"Bit by bit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is wanted, heat the main tube all round the joint bit by bit, and blow each section slightly outwards. If the operator is confident in his skill, he should then heat the whole joint to the softening point, blow it out slightly, and then adjust by pulling and pushing. Cool first in the gas flame, ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... is!" exclaimed the hair-dresser, in Pindaric accents, "to die on the field of battle! On my word of honor, rather than die in bed, of an illness, slowly, a bit by bit each day, with drugs, cataplasms, syringes, medicines, I should prefer to receive a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... it was often repeated, and, as surely as the night was dark and she had freely indulged at the village inn, the Truslow ghost might be seen crossing the Kennet at ten o'clock. Each fresh beholder adding some gruesome detail to the dimly-seen form in its flapping sun-bonnet, the ghost bit by bit took shape, and at last was fully created. Who can tell how many years longer it might have lived but for Biddy's scream and her ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... Death, how now? Why all this tedious pomp of writ? Thou hast reclaimed it sure and slow For half a century, bit by bit. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... tantamount to an accusation made in court; automatically, the accuser became a criminal prosecutor, and would have to repeat his accusation under narco-hypnosis. Then the whole story would come out, bit by bit, back to its beginning in that first illegal deal in Indo-Turanian opium, diverted from trade with the Khiftan Sector and sold on Second Level Luvarian Empire Sector, and the deals in radioactive poisons, and the slave trade. He would be able to name few names—the Organization ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... strange manuscript bit by bit; when he came to the end he cried, "Now I will play it through for you," which he did without a mistake. Goethe was well pleased and begged Felix to come every day and play, while he was in the city. The two became fast friends; the poet treated him as a son, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... say the word an' I'll pull off me coat again an' show ye. Well now, we'll git back to business. The jewels bes still hid in the swamp. They bain't no manner o' use to us till we sells 'em. I'll do that, men, bit by bit, in St. John's. The grub an' liquor we took bes all in the pit under this floor. Ye kin come every day an' tote away what ye wants of it. The wines and brandy bes for them who has sick folks an' old folks to feed. Lift the trap, Bill, an' let ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... that Tom could see every feature; and, as he saw, he recollected, bit by bit, it was ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... disclose a comic aspect; the plight of poor, respectable Mr. Peaslee, in all the fresh honors of his jurorship, began to show a ludicrous side; their own position as grave men seeing what they thought a serious offense change, as by magic, into a farcical accident, bit by bit revealed its humor. ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... clasped on her knee, her gaze holding his with a kind of visionary fixity, seemed to reconstruct the history of his past, bit by bit, with the words she was dragging out ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... uneasy as the advancing hours neither brought Sylvia nor little Bella to their home, she had set out for Jeremiah Foster's as soon as she had seen her mother comfortably asleep in her bed; and then she had learnt the whole story, bit by bit, as each person who spoke broke in upon the previous narration with some new particular. But from no one did she clearly learn whether Sylvia was with her husband, or not; and so she came speeding along the road, breathless, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and picked up a sheet of manuscript. Francisco took the hint. From that day he camped on Buckley's trail. Bit by bit he gathered proofs, some documentary, some testimonial. No single item was of great importance. But, as a whole, Robert had assured him, it was weaving a net in which the blind boss might one day find ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... monsters retreat; not scared-like, but with a show of defiance, as if disposed to contest possession of the place. They give back, however, bit by bit, till at length, ceasing to dispute, they shuffle off over the quarter, and ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... compass; sphere, station, rank, standing; rate, way, sort. point, mark, stage &c. (term) 71; intensity, strength &c. (greatness) 31. Adj. comparative; gradual, shading off; within the bounds &c. (limit) 233. Adv. by degrees, gradually, inasmuch, pro tanto[It]; however, howsoever; step by step, bit by bit, little by little, inch by inch, drop by drop; a little at a time, by inches, by slow degrees, by degrees, by little and little; in some degree, in some measure; to some extent; di grado in grado[Lat]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... had pictured to herself so many impossible scenes beforehand, had rehearsed the probable questions and answers in so many strange dialogues, had soothed her fancy with so many extravagant ideas, that she had at last created, bit by bit, a situation very different from the reality, and then threw herself ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... reorganization plans which will be completed over a period of 3 years. We have also proposed abolishing almost 500 Federal advisory and other commissions and boards. But I know that the American people are still sick and tired of Federal paperwork and redtape. Bit by bit we are chopping down the thicket of unnecessary Federal regulations by which Government too often interferes in our personal lives and our personal business. We've cut the public's Federal paperwork load by more than 12 percent in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... her cushions, Fleda amused herself a great deal; and it was an especial pleasure when he would sit down by her and read and talk about them. Still a greater was to watch the sea, in its changes of colour and varieties of agitation, and to get from Mr. Carleton, bit by bit, all the pieces of knowledge concerning it that he had ever made his own. Even when Fleda feared it she was fascinated; and while the fear went off the fascination grew deeper. Daintily nestling among her cushions she watched with charmed eyes the long rollers that came up in detachments of three ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... hangeth Threatening ruin o'er my head, With terrific pride and grandeur. Darker grows the air around me, Chained, my feet proceed no farther, Even the seas retire before me. What, here fly me not nor startle, Are the wild beasts, which to rend me Bit by bit come on to attack me. Mercy, mighty Lord, oh, mercy! Pardon, gracious Lord, oh, pardon! Holy baptism I implore, That in grace I may depart hence. Mortals, hear, oh, mortals hear, Christ is living, Christ is master, Christ is god, the one true God! ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... treaty signed, our traveller was put in training, or we might say weaned, by the secretary-general of the enterprise, who freed his mind of its swaddling-clothes, showed him the dark holes of the business, taught him its dialect, took the mechanism apart bit by bit, dissected for his instruction the particular public he was expected to gull, crammed him with phrases, fed him with impromptu replies, provisioned him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak, sharpened the file of ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... Jean Servien spent his days in translating Myrrha bit by bit, with an infinity of pains. The task having taught him something of verse-making, he composed an ode, which he sent by post to his mistress. The poem was writ in tears of blood, yet it was as cold and insipid as a schoolboy's ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... told of the troops on Freyberg's left being held up, and that between him and them ran, roughly parallel with the line of advance, a spur which cut off the effect of the enemy's machine guns. After fourteen hours of fighting, bit by bit, the sea-dog soldiers had plunged through a mile of trenches and ground sorely marked by shells. Three machine guns then were pushed forward well beyond that line, and the still unsatisfied sailor-colonel, his shoulder and right arm swathed in bandages, asked leave to go ahead and attack the village. ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... need to detail all that was said during the next hour. Bit by bit we added to the girl's knowledge of the world into which she had emerged, and bit by bit there unfolded in her mind a corresponding image of the world from which she had come. And when, for an experiment, we took her out on the front ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... table-cloth, and drink tea out of tin pannikins. The notion of getting such wages in a place with such surroundings quite dumb-founded me; and he had the things too; for by-and-by I found napery and china in a big chest that I used for a table out of doors; and bit by bit I made great improvements at Barragong. He gave me one of the huts for myself, and I was a thought frightened to sleep there my leafu' lane at first, but I put my trust in my Maker, and He watched over me. I cooked ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... Then, bit by bit the trio worked their log buoy into the cove. Once they were inside, the water was very much smoother. Resting a few moments for breath, they then made a last dash forward, to ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... with change and even to welcome it because the time of troubles through which their society is passing is warning them of the dangers they face. At the same time they are learning, bit by bit, of the spectacular achievements of the billion human beings ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... for his great foresight, we call the Philosopher, set his plough in the Poplars, above the hermitage, and bit by bit, he has ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... the south we saw the first faint flush of dawn as Cromwell, knocking the ashes from his pipe, advised me to go to bed. "You get the old factor to tell you the story of his friend the cure, and of the cure's Christmas gift," Cromwell called back, and I made a point of getting the story, bit by bit, from the florid factor himself, and you shall read it as it has ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... bit by bit Peter doled out another portion of the white cake, venturing at the same time to stroke ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... for attracting admiration and commanding respect, this infallible kindness and this inherent dignity, were never made manifest to so great advantage as in his attitude toward his inferiors. These adored him. He accumulated, bit by bit, a remarkable store of intimate information relating to them, and employed it in his intercourse with them, with a tact and a frank sincerity of interest which never failed of their effect. The response thus elicited was strongest of ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... when he was well paid for his pots, he would get a bit of gold and put it by. This small hoard was precious to him as sunlight, and bit by bit, little coin by little coin, it grew, till one day he had enough. Then he left his clay, and with care and loving pains, his lathe turning to the beat of his heart, he fashioned a little cup ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... regards A snug and friendly game at cards; And one, whatever you may say, Can see no evil in a play; Some love a concert, or a race; And others shooting, and the chase. Reviled and loved, renounced and followed, Thus, bit by bit, the world is swallowed; Each thinks his neighbor makes too free, Yet likes a slice as well as he; With, sophistry their sauce they sweeten, Till quite from tail to ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... his life bit by bit up to the level of the earnest plea of this special revelation, as bit by bit it opens to him, will find his understanding of it wonderfully clearing. Obedience is the organ of understanding. Through it there comes clear ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... nobody remembered him, and he feared to ask too openly, a sort of Enoch Arden terror restraining him from proclaiming his personality till he knew exactly what had happened in his long absence. But bit by bit, he found out at last that his wife had married again, and was now long dead: and that the man she had married was Vivian Callingham, his own treacherous companion on the Crozet Islands. As soon as he learned that, the full depth of ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... bit by bit," he said, "I am beginning to form a sort of picture of this girl, this—what was her name again? Bennett—this Miss Bennett. You have a wonderful knack of description. You make her seem so real and vivid. Tell me some more about her. She wasn't keen on golf, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... The Swakop River? Very well. Was there water there? But certainly so; water obviously of the worst quality—yet water. Besides, were there not always refrigerators and condensing machinery? Upon which Swakopmund was forced into existence—planked down there bit by bit in the face of circumstance. Walk a trifle over a thousand yards from the edge of the changeful Atlantic through Swakopmund's deep sandy streets and you get the key to the town. For it ceases utterly, abruptly; from the door of its last villa, fitted with perfect furnishings ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... of his own lies, before he is quite comfortable about telling them to other people. Hanky keeps Hanky well out of it; Panky must have a base of operations in Panky. Hanky will lead him by the nose, bit by bit, for his is the master spirit. In England Panky would be what we call ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... window ledge. I had failed to put the extinguisher on the lighter, and the wick had gone on burning. As I watched the red spark crawling almost imperceptibly along the yellow wick, there dawned in my mind the first glimmering of the idea of a slow match and a delayed report. Bit by bit it took form, and the means of my revenge was made clear to me. I went back to ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... had hesitated. 'I have received a telegram,' she said at length; and so she allowed to escape her bit by bit the information that her architect, whose name she seemed reluctant to utter, had travelled from England to Nice that week, partly to consult her, partly for a holiday trip; that he had gone on to Monte Carlo, had there lost his money and got into difficulties, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... speak, he told with scared face a tale of the great mustering of desperate men in this or that quarter. The Crane was a hardy fighter, but the mystery baffled him, and he became cautious, and—after the fashion of his kind credulous. Bit by bit Jehan shepherded him into the trap he had prepared. He had but one man to the enemy's six, and must drain that enemy's strength before he struck. Meantime the little steadings went up in flames, but with every blaze seen ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... able to prevail over flesh and blood and the spirit of heroic men, but he had destroyed the city bit by bit. It was pitiful beyond all expression. It was worse than looking upon a woman whose beauty had been scarred ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... meaningless words or sentences are written wearily and without pains, but to write the name of a picture you have painted, at the bottom of it, or to write something that Cinderella's Godmother said, or bit by bit to write a letter, will be having a purpose that gives life to an apparently meaningless act, and thoroughness ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... punishment. As for the bacon, Rodriguez scorned it and marched on down the road. Now one side of the frying-pan was very hot, for it was tilted a little and the lard had run sideways. By tilting it back again slowly Morano could make the fat run back bit by bit over the heated metal, and whenever it did so it sizzled. He now picked up the frying-pan and one log that was burning well and walked parallel with Rodriguez. He was up-wind of him, and whenever the bacon-fat sizzled Rodriguez caught the smell of it. A small matter to inspire thoughts; ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... work—watching himself. He must always be buffeting himself, and keeping under his body, as Paul did, lest he himself should be a castaway. Let him grow careless, presumptuous, neglectful of prayer, and all the old tempers and passions slowly steal in, and bit by bit obtain the mastery, and the Christian disgraces his profession, and the saint becomes a sinner again. Every Christian knows this. He knows the evil powers that ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... place. Only a few of the larger trees remained. Cueto was disappointed at finding nothing, but he was not discouraged. Next he tore down the old slave barracoons and the outbuildings, after which he completely wrecked the residence itself. He pulled it apart bit by bit, brick by brick. He even dug up its foundations, but without the reward of so much as a single peseta. Finally, when the villa was but a heap of rubbish and the grounds a scar upon the slope of La Cumbre, he desisted, baffled, incredulous, while all Matanzas laughed at him. Having ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... it occurred to Pacey that Mr. Spraggon was the purchaser, and that he was only a middle-man. His headache forsook him for the moment, and he felt a new man. It was clearly the case, and bit by bit he recollected all about it. How Jack had told him to challenge the horse, and he would stand to the bargain; how he had whispered him (Pacey) to name him (Jack) arbitrator; and how he had done so, and Jack had made the award. Then he began to think ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... He taught and preached to the multitudes. He was a preacher, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom. He was a teacher, bit by bit, line upon line, patiently teaching and explaining to them about the Father's love, and about the true life and how to live it. Three words are used several times to characterize that Galilean ministry, teaching and ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... researches further. He has not limited himself to studying, bit by bit, the voluminous report of the trial of 1808, which fills a whole cupboard; to comparing and opposing the testimony of the witnesses one against the other, examining the reports and enquiries, disentangling ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... ambrosial curls of his youth. Most young people, I dare say, think it will be a dreadful thing to grow old: a girl of eighteen thinks it must be an awful sensation to be thirty. Believe me, not at all. You are brought to it bit by bit; and when you reach the spot, you rather like the view. And it is so with graver things. We grow able to do and to bear that which it is needful that we should do and bear. As is the day, so the strength proves to be. And you have heard people tell you truly, that they have been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... watched one observed a distinct line of demarcation between the sunshine and the shade, and this line gradually approached nearer and nearer, lighting up the hummocky relief of the ice-field bit by bit, until at last it reached us, and threw the whole camp into a blaze of glorious sunshine which ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... little, as they sat together, the story of the fight came out. Jim told it bit by bit, not eager. When it was done, Agatha was still puzzled. "Why should he come here? ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... art as the ceiling frescoes, yet because of its conception, of the number of figures introduced, the boldness of their treatment, and the magnificence of their drawing, it stands unrivalled. He said they ought to study it, bit by bit, group by group, after having once learned ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... forget that meeting in this world, or the next,' he says. 'I had been watching for the cab, and had run out to meet her and help her up the steps. She tried to smile on me through her tears; but, drawing me into the room, soon told me, bit by bit, what the doctor had said. I sat down speechless. She rose from her seat, and came and knelt beside me, saying: "Do you know what was my first thought? That I should not be there to nurse you ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... childhood had been one of tumult and sorrow; the different and dissident ideals growing up in his heart and striving for the mastery, had torn and tortured him, and he had long lain as upon a mental rack. Ignorance of the material laws of existence had extended even into his sixteenth year, and when, bit by bit, the veil fell, and he understood, he was filled with loathing of life and mad desire to wash himself free of its stain; and it was this very hatred of natural flesh that had precipitated a perilous worship of deified flesh. But the Gothic cathedral had intervened; he had been ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... with effect. It was pitiful to see how little gratification they got out of it; especially she, with that silly belief in her ability to rekindle his spiritual energies and lift him into the thin air of her transcendentalisms; slipping, nevertheless, bit by bit, down the precipitous incline between her vaporous refinements and his wallowing animalisms; too destitute of the love that loves to give, or of courage, or of cunning, to venture into the fires of real passion, ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... after mile, always between the shadows of the high mountains, I was glad I did not live in the Alps. The villages on the slopes, the people there, seemed, as if they must gradually, bit by bit, slide down and tumble to the water-course, and be rolled on away, away to the sea. Straggling, haphazard little villages ledged on the slope, high up, beside their wet, green, hanging meadows, with pine trees behind ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... out like a torrent let loose, Cyrus Garst and Dol Farrar gave an account of the past two hours—strangest hours of their lives—filling up the picture of them bit by bit. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... Bit by bit the man with cramps gained a little strength, and with the boys' help he was towed ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... Bit by bit, however, the C.P.M. softened; but he hadn't softened quite enough to satisfy our Field Cashier by April 24th. It was not till May 1st that he gave in altogether, and went so far as to send a chit to the Camp Commandant, authorising him to receive for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... sorrow could break the human heart I doubt if many of us would be alive to smile at next year's joys. However that may be, I do believe that young Josiah thought that he was partly responsible for his mother's death. He turned up at the funeral with a boy seven years old; and bit by bit we learned that he was separated from his wife and that the court had given him custody of ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... problem and calls for grave public human judgment and not secrecy and closed doors. All this means time and development. It comes not complete by instant revolution of a day, nor yet by the deferred evolution of a thousand years—it comes daily, bit by bit and step by step, as men and women learn and grow and as ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and for her too what I could. She cried, but she saw it was best. Billy was just a bag of bones and all over strap marks. He'd have to mud-lark just the same, but he'd have more to eat and no beatings, and he'd always hung to me from the time he was born. So that is the way I did, and, bit by bit, I got a comfortable place, and had Billy in school, and kept us both, and did well. But then the wages began to go down, and every week they got lower till, where I'd earned twelve shillings a week sometimes, I was ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... ideals, never considering himself, always placing his art first and personal comfort and convenience afterward. This is apparent in the sketch-books of this early date. His industry was extraordinary, although his work grew but slowly. It was elaborated bit by bit in much the same way in which Nathaniel Hawthorne built ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... been amply practised by one king at least, was soon known throughout the capital of the country over which the monarch here written of held dominion. Somehow, and by some means or other, the story oozed out bit by bit and in guarded whispers, that the King had 'trapped' Carl Perousse, as well as several other defaulting ministers,—and that, strange and incredible as it appeared, he himself was the very 'Pasquin Leroy' whose political ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... their work that even the writings of Aristotle, the Philosopher, must wait for centuries as 'things silently gone out of mind or things violently destroyed' (to borrow Wordsworth's fine phrase) and creep back into Europe bit by bit, under ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... lonely beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I, And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... weakly. "What a weapon! Just push a button every so often and you could blow up another country bit by bit—and no one could ever prove who was behind ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... of building up your Bible knowledge in this manner, bit by bit, is what you would not anticipate. The whole acquires a solidity and compactness not to be attained by any other method. You will find at the end of many days, not only that the structure has attained to symmetry and beauty,—but that the disposition of its several parts, in some respects, has ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... and devoted heart could doubt what all this meant. Days, weeks, months passed away, till time wore out hope, for he never came. As some fainting wretch in a famine visits his scanty store in trembling secrecy, bit by bit consumes it to the last, and then despairs, so she lived on till her faith grew less and less, and she hid its last remnant in her heart, lest it should be torn from her; but it wasted fast away, and not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... wagon soon should need repair: Thus, when the tires are worn through, Columbia's iron doth renew; Likewise the fellies, hubs, and spokes Should be replaced by Western oaks; In course of time down goes the bed, But here's one like it in its stead. So bit by bit, in seven years, All things are changed in bed and gears, And still it seems as though it ought To be the one from Scotland brought; But when I think the matter o'er, It ne'er was on a foreign shore, And all that came across the sea Is only ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... up—and he was always picking them up—were hidden from her; and she understood nothing of the mingled surmise and certainty which made his interest in her partly retrospective and partly prophetic, as he fitted in bit by bit that hidden thing in the past or foresaw the discovery that must come in the future. She only thought him tiresome and inquisitive, and wished that he would not come ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... minute until I think how it goes." Reddy began a reflective strumming, bringing back, bit by bit, a plaintive little air that carried a subdued heart throb. "I've got it," he nodded. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... refuse of food, which have been stored up. What remains of the tree is taken to the house of the master of the ceremonies and hung over the fire-place; it will be brought out again at intervals and burned bit by bit, till all is consumed, whereupon a new mango will be cut down and treated in like manner. The ashes of the holy fire on each occasion are gathered by the people and preserved in the house of ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... had suggested that he should write his own life. He had begun to tell the story, bit by bit, in "Fors." On the journey of 1882 he made a point of revisiting most of the scenes of youthful work and travel, to revive his impressions; but the meeting with Miss Alexander gave him new interests, and his return to Oxford put the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... "Darwin among the Machines," and another, "The World of the Unborn," as a starting point and helping himself with a few sentences from A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, he gradually formed Erewhon. He sent the MS. bit by bit, as it was written, to Miss Savage for her criticism and approval. He had the usual difficulty about finding a publisher. Chapman and Hall refused the book on the advice of George Meredith, who was then their reader, and in ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... master-smith fused those decorative belts into their very substance? What engineer built those table-topped mounds? Who had gouged out the bowls for those icy lakes? Why were some snowdrifts perennial? I puzzled over these conundrums, until, bit by bit, I solved them. The answers were more amazing than anything else I encountered in ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... want to talk of all this, but I made him speak out. Bit by bit, I learned the details of one of those tragedies which touched my life when a child. I went to the National Library, secretly, and looked through the newspapers of that period. I noticed that in whatever concerned us, whether legally or privately, closely or distantly, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... be called America, did not reveal itself to navigators during the lifetime of any one of those first engaged in its discovery. Its islands and coast-lines were brought to view one by one, and bit by bit, so that many years elapsed between the voyage of Columbus, in 1492, and that which finally enabled the map-makers to complete the outlines of the continents. It is interesting and instructive to trace the movements of the explorers, and note how, after the initial work ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... away with his questions, and bit by bit drew out the entire story of that one day's happening; now and then he would go over some point and try to see if Dick would contradict himself, but the result was ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... the sketching, save that he'd lost all his young manhood through a senseless crime. He wanted his youth back. He was recovering it bit by bit. The occupation made it absurdly easy to live on the surface of the far side of the Moon, whether anybody else ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... upright, and in the direction b d, parallel to the side of the window, or a little turned, so as to catch more light, as at a d, never turned as at c d, or the paper will be dark. Then you will see the landscape, bit by bit, through the circular hole. Match the colors of each important bit as nearly as you can, mixing your tints with white, beside the aperture. When matched, put a touch of the same tint at the top of your paper, writing under it: "dark tree color," "hill color," "field color," as the case may be. Then ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... Then, bit by bit, and unwillingly, and mainly in answers to my questions, she told a tale that made my heart bound within me. This is the mere skeleton of it, for I have no skill to give body and soul to ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... mistake! Yes, hotels! There aren't twenty people in England who know what a hotel is! But I know!" He paused, and added reflectively, in a comically naive tone: "Curious how these things come to you, bit by bit! Now, if it hadn't been ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... were short and sharp, and now he lay down and began to lower the lanthorn rapidly, its clear flame reflected from the ice wall, and revealing bit by bit the horrors of the terrible ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... long breath of gloating and fell upon it. For three days he lived in grimed, greased, and oiled ecstasy, appeasing that sharp curiosity to know what was inside of things. The first day he took down the engine bit by bit. The clean-swept floor about the dismantled hulk was a spreading turmoil of parts. Sharon, on cool afterthought, had conceived that his purchase might not have suffered beyond repair, but returning to survey the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... had come back from Poona where five of Carlin's seven brothers had been present at her marriage. There were weeks in Hurda now, while Skag's equipment for jungle work arrived bit by bit. They lived some distance from the city and back from the great Highway-of-all-India, in Malcolm M'Cord's bungalow, a house to ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... that things weren't going quite smoothly with his cousin and Paul Percival. Bit by bit the glamour with which he had viewed the school was wearing off. He no longer regarded it through rose-coloured glasses. Plunger had lorded it over him and made fun of him; his cousin and Paul, whom he had expected to find on the same footing as himself, ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... lad, she lets out bit by bit a little about herself. She had been on her way out to join her father, who was an officer of the East Indy Company, when the ship was taken by the pirates. The men was all killed, but she and some other women was taken on board the pirate and at last brought there. The French ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... of Marianne, Louis, Michel, and Laure. Born in 1766, he belonged to a family of peasant proprietors which for centuries had owned land, in varying quantities, in the neighbourhood of Rognes. They were originally serfs of the Roques-Bouqueval family. Bit by bit they acquired their land, until, when the Revolution of 1789 arrived, the Fouan of that day, Joseph Casimir, was the owner of twenty-one acres—the conquest of four centuries from the seigneurial territory. When, in 1793, the rest of the estate was declared national property and sold in ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... At last, bit by bit, from hurried speech, the supervisor derived the fact, the location, the hour, and directed the herder to ride back and guard the remains till ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... rudely hurt, there had been a certain readjustment of Lucy's nature going on below the little commonplaces and vanities and affections of her life which she herself would never have been able to explain. It implied the gradual abandonment of certain ambitions, the relinquishment bit by bit of an ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... another and give a fine pattern of colour. In the pendentives are seated figures of the four Evangelists. These were all worked, not from the back as is usual, but from the face, and each was fixed on the vault bit by bit. ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... can to be going on with. Preach revolutionary thoughts? Yes, but rely on the ameliorative method.... The minds of men are of slow development, and we must be content, we fear, to accomplish our revolution piecemeal, bit by bit, till a point is come to when, by accumulative process, a series of small changes amounts to the Great Change. The most important revolutions are those that happen quietly without anything particularly noticeable ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... And bit by bit, but very soon, all his old trust in an all-merciful, all-powerful ruler of the universe fell from him; he shed it like an old skin; it sloughed itself away; and with it all his old conceit of himself as a very fine fellow, taller, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... one regiment from another, but he was only allowed to take the suit he wore to the front, and before long, what with marching and sandstorms and fighting, that suit became unrecognisable as a suit. Bit by bit it went. Tailors of the most amateur description plied their needles and thread upon it in vain. It went! and Tommy's distress occasionally knew no bounds. We hear of one man who at last marched into Ladysmith ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... greed, and as the victuals refreshed and fortified him, he came out with his story, slowly, bit by bit. Pinney listened with mute admiration. "Well, sir," he said, "it's the biggest thing I ever heard of." But his face darkened. "I suppose you know it leaves me out in the cold. I came up here," he explained, "as the agent of your friends, to find you, and I did ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... her—bearing aloft a great platter of stewed duck. Behind her is Kotrina, making her way cautiously, staggering beneath a similar burden; and half a minute later there appears old Grandmother Majauszkiene, with a big yellow bowl of smoking potatoes, nearly as big as herself. So, bit by bit, the feast takes form—there is a ham and a dish of sauerkraut, boiled rice, macaroni, bologna sausages, great piles of penny buns, bowls of milk, and foaming pitchers of beer. There is also, not six feet from your back, the bar, where ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... analysis and the gradual methods of science, but our apprehension of truth in our soul is immediate and through direct intuition. We cannot attain the supreme soul by successive additions of knowledge acquired bit by bit even through all eternity, because he is one, he is not made up of parts; we can only know him as heart of our hearts and soul of our soul; we can only know him in the love and joy we feel when we give up our self and stand before him face ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... full of tears. Zimbach licked her face, and then wrenching his head away began to dance about her, barking and running at the platter. She took a bone and gave it to him; it went with a snap; so bit by bit she fed him with her own hands, and the tears dried ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... name for skill to trace To its last hiding-place, Each secret Mother Earth engaged to save, Of jungle, sea or cave. No path so devious but he mastered it; And, bit by bit, From off the face of mystery, he tore The veil she wore; Then, turning inward all his skill in seeing, To solve the knot of Being, In the deep crypts of Self fordone he lay, Quite cast away. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... FOLLIOTT. Pray, sir, let your science alone, or you will put me under the painful necessity of demolishing it bit by bit, as I have done your exordium. I will undertake it any morning; but it is too hard exercise ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... his wife dropped upon their knees in the mud. They dug with their knives. Carefully, bit by bit, they lifted the dirt. All at once there ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... "lay as only dead men lie". Then he got up bit by bit, wandered off home to the police-barracks, and mentioned casually to his wife that John L. Sullivan had come to town, and had taken the sergeant away to drown him. After which, having given orders that anybody who called was to be told that he had gone fifteen miles out of town to serve ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... thought it all over, as I trudged back on yesterday's track, I concluded that I had told them all my history from my youth up until now, and had got nothing from them in return. I had exhausted my family records, bit by bit, like a curate in his first parish; and had gone so far as to testify that one of my ancestors had been banished to Australia for political crimes. Distinctly they had me at an advantage, though, to be sure, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lights ablaze and its ports open, looking like a big firefly. There was music aboard. I stood up and shouted and screamed at it. The second day I broached one of the AEpyornis eggs, scraped the shell away at the end bit by bit, and tried it, and I was glad to find it was good enough to eat. A bit flavoury—not bad, I mean—but with something of the taste of a duck's egg. There was a kind of circular patch, about six inches across, on one side of the yoke, and with streaks of blood and a white ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... century, and perhaps supplanted by something quite to the contrary. Or, at all events, to the contrary in appearance. Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent—the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... courses, were then set, and the brig began to walk the water like a thing of life, her forefoot discoursing music, the birds flying and crying over her spars. Bit by bit the passage began to open and the blue sea to show between the flanking breakers on the reef; bit by bit, on the starboard bow, the low land of the islet began to heave closer aboard. The yards were braced up, the spanker ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ambush, and alert. I began to think Colebrook must have been lost or killed—so long was he gone—and that we must return without him. At last—we leaned forward—a muffled movement in the grass ahead! A slight wave at the base! Then it divided below, bit by bit, while the tops remained stationary. A weasel-like body slank noiselessly through. Finger on lips once more, Colebrook glided beside us. We turned and crawled back, stifling our very pulses. For many minutes none of us spoke. But we heard in our rear a loud cry and a shaking ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... were by this time in a woeful condition. The soles had shed themselves bit by bit, and the upper leathers had broken and burst until the very shape and form of shoes had departed from them. My hat (which had served me for a night-cap, too) was so crushed and bent, that no old battered handleless saucepan on a dunghill ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... in the small shop which occupied the back room of the house and day after day he worked there alone in a deadly quiet, strangely mechanical fashion. Sometimes far into the night they heard the tap-tap of his mallet as he chipped away, bit by bit, on a slender shaft of white marble, until more than one man in those days shook his head dubiously and vouchsafed his neighbor the information that John Anderson ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... Even on this small map you can see at once, by all those wavy lines, shoals and sand everywhere, blocking nine-tenths of the land altogether, and doing their best to block the other tenth where the great rivers run in. Now let's take it bit by bit. You see it divides itself into three. Beginning from the west the first piece is from Borkum to Wangeroog—fifty odd miles. What's that like? A string of sandy islands backed by sand; the Ems river at the western end, on the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... always at war, which ended invariably to the detriment of Spain.* The strife begun by the Papal Bull of 1493, in which Pope Alexander VI. divided the territories discovered and to be discovered between Portugal and Spain, went on, till bit by bit Spain was stripped of the provinces of Matto Grosso, Rio Grande, and Guayra, and found herself drawn into the numerous disputes about the Colonia del Sacramento, which cost so much blood to both contending Powers. Perhaps the most curious and interesting incident of the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... she showed a very vivid imagination, and exhibited an unaccountable savage sort of pessimism. Her intervals of absence had been occupied in this way from the first. The astounding slanders she had circulated concerning the teacher's private life came back, bit by bit, to his ears for a year afterwards, and her character sketches of previous teachers, and her own relations—for she spared nobody—would have earned a white woman a long and well-merited term of imprisonment for criminal libel. She had cunningly, by straightforward and unscrupulous ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... Bit by bit the porter drifted back and gave Hubert his form, now stamped and become his ticket. The porter having finished with him, he passed on and, after many wanderings, found the door of the room where his sentence would be passed. Bracing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... He groped his way through it with difficulty and found the hut. Once inside it, he fastened the door with a wooden bar he had himself made, and turned on his electric torch. Bit by bit in the course of his night visits he had accumulated a few necessary stores—some firewood, a few groceries hidden in a corner, a couple of brown blankets, and a small box of tools. A heap of dried bracken in a corner, raised on a substratum ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... justice of your criticism; but I am dreadfully unsystematic. It is my first large work involving much of the labour of others. I began with the intention of writing a comparatively short sketch, enlarged it, and added to it bit by bit; remodelled the tables, the headings, and almost everything else, more than once, and got my materials in such confusion that it is a wonder it has not turned out far more crooked and confused than it is. I, no doubt, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... higher figure. Such men, on the strength of some small knack in handling clay, which might have been fitly employed in making wax-work, are bold to call themselves sculptors. How terrible should be the thought that the nude woman whom the modern artist patches together, bit by bit, from a dozen heterogeneous models, meaning nothing by her, shall last as long as the Venus of the Capitol!—that his group of—no matter what, since it has no moral or intellectual existence will ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I've had out of it so far," he declared, "is free quarters here. The rent's paid up to the end of the year. I've had to sell the furniture bit by bit to keep alive. It was a cheap lot, cheap and showy, and it fetched jolly little. Morry always did like to have things that looked worth more than he gave for them. Even his jewellery was sham—every bally bit of it. There wasn't a real ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the wonder of it—the Fountain of Life Himself wells up within us, taking the place of all that we have delivered, bit by bit, into His grave. "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Little have we proved, any of us, the resources that lie in that mighty indwelling, little have we learnt what it is to have all our soul-fibres penetrated ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... do that," grumbled the elder man; but his companion sprang up lightly, hoisted one end of the case, and walked it bit by bit to where it was to stand, before ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... of Ronsard, piqued, it is said, that the Guises had given him only a little pavillon in the Forest of Meudon, whereas the presbytery was close to the chateau. From that time legend has fastened on Rabelais, has completely travestied him, till, bit by bit, it has made of him a buffoon, a veritable clown, a vagrant, a glutton, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... marking by a peculiar emphasis his dissatisfaction with Tom's choice of nouns, 'was very loyal. I had to drag the story out of him bit by bit. I repeat: why did you do it? Was this your idea of a joke? If so, I ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... on, as crafty Philip Hardin slumbers that night. Visions of violence, of hidden traps, of well-planned crime, haunt his dreams. Only "Kaintuck" knows. Secretly, bit by bit, he has brought in these ores. They have been smuggled out and worked, with no trace of their real origin. No one knows but one. Though old "Kaintuck" feels no shadow over his safety, the sweep of the dark angel's wing is chilling his brow. He knows ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Resartus" was not, however, lost. Two years after Carlyle's visit to London, it came out, bit by bit, in Fraser's Magazine. Through the influence of Emerson, it was issued, as a book, at Boston, in the United States, and Carlyle got some money for his production. It was eventually published in England, and, strange to say, has had the ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... real communication to his son began at that point in the long ago when the Gull outsailed his sloop and young Horace Gower, smarting with jealousy, struck that savage blow with a pike pole at a man whose fighting hands were tied by a promise. Bit by bit, incident by incident, old Donald traced out of a full heart and bitter memories all the passing years for his son to see and understand. He made Elizabeth Morton, the Morton family, Horace Gower and the Gower kin stand out in bold relief. He told how he, Donald MacRae, a nobody from nowhere, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... when I heard a voice, 'Girl, what are you doing there? It was a Sister of Mercy, come from the death-bed of a pauper, who had died in his misery blessing God, and the Sister took me to her house, and bit by bit—for she promised secrecy—I told ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... satisfaction that, at length, he began to think it even preferable to the moon itself. "It does na light up a' the Abbey at since, to be sure," he would say, "but then you can shift it about and show the auld ruin bit by bit, whiles the moon only ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... to words, she sought out her paint-box and was soon busy with a sketch, which, developing bit by bit, or rather, seeming to evolve out of nothing, showed a native dressed in furs, shading his eyes to scan the dark, tossing ocean. And beyond, the object of his gaze, was the silvery line. When she had finished, she playfully inscribed a ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... It is only bit by bit that one ascertains the truth in affairs like these. It is true that the King imparted his resolution to Melbourne in a letter, but not true in the sense in which that fact is intended to be taken. I went to Holland House yesterday, but my Lord and my Lady were gone to town. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... though the Tiger could gain little on her rival in actual headway, she was gradually pulling over closer to the quarter of the Revenge. Hawkes, who was an excellent seaman, humored the craft to starboard, bit by bit, without ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... in his undressing to ponder how Moran had come to tell him that he was going away on a drinking-bout, and all their long walk together to within a mile of Regan's public-house returned to him bit by bit, how Moran knelt down by the roadside to drink bog-water, which he said would take the thirst from him as well as whisky; and after bidding Moran good-night he had fallen into his armchair. It was not till he rose to his feet to go to bed that he had caught ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... So, bit by bit, the long day passed away, and I thought it would never end. For Helene and I sat and waited for that which might happen, with beating and anxious hearts. Ofttimes I ran to the top of the Red Tower, and sometimes it seemed that I could see a moving ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... was not idle. The fate of 'Crinoline and Macassar' has not yet been told; nor has that of the two rival chieftains, the 'Baron of Ballyporeen and Sir Anthony Allan-a- dale.' These heartrending tales appeared in due course, bit by bit, in the pages of the Daily Delight. On every morning of the week, Sundays excepted, a page and a half of Charley's narrative was given to the expectant public; and though I am not prepared to say that the public received the offering with any violent acclamations of applause, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... In the ore, the action is more gradual and gentle, since it is less concentrated. But the metal itself would burn the vital organs out of these creatures, cause them to be struck blind, shrivel them up inside and kill them in a few minutes in the quantity we have. We expose them bit by bit, allowing more and more time as they begin to grow immune to the rays. Here, you see, are smaller creatures which have grown some eight or ten ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... two later, Anne wandered alone into the old-fashioned garden. She had just recalled—bit by bit things from the past came back to her—a damask rose at the end of the south walk that was her mother's special favorite. It was bare now of its rosy-pink blossoms and Anne gathered some red and yellow zinnias ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... he, by a rare combination of prudence and audacity, gradually acquired the reputation of being a most successful smuggler— and the snug little fortune of some ten thousand pounds. The latter and more desirable portion of his acquirements he carefully invested, as it dribbled in bit by bit, in house-property in the neighbourhood; so that, when this estimable man's career was cut short at the comparatively early age of sixty years, by an unlucky cannon-shot fired from a revenue cutter, his disconsolate ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... Price's corps, and Van Dorn gave his personal attention to that part of the field. Gallantry and determination could not prevail against gallantry and determination backed by superior numbers. Bit by bit, first on one flank, then the other, he receded. Curtis sent his body-guard, then the camp-guard to reinforce him, and then a small reserve that had been guarding the road to the rear. Carr had sent word he could not hold out much ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... as an elevator drops, and as safely, the cube shot straight downward. Every second the landscape narrowed and shrunk, leaving the remaining details larger, clearer, sharper. Bit by bit the amazing thing below them resolved itself ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... did. It was an enigma which puzzled many wiser heads than his in the long run; but I think the part which astonished him most was to be discovering, bit by bit, that the story of my visit to the house in Monmouth Street, as related to him and his brother, the "tip-top London detective," was actually founded at any rate on ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... moment, no. You look remarkably sane. A man with as good a brain as yours does not let it go all at once. It will slide from you imperceptibly, bit by bit, until one day there will ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton |
