"Narrowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its constantly widening and narrowing perspectives, its jumble of old and modern houses, had never looked more cheerful as Jack drove rapidly westward. He crossed Kew Bridge, rattled on briskly, and finally entered Richmond, where he pulled up by the curb opposite to the station where centre a ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... and landed at a ferry-house opposite to Bunawe, where we gave the men a glass of whisky; but our chief motive for landing was to look about the place, which had a most wild aspect at that time. It was a low promontory, pushed far into the water, narrowing the lake exceedingly; in the obscurity occasioned by the mist and rain it appeared to be an island; it was stained and weather-beaten, a rocky place, seeming to bear no produce but such as might be cherished ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Nature holds with narrowing space, From mart and crowd, her old-time grace, And guards with fondly jealous arms The wild growths of ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... he was so fascinated by the sight, that he could not resist the impulse to dash in upon it. On and on he glided, on what seemed to him the most perfect ice that skater ever tried. He did not appear to observe that this glassy, winding river, on which he was so joyously skating, was gradually narrowing, until he observed the great branches of some high trees meeting together and cutting off the bright moonlight. Skating under these great shadowy branches, with the glinting moonlight here and there in great patches of white upon the ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... existence, though in reality no detail of the brewing storm had escaped him. He was studying the other faces around the table, and what he saw in them appeared to occupy him. Wilfred Horton's cheeks were burning with a dull flush, and his eyes were narrowing with an unveiled dislike. Suddenly, a silence fell on the party, and, as the men sat puffing their cigars, Horton turned toward the Kentuckian. For a moment, he glared in silence, then with an impetuous ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Other ongoing challenges include increasing government revenues, negotiating further assistance from international donors, upgrading both government and private financial operations, curtailing drug trafficking, and narrowing the trade deficit. Remittances from a large expatriate community that moved to the United States during the war have become an important source ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... turned and was rapidly nearing the Rebel shore,—a suspicion which a glance at the stars corrected,—or else it was the tide itself which had turned, and which was sweeping me down the river with all its force, and was also sucking away at every moment the narrowing water from that treacherous expanse of mud out of whose horrible miry embrace I had lately helped to ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... a question of discretion, and that discretion exercised solely upon what will appear best for the conservation of the state on its present basis, I should recommend it to your serious thoughts, whether the narrowing of the foundation is always the best way to secure the building? The body of disfranchised men will not be perfectly satisfied to remain always in that state. If they are not satisfied, you have two millions of subjects in your bosom full of uneasiness: not that they cannot ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the time when Dudley Venner was born,—she being then a middle-aged woman. The heir and hope of a family which had been narrowing down as if doomed to extinction, he had been surrounded with every care and trained by the best education he could have in New England. He had left college, and was studying the profession which gentlemen of leisure most affect, when he fell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Persian triremes drew up in three lines on each side of the island of Psyttaleia and advanced into the straits. But the narrowing waters of the channel made it necessary to reduce the front and bear to the left. Consequently all formation was lost, and the Persian triremes poured into the narrows "in a stream,"—to quote the phrase of the tragedian AEschylus, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... move, however, in the game Wolfe had to play there could be no possible doubt, and that was the occupation of Point Levis. This was the high ground immediately facing Quebec, where the river, narrowing to a width of twelve hundred yards, brought the city within cannon-shot from the southern bank. It was the only place, in fact, from which it could be reached. It is said Montcalm had been anxious to occupy it, and intrench it with four thousand men, but was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... narrowing of the cowpuncher's eyes, an expression, slight as it was, that spoke disapproval. The man's attitude angered her. Here was poor Watts, about to undertake the first work he had done in years, judging by the condition of the ranch, under stimulus of the few dollars promised him by Bethune, ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... know." Thus those who appreciate and welcome the book beautiful, by their encouragement help to make it more beautiful, and so by head and heart, if not by hand, they share in the artist's creative effort. Also, by thus promoting beauty in books, they discourage ugliness in books, narrowing the public that will accept ugly books and lessening the degree of ugliness that even this public will endure. Finally, it seems no mere fancy to hold that by creating the book beautiful as the setting of the noblest literature, we are rendering that literature itself ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... Jock whistled for his companion, and on looking out was surprised to find him gone; but from the narrowing walls of the gorge came the sound of his furious barking. Jock whistled again and again, but the dog did not come. Perfectly convinced that something was wrong, he seized his rifle and hurried off, expecting to find that Collie had cornered ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... blankets were taken off and thrown among the bushes, the rocks having cut through them, they were useless any longer to conceal the tracks, and they incommoded the horses. A mouthful of water was given to the animals, and they again started at a brisk pace. The sides of the valley were now narrowing in again, and becoming much steeper; the trees had ceased, and the bare rock rose ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... an all-round sound of sympathy and wonder as the last quarter opened, and then there began exactly what The Maltese Cat had foreseen. People crowded in close to the boundaries, and the Archangels' ponies kept looking sideways at the narrowing space. If you know how a man feels to be cramped at tennis—not because he wants to run out of the court, but because he likes to know that he can at a pinch—you will guess how ponies must feel when they are playing in a box of ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... you to converse with common strangers and shake hands with them?" continued Mrs. Randolph, with narrowing lips. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... expedition, under his command, to move against Vicksburg from Cairo or Memphis as a place of rendezvous, and "to clear the Mississippi River and open navigation to New Orleans." Perhaps because of the confidence still felt in Grant by the President himself, although within narrowing limits, Grant was not to share the fate of McClellan, of Buell, and of so many others. The secret orders were not made known to him, yet it was settled that he was to retain the command of his department, while the principal active operations ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... with delight, with eager absorption in the story and an eager desire to know how it turns out, are two different matters. The loss of this capacity for enjoyment of the every-day novel is not a subject for self-gratulation, coming as it does from our own absence of imagination and from narrowing instead of increasing powers. That period of our existence when we could read anything which offered should be looked back upon with a feeling of purely admiring regret, and in our efforts to master the novel of to-day we should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... mouth of the Morona to Borja, at the head of steamer navigation, the current is three and three-fourths miles per hour. This is the usual and average current to be met with, but it increases or diminishes with the rise and fall of the river and, also, with the narrowing ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle
... nice people, who exhibited becoming signs of pleasure and gaiety at being there; but as regards the vigour with which these emotions were expressed, it may be stated that a slight laugh from far down the throat and a slight narrowing of the eye were equivalent as indices of the degree of mirth felt to a Ha-ha-ha! and a shaking of the shoulders among the minor traders of the kingdom; and to a Ho-ho-ho! contorted features, purple face, and stamping ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... think," her eyes narrowing till naught but a line of their beautiful blue-green could be seen, "that one of those would dare take ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... exportation. Our great insurance companies, for example, having built up a vast business abroad and invested a large share of their gains in foreign countries in compliance with the local laws and regulations then existing, now find themselves within a narrowing circle of onerous and unforeseen conditions, and are confronted by the necessity of retirement from a field thus made unprofitable, if, indeed, they are not summarily expelled, as some of them ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... peninsula between the York and the James, is only eight miles wide. In this broad and bold river, a ship of the line may ride in safety. Its southern banks are high, and, on the opposite shore, is Gloucester Point, a piece of land projecting deep into the river, and narrowing it, at that place, to the space of one mile. Both these posts were occupied by Lord Cornwallis. The communication between them was commanded by his batteries, and by some ships of war which ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... beauty grew till drawn in narrowing arcs The southing autumn touch'd with sallower gleams The granges on the fallows. At that time, Tir'd of the noisy town I wander'd there. The bell toll'd four, and by the time I reach'd The wicket-gate I found her ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... terms are applied to certain changes which result in narrowing of the lumen and loss of elasticity in the arteries. The condition may affect the whole vascular system or may be confined to particular areas. In the smaller arteries there is more or less uniform ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... an easy ascent. On this side of the canyon the bare rock did not predominate. A clear trail led up a dusty, gravelly slope, upon which scant greasewood and cactus appeared. Half an hour's climbing brought Slone to where he could see that he was entering a vast valley, sloping up and narrowing to a notch in the dark cliffs, above which towered the great red wall and about that the slopes of cedar and the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... is one of the problems which requires the highest wisdom for its solution. It is easy to become entirely absorbed in one's age, or it is easy to detach one's self from it, and study it in a cold and critical temper; but to get its warmth and vitality and escape its narrowing and limiting influence is so difficult that comparatively few men succeed in striking the balance between ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... depth of water, they ventured down the Kebrabasa Rapids. For several miles they continued onward till, the river narrowing, navigation became both difficult and dangerous. Two canoes passed safely down the narrow channel with an ugly whirlpool, caused by the water being divided by a rock in the centre. Dr Livingstone's canoe came next, and while it appeared to be drifting broadside into the vortex, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... misty haze, one point in a dark corner grew clearer and clearer till she saw (what at another time she could not have discerned at all) a face—a gargoyle I think they call it—at the end of the arch next to the narrowing of the nave into the chancel, and in the shadow of that contraction. The face was beautiful in feature (the next to it was a grinning monkey), but it was not the features that were the most striking part. There was a half-open mouth, not in any way distorted ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Olga repeated, and by the sudden narrowing of her eyes, as though she were all at once "on guard," Diana knew that her shot in the dark had gone home. "What ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... hutches, once inhabited by the skipper and his mate. Here there were great findings in the way of rubbish. Old clothes, old boots, an old top-hat of that extraordinary pattern you may see in the streets of Pernambuco, immensely tall, and narrowing towards the brim. A telescope without a lens, a volume of Hoyt, a nautical almanac, a great bolt of striped flannel shirting, a box of fish hooks. And in one corner—glorious find!—a coil of what seemed to be ten yards or so of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... hill came to a distinct end, and the second rose higher and more rough. Its face was torn and barren, and what timber there was grew low down almost at its foot. The valley was narrowing, and the rich prairie grass was changing to a lank tangle of weedy tufts. There was a suspicion of moisture, too, in the spongy tread. The sun further lost power here, between these narrowing crags, and, although summer ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... be no narrowing of marriage to mere sex adjustment. What is essential is life adjustment, of which ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... show her that I can be magnanimous, and compel her to admit that she was mistaken in me. I will raise Prussia from the dust. I will render her more powerful than ever, and enlarge her frontiers instead of narrowing them. And then, when her enchanting eyes are filled with gladness, I will offer my hand to her husband and say to him: 'You were wrong; you were insincere toward me, and I punished you for it. Now let us forget your defeats and my victories; instead of weakening ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... a clear space in the rapidly narrowing ribbon of shade, and there I soon saw Mrs. Lascelles settled with her book (a trashy novel, that somehow brought Catherine Evers rather sharply before my mind's eye) in an isolation as complete as could be found upon the crowded terrace, and ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... covered with weather-stains, green and gray, and standing out in bold and yet bolder relief from the steep hill-side as the pulverizing frosts and washing rains bear away the lesser masses from around it. The sea is slowly rising, and the land, in proportion, narrowing its flatter margins, and yielding up its wider valleys to the tide; the low green island of one century forms the half-tide skerry, darkened with algae, of another, and in yet a third exists but as ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the machine next mine had an ear like a sea-shell, a skin of satin. Her youth was bound, strong shoulders already stooped, chest fast narrowing. At 7 A.M. she came: albeit fresh, pale still and wan; rest of the night too short a preparation for the day's work. By three in the afternoon she was flushed, by five crimson. She threw her hands up over her ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... thin metallic lips and narrowing a cold fixed gaze, destroyed the harmony of the assured salvation. Lemuel Doret silently cursed the pinched stupidity of the country clods. The slow helpless fools! If instead of muttering in groups one of ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... this age of specialties than the dwarfing, crippling, mutilating influence of occupations or professions. Specialties facilitate commerce, and promote efficiency in the professions, but are often narrowing to individuals. The spirit of the age tends to doom the lawyer to a narrow life of practice, the business man to a ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... brick red, 2 to 5 inches broad, fleshy, bell-shaped or almost conical, then convex, dry, smooth, marked with reddish specks, darker toward the centre, flesh white, turning red and narrowing toward the margin. Stem 3 to 6 inches long, 1/2 inch thick, solid, firm, slightly tapering toward the apex, very bulbous at base, same color as cap, stuffed with brown pith inside. There are two or three reddish oblique zones encircling the ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... ourselves on a good road—good, that is to say, for riding or marching, as no roads in Kashmir are adapted for wheeled traffic excepting the main artery from Baramula to Srinagar, and the greater portion of the route from Srinagar to Gulmarg. This road we followed up a gradually narrowing valley, and over a brawling little river, until at Kralpura the Gilgit road begins the steep ascent to the Tragbal by a series of wide zigzags up the face of a mountain. The pass which we should have had to tackle, had we carried out our original intention of going into ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... I go on to remark that scientific discovery is day by day narrowing the chasm, or, to vary Mr. Martineau's metaphor, "opening the door." Not many years since, it was held as certain that the chemical compounds distinguished as organic could not be formed artificially. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... grown intensely hot too, for the faint current of cool air that they had felt since entering the place had stopped for some time past, and still the water kept rising, and at last seemed to come through the narrowing opening with so horrible a gurgling rush that it affected even stolid Josh, who took his cap off and said that it was "a ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... The valley, deepening and narrowing, became a gorge, the beginning of that long series of fissures in the metamorphic and secondary rocks which, crossing an extensive tract of Languedoc and Guyenne, leads the traveller up to the Cevennes Mountains, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... drew his lungs full of the sparkling clear air and felt inclined to shout. The thing that claimed his attention most strongly was the dull green band of the forest, thick and impenetrable to the south, fringing into ragged tamaracks on the east, opening into a charming vista of a narrowing bay to the west. Northward the land ran down to sandpits and beyond them tossed the vivid white and blue of the Lake. Then when his interest had detached itself from the predominant note of the imminent wilderness, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... semi-masculine outfit, bright-colored, jaunty, and she walked with a lilt toward them. It was Nelly Lebrun. And as she passed them. Donnegan lifted his hat ceremoniously high. She nodded to him with a smile, but the smile aimed wan and small in an instant. There was a quick widening and then a narrowing of her eyes, and Donnegan knew that she had judged Lou Macon as only one girl can ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... perhaps 75% of the population below the poverty line. Ongoing challenges include increasing the government revenues, negotiating further assistance from international donors, upgrading both government and private financial operations, and narrowing the trade deficit. A free trade agreement between the US and Central American countries promises greater access to US and ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... who could never sympathize with her intellectually or artistically?—the relations of married life with a husband who made assignations with an old love, under the eyes of the whole neighbourhood?—the narrowing, cramping influences of English provincial society? No! she was born for other and greater things, and she would grasp them. "My first duty is to myself—to my own development. We have absolutely no right ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 21 leagues: except one that was lost by delay caused by closing with the Pinta to communicate. The air was colder, and it seemed to get colder as they went further north, and also that the nights grew longer owing to the narrowing of the sphere. Many boatswain-birds and terns[231-2] were seen, as well as other birds but not so many fish, perhaps owing to the water being colder. ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... and curved like a bow, the curve from point to point being about a quarter of a circle. The piece of wood that forms the boomerang is about half an inch thick, and in the middle it is two and one half inches wide, narrowing steadily towards the end. I took it in my hand and made a motion as if to throw it, whereupon the owner laughed, and indicated by signs that I had seized it by ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... not say it, and waited, while his silence answered. Forgetting everything else she sprang to her feet and stepped back, her eyes narrowing at what she had discovered to be under his uniform—or, rather, not under it! In a panic she realized that here was a derelict ship of manliness being irresistibly driven by a hurricane of Fear; that a complete wreck was imminent unless she were the master-pilot. Her cheeks were aflame with indignation, ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... already of Catherine vs. Surrey, Holt vs. Lyle, and Coates vs. Lyle, which show that there is in counties no such incapacity even as to the freehold franchise, even under the acts passed before 1832, greatly narrowing the basis of that suffrage there), that, a fortiori, there was no such incapacity in boroughs of the common right at least, and also of many, perhaps all, of those by custom also, as appears by the valuable records preserved ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the federal government of the United States be not constantly losing strength, retiring gradually from public affairs, and narrowing its circle of action more and more. It is naturally feeble, but it now abandons even its pretensions to strength. On the other hand, I thought that I remarked a more lively sense of independence, and a more decided attachment to ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... the abode of fruition, and that Brahman may possess a body in this latter sense; for there are abodes of fruition, such as palaces and the like, which are not considered to be bodies. Nor will it avail, narrowing the last definition, to say that that only is an abode of enjoyment directly abiding in which a being enjoys pain and pleasure; for if a soul enters a body other than its own, that body is indeed the abode in which it enjoys the pains and ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... as he followed up the crevasse, which showed no sign of narrowing. The snow was thick, the bitter wind increasing, and a plunge into icy water might prove disastrous. It was obvious that he must extricate his companion as soon as possible, but the means of accomplishing it was not clear. Crestwick was somewhere on the wrong side of the ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... judiciary had contributed to the expansion of the Constitution in notable ways; sometimes by affirming the constitutionality of powers exercised by the President or Congress, and at other times by narrowing the limits of state authority. In the case of the American Insurance Company v. Canter, twenty-five years after the acquisition of Louisiana, Marshall affirmed the constitutionality of the treaty which ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... stories of the earlier paganism and the clear records of the Christian epoch after the re-Latinisation of England. An outpost beyond these three is the institution of St Frideswides at Oxford. Beyond that point the upper river, gradually narrowing, losing its importance for commerce and as a highway, supported no great monastery, and felt but tardily the economic change wrought by the foundations ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... Comet?" asked Nancy in her brief, quiet tones, narrowing the double line of black eyelashes as she spoke so as to hide the ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... equanimity, and several of the beaten and despondent Saxons had joined the royal exiles. Their voyage, however, was an unprosperous one, and after much beating about by winds and storms they were at last driven up the Firth of Forth, where their ship found shelter in the little bay at the narrowing of the Firth, which has since borne the name ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... irregularly, and becomes an easy prey to decay, while from failure of the entire upper and lower arches of the teeth to meet squarely and press evenly and firmly against one another, the jaws fail to expand properly and the tendency to narrowing of the tooth-arches and upward vaulting of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... me your reason for not wearing the diamonds when I desire it," said Grandcourt. His eyes were still fixed upon her, and she felt her own eyes narrowing under them as if to shut ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... flexibly integrated is much wider. Isolation of subject matter from a social context is the chief obstruction in current practice to securing a general training of mind. Literature, art, religion, when thus dissociated, are just as narrowing as the technical things which the professional upholders of general education ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... curious, rather anxious way. For vaguely she knew that years ago when she herself had come to New York, she too had had dreams and imaginings of what her young sister called "the real thing." And she knew that these had dropped away—at first in the struggle, which for her had been so intense and narrowing, to gain a foothold in the town; then through rebuffs from the clever friends of Joe Lanier when she married him; and later through a feeling of lazy acceptance of her lot. But Ethel's talk and Ethel's eyes recalled what had been left behind. And Amy thought of her present friends, and ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... to earth in human guise, that He might press His great heart of world- wide sympathy against the burdened, suffering heart of humanity. He need not have died to open a way of life for all. There is nothing here but human motive, human strength, and earthly destiny. We protest against this narrowing down of life, though it be done with the faultless skill and taste of the most cultured genius. The children of men are not orphaned. Our Creator is still "Emmanuel—God with us." Earthly existence is but the prelude of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... we notice the Hovenweep Creek joining the McElmo from the north. The mesa, narrowing to a point where the two canyons meet, is covered with ruins much like what we have described already. The Hovenweep is ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... carriage cushions under the flattery of the south wind in the course of her evening drive. She had ceased latterly, however, to note particularly that or any impression. Such things require range and atmosphere, and she seemed to have no more command over these; her outlook was blocked by crowding, narrowing facts. There was certainly no room for perceptions creditable to one's intellect or one's taste. Also it may be doubted whether Alicia would have tried the days of her hospitality to Captain Filbert by her general standard of worthlessness. She turned away from them more actively than from ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... best, old top—narrowing down to four from a hundred and twenty-five. Well, until we get there, what to do? Let's sing us a song, to keep our fearless ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... Hence Sturgill on the wagon-tongue, who stopped whittling, and merely looked at the big man with narrowing eyes. ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... the narrowing channel, smooth and grim, A hundred deaths beneath it, and never a sign; There lay the enemy's ships, and sink or swim The flag was flying, and he was ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... the other sex. Valmont had a hypospadic urethra and penis; a scrotum without testicles; ovaries with the Fallopian tubes; a uterus opened into a vagina of two inches in length, which, gradually narrowing, ended in the male urethra, to which was attached a prostate gland. Valmont contracted marriage as a man and was not discovered to have been a female until the autopsy revealed her to be a woman. The relation does not state anything in regard to menstruation; so that her condition ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... quiet laughter at his amazed expression, while the guides pulled him out hurriedly and silently. Then he saw that he had tumbled into an elephant pit—a long, deep trench, narrowing at the bottom. ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... child, did you ever hear one of them young men's life-commencement speeches made?" This time Mother Mayberry peered over the top of her glasses seriously and her needle paused suspended over the fast narrowing ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to his sight; the world was narrowing around him. I glanced about me, and saw that the hay and straw were trampled over the floor, as if there ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... fright when the machine took off from the ground, I kept him on my lap for a time. Here he remained subdued and apparently uninterested. Later, becoming inured to the engine's drone and the slight vibration, he roused himself and wanted to explore the narrowing passage toward the tail-end of the fuselage. The little chap was, however, distinctly pleased to be on land again at Saint Gregoire, where he kept well away from the machine, as if uncertain whether the strange giant of an animal were ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... eccentric taste for about a quarter of an hour, sometimes with admiration, sometimes with a strong disposition to laugh, I followed the road, which led past the house in nearly a southerly direction. Presently the valley became more narrow, and continued narrowing till there was little more room than was required for the road and the river, which ran deep below it on the left-hand side. Presently I came to a gate, the boundary in the direction in which I was ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... guest to spew forth of gleeds, The bright dwellings to burn; stood the beam of the burning For a mischief to menfolk; now nothing that quick was The loathly lift-flier would leave there forsooth; The war of the Worm was wide to be seen there, The narrowing foe's hatred anigh and afar, How he, the fight-scather, the folk of the Geats Hated and harm'd; shot he back to the hoard, His dark lordly hall, ere yet was the day's while; The land-dwellers had he in the light low encompass'd 2320 With bale ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... round, almost without knowing how, to beg you to write to me. Don't do more than you like; but in any case forgive me for growing old and arriving at the point when noble recollections grow in proportion as the narrowing meannesses of daily life find their true level. Yes, even if you thought me more of a fool than formerly, it would be impossible for me to hold your friendship cheap, or not to prize highly the fact that, somehow or other, it has ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... six-hundred-acre tract stretching along the water-front, with the Presidio at its farther end, the high hills behind it, and in front of it the exquisite panorama of the Golden Gate, with emerald islands rising beyond; and Berkeley and Oakland just across the way; and on beyond, northward across the narrowing portals of the harbor, the big green mountain of Tamalpais, rising sheer out of ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... 60. Narrowing the Subject.—It is often necessary to narrow a subject in order to bring it within the range of the knowledge and interest of ourselves and of our readers. A description of the transportation of milk on the electric roads around Toledo ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... surrender of thousands of guns, locomotives, aeroplanes, of all submarines fit for sea, and of the better part of the German Navy. The Germans had no choice: their armies were in flight along roads choked with transport towards an ever narrowing exit, and they could only escape if given time, which they could only obtain by surrender. They yielded to avoid a Sedan which would have destroyed their armies as a fighting force. But they gained one at least of the objects for which they had fought. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... the dove dipped her wing and the oars won their way, Where the narrowing Symplegades whiten the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... of ever minuter fields—not to say lanes and alleys—of research, one is led to doubt whether research is not one of the disintegrating forces of society, and whether ever increasing specialisation must not mean a perpetual narrowing of human sympathies in the intellectual leaders of mankind. Both types of university appear to me to present the phenomena of a country suffering from the effects of overproduction, where the energies of workers had been concentrated upon adding to the sum of wealth, and all too little attention ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... hundreds of trees and bushes, big and little, in the course of his life, and he had never yet met with an accident; but this time he thought he would take one more bite after the tree had really begun to fall. So he thrust his head again into the narrowing notch, and the wooden jaws closed upon him with a nip that was worse than his own. He tried to draw back, but it was too late, his skull crashed in, and his life went out ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... wire gauze or perforated zinc (see Fig. 56), capped top and bottom with zinc, the bottom a fixture, the top to lift off, dished inward towards an orifice with a tube soldered in it, which is kept corked until it is wanted to drop larvae down it. The tube coming well through into the cylinder, and narrowing inside to half its diameter at the top, prevents anything escaping, even if the cork should be left out, and also prevents the swarming out of the enclosed larvae, which would take place if the top were lifted ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... November day; a low sky hung over the ocean, narrowing the horizon. The child jumped with joy. He ran, gambolled, and sang for happiness when he saw all ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... turned round, excitedly, in his chair; he stooped, bringing his eyes level with yours. When he talked he tossed back his head and stuck out his sharp-bearded chin. She was not sure that she liked his eyes. Hot black. Smoky blurs like breath on glass. Old, tired eyelids. Or his funny, sallowish face, narrowing to the black chin-beard. Ugly one ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... predisposed. These latter will either develop into adherents as they read, or, what is more likely, they will exchange a vague disorderly objection for a clearly defined and understood difference. To arrive at such an understanding is often for practical purposes as good as unanimity; for in narrowing down the issue to some central point or principle, we develop just how far those who are divergent may go together before separation or conflict become inevitable, and save something of our time and of our lives from those misunderstandings, and those secondary differences ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... had had barely time to ride down to meet us at such "full speed," as a swampy and partially made road would allow. So our dreams of breakfast ended in cups of stewed tea, given to us by a half-naked Chinaman, and, to our chagrin, we had to go back to the boat and be poled up the shallowing and narrowing river for four hours more, getting on with difficulty, the boat-men constantly jumping into the water to heave the boat off ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... find there a centre of interest, otherwise lacking, round which other interests can group, and to which knowledge obtained in various class-subjects can attach itself, and so get for him a meaning and a use. And further, if we do not make the mistake of narrowing the range of choice, and allow, at any rate at first, a succession of interests, the very range and variety of these pursuits is an antidote against the tendency to early specialisation, encouraged by scholarship and entrance examinations, which is one ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... On the last evening of the voyage he and Edith stood on the upper deck. It was a zone of danger. From each side of the narrowing river flashlights skimmed the surface of the water, playing round but never on the darkened ship. Red and green lights blinked signals. Their progress was a devious one through the mine-strewn channel. There was a heavy sea even there, and the small lights on ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dedicate this book to you as the representative of a class which ought to be more numerous,—the class of large-minded persons who take a lively interest in arts which are not specially their own. No one who had not carefully observed the narrowing of men's minds by specialities could believe to what a degree it goes. Instead of being open, as yours has always been, to the influences of literature, in the largest sense, as well as to the influences of the graphic arts and music, the specialized ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the Inquisition, with mural paintings. In the story immediately below is the chapel of the Popes. From the Tour St. Jean, after passing through a large hall, we enter an octagonal room, gradually narrowing towards the centre, till it forms a chimney-tower, called the Tour Strapade. Some say this was the torture room; but it is evidently more suited for a kitchen, which in all probability it was. Adjoining is the Glacire, into whose underground ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... been on the side of those who wished to resist patronage and "cowe the lairds" had not this, his natural tendency, been counteracted by a stronger bias drawing him in an opposite direction.' This is a narrowing—if not even a positive misconception—of the case with a vengeance. The question was not of patronage at all, but of moral and religious freedom; while the democracy of those ministers was a terribly one-sided democracy. ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... attempt the capture of the hare by a well-known trick. Thrusting a stake into the ground, he placed his hat on it, and strolled unconcernedly away. Then, as though he had changed his mind, he walked round the clump, in ever narrowing circles, gradually closing on his prey. Meanwhile, the hare, her attention wholly diverted by the improvised scarecrow, remained motionless, baffled by the artifice. Suddenly she felt the touch of the man's hand. The poacher had thrown himself down on the tuft, hoping to clutch ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... splashes. Pollard willows indicated the edge of one field, gaunt poplars marked the boundary of another, alike leafless and unbeautiful, standing darkly out against the dim grey sky. Night was hastening towards the travellers, narrowing and blotting out that level landscape, field, dyke, and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... o'clock. The tide is rising fast; the sea dashes, in higher and higher waves, on the narrowing beach. Rain and mist are both gone. Overhead, the clouds are falling asunder in every direction, assuming strange momentary shapes, quaint airy resemblances of the forms of the great rocks among which we stand. Height after ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... with ink, which afterwards dries and produces a thicker layer of black sediment than those elsewhere. The variations of pressure upon the pen can be easily noticed by the alternate widening and narrowing of the band between these two furrows. The tracing appears knotty and uneven when made by an untrained hand, while it appears uniformly thin, and generally tremulous or in zigzags when made by ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... symptoms of the bunch disease are mainly the production of brooms or sucker shoot growth on the tree trunk and main branches and the tufting of terminals, profusion of small branches from axillary buds, the dwarfing and narrowing of the leaflets, and the dying back of the trees resulting sometimes in the death of the trees. The principal symptom is the production during summer of bushy, wiry growth caused by the breaking into growth of lateral buds that normally would ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the passage of many hundred thousand cattle which preceded our Circle Dots, and was destined to afford an outlet to several millions more to follow. The trail proper consisted of many scores of irregular cow paths, united into one broad passageway, narrowing and widening as conditions permitted, yet ever leading northward. After a few years of continued use, it became as well defined as ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... the annual profits displayed a constant and disturbing tendency toward complete evaporation, since the coming of the big cafes, and the resultant subversion of custom to the wholesale dealers. This persistent narrowing of the former appreciable gap between purchase and selling price rankled in Alexandrine's mind, but her misguided efforts to maintain the percentage of profit by recourse to inferior qualities only made bad worse, and, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... the sun's rays; and even then in those terrible moments—so strangely are little petty things mixed up with the most momentous in our lives— Steve thought to himself that when the two sides of their rapidly narrowing canal did come together, crushing the ship, not a man would stop to pick up anything ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... and Mr. Westgate looked at him, narrowing his eyelids. "Open your mouth and shut your eyes! Leave it to me, and I'll put you through. It's a matter of national pride with me that all Englishmen should have a good time; and as I have had ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... mountain, and far blue peaks in the north. And so at least I came to the place. The track went up a gentle slope, and widened out into an open space with a wall of thick undergrowth around it, and then, narrowing again, passed on into the distance and the faint blue mist of summer heat. And into this pleasant summer glade Rachel passed a girl, and left it, who shall say what? I did not stay ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... They were arranged in a semi-circle. The carpet of verdure, which stretched at their feet, after bordering the stream for some hundreds of feet, gave place to a long beach, covered with rocks, and shingle, and sea-weed, which ran out into the water in a narrowing point to ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... of cicatrisation narrowing of the lumen of the trunk vessels was far from uncommon, especially in cases of wounds of the arm crossing the course of the brachial artery; in many of these the radial pulse was diminished almost to imperceptibility. How far this condition may prove ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... thing was to make a torch, and aided by its light we groped our way in and explored the interior. The cave, we found, was about fifty feet long, narrowing to a mere hole at the extremity; but the anterior portion formed an oblong chamber, very lofty, with a dry floor. Leaving our torch burning, we set to work cutting bushes to supply ourselves with wood enough to last us all night. Nuflo, poor old man, loved a big fire dearly; a big fire and ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... poured whiteness into the court, making its cobbles embedded in the earth look like milky bubbles and drawing clear-cut shadows of the well-top and the gables and chimneys of the house. The man slowly circled the court beginning close to the walls and narrowing till he made a loop about the well, and then, reversing, worked in widening orbits as far as the walls again. His wife, looking out at him through one of the windows, thought that, in the moonlight, followed by his own squat, active shadow, he looked like a huge spider weaving a web. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... small purplish speck on the far horizon, but it broke the monotony of the sky-line sharply. Coyote Pete scrutinized it with keen eyes for a moment, narrowing his optics till they were ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... for a moment remained tensely, watchfully still. She felt his eyes on her; she could not see them in the shadow of his hat, but had an unpleasant sensation of a pair of sinister eyes narrowing in their keen regard of her. She shivered ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... antagonism or differentiation of interests, the later situation by an emulation constantly increasing in relative absence of antagonism or differentiation of interests, the later situation by an emulation constantly increasing in intensity and narrowing in scope. The traits which characterize the predatory and subsequent stages of culture, and which indicate the types of man best fitted to survive under the regime of status, are (in their primary expression) ferocity, self-seeking, clannishness, and disingenuousness—a ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the corner at which stood the shop. Hilda peered within the narrowing, unshuttered slit, but she could see ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to the first eminence. His extraordinary memory, diligence, and virtuous habits gained him respect from his pupils and the intimacy of the great. But there is nothing in his writings to show a man of more than average capacity, who, having been thrown all his life in an artificial and narrowing profession, has lost the power of taking a vigorous interest in things, and acquired the habit of looking at questions from what we might call the examiner's point of view. We have remains of two sets of compositions by him; Controversiae, or legal questions discussed by way of practice ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... they have found it merely in union with one other person. For what love gains in intension it is apt to lose in extension; so that in practice it may even come to frustrate the very end it seeks, limiting instead of expanding, narrowing just in proportion as it deepens, and, by causing the disruption of all other ties, impoverishing the natures it should have enriched. Or don't you think that this happens sometimes, for instance ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... which could restrict or retard our physical and mental development was kept away from us, and our teachers might call themselves so because, with virile energy, they had understood how to protect the institute from every injurious and narrowing outside influence. The smallest and the largest pupil was free, for he was permitted to be wholly and entirely his natural self, so long as he kept within the limits imposed by the existing laws. But license was nowhere more sternly prohibited than at Keilhau; and the deep religious ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... come: he brings but nigher His circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire Where old friends meet. Let him; now heaven is overcast, And spring and summer both are past, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... up his club, wrenched the broken spear from his dead rival's neck, thrust it into the girl's hands, and darted for the narrowing space of open between the two ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... series of constantly repeated calculations, particularly if the short story should bring in even a check large enough to cover the dentistry, Lilly planned to span the weeks of her narrowing interval with the three bills intact, but pretty shortly the first piece of mail she had received in New York arrived in a ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... he whispered as we came up. We looked down from the top of the bank and saw below us a broad forest glade, canopied by the thick branches of the ancient trees that met overhead, and leading up a slope, narrowing as it went, to a path that lost itself among the shadows that were ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... over two small islands. Half a mile beyond them arose a third larger one. It was quite prominent, for the reason, that it presented a range of great cliffs. Dave navigated the air in narrowing circles. Then, timing and calculating a volplane glide, he let the machine ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... degrees. This result differed much from that we had obtained at Cumana, where the rain-water was often a degree colder than the air.* (* As, within the tropics, it takes but little time to collect some inches of water in a vase having a wide opening, and narrowing towards the bottom, I do not think there can be any error in the observation, when the heat of the rain-water differs from that of the air. If the heat of the rain-water be less than that of the air it may be presumed that only a part of the total effect is observed. I often found at Mexico ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... up the valley, following as well as we could the directions given by the bishop. Neither Jack nor I had been this way before. We could see the slight depression in the surface of the snow which indicated a waggon-rut beneath, and by that token continued up the ever-narrowing valley; the slopes sprinkled by large pine trees. Snow fell thickly. It was not always easy to see our way, but we went on. At a certain point we were to turn to the left up a side gulch, following it till we came to the divide, some eight thousand or ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... out of the pale of peace already, and at all events. Poverty is most seriously an evil to sons and daughters, who see their parents stripped of comfort, at an age when comfort is almost one with life itself: and to parents who watch the narrowing of the capacities of their children by the pressure of poverty,—the impairing of their promise, the blotting out of their prospects. To such mourning children there is little comfort, but in contemplating the easier life which lies behind, and (it may be hoped) ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... 24, by advancing due east of Jaroslav, capturing Drohojow, Ostrov, Vysocko, Makovisko and Vietlin all in one day. Radymno was occupied by the Austro-Hungarians under General Arz von Straussenburg, still further narrowing the circle and compelling the Russians to fall beyond the San. On the twenty-fifth the Austrians followed them over, captured the bridgehead of Zagrody, the village of Nienovice and the Heights of Horodysko, while Von Mackensen's troops farther north captured Height 241. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... require, but not a quarter furnished. Our view is extremely pretty from it, and always cheerful; we rarely go out, yet always are pleased to return. We have our books, our prate, and our boy—how, with all this, can we, or ought we to suffer ourselves to complain of our narrowed and narrowing income? If we are still able to continue at Passy, endeared to me now beyond any other residence away from you all, by a friendship I have formed here with one of the sweetest women I have ever known, Madame de Maisonneuve, and to M. d'Arblay by similar sentiments for all her family, our ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... plates; and even if it were, narrow sluice plates were a step in the wrong direction. If anything the amalgamating surface should be widened to give the particles of gold a better chance to settle. His argument was that the conditions should be changed; by narrowing the stream and giving it less fall, gold, which was incapable of amalgamation on the wide plates, would be saved. We finally put one in, and it proved so successful that we now have one at the end of each table. The per-centage recovered on the sluice plates, of the total ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... public sentiment is depraved because it is alienated from the Churches, or whether the Churches are depraved because they have excluded so many of the most powerful moral forces of the time. Certain it is that they have offended by their exclusiveness; by the narrowing down of interest; by the cliquishness of those who are specialists in piety or ritual. We may observe their habit of mind in that narrow Victorian sect which converted Mr. Gosse's strong-willed and in many ways lovable father into an intolerant ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... has not been merely to exercise our ingenuity. By drawing this parallel, which is naturally only to be taken approximately, we have intended to make clear the comforting probability that, in spite of all the exaggerating, narrowing down, and forcing to which it has been obliged to submit, our modern and most recent German literature is essentially a healthy literature. That, in spite of all deviation caused by influential theorists—of the Storm and Stress, of the Romantic School, of the period ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the star, or the collision of the star with a star-cloudlet, or nebula, traversing space in one direction while the star swept onwards in another. A planet could not very well come into final conflict with its sun at one fell swoop. It would gradually draw nearer and nearer, not by the narrowing of its path, but by the change of the path's shape. The path would, in fact, become more and more eccentric; until, at length, at its point of nearest approach, the planet would graze its primary, exciting an intense ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... and does distil To that drop's span The atta of all rose-fields of all love! Therefore the soul select assumes the stress Of bonds unbid, which God's own style express Better than well, And aye hath, cloister'd, borne, To the Clown's scorn, The fetters of the threefold golden chain: Narrowing to nothing all his worldly gain; (Howbeit in vain; For to have nought Is to have all things without care or thought!) Surrendering, abject, to his equal's rule, As though he were a fool, The free wings of the will; (More vainly still; For none knows rightly ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... into an unbelievable number of well-filled-out puffs, was chattering to the Colonel in a low voice, so that Judith could not understand, and breaking into French at intervals—Green River High School French, but she spoke it with an air, narrowing her blue-gray eyes after an alluring fashion she had and laughing her full-toned laugh. She was a full-blown, emphatic creature, though she had been married only three years, and was Lil Gaynor still to ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... covers, although when seen from the parapet its inner stakes seem always to be about the same distance away from the nearest sandbags. But taken in relation to the trench opposite the entanglements are laid with occasional V-shaped openings narrowing ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... you must do it. You aren't written out, as you call it, but you are rusting out, fast. If you don't get away and polish up you'll never do a thing worth while. You'll be another what's-his-name—Ase Tidditt; that's what you'll be. I can see it coming on. You're ossifying; you're narrowing; you're—" ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... for defense. Here, between these high grounds, and stretching on either side of the river, is the valley of the Rappahannock—almost a level plain of six miles in length, and averaging two and a half miles in breadth, narrowing in front of the town to less than a mile, and spreading out, at the point where our lower bridges were thrown across, to at least three miles. On the crest of the heights, north of the river, were ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... was, a healthy, able-bodied sparrow could knock the whole thing to pieces with two pecks. No; when there are any disputes as to proprietorship between sparrows and martins, the martins have a trick of waiting till the sparrow is out, and then narrowing down the entrance so that the sparrow will have a job to get in decent nest material. When a live sparrow is in possession, he very soon lets callers know it. The martins, in these cases, miss their usual greeting, and probably conclude ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... As great a change was passing over the spiritual sympathies of men. A sterner Protestantism was invigorating and ennobling life by its morality, its seriousness, its intense conviction of God. But it was at the same time hardening and narrowing it. The Bible was superseding Plutarch. The "obstinate questionings" which haunted the finer souls of the Renascence were being stereotyped into the theological formulas of the Puritan. The sense of a divine omnipotence was annihilating ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... mangroves, and the cabbage-palm and palmetto made their appearance. On some of these oyster-reefs the mangrove trees had struck root—thus forming islands, which are constantly increasing, and still further narrowing the channel. ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... black, murky, windy day, with frequent gusts of rain, and a thick fog circumscribed the horizon, narrowing the view to a few miles in each direction. Toward evening the fog rose like a gathered cloud to westward, leaving that part of the horizon cloudless, and shedding down a bright light upon the waters. Had the look-out on the Arrow been on the alert he might ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... quiet here, and safe from interruption but that I have begged one privilege rather than commanded it. This was that the lower end, just this narrowing of the valley, where it is most hard to come at, might be looked upon as mine, except for purposes of guard. Therefore none beside the sentries ever trespass on me here, unless it be my grandfather, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... that island did not compel a sordid narrowing of life. You would have found our living-room furnished in mahogany rich and old. In a corner where the airs came in by a great window stood a jar big enough to hide in, into which trickled a cool thread of water from a huge dripping-stone, while above ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... in the year 1851, Robert would have found a parallel before his eyes, in these birch-bark flounces arranged over a sustaining framework, in four successive falls, narrowing in circumference as they neared the top, where a knot of bast tied the arching timbers together. He was interested in the examination of these forest tent cloths, and found each roll composed of six or seven quadrangular bits of bark, about a yard ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe |
