"Shortening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dogmas a religious system obviously springs having for its object to hasten the purification of the soul, that it may the more quickly enter on absolute happiness, which is only to be found in absolute rest. The methods of shortening its wanderings and bringing it to repose are the exercises of a pious life, penance, and prayer, and more especially a profound contemplation of the existence and attributes of the Supreme Being. In this profound contemplation many holy ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... can be nothing, dearer to a thinking being than life; yet the voluptuous men, those who try to enjoy it in the best manner, are the men who practise with the greatest perfection the difficult art of shortening life, of driving it fast. They do not mean to make it shorter, for they would like to perpetuate it in the midst of pleasure, but they wish enjoyment to render its course insensible; and they are right, provided they do not fail in fulfilling their duties. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... difficulty, and I perceived that she regretted the necessity of death, even more than she cared to confess. Yet she had not to complain of an undue shortening of existence; her faded person shewed that life had naturally spent itself. We had been alone at first; now Clara entered; the Countess turned to her with a smile, and took the hand of this lovely child; her roseate palm and snowy fingers, contrasted with relaxed fibres and yellow ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... as much as it was in my nature to be offended, and I began to meditate apologies for shortening my visit at Ormsby Villa: but, though I was shocked by the haughtiness of Lady Geraldine, and accused her, in my own mind, of want of delicacy and politeness, yet I could not now suspect her of being an accomplice with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... was shortening the stirrup straps to the length of his limbs as measured by his arms. Alfred's thinking gear was working faster than the white mare's hoofs ever pounded the earth. As he was about to mount he said: "Mr. Thornton, I'll bring this mare home. I don't want to trouble ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... now been eleven days in the ice, during every day of which period they had witnessed it working effectually under every circumstance; they had seen the crews of the whalers labouring at the track-line, at the oar, and in making and shortening sail, both by day and by night; whilst our crews had nothing to do beyond taking the ships in tow and casting them off again; already I observed a really sincere anxiety upon all their parts for the safety of the "screw." I heard from henceforth ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... the occasional, and often involuntary, response to Christlike deeds and ideals. But so ingrained is our earthly nature that, in communities as in nations, periods alternate with periods, and the pendulum swings from laxity to morality, from apathy to piety, gradually shortening its arc. So in Connecticut, numbers of her towns from time to time had been roused to greater interest in religion before the spiritual cyclone of the great revival, or "Great Awakening," swept through the land in 1740 and the two following years. ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... sigh completely puzzled him. Were they for himself, or for Stephen Archdale? Had she already chosen without being willing to speak, or was she still hesitating? In either case, the decision was equally momentous, the only question was of lengthening or shortening the suspense ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... be possible to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the fact here stated by M. Morel, and the report of M. Garella, by mentioning that the latter suggests the propriety of carrying the Canal over a hill 120 yards high, and thus shortening its length, rather than to adopt M. Morel's line of survey along the flat and low lands, which is the longest of ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... societies are generally especial asses: their eternal talk about the fine arts, drawing, colouring, harmony, composition, chiaro-scuro, fore-shortening, design, and so forth, is enough to turn the stomach of a horse. The thing is the more insufferable, because they absolutely know nothing of the subject, and have about as much real appreciation of works ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... No shortening, however, takes place when the accent goes back to the antepenult (cf. contine), nor in words like aetas, mores, where the first syllable is long, nor even in abi, tene, tace, and the like, when the chief accent is weakened, i.e., where these words are pronounced slowly and emphatically ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... heard him; so they seized him and dragged him along and carried him before the Sultan who no sooner saw him than she ordered him to jail. And they imprisoned him for he had not come to that city save for the shortening of his days and the lavishing of his life-blood and he knew not what was predestined to him and in very sooth he deserved all that befel him. Hereupon the damsel bade bring before her, her father and her cousin and the Ra'is and the King and the Wazir and the Pirate (while she ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... all you'll let me say that a bad temper is an affliction, whoever owns it, and shortening to life. I don't know what your opinion may be: but my grandfather was parish constable in these parts for forty-seven years, and you'll find it on his headstone in Manaccan churchyard that he never had a cross word for man, woman, or child. He took no credit ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... improved, as is done in Tennessee, by the shortening of the journeys which must be made by the minister from his home to his preaching point. Nevertheless, it gives to the country community only a fraction of a man's time. He can interpret religion in only three ways; in the sermon, the funeral service and the wedding. Unfortunately mankind has to ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... differences in the manner and amount of attention given to the two kinds of spaces when they are held in immediate contrast. This explanation was of course purely theoretical. I have thus far offered no experiments to show that this double illusion of lengthening, on the one hand, and shortening, on the other, does actually exist. I next made some simple experiments which seemed to prove conclusively that the phenomenon does not exist, or at least not in so important a way, when the time factor is not ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Romans. They may, indeed, have perfected the system by grafting the column upon it, but it is at least probable that they took it in the first place from those who had practised it from time immemorial, from men who taught them the traditional methods of shortening and facilitating the labour of execution. The boundaries of Asia Minor "march" with those of Mesopotamia, and in the latter every important town had buildings of brick covered with domes. The Romans frequented the Euphrates ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... little renown can be admitted in the world. Mankind are kept perpetually busy by their fears or desires, and have not more leisure from their own affairs, than to acquaint themselves with the accidents of the current day. Engaged in contriving some refuge from calamity, or in shortening the way to some new possession, they seldom suffer their thoughts to wander to the past or future; none but a few solitary students have leisure to inquire into the claims of ancient heroes or sages; and names which hoped to range over ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... festivals of Egypt. He explains the rites in commemoration of Typhon's murder of Osiris as symbols referring to four things, the subsidence of the Nile into his channel, the cessation of the delicious Etesian winds before the hot blasts of the South, the encroachment of the lengthening night on the shortening day, the disappearance of the bloom of summer before the barrenness of winter.18 But the real interest and power of the whole subject probably lay in the direct relation of all these phenomena, traditions, and ceremonies ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the deep imprint showing where the buck had bounded at the shot, but no blood. He followed, and a dozen feet away found the next hoof marks and on them a bright-red stain; on and another splash; and more and shortening bounds, till one hundred yards away—yes, there it lay; the round, gray form, quite dead, shot ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... eight too long. Of these eight birds, five were long-beaked,[313] and this fact perhaps indicates that there is some correlation between the length of the beak and the length of the bones of the wings, in the same manner as with the feet and tarsi. The shortening of the humerus and radius in the seventeen birds may probably be attributed to disuse, as in the case of the scapulae and furcula to which the wing-bones are attached;—the lengthening of the wing-feathers, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... five to eight minutes, or as often as they become warm. Although the cool compresses are not usually liked by the patient, they will soon give relief if their use is continued, and they do much towards shortening the course of the disease. Care should be taken to keep the patient's body from being wet except where the treatment is applied. The cold compress is much used in the large hospitals of Germany. When the pulse becomes as rapid as 95 to 110 or more, cool sponging, ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... some lively moves. The instant he saw that the cat was going to jump he took a quick twist about the tree, shortening the rope until it was taut. He made a quick knot, then leaped back out of the way. But none too soon. The cat pounced on the spot where he had been standing, narrowly missing the boy. But the rope was free of the limb of the tree over which it had been first drawn. The beast was free to gambol ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... hundred picked troops, which he meant to convey under cover of night across the West Bay, and to land on the Cambridge side, thus baffling the vigilance of the townspeople, and at the same time considerably shortening the distance his troops would have to march. So much pains were taken to keep the actual destination of these troops a profound secret, that even the officer who was selected for the command only received an order notifying him to ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... or more, waving and smoking slightly. He now turned down the gas and replaced the chimney, then set the tap at the same angle as before. "Here," said he, "we have a flame barely four inches high—of brilliant white—which gives more light than the taller flame did. The cause of the shortening of the flame is the more rapid combustion of the gas, owing to the increased draught or air-supply in the chimney. From the greater intensity of this flame a much larger quantity of light is produced than by the longer flame. If too tall a chimney is used, the flame is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... canal was constructed by de Lesseps, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and shortening by one-half the route to India, the project had been frowned on by England. In 1875 the Khedive of Egypt, the largest stockholder in the canal, became hard-pressed for funds, and a telegram from Disraeli bought the entire block of shares for the English government ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... critic has seen in it the origin of the more gorgeous and full-mouthed, if not more accomplished and dexterous, rhythm in which Mr. Swinburne has written "Dolores," and the even more masterly dedication of the first "Poems and Ballads." The shortening of the last line which the later poet has introduced is a touch of genius, but not perhaps greater than Praed's own recognition of the extraordinarily vivid and ringing qualities of the stanza. I profoundly believe that metrical quality is, other things being tolerably equal, the great ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... making all proper preparations for it, convinced that grief and ill usage have broken her noble heart, she abhors the impious thought of shortening her allotted period; and, as much a stranger to revenge as despair, is able to forgive the author of her ruin; wishes his repentance, and that she may be the last victim to his barbarous perfidy: and is solicitous for nothing so much in this life, as to prevent vindictive mischief to and from ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... crowds of running men and boys; the fire engines went clanging past with the rattle and roar of galloping horses and shouting men. Never had Archie Anderson felt his frailty as he felt it at this moment. The very news made him almost faint, but he started to run with the crowd until his shortening breath and incessant coughing compelled him to return home, where he flung himself down on the doorstep, burying his throbbing forehead in his hands and saying: "Oh! I'm no good! I can never hope to be a man! I'm not even a boy! I seem to myself ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... to night rolled above the yellow sands in a way not caused by heat. Was it saddle wear or exhaustion that he stumbled as he walked? He looked at the silver strip of mountains above the westering sky. A fore-shortening haze swam into his sight. There was the mountain flecked with silver. Then it had gone into a milky black and pools, pools of water, fringed by the pines of the North, hung in the blue haze of mid-air, fore-shortening, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... ulna is compared with the right radius, it might at first sight be concluded that the bones respectively belonged to different individuals, the ulna being more than half an inch too short for articulation with a corresponding radius. But it is clear that this shortening, as well as the attenuation of the left humerus, are both consequent upon the pathological condition ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... were a beautiful pair of gray cloth trousers, with vest and coat to match, and I had been so proud of them when M. Acquin had given them to me, but I did not consider that I was spoiling them by shortening them, quite the contrary. ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... seen the forms of feelers, legs, and maxillae of the imago prefigured in the cuticle of the pupa (fig. 1 e). The pupa thus resembles the imago much more closely than it resembles the larva; even in the proportions of the body a relative shortening is to be noticed, and the imago of any insect with complete transformation is reduced in length as compared with the full-fed larva. Now these wings and other structures characteristic of the imago, ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... Spring of this year, at a meeting of the electors of Southwark, 'instructions' had been presented to Mr. Thrale and his brother-member, of which the twelfth was:—'That you promote a bill for shortening the duration of Parliaments.' Gent. Mag. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... experiences in excelling his companion, or in winning a game.—These are the reasons why the catechetical exercise is so much relished by the young, and why it has succeeded so powerfully, not only in smoothing the pathway of education, but also in shortening it. ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... original in many ways. Although he had never seen the work of any great artist, he painted the most extraordinary fore-shortened pictures; and fore-shortening was a technicality in art then uncommon. He also was the first to paint church cupolas. Fore-shortening produces some peculiar as well as great results, and being a feature of art with which people were not then familiar, Correggio's work did not go uncriticised. Indeed ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... by this time finished his third slice of toast and drunk up his tea, turned to his book. Esther remained greatly chilled and cast down. Was her advantage to be bought at the cost of shortening her father's life? Was her rich enjoyment of study and mental growth to be balanced by suffering and weariness on his part?—every day of her new life in school to be paid for by such a day's price at home? Esther could not bear to think it. She sat pondering, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... first watch after the second dog-watch, and at two bells, or nine o'clock, in the evening, Mayo awoke and heard him give orders to "pinch her." He heard the sails flap, and knew that the men were shortening in readiness to lay to. He slipped on his outer clothing and went ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... branch to the Mauritius. The route by Egypt and India has at length been chosen, and the most sanguine hopes are entertained of its success. The steam establishment will have the farther advantage of shortening the distance by one-half between Calcutta and Sydney; and reducing it to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... favored localities in avoiding the natural afflictions that beset an arid country. In producing the ideal range animal it was more important to retain those rustling qualities than to gain a better color, a few pounds in weight, and a shortening of horns and legs, unless their possessor could withstand the rigors of a variable climate. Nature befriends the animal race. The buffalo of Montana could face the blizzard, while his brother on the plains of Texas sought shelter from ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... all fresh and excellent stock. We soon began shortening the distance between ourselves and the fugitives. Before they had fled five miles we overtook them and killed eight of their number. The others succeeded in making their escape. Upon coming to the place where I had dropped the spotted horse that carried the leader of my ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... of course prevail, and the two traitors, after a due amount of hard fighting, receive their doom, Godard the Dane being hanged, and Godric the Englishman burnt at the stake. This rough and vigorous story is told in rough and vigorous verse—octosyllabic couplets, with full licence in shortening, but with no additional syllables except an occasional double rhyme—in very sterling English, and with some, though slight, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the sun is up, Malcolm—then the morning and not the evening is the season for the place of tombs; the morning when the shadows are shortening and separating, not the evening when they are growing all into one. I used to love the churchyard best in the evening, when the past was more to me than the future; now I visit it almost every bright summer morning, and ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... anguish. Perhaps she was murmuring melodious litanies to the Virgin, while the demoniacal cravings of the flesh were haunting you with their shameless clamor, and you disdained the divine fruits of that ecstasy in which I live, though shortening my life." ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... nervous pulse-stirring throb, the strident notes of a reed-pipe joined in and the dancer, raised on her toes on the dais, began to sway languorously to and fro. And so she swayed and swayed with sinuously curving limbs while the drums throbbed out faster with ever-shortening beats, with now and then a clash of brazen cymbals that was ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... attached to the train until they reached Ogden. At twilight they stopped "twenty minutes for refreshment," and the Valentins took the refreshment they needed most by pacing the platform up and down,—the tall daughter, in her severely cut clothes, shortening her boyish stride to match her mother's step; the mother, looking older than she need, in a light-gray traveling-cap, with Elsie's golf cape thrown ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... sun and air, and allow the main branches to develop themselves freely. In the winter cut all shoots not needed back to two or three eyes. If more boughs are needed, shorten the leading shoots, always cutting just above an outer eye. Make the tree as even as you can by shortening leading shoots on opposite sides. Never allow boughs to cross or to interfere with one another. If boughs are void of a fair proportion of shoots and spurs, they should be stopped. Be careful to admit the sun fully on the south side. Cut off all shoots springing from the central part or on the ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... repair; Or shun in some black forge the midnight air. Proceeds this boldness from a turn of soul, Or flows licentious from the copious bowl? Is it that vanquish'd Irus swells thy mind? A foe may meet thee of a braver kind, Who, shortening with a storm of blows thy stay, Shall send thee ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the number of degrees, for the voyage from Guinea to Calicut is shown to be greater than they assert or show, because from the time those lands were discovered until now, the said Portuguese have been shortening and lessening the said distance. [This assertion is proved by the various discoveries eastward made by the Portuguese navigators from the time of the Infante Don Enrique, (Prince Henry the Navigator) namely, Cadamosto, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... and tried to protect all parts of her scattered empire by dividing the fleet among them. It has been attempted to show the weakness of the one policy, while admitting the difficulties and dangers of the other. The latter aims at shortening and deciding the war by either shutting up or forcing battle upon the hostile navy, recognizing that this is the key of the situation, when the sea at once unites and separates the different parts of the theatre of war. It requires a navy equal in number and superior in efficiency, to ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... mind to a sense of moral and religious duties, and most effectually arms it against the inevitable evils of life. With the rising sun she left her bed, and accompanied me to the garden or the vineyard. Her little hands were employed in shortening the luxurious shoots of fruitful trees that supplied our table with wholesome and delicious fruits, or in supporting the branches of such as sunk beneath their load. Sometimes she collected water from a clear and constant rill that rolled along the valley, and recruited ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... off, up a winding way, he underwent another change, and became our guide to the Escorial. In the event he proved a very intelligent guide, as guides go, and I really cannot now see how we could have got on without him. He adapted the Spanish names of things to our English understanding by shortening them; a patio became a pat', and an old master an old mast'; and an endearing quality was imparted to the grim memory of Philip II. by the diminutive of Philly. We accepted this, but even to have Charles V. brought nearer our hearts as Charley Fif, we could ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... shortening their lives. The Lord is pressin' us now tryin' to press us back. But thank ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... number of plates for cold food, that each kind may be kept by itself. The fat trimmings from beef, pork, veal, chickens and fowl should be tried out while fresh, and then strained. The fowl and chicken fat ought to be kept in a pot by itself for shortening and delicate frying. Have a stone pot for it, holding about a quart, and another, holding three or four quarts, for the other kinds. The fat that has been skimmed from soups, boiled beef and fowl, should be cooked rather slowly until the sediment falls to the bottom and ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... disadvantage of the subjects of the interfering power, and by this means German commerce might be weighted with far heavier losses than a transitory prohibition of the rice trade in Chinese waters. The measure in question has for its object the shortening of the war by increasing the difficulties of the enemy and is a justifiable step in war if impartially enforced ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... serious. We do not know how long this fellow has been prying and listening, or how much he may have learnt. I don't think it can be much. We talked it over, and my friends all agreed with me that they do not remember those curtains having been drawn before. To begin with, the evenings are shortening fast, and, at our meeting last week, we finished our supper by daylight; and, had the curtains been drawn, it would have been noticed, for we had need of light before we finished. Two of the gentlemen, who were sitting facing the window, declared ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... named many of the friends who did everything to make our stay in England and Scotland agreeable. The unforeseen shortening of my visit must account for many disappointments to myself, and some, it may ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and good cheer did not last long. In a few weeks the unhappy men, or such as still clung to life, were living on a few shrimps, pieces of sealskin boots, lichens, and even more offensive food. The shortening of the ration, and the resulting hunger, broke down the moral sense of some, and by one device or another, food was stolen. Only two or three were guilty of this crime—an execrable one in such an emergency—and one of these, Private Henry, was shot ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... got back to the drive room, he saw through the viewport that the blur had vanished, the star-trails were clear, distinct again, their comet-tails shortening by the moment, their ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... inserted from the quarto are in crotchets. The omission of them in the folio is certainly faulty: yet I believe the folio is printed from Shakespeare'a last revision, carelessly and hastily performed, with more thought of shortening the scenes, than ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... long remembered in Avonlea. With the dropping of the leaves, and the shortening of the dreary days, the shadow of a fear fell over the land. Charles Holland brought the fateful ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Herr Eugene Richter say to this calculation? In his "Irrelehren" (False Doctrines) he makes merry over the enormous shortening of the hours of work that we have held out in this work as the result that would follow upon the obligation of all to work and upon the higher technical organization of the process of production. He seeks to minimize as much as possible the productivity ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... for these two times is like that for two in a bar. If the movement is very slow, each time must be divided; and consequently eight gestures must be made for the time, four in a bar, and six for the time, three in a bar, repeating (and shortening) each of the principal gestures we ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... shallow and false, is a smooth and artistical, conception. On the other hand, I have always felt that there was a peculiar grandeur in the indescribable, ungovernable fury of Dante's fiends, ever shortening its own powers, and disappointing its own purposes; the deaf, blind, speechless, unspeakable rage, fierce as the lightning, but erring from its mark or turning senselessly against itself, and still further debased by ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... better, more nourishing and more liberal food rations, transformed into increased bodily tissue, with a consequent greater weight and greater muscular strength, would result in a loss of vitality or the shortening of a man's life. ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... lateral to the perpendicular position of a leader? The uninitiated in these matters, and, in fact, practical gardeners generally, would at once reply, by supporting to a stake with the all-powerful Cuba or bast-matting. But no. A far simpler method than that, namely, by fore-shortening all the laterals of the upper tier but the one selected for a leader. Nature becomes the handmaid of art here; for without the slightest prop the lateral gradually raises itself erect, and takes the place of the lost leader. All that the ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... well-served battery of Parrotts would have silenced them in fifteen minutes. By giving him a few pieces of the kind the poet would have further brightened the feather he sets in Satan's cap as the benefactor of mankind by inventing gunpowder and shortening wars. The bow he presents to us as an old and familiar weapon even at the date of that first and greatest of pitched battles. Its claim, as the parent of projectile implements, is recognized in the common etymology of arcus, arcualia—artillery. Arblast, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... a French settler's wife crossed the river to buy maple-sugar and deer-meat at the Ottawa village. She saw the warriors busy filing at their gun-barrels—shortening the guns to scarce a yard of length. This was a curious thing to do. When she went back to the post ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... of this species which sometimes manifest themselves are very singular; the sporangium has a tendency to dilate, becoming funnel-form or even salver-shaped, the stipe shortening and even disappearing. I have a large specimen which superficially resembles some lichen, a Physcia, for example; the sporangia are pressed down, flattened out, extremely irregular, and in many places confluent; the rudimentary stipes are hidden beneath the leafy expansions. In all the forms, however, ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... thick, and had an undergrowth of dwarf spruce and brambles, but as the horse had become fidgety and "scary" on the track, I turned off in the idea of taking a short cut, and was sitting carelessly, shortening my stirrup, when a great, dark, hairy beast rose, crashing and snorting, out of the tangle just in front of me. I had only a glimpse of him, and thought that my imagination had magnified a wild boar, but it was ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... the great African desert is already in sight, and the railway will be its master. The Cape to Cairo line is no longer a vision of the future; the ends of its two parts are rapidly shortening the interval that separates them and they are almost in sight of each other. When the lines that are projected from the Mediterranean coast shall have traversed the stronghold of the Tuaregs to penetrate the wealth of the Sudan and ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... from all the aforesaid places have a yearly return, inhabiting for our staple some convenient place of America, about Sierra Nevada or some other part, whereas it shall seem best for the shortening of the voyage. ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... wolues: we named it Brions Iland. About it toward Southeast, and Northwest, there are great lakes. As farre as I could gather and comprehend, I thinke that there be some passage betweene New found land, and Brions land. If so it were, it would be a great shortening, aswel of the time as of the way, if any perfection could be found in it. About foure leagues from that Iland toward West-South-west is the firme land, which seemeth to be as an Iland compassed about with litle Ilands of sands. There is a goodly Cape which we named Cape Dolphin, for ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... yourself a part, you could regard it as possible by your own will. Everyone does, in fact, decide by this rule whether actions are morally good or evil. Thus, people say: "If everyone permitted himself to deceive, when he thought it to his advantage; or thought himself justified in shortening his life as soon as he was thoroughly weary of it; or looked with perfect indifference on the necessity of others; and if you belonged to such an order of things, would you do so with the assent of your own will?" Now everyone knows well that if he secretly allows ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... who take pills to make them sleep. That's a crime. It's murder in slow degrees for they are surely shortening their lives by this poison ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... man of them. What symmetry of form! what jet black beard and mustache! what dark flashing eyes! what noses without reproach! All were in the various combinations of action which their position demanded, hauling away at what seemed to our impatience an endless net; by the shortening of which, however, as their boat received it, layer upon layer, fold upon fold, coil upon coil, they were slowly bringing up the reticulated wall. As the place of captivity came nearer, every body was intensely anxious to get a first view of the fish; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... on which we had fixed our depot; but the sameness of vegetation, and the seemingly diminutive size of the timber in the distance, argued against any change for the better in the soil of the interior. Having taken the precaution of shortening the painter of the skiff, we found less difficulty in steering her clear of obstacles, and made rapid progress down the Morumbidgee during the first cool and refreshing hours of the morning. The channel of the river became ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... ardent and not derogatory and he is talking and not swaying as he is standing and he is shortening in not betraying that he has not been changing. He stayed longer than he was refusing to stay and this was not embittering. He could win enough of complete likelihood to release the volume of delicate intention. He had it then and was enough and he stayed with ardent expression of having ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... discussion, and he showed me his own suggestions in so far as the programme concerned labour. He wished the programme to include, among other aims, the further mechanization of production, particularly the mechanization of all unpleasant and dirty processes, improved sanitary inspection, shortening of the working day in employments harmful to health, forbidding women with child to do any but very light work, and none at all for eight weeks before giving birth and for eight weeks afterwards, forbidding overtime, and so on. "We have already gone far beyond our old programme, and our new ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... ostensibel physic, visit, and vision, a dubbel depressive; in dhe real phyzzic, vizzit, and vizzion; but work equal wonders, in polysyllables ov anny extension; pretending, in dhe verry name, to' paint pollysyllabels. And dhus dhe trokees grow innumerabel, dhat shut and sharpen, shortening dhe former vowel; hwich dhey hav hiddherto' pretended to' exhibbit slowly and smoodhly open: so leving singuel dhe intermediate articulacion, hwich must be audibly dubbel, (must shut az wel az articculate,) and continnue dhe equal impossibillity, ...
— A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy • James Elphinston
... the protection of the blanket, began to seek out the crannies in it and sting his face. He knew that he was wet again from ankle to knee, but he struggled resolutely on, alike for the sake of keeping warm and for the sake of shortening the distance. Yet there were other difficulties than those of the snow. The ground became rough. Now and then he would go suddenly through the treacherous snow into an old buffalo wallow or a deep gully, and no agility could keep him from falling on his face or side. This not only made him ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... the poop, almost dazed with the good fortune which had enabled him to so unexpectedly deliver his brother from a life that was one long torment, his ears were greeted with the cries of the mariners shortening sail; and a few minutes later the galleon's anchor was dropped in the new berth for which the ship had been making. The sails were furled, the decks cleared up, ropes coiled down, and every preparation made for the expected visit ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... for, although the action of the play terminates in less than four hours (I. 2. 240 and V. 1. 186), yet Ariel's ministry is not to end till the voyage to Naples shall be over. Prospero, too, repeats his promise, and marks his contentment by further shortening the time of servitude, 'within two days,' I. 2. 420. Possibly 'Invisible' (301) should have a line to itself. Words thus occupying a broken line acquire ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... the insect itself boring the exit passage, the problem assumes a more troublesome form. If the larva, rich in leisure and satisfied with its sojourn in the interior of the trunk, simplifies the coming emergence by shortening the road, what must not the adult do, who has so short a time to live and who is in so great a hurry to leave the hateful darkness? He above any other should be a judge of short cuts. To go from the murky heart of the tree to the sun-steeped bark, why does he not ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... the middle of September, and the days were shortening. The dusk of evening had already closed over the city when de Casimir and Charles at length came downstairs. No one had troubled to open the shutters of such rooms as were not required; and these were many. For Moscow was ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... time to effect certain alterations of form in the bullet. These with rectangular impact in the case of bullets travelling at a low degree of velocity consist in a bending and deformation of the tip; in the higher degrees, of bending, shortening, extensive destruction, or complete fragmentation. If the bullet makes lateral impact, only widening and flattening result, often with the escape of the lead core from the mantle. That a ricochet bullet may travel a considerable ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... From its farthest edge where Eden lay, a beam of glory spanned it with an orange path. It was this beam that made the golden mist about the Woman. To his amazement he saw that Eden's gates were open. Even while he watched they began to close, slowly and slowly, with the beam ever shortening, till at last they were ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... part of the body too prominent anteriorly, render it less apparent by shortening the waist, by a corresponding projection behind, and by increasing the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... With the shortening of the days, and the sweeping away of great shoals of leaves, in the frequent gales, Miss Du Prel's mood grew more and more sombre. At last she announced that she could stand the gloom of this wild North no longer. She had made arrangements to return to London, on the morrow. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... was up aloft shortening sail on a rough day, and Micky missed the stirrup just as the ship give a regular pitch. 'I'm off, Tommy,' he shouts, and down he went head fust on to the yard below, and then Snoots off on to one of the stays, and from there on to the deck, where every one thought he was killed. But he warn't, ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... after these antecedents, the origin of the infinitive in ein, as tuptein, we must admit either the shortening of nai to ni, which is difficult; or the existence of a locative in i by the side of a dative in ai. That the locative can take the place of the dative we see clearly in the Sanskrit forms of the aorist, parsh{n}i, to cross, nesh{n}i, to ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... channels of suppuration were stopped, and the danger of a fatal consumptive fever was averted. If our aid is not sought until the head of the femur is destroyed, and the bone has completely slipt out of its socket, it is impossible to prevent shortening and stiffness of the limb. Another splendid triumph over a dreadful source of ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... The days were shortening so that Lady Merrifield had doubts as to the fitness of letting the girls return in the dark, but Gillian would have been grieved to relinquish her class, and the matter was adjusted by the two remaining till evensong, when there was sure to ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had been so delayed by the capricious weather that whenever a fine day occurred all sinews were strained to save what could be saved of the damaged crops. On account of the rapid shortening of the days the harvesters worked by moonlight. Hence to-night the wheat-fields abutting on the two sides of the square formed by Casterbridge town were animated by the gathering hands. Their shouts and laughter had reached Henchard at the Market House, while he stood there ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... hence, when there is any reasonable doubt on that point, the unfortunate suicide is usually given the benefit of it. It is also a sin to risk our lives uselessly or to continue in any habit that we are sure is injuring our health and shortening ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... but till the following month of October. What could be the meaning of this, but to prepare the world for a death that was predetermined? Who could limit the days of a man's life but a person who knew what was intended to be done towards the shortening of it? ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... it, if she seldom talked. What was perhaps more vital, she felt about it with an intensity Thompson could not fathom, because he had not experienced such feeling himself. He only divined this. Sophie never paraded either her thoughts or her feelings. And divining this uneasily he foresaw a shortening of his stature in her eyes by comparison with Tommy Ashe—who had become a doer, a creator in the common need, while he remained a gleaner in the field of self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he considered Tommy's speech a trifle ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... until, after crossing four miles and a half of it, we reached a bend of the river, and at three P.M. encamped on an open spot a quarter of a mile from it. At five o'clock the other cart came up, having been substantially repaired, by taking off the ring, shortening the felloes, closing them on the spokes, and then replacing the ring again by drilling two holes ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Ile of Japan, which ships are of exceeding wealth and riches. [Sidenote: The currents set to the North-west.] But in our course we were very much deceiued by the currents that set into the gulfe of the Red sea along the coast of Melinde. [Sidenote: Zocotora.] And the windes shortening vpon vs to the Northeast and Easterly, kept vs that we could not get off, and so with the putting in of the currents from the Westward, set vs in further vnto the Northward within fourscore leagues of the Ile ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... acceleration of their movements; at any rate, I had never seen men work more smartly; and the nearest proa was still fully three-quarters of a mile distant when the last man reached the deck—which he did by way of the main-topmast backstay—and our task of shortening ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... that he passed through the forty-two years which made up the measure of his life in a chronic state of bodily infirmity. The fret and worry incidental to an ambitious parliamentary and official career doubtless also contributed their share to the shortening of his life. ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... and Mrs. Fleetfoot had dropped in to take tea with Mrs. Sykes on a pleasant September evening. The latter lady, as in duty bound, was highly pleased to see her dear friends, and forthwith ordered Hannah, her servant-girl, to make a batch of soda rolls, with a bit of shortening rubbed in, and just step over to Mrs. Frye's, and ask that good lady "if she would not be so very kind and obliging as to lend Mrs. Sykes a plateful of her nice, sweet doughnuts, as she had visitors come in unexpectedly, and was not quite prepared to entertain them as she ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... yeast in the presence of heat. There are so many ways of making bread of this kind that a recipe is not necessary. The amount of salt to be added depends upon individual taste. Some like to set their yeast working in part potato, part flour. Others use milk instead of water. Some add shortening. And nearly all women believe that their own bread is ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... compare such a man to a blind person who is acquainted with the road, and can pass along it with ease, and perhaps even with the confidence and assurance of a man who sees perfectly well, but is at the same time incapable of avoiding accidental obstacles, of shortening his way, or taking the most direct course, and alike incapable of laying down any rules which he can communicate to others. This is the state of the artist of mere experience, however long the duration of his practice may have been, as the ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... prince. Certainly he showed himself a good-natured man, and dealt less in cutting off heads and extinguishing eyes, than had been the practice of his predecessors, who generally took this method of shortening the ambitious ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... believed.[134:1] Wipe off all that is doubtful in the results, all evasions of the law, all that was due to the absence of a large number of healthy men, yet the State interference—prohibition of treating, great shortening of hours, provision of weakened beer—these undoubtedly have acted ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the pains, the quicker it will be over. First confinements necessarily take longer, because the parts take more time to open up, or dilate, to a degree sufficient to allow the child to be born. In subsequent confinements, these parts having once been dilated yield much easier, thus shortening the time and the pains of this, the most painful, stage of labor. The average duration of labor is eighteen hours in the case of the first child, and about twelve hours with women who have already borne children. The time, however, is subject to considerable variation, in ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... standing when prompted by companionable peckishness, straight he plunges among the nearest bars, being mightily astonished at his inability to reach next door, if by chance he have dropped among bars far from Atkinson's. He suspects his neck. Is the ungrateful tube playing him false? Maliciously shortening? Or are his eyes concerned in fraud? He loops his head back among his own adjoining bars, with a vague suspicion that they may be Atkinson's after all; and he stretches and struggles desperately. Some day Pontius Pilate will weave himself ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... his own working day. As a matter of economic theory, the usance of a child, a woman, or a man, is merely that kind and amount of service that can be given out by each without repressing the normal possibilities of growth, reducing the normal health and vigor, or shortening the normal period of healthy productive human existence.[8] It is becoming a general social policy to prevent the abnormal strains of industry that cause the unnatural deterioration of the human factor in industry. A wage-worker may be permitted to sell his daily net fund of working ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... stowed her; there huddied she lay, Shortening sleeves, legs, and tails to her limbs; But most o' the time in a mortal bad way, Well knowing that there'd be the divel to pay If 'twere found that, instead o' the elements' prey, She was ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy |
