers, their puffed redness in contrast to the usual amethystine coloring of Warlock's growing things. Under the climbing sun that whole stretch of country was revealed in a stark bareness which at ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... and dangers that beset them, and the sorrows that lie lurking on every man's path. He saw more distinctly what Christ came to do; and how he did it by complete self-abnegation, and by descending to the level of the lowest. But he had no delight in standing up in his pulpit in full face of his dwindling congregation. Language seemed poor to him; and it had grown difficult to him to put his burning thoughts into words. As the bitter experience of daily life seared his very soul, he found that no smooth, fit expressions of ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... Dunbar shooting right on ahead. And all three of them dwindling and dwindling and blinking out ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton
... debated. His partisans asserted that he had been honestly deceived by some designing knave as if such child-like credulity were any excuse for a veteran journalist! His foes opined that under the cloak of a virtue, which Cato never knew, he sought to quicken his subscription list ever dwindling under the effects of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... once and without warning, Catia had swept in and dominated him completely, dominated him with her oozy layer cake, and her two sorts of lemonade, and with her Princeton grenadier of a hat. Beside it all, he felt himself dwindling into insignificance, despite the hind-side-before waistcoats of the visiting clergymen and his mother's gown of stiff black satin. It was a positive relief to him when he could turn his back upon the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Gaultier, at the ball, Ripe lips, trim boddice, and a waist so small, With clipsome lightness, dwindling ever less, Beneath the robe of pea-y greeniness? Dost thou remember, when, with stately prance, Our heads went crosswise in the country-dance; How soft, warm fingers, tipped like buds of balm, Trembled within the squeezing of thy palm; And how ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... and the ragged land leapt into full view with magical abruptness. It was as though Nature had grown her forest within the confines of a field embraced by an imaginary hedge. There were no outskirts, no dwindling away. It ended in one clean-cut line. And beyond lay the rampart hills, fringed and patched with disheveled bluff, split by rifts and yawning chasms. And ever they rose higher and higher as the distance gained, and, though summer was not yet at ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... could not make me forget that my position was still very awkward. My stock of money was dwindling, and I could not expect to live in the Admiral's house for ever; while, as long as we remained at Rochelle, Henry of Beam's generous promise was ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... thanked him and so went cheerily down the Pass. Shere Ali watched them as they went, wondering that men should take such a journey and endure so much discomfort for their faith. He watched their dwindling figures and understood how far he was set apart from them. He was of their faith himself, nominally at all events, but Mecca—? He shrugged his shoulders at the name. It meant no more to him than it did to the White People who had cast him out. But ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... juxtaposition, your sweet fraternal breath. How the Fates have since sundered us! How have you been going on, fattening and beautifying from one degree to another of poetical perfection, while I have, under the chilling shade of the Ochil Hills, been dwindling down from one degree of poetical extenuation to another, till at length I am become the very shadow and ghost of literary leanness! I should now wish to see you, and compare you as you are now with what you were in your 'Queen's Wake' days. For this purpose, I would ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... stood as high as I did. But, as I stared at it, in stupefied amazement,—as you may easily imagine,—the thing dwindled while I gazed. I did not stop to see how far the process of dwindling continued,—a stark raving madman for the nonce, I fled as if all the fiends in hell ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... receive the Review—a poor business, truly! Is there a reason for a man's wits dwindling the moment he gets into a critical High-place to hold forth?—I have only glanced over the article however. Well, one day I am to write of you, dearest, and it must come to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... mastery of himself to reply that he would think it over. As he gave no signs of life or thought, the popular composer then wrote to him at length on the subject, offering him fifty pounds for the job, half of it on account. Lancelot was in sore straits when he got the letter, for his stock of money was dwindling to vanishing point, and he dallied with the temptation sufficiently to take the letter home with him. But his spirit was not yet broken, and the letter, crumpled like a rag, was picked up by Mary Ann and straightened out, and ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... is a writer who should just now be re-emerging into his own high place in letters, for unquestionably the recent, though now dwindling, schools of severely technical and aesthetic criticism have been unfavourable to him. He was a chaotic and unequal writer, and if there is one thing in which artists have improved since his time, it is in consistency ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... richer in each generation by a new and improved father. He is born and cherished, however, by the same kind of mother, bringing to her tremendous task no new tool worthy of the time, but merely the same old dwindling, overworked "maternal instinct." ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as became an old sailor, and so, it seemed, were Miss Mavis's, for when I mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone, in the stern of the ship, her eyes on the dwindling continent. It dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted her, having had no conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of farewells before we put off; we talked a little about ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... liable to cease when it fails. They belong to the permanent, invisible order of things. Suppose one loses his body. Then there is no force whereby earth can hold its child any longer to its breast. It flies on at terrific speed, dwindling to a speck in unknown distances, and leaving the man amid infinitudes alone. But there are other attractions. There was One uplifted on a cross to draw all men unto him. Love has finer attraction for souls ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... With dwindling trunk and wolfish jaw Revolving sullen things, But most the blind unequal law That rules the food ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... guests in the park, all thoughts of festivity had faded. As summer-flies are scattered by rain, so did this congregation, late noisy and happy, in sadness and melancholy murmurs break up, dwindling away apace. With the set sun and the deepening twilight the park became nearly empty. Adrian and Ryland were still in earnest discussion. We had prepared a banquet for our guests in the lower hall of the castle; and thither Idris ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... cheerful at this point that a second postal order relieved the dwindling fortune of Spencer. And it was this, coupled with the remonstrances of Phipps, that induced the Dencroftian to break through ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of thousands of settlers, whom he should govern under the commission of the King of Spain. Gardoqui entered into the plan with enthusiasm, but obstacles and delays of all kinds were encountered, and the dwindling outcome was the emigration of a few families of frontiersmen, and the founding of a squalid hamlet named after the Iberian capital. [Footnote: Gardoqui MSS., Gardoqui to Morgan, Sept. 2, 1788. Morgan to Gardoqui, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... barracks veranda, an inquisitive little group heard first the clang of the door within, and presently the clatter of hoofs coming round from the yard. Stingaree and Howie—a white flash and a bay streak—swept past them as they stood confounded. And the dwindling pair still bobbed in sight, under a full complement of stars, when a fresh outcry from the cell, and a mighty hammering against its locked door, broke the ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... secretary) from his headquarters at Montmorenci Falls on 2nd day of September; and on the 14th of October following, the Rodney cutter arrived with the sad news in England. The attack had failed, the chief was sick, the army dwindling, the menaced city so strong that assault was almost impossible; "the only chance was to fight the Marquis of Montcalm upon terms of less disadvantage than attacking his entrenchments, and, if possible, to draw him from his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... paw their friends, and scratch their enemies. One does more of one thing and another of another, and the feet soon show the effects of the occupation, the claws first, then the muscles, and even the bones dwindling by disuse, or waxing stout and strong. Then the joy of doing what it can do well impels the beast further on the same path, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... that were valueless. There was comparatively little of the first, much of the second. Kygpton itself was a world as large as your entire solar system, with a diameter roughly of four billion miles. Our ancestors knew that Kygpton was dying, that the store of our most precious element Sthalreh was dwindling. But already our ancestors had mastered the forces of our universe, had made inventions that are beyond your understanding, had explored the limits of our universe in space-cars that were propelled by the free energies in space and by the attracting-repelling influences ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... us next trip," said Mr Mackay, as he with all of us gave Ching Wang a parting "chin chin" on the celestial cook being presently rowed ashore in great state, sitting in the stern-sheets of his sampan and beaming on us with his bland smile as long as his round face could be distinguished, dwindling away in the distance till it finally disappeared. "I'm sorry to lose him, though, sir, for he was a capital cook, besides being a plucky fellow. Recollect how he helped to save all our lives the other day, as well ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... English-speaking people of the British Empire and the United States had twenty times as much land, fit for whites, on which to grow bigger and bigger populations of their own blood under their own flags. This meant that the new, strong, and most ambitious German Empire was doomed to an ever-dwindling future as a world-power in comparison with the British Empire. The Germans could not see why they should not have as good a "place in the sun" of the white man's countries as the British, whom they now looked on very much as our ancestors looked upon the ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... had been increased by the fact that his programme of exploration had taken longer than he calculated, and now ominous snow-clouds, a rapidly dwindling food supply, and his own importunate heart, urged an immediate start for the terrible Wakhan Valley and the Darkot Pass. It meant a race for life—that he saw plainly enough. The chances were ten to one against the Pass being open after the 1st of October—the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... H.M.S. 'Paluma.' Bowen is a small town, but the harbour is spacious. The sea was rather rough, and we found some difficulty in communicating with the shore; but after lunch all the party landed in the large cutter. I was sorry to hear that Bowen is rapidly dwindling and losing its trade; the inhabitants hope, however, to recover some of their former vitality when once the network of railways is extended to their little town. Later on the officers of the 'Paluma' came on board, and seemed pleased ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... of which, from port to port, was done by her seamen, but that of England as well. Even of the English coasting trade much was done by Dutch ships. Under this competition, the English merchant marine was dwindling, and had become so inadequate that, when the exclusion of foreigners was enforced by the Act, the cry at once arose in the land that the English shipping was not sufficient for the work thus thrust upon ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... hour, nearer and nearer came the roar of the gulf of destruction. A sort of stupor descended. The country—prostrate and writhing—tried to rise, but could not. The government knew not where to turn, or what course to pursue. Grant was growing in strength hourly. Lee's little force was dwindling. Sherman was streaming through South Carolina. Grant was reaching out toward Five Forks. All-destroying war grinned hideously—on all sides stared gaunt Famine. The air jarred with the thunder of cannon. The days and nights ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... ditches as we meet with in the Nile Valley, but actual running brooks, coursing and babbling between the trees, spreading out here and there into pools of water, and in places forming little cascades like those of our own streams, but dwindling in volume as they proceeded, owing to constant drains made on them, until they were for the most part absorbed by the soil before finally ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... an even more discouraging business than the epistolary process, as it was bitterly cold and the streets were filled with slush and snow. The distances were interminable, and each day found my little hoard dwindling away with frightful rapidity into innumerable car-fares and frequent cups of coffee at wayside lunch-counters. I traveled over miles and miles of territory, by trolley-car, by elevated train and ferry-boat, to Brooklyn, to ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... population—if there results an undermining of the physique, not only in adults, but also in the young, who, as I learn from your daily journals, are also being injured by overwork—if the ultimate consequence should be a dwindling away of those among you who are the inheritors of free institutions and best adapted to them; then there will come a further difficulty in the working out of that great future which lies before the American nation. To my anxiety on this account you must please ascribe the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... the house is plain now. It was once the residence of a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere spinsterhood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne. It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... been privileged to know; With all my lips in love have brought To lips that yearned in love to them, and wrought In the way of wrath, and pity, and sport, and song: Content, this miracle of being alive Dwindling, that I, thrice weary of worst and best, May shed my duds, and go From right and wrong, And, ceasing to regret, and long, and strive, Accept the past, and be for ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... every day. The civilian leaders had already suggested the last expedients of despair,—the enrolling of boys of fourteen years and old men of sixty-five, nay, even the enlistment of slaves. But there was no cure for the mortal dwindling. The ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... by side in the northern Caucasus,[1382] attended by that primitive assertion of individual right, the blood feud.[1383] Often the two forms of government are combined, but the feudal element is generally only a dwindling survival from a remote past. The little Republic of Andorra, which for a thousand years has preserved its existence in the protection of a high Pyrenean valley, is a self-governing community, organized strictly along the lines of a Tyrolese or Swiss commune; but ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... an equipoise of parties and serious divisions in the ranks of the ministerialists as well as of the opposition. Not only was there a very strong conservative majority in the house of lords, with a sufficient though dwindling liberal majority in the house of commons, but neither majority was amenable to party discipline. The aggressive policy and vexatious tactics of Lyndhurst were distasteful to his nominal leader, the Duke of Wellington, and still more so to Peel, the only possible conservative premier, who eschewed ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... to paint a picture, but it was very slow painting; he would go over in the afternoon and come back long after dark, damp with the dew and fog. He kept growing paler and weaker and more silent. Some days he did not speak more than a dozen words, but always kind and pleasant. He was just dwindling away; and when the picture was almost done a fever took hold of him. The doctor said it was malaria, but it seemed to me more like a trouble in the throat, a kind of dumb misery. And one night, in the third quarter of the moon, just after the tide turned to run out, he raised up in the bed ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... length beneath a blue sky softer than the tenderest dream; the white steeples shone through the enveloping brightness, taking to each other, and to the distant roofs beneath them, successive and changing relations, while the dwindling mass of streets and edifices followed more slowly the veering of the steeples, folded upon itself, and refolded, opened into new shapes and closed again, dwindling always, and always white and beautiful; and as the far-off vision of it held the eye, the few masts ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... to rise, Spouse of the sun, eternal as the skies. Where shall we find them now? the very shore Where Ninus rear'd his empire is no more: The dikes decay'd, a putrid marsh regains The sunken walls, the tomb-encumber'd plains, Pursues the dwindling nations where they shrink, And skirts with slime its deleterious brink. The fox himself has fled his gilded den, Nor holds the heritage he won from men; Lapwing and reptile shun the curst abode, And the foul dragon, now ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... take care of itself, she gives it its due deserts by letting it die and disappear. So, you plant or you animal, are you among the strong, the successful, the multiplying, the colonising? Or are you among the weak, the failing, the dwindling, the doomed? ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... everywhere observable. One of the most advanced nations, France, has already reached the equilibrium towards which other civilised nations are moving. The old-established families in the United States are believed to be actually dwindling. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... local affairs were quickly submerged. News of Washington's abandonment of the island of New York and retreat into Westchester, pursued by Howe's army, of the capture of Fort Washington and its garrison, of the evacuation of Fort Lee, of the steady dwindling of the Continental Army by the expiration of the terms of enlistment, and still more by wholesale desertions, reached the little community in various forms. But interesting though all this was for discussion at the tavern of an evening, or to fill in the vacant hour ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... gradually spreading over the lands newly raised above the sea. The animals and insects living on these modified plants, would themselves be in some degree modified by change of food, as well as by change of climate; and the modification would be more marked where, from the dwindling or disappearance of one kind of plant, an allied kind was eaten. In the lapse of the many generations arising before the next upheaval, the sensible or insensible alterations thus produced in each species ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... and developments in the young nation as few then foresaw or even dreamed of. At this era, when the Adams Administration was about to close, Jefferson, in spite of his known liberal, democratic views, was one of the most popular of political leaders, save with the Federalists, now dwindling in numbers and influence. He it was who was put forward on the Republican side for the Presidency, while Adams, still favored by the Federalists and himself desiring a second term of office, became the Federalist candidate. ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... consisted of globules, glossy spheres of scarlet that ranged in size from pinheads to the bulk of large pumpkins. The branches of the vegetation were formed from strings of the globules set edge to edge and tapering in size like graduated beads strung upon wire, dwindling in bulk until the tips of the branches were as fragile as the fronds of maidenhair fern. The bulk of the shrubbery was head-high, and so dense that Powell could see for only a couple of yards into the ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... one-sixtieth) of a second. With the stronger light there is a more rapid and a greater loss of the initial intensity of the impression or effect of stimulus, and though each successive effect remains as long, or longer, in dwindling intensity, you get want ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... men; we are Indians; What a gulf their stares proclaim! They are mounting; we are dying; All our heritage they claim. We are dying, dwindling, dying, Strait and smaller grows our bound; They are mounting up to heaven And ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... loveliness and taste among us in ranks below the very highest; this remains unquestioned and unquestionable; and perhaps, in the given instance, it was an appearance and not a fact, or perhaps the joint spectator was deceived as to the supreme social value of those rapidly dwindling and dissolving groups. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... husband's obtaining an engagement for a series of concerts at the chief county town, Mrs. Dixon had insisted on coming with him to St. Mildred's in the hope that country air might benefit Marianne, who, in a confined lodging in London, was pining and dwindling as her brothers and sisters had done before her. Sebastian, who liked to escape from his wife's grumbling and rigid supervision, and looked forward to amusement in his own way at the races, had grudgingly allowed her to come, and, as she described it, had been reluctant to go to even so slight ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I could not sleep—and now the hour's at hand! All's ready. Idenstein has kept his word; And stationed in the outskirts of the town, Upon the forest's edge, the vehicle Awaits us. Now the dwindling stars begin To pale in heaven; and for the last time I Look on these horrible walls. Oh! never, never Shall I forget them. Here I came most poor, But not dishonoured: and I leave them with A stain,—if not upon my name, yet in 10 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the poor, lame weaver, How will he laugh outright When he sees his dwindling flax-field All ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... thought of Douwie. Scarcely as tall as himself; the big, rounded, mouselike ears, and the flat, cloven pads that could carry her so swiftly over the sandy Martian flatlands. One of the last dwindling herds of native Martian douwies, burden-carriers of a vanished race, she had been Tommy's particular pride and joy ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... looked east. The dust-cloud was dwindling every minute. And without hope, she cast another glance towards the corrals. Evidently, the men agreed that it was unnecessary for two of them to stay in the heat of the sun to prevent her from getting ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... nothing but shame and sorrow of heart and deceit to hide his sin; unlike him, to me was given to see, beyond the desert and the dwindling line of camels, the groves and palaces of the land of wisdom, whither my sad soul was bound, lonely and dismayed. My heart went out to the day of reconciliation, when I should be forgiven with tears of joy for my own faltering treachery, when my soul should be even grateful for my weakness, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by the card, but the spirit of joy or the spirit of sorrow has the power to multiply its potentialities amazingly. Both these spirits walked by Evander's side during his second day at Harby. The one that went in sable reminded him that his horizon was dwindling almost to his feet; the other, in rose and gold, hinted that it is better to be emperor for a day than beggar for a century. And truly through all that day Evander esteemed himself happier than an emperor. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... atmosphere of the eating-house; knives and forks played but intermittently, and Mary, sitting at the end of the oilcloth-covered table, felt intuitively that she was the centre of the brewing storm. Oh, why hadn't she been contented to stay at home and make over her clothes and share the dwindling fortunes of her aunts, instead of coming ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... lost. Another company escaped by land, and thought to pass through Sclavonia; and the peasants of that land fell upon them, and killed many, so that the remainder came back flying to the host. Thus did the host go greatly dwindling day by day. At that time a great lord of the host, who was from Germany, Garnier of Borland by name, so wrought that he escaped in a merchant vessel, and abandoned the host, ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... dwindling. He needed funds for the many secret agents in his employ—needed yet more funds for the purchase and support of his lands in the South. And the minister of Great Britain had given plain warning that unless this expedition up the Missouri could be stopped, no ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... the inhabitants of Patagonia been also dwindling, though, there, if anywhere, still lies the Cape of Bad Hope for the apostles of human degeneracy. Pigafetta originally estimated them at twelve feet. In the time of Commodore Byron, they had already grown downward; yet he said of them ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... forces were rapidly dwindling, a blow must be struck now—a sensational blow—which would, it was hoped, break the power of France before those British reinforcements could reach her. Later, Germany might still have strength to tackle Britain alone; and in that case ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... to it. His younger acquaintances in the Nonjuring body, however sincere and generous in temperament, were men of a different order. It was but natural that, as the schism became more pronounced and Jacobite hopes more desperate, the Church views of a dwindling minority should become continually narrower, and lose more and more of those larger sympathies which can scarcely be altogether absent in any section of a great ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... of one of the highest hills in London, and entrenches itself as a fortress against the poverty and squalor that are creeping up the hill towards it. Around the square there are still gardens and crescents and roads of consideration, but ever dwindling in social status as one goes down the hill, till the consideration vanishes in the degradation of cheap boarding-houses and the homes of Jews ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... sleep past waking—"while I, roamed and roam yet in a solitary watch beyond all sleeping. Wherefore, sir, I only of the most hospitable house in these lands am awake to bid you welcome. But as for that, a few dwindling and harsh fruits in my orchards, and the cold river water that my dogs lap with me, are all that is left to offer you. For I who never sleep am never hungry, and they who never wake—I presume—never thirst. Would, sir, it were otherwise! After such ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... found her, after a day of agonized apprehension, at a time when his hopes were dwindling. To know her safe, to feel her hand inside his own, was enough. All she told him then was that she had come back to the house for Aunt Ellen and Chrystie, and found they were gone. But they might have left a letter, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... yet I entered! Night And Doubt mocked at the dwindling light: Strange claw-like hands flung me their shadowy hate. I clomb the dreadful stairways of desire Between a thousand eyes and wings of fire And ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... to find bitterness, after all; perhaps it would be his glad good fortune to keep it from her. It was surprising the way he felt his misery dwindling, and instantly he pulled up ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... road toward the mountain. Things were black before her eyes and in her heart as she went blindly forward where the road led her. She still fought off any acknowledgment of the bitterness that filled her, but when the road, after dwindling to a wood trail and then to a path, finally stopped, she sat down with a great swelling breath. "Well, I guess this is the end," she said aloud, instantly thereafter making a pretense to herself that she meant the road. She looked about her with a brave show of interest in the bare November woods, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... nations or peoples whose lives were out of chime, or to inaugurate the existence of new republics. One face I shall never forget. It was that of the self-made temporary dictator of a little country whose importance was dwindling to the dimensions of a footnote in the history of the century. I had been acquainted with him personally in the halcyon day of his transient glory. Like his picturesque land, he won the immortality of a day, was courted and subsidized by competing states in ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... flea probably started on its downward course as a comparatively large insect, probably larger than the Ornithomyia. That insect has been able to maintain its existence, without dwindling like the Leptus into a mere speck, through the great modification in organs and instinct, which adapt it so beautifully to the feathery element in which it moves. The bush-tick, wingless from the beginning, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... found Washington still encamped at Fort Cumberland, his troops sickly and dispirited, and the brilliant expedition which he had anticipated, dwindling down into a tedious operation of road-making. In the mean time, his scouts brought him word that the whole force at Fort Duquesne on the 13th of August, Indians included, did not exceed eight hundred men: ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... the Fatherland by reason of its dwindling birth rate. The cradles of Germany are empty to-day; it is your duty to see that they are filled. You bachelors, when your leave comes, marry at once the girl of your choice. Make her your wife without delay. The Fatherland needs ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... understood how the crisis will be met. As the final period draws nearer, families will become smaller and smaller, and in the last Martian century no children will be born; so the diminishing water supply will suffice for the needs of the dwindling population. Thus the race will gradually die out naturally, and become extinct long before the conditions of our world can make life a terror. There will, therefore, be no self-slaughter, nor murderous extermination, amongst ourselves—we shall ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... They can't arrest me for the money before Wednesday. And my miserable five pounds are dwindling to four! And he told her he had plenty of money! And she blushed and trembled when he kissed her. It might have been better for him, better for her, and better for me, if my debt had fallen due yesterday, and if the bailiffs had their hands on ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the worst. I have said that there was a difference this morning when I got up and looked out. The sandy paths were dry, showing that there had been no fresh rain in the night. Moreover, the hillsides were open to view, the silver rills that veined the rugged steeps were dwindling, there was a blue sky, and great ranges of wooded or desolate mountains were in clearly cut outline—the first time since the wet period set in. Over the shoulder of the huge pyramid to the east there was actual sunshine, and the fleecy ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... heavy attack the evening before—which was heavily repulsed—the morning of the 17th saw one of the bloodiest and most desperate fights in all the horrid records of that war. Hurling his immense masses against the rapidly dwindling Confederate line; only to see them reel back shattered and broken—McClellan strove to crush his adversary by sheer strength. No sooner would one attacking column waver, break, retreat—leaving a writhing and ghastly wake behind it—than a fresh host would hurl against ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... in the early part of the century had inspired millions with high hopes of social regeneration and rekindled the beacon fires of faith in the world. The Saint-Simonians had, as an organized body, disappeared; the Fourierists were a dwindling sect, discouraged by the failure of the one great trial of their system, the famous Brook Farm experiment, in the United States; the Owenite movement had never recovered from the failures of the experiments ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... form of usage is the exclusive property of those persons who positively know that all UFO's are nonsense. Fortunately, for the sake of good manners if for no other reason, the ranks of this knowing category are constantly dwindling. One by one these people drop out, starting with the instant they ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... to her she could doubtless influence him to stay and care for her. There were many others who could be sent, who did not, could not, mean so much to those they would leave behind. Joe was all she had. She was growing old, and her little store of money was dwindling surely ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... There was an unspeakable dread mingled with his grief—his remorse. It had been there for months. In her eyes would not only pain but sin divide them? Could he possibly prevent her whole relation to him from altering and dwindling? ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for the commissariat of his army. Thus the difficulties of the Imperial treasury increased. Justinian became more and more unwilling to loosen his purse-strings for the sake of a province which showed an ever-dwindling return. The pay of the soldiers got more and more hopelessly into arrear. They deserted in increasing numbers to the standard of the brave and generous young king of the Goths. Hence, it came to pass, that in the spring of 544, when Totila had been only for two and a half years king, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... renewed threats from the Chiapas rebels - combined with rising international interest rates and concerns of a devaluation to undermine investor confidence and prompt massive outflows of capital. The dwindling of foreign exchange reserves, which the central bank had been using to defend the currency, forced the new administration to change the exchange rate policy and allow the currency to float freely in the last days ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... with the fate which seemed to have already overtaken Bosnia and Herzegovina; when gallant little Montenegro was already shut out from the sea by the octopus-like grip of Dalmatia crouching along her western shore; when Turkey was dwindling down to almost ineptitude; when Greece was almost a byword, and when Albania as a nation—though still nominally subject—was of such unimpaired virility that there were great possibilities of her future, it was imperative that ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... very small and dwindling group, composed almost entirely of the personal following of Plekhanov, one of the pioneers of the Russian Social Democratic movement in the 80's, and its greatest theoretician. Now an old man, Plekhanov was extremely patriotic, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... received at present any proposal from France to offer mediation and no intention at present exists to offer it on our part[645]." This was the exact language used by Palmerston in reply to Hopwood[646]. Mason again saw his hopes dwindling, but was assured by Lindsay that all was not yet lost, and that he would "still hold his motion under consideration[647]." Lindsay, according to his own account, had talked very large in a letter to Russell, but knew privately, and so informed Mason, that the Commons would not vote for his motion ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... with it, except in the case of a nation which has aggressive tendencies, and keeps up a navy merely as a branch of the military establishment. As the United States has at present no aggressive purposes, and as its merchant service has disappeared, the dwindling of the armed fleet and general lack of interest in it are strictly logical consequences. When for any reason sea trade is again found to pay, a large enough shipping interest will reappear to compel the revival of the war fleet. It is possible that when a canal route ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... modern and real immensity of the unfathomed Skies. But suddenly the vast meaning of my words rushed into my mind; I felt myself dwindling, falling through the blue. And yet, in these silent seconds, there thrilled through me in the cool sweet air and night no chill of death or nothingness; but the taste and joy of this Earth, this orchard-plot of earth, ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... mighty boats on that morning tide When they flee away from the dwindling lands Will feel the clutch of mother hands And the soul of the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... went again to New Zealand, in 1830, Hunghi had been killed in battle, and the nation was fast dwindling between war and a disease resembling the influenza. It was estimated that in twenty years the numbers had diminished by one-half, and in the meantime English settlers were entering on the lands so numerously that it was evident that before long the islands would be annexed to the British ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... disposition. But usually it is somewhat difficult to prove, and when proved it has little psychological significance or importance. We may expect, therefore, to find "pseudo-homosexuality," or spurious homosexuality, playing a dwindling part in classification. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... I felt more and more that his love must be dwindling to make him act as he did. I thought it all over wearily enough and asked myself whether I had done everything I should to hold my husband's love. I had kept him in at nights. I had cut down his smoking. I had stopped his playing cards. What more was there ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... continually dwindling in size and importance—stood in the way of Bonaparte's complete mastery of France. One was the remnant of the Jacobins who would not admit that the Revolution was ended. The other was the royalist party which longed to undo all the work of the Revolution. Both these ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... lights fading into blue and misty distances, there rose up before him in the visionary air solemn rows of sphinxes in serried array, and starlit pyramids and temples—greatness long dead, a dream that mocked the lives around him, hoarding the sad small generations of humanity dwindling away from beauty. Gone was the pure and pale splendour of the primeval skies and the lustre of the first-born of stars. But even this memory, which linked him in imagination to the ideal past, was not always his: he was weighted, like all his race, with an animal ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... into an offended silence, and the professor, also silent, looked with a gradually dwindling indignation ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... her hardest, and gave little heed to these things. She saw her own chances of success dwindling farther into the distance, and was surprised to see how little she cared, for a curious callousness had come over her of late. Selfish ambition—selfish, because it often persists in living when all other things are dead—seemed to have died in her at last. Had she overcome it? ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... Spanish troops, at once and without parole, back to their own country. Secretary Alger was no unskillful politician, and he was right in believing that this device, though unconventional, would make a strong appeal to an army three years away from home and with dwindling hopes of ever seeing Spain again. On the 15th of July a capitulation was agreed upon, and the terms of surrender included not only the troops in Santiago but all those in that military district—about twenty-four thousand men, ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... arts a barbaric peasantry would possess. In many ways they were curiously degenerate and incompetent. They had lost any idea of making textiles, they could hardly make up clothes when they had material, and they were forced to plunder the continually dwindling supplies of the ruins about ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... the headings of the Daily Mail; unable to talk a foreign language; and with no knowledge of the sciences which are of military use."[15] To this may be added the fact that these young dullards, the supply of whom is dwindling, are, on joining the service, encouraged and accepted rather with reference to their sporting and social qualities than to ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... might of fire, in slow decay The scented tears of glowing nectar fall; Lower and lower droops the candle tall And ever dwindling ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially and politically a dwindling superstition. That is the chief lesson one learns—and one has barely time to take it in—between Queenstown and Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we cross before we know where we are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From north to south, perhaps, it may ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Pietro and Violante gone! Only his saint to guard him—that was why she chose the new one; he would not be tired of guarding namesakes. . . . After all, she hopes her boy will come to disbelieve her history, as herself almost does. It is dwindling ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... Anatolian peninsula, the Orthodox Greek population, submerged beneath the Turkish flood more than eight centuries ago, has retained little individuality except in its religion, and nothing of its native speech but a garbled vocabulary embedded in a Turkified syntax. Yet even this dwindling rear-guard has been overtaken just in time by the returning current of national life, bringing with it the Greek school, and with the school a community of outlook with Hellenism the world over. Whatever the fate of eastern Anatolia may be, the Greek ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... Pendleton, listening with dwindling interest, saw Ashton-Kirk's hand clench, and saw a gleam shoot into his eyes. Then he saw him bend toward Tobin, his elbows on his knees, his ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... Kotzebue Sound. It was a long, hard day, in which we made forty miles, but an interesting one. With a start at six, we were at the mouth by nine-thirty. The spruce which had for some time been dwarfing and dwindling gave place to willows, the willows shrank to shrubs, the shrubs changed to coarse grass thrusting yellow tassels through the snow. The river banks sank and flattened out and ceased, and we were on Hotham Inlet with the long coast-line of the peninsula that forms ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... scanty resources dwindling fast. One by one his old commissions were paid and disappeared down the hopper of household expenses. He took to thinking of what would happen when the commissions were all paid, and to haunting Fisher's office. Fisher was his contractor client and owed him ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... He was too disgusted with himself to speak. He clenched his fists, and put his teeth together, and held his breath. In the silence he could hear the dwindling sound of Rocco's footsteps ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... cheating. Still he was losing, and still, despite all beliefs to the contrary, he entertained hope, hope that he might win. If he did win, he told himself, Johnson was enough of a white man to accept the defeat and leave the horse where he was. Yet his chips were steadily dwindling; the cards persistently refused to come his way; only once thus far had he held a winning hand. But he played on, becoming ever more discouraged, until, suddenly awaking to an unexpectedly good hand, he opened the pot. The raises followed back and forth swiftly, but ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... perhaps, a mimic moon, but no other light unless his path chanced to lie through Herzogstrasse. In that street a couple of windows on the first floor showed bright and unabashed, and the curious passer-by could detect upon the blind the shadows of men growing to monstrous giants and dwindling to pigmies according as they approached or retired from the ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason |
