"By inches" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from here—to get to a place where there 's a chance for a quicker death than eating one 's heart by inches." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... suddenly and a bullet missed Tommy's neck by inches. He fired at that window, and absorbedly guided the knot of the rope past its vanishing point. The knot ceased to exist and the rope crept onward—and suddenly moved more and more swiftly to a place where abruptly it was not. For the length of half an inch, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... (“Climate and Time”). It is now generally held that there were more than one ice-age, with inter-glacial breaks. These boulders are abundant in our neighbourhood, and of all sizes. They may be measured by inches or by yards. There is a good-sized one in the vicarage garden at Woodhall Spa, which the present writer had carted from Kirkby-lane, a distance of a mile and a half. There is a larger one lying on the moor, near the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... there were one breed, so to speak, of rouble. There were KERENSKY roubles, and Duma roubles, and NICHOLAS roubles, and every little town had a rouble-works which was turning out local notes as hard as they, could go. I missed a fortune there by inches." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... better news of you. As to dying by inches, that is what we are all doing, my dear old fellow; the only thing is to establish a proper ratio between inch and time. Eight years ago I had good reason to say the same thing of myself, but my inch has lengthened out in a most extraordinary way. Still I ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... pity? We think it sad when a woman is thus crushed by neglect or abuse, by the hand of poverty, by hard toil, or the harder fate of a consuming death at the hands of a false or brutal companion. But really, why is it sadder than to die by inches on the guillotine of Fashion? The results are the same in either case. Abused women generally outlive fashionable ones. Crushed and care-worn women see the pampered daughters of Fashion wither and die around them, and wonder why death in kindness does not come ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... Give me no encouragement unless you mean to free him. As for my part, take my life and spare John's. Kill me by torture, burn me at the stake, stretch me upon the rack till my joints are severed and my flesh is torn asunder. Let me die by inches, my queen; but spare him, oh, spare him, and do with me as you will. Ask from me what you wish. Gladly will I do all that you may demand; gladly will I welcome death and call it sweet, if I can thereby save him. The faint hope your Majesty's words hold out makes me strong again. ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Ross gave a queer little cough and folded forward to his knees, sprawling on his face. His companion stared at him wildly for an instant, and then skidded into the passage beyond, escaping by inches a shot which clipped the door as he ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... though the man and the girl were working slowly and deliberately, really covering the ground by inches, so thorough was their search for clues of the supposed night visitors. No spot of the size of a hand escaped the keen scrutiny of one or the other of them. They could not have answered had they been asked what particular ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... rather stake my chances on a long swim even than perish by inches on the floe, as there was no likelihood whatever of being seen and rescued. But, keenly though I watched, not a streak even of clear water appeared, the interminable sish rising from below and filling every gap as it appeared. We were now resting on a piece of ice about ten by ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... know that it is barely enough to keep one body and soul together; the two of us would only starve by inches. No use, Nanna, we must take things as we find them. But isn't it strange—" She stopped abruptly and let her glance wander over the luxurious table-service, the gleaming surface of the silver reflecting her troubled eyes. She ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... pinioning the latter to his body, so that, excepting his head, which was 'left free to enjoy the prospect,' he could not move a muscle. In this condition he hung for days beside his stiffened companion; dying by inches of famine and cold, which had moderated so as, without ending, to aggravate his misery. Before he died, he had gnawed his shoulder from very hunger. On the fifth night, as it approached twelve o'clock, having been motionless for hours, his guards believed him to be dead, and, tired of their horrid ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... were unable to stop until they had carried six or eight yards beyond. One or two jostled the leader in passing and were rewarded with swift, silent slashes of his great jaws. Luckily for themselves, the culprits escaped death by inches, and leaping swiftly aside, mingled with their companions, while the great grey leader stood squarely upon his ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race. There will be no killing of babies in the womb by abortion, nor through neglect in foundling homes, nor will there be infanticide. Neither will children die by inches in mills and factories. No man will dare to break a child's life upon the wheel ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable; when we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people with no light but one tallow candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are clothes to dry. I asked if we were to have rope dancing between the acts. We heard nothing; they told us (as they would at a puppet show) that it would not come that night till seven in the morning, that is, when ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... cloud of heavy sorrow and foreboding hung over the little village. All its inhabitants were oppressed by a dreary sense of helpless wretchedness and personal loss. Maryllia was not dead,—but it was to be feared that she was dying,—slowly, and by inches as it were, yet nevertheless surely. A great specialist had been summoned from London by Dr. Forsyth, and after long and earnest consultation, his verdict upon her case had been well-nigh hopeless. Thereupon ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... fearing God; and thought they'd made men and sailors of them by private subscription. I tricked these thieves into believing I'd sold myself to the devil. It saved my soul from the kicking and swearing that was damning me by inches. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... of this Sybaritic fare, helped down with a crusted bottle of Calabrian wine—your Sicilian stuff is too strong for me, too straightforward, uncompromising; I prefer to be wheedled out of my faculties by inches, like a gentleman—under this genial stimulus my extenuated frame was definitely restored; I became mellow and companionable; the traveller's lot, I finally concluded, is not the worst on earth. Everything was as it should be. As for ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Catholicism were made at a time when the Pope was not a ruler. Since he has become a king, you may measure the territory won from the Church by inches. ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... by the seashore know well those familiar ripples that mark the sands when the tide is out. On the Goodwins those ripples are gigantic banks, to be measured by feet, not by inches. I can speak from personal experience, having once visited the Goodwins and walked among the sand-banks at low water. From one to another of these banks this splendid boat was thrown. Each roaring surf ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... away over there in France was real to you," he continued. "Well, less than a mile from this spot, I called this afternoon on a man who is dying by inches of consumption, contracted while working in our office. For eight years he was absent from his desk scarcely a day. The force nicknamed him 'Old Faithful.' When he dropped in his tracks at last they carried him out and stopped his pay. He has no care—nothing to eat, ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... substance of fact behind the shadow of the figure a lesson for our instant application. The disciplined Romans scorned the long blades of the barbarians, whose valor so often impetuous was also impotent against discipline. The Romans measured their blades by inches, not by feet. For ages the Japanese sword has been famed for its temper more than its weight.[7] The Christian entering upon his Master's campaigns with as little impediments of sectarian dogma as possible, should select a weapon that is short, sure ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... than you do, where would you be? Are you mad as well as reckless, to rise against your own captain because he has two strings to his bow? Go my way, I say, or, as I live, I'll blow up the ship and every soul on board, and save you the pain of rotting here by inches." ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... and the S.E. wind is the lower stratum now. It is the dry season well begun. Seventy-three inches is a higher rainfall than has been observed anywhere else, even in northern Manyuema; it was lower by inches than here far south on the watershed. In fact, this is the very heaviest rainfall known in these latitudes; between fifty ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... of natural affinity. How well one can realise the extraordinary comfort that Amelia Opie must have found in the kind friends and neighbours with whom she was now thrown! Her father was a very old man, dying slowly by inches. Her own life of struggle, animation, intelligence, was over, as she imagined, for ever. No wonder if for a time she was carried away, if she forgot her own nature, her own imperative necessities, in sympathy ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... the world," says The Onlooker, "are those who work by rule of thumb; who do the day's work by the day's light and advance on chaos and the painful dark by inches; in other words, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... mine. I will lay them in the scale against my sins. Hasten, and be firm. Be thou the arrow of my vengeance. Seize the favourite and hurl him among the sands of burning Libya, so that he may perish by inches. ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... his precious self his dear delight; Who loves his own smart shadow in the streets, Better than e'er the fairest she he meets; Much specious lore, but little understood, (Veneering oft outshines the solid wood), His solid sense, by inches you must tell, But mete his cunning by the Scottish ell! A man of fashion too, he made his tour, Learn'd "vive la bagatelle et vive l'amour;" So travell'd monkeys their grimace improve, Polish their grin—nay, sigh for ladies' love! His meddling vanity, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... further tells us, that a boy of ten or eleven years of age was bitten by a vampire, and a poor ass, belonging to the young gentleman's father, was dying by inches from the bites of the larger kinds, while most of his fowls were killed ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... hill as a lookout place, do not make the common mistake of showing yourself on the skyline. Reach the top of the hill slowly and gradually by crouching down and crawling, and raise your head above the crest by inches. In leaving, lower your head gradually and crawl away by degrees, as any quick or sudden movement on the skyline is likely to attract attention. And, remember, just because you don't happen to see the enemy that is ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... roam about the world at pleasure, when that gallant coachmaker had vowed but the night before that Miss Varden held him bound in adamantine chains; and had positively stated in so many words that she was killing him by inches, and that in a fortnight more or thereabouts he expected to make a decent end and leave the business to ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... her chair, thrilled and wide-eyed. She could imagine all the horror of the happening through the old lawyer's precise and unemotional story. The boy-lover, pinioned, helpless, condemned to watch his sweetheart dying by inches, and unable to help her by so much as lifting a hand—could anything be more awful not only to endure, ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... fingers had recovered their feeling. If only she could loose that galling chain, she thought to herself, she might escape, for now death, however strong her faith, was very near and unlovely; also she suffered in many ways. To die and pass quick to Heaven—that would be well, but to perish by inches of starvation, heat, cold, and cramped limbs, with pains within and without and a swimming sickness of the head, ah! it was hard to bear. She knew that even were she free she could not hope to descend the gateway by its staircase, since ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... "By inches. After working all day on a bulletin paper whose city editor is constantly shouting: 'Boil it now, fellows! Keep it down! We're crowded!' it is too much of a wrench to find myself seated calmly before my own ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... dear, but that you do not know what has happened, even since you were born. Any white will tell you what the negroes did, so late as the year ninety-one—how they killed their masters by inches—how they murdered infants—how they carried off ladies into ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... he wasn't getting much out of living, Jack. There was nothing for him to look forward to but a few years of discomfort and uncertainty. A man who has been strong and active rebels against dying by inches. Steve told me—not so very long ago—that if something would finish him off quickly he would ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... very much to be done before a royalist army can march from La Vendee to Paris; unthought of sufferings to be endured, the blood of thousands to be sacrificed, before France will own that she has been wrong in the experiment she has made. We must fight our battles by inches, and be satisfied, if, when dying, we can think that we have left to our children a probability of final victory. Normandy and the Gironde may be unwilling to submit to the Jacobin leaders, but they ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... flickering spirit into steady flame, such pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart—the struggle of life and death in him—grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the dead river. And he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised by the old fires, and the old tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight clear of the cloud of forgotten sensations that settle on him; such pain it is, the old sweet music reviving through his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... where it was about an inch deep, and he was nearly wild with impatience when he found that this process was to be repeated every day in spite of all he could say or do, the water rising higher and higher by inches, so that for sixty days he had to live in perpetual silence, ceremoniously conducted to and fro, supping all his meals through the long reed, and looking on at innumerable games of chess, the game of all others which he detested ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... lads,' said the mate, 'it is better to be killed outright by the blacks, than die by inches from hunger and thirst. I am ready to step on shore first, and you may shove off, and wait till you see what becomes ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on to take some things to poor old Mrs. Lassiter. She never has recovered from the loss of her son—it's killing her by inches, Tom says. And you considering that office of sheriff!" She turned to him with censorious eyes as she spoke, as if struck with a pain of which he was the cause. "I tell you, you men don't know, you don't know! It's the women that suffer in all this shooting and killing—we are the ones ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinico may tutor thee. You scurvy valiant ass! Thou art here but to thrash Troyans, and thou art bought and sold among those of any wit like a barbarian slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel and tell what thou art by inches, thou thing ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... She had been dying by inches for months. She had fought Death in Russia; she had fought him through all the long voyage. It was a strange warfare. For he was not to be stayed. Irresistible, majestic, wonderful, he took his toll—and yet she remained untouched by him! With unclouded ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... coast of Ireland to make the entrance of the British Channel. There a trial of patience awaited us. A hard-hearted east wind barred our progress, and with long tacks we seemed to make headway only by inches. Yet the little "Harmony" bravely held on her way, when larger vessels had given ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... the poor mother grew as yellow as a quince, and her appearance did not contradict the tongues of those who declared that Doctor Rouget was killing her by inches. The behavior of her booby of a son must have added to the misery of the poor woman so unjustly accused. Not restrained, possibly encouraged by his father, the young fellow, who was in every way stupid, paid ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... he is sometimes right side upward in his natural condition—graced the sign-board. The sign-board chafed its rusty hooks outside the bow-window of my room, and was a shabby work. No visitor could have denied that the Dolphin was dying by inches, but he showed no bright colours. He had once served another master; there was a newer streak of paint below him, displaying with inconsistent freshness the legend, By ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... him that I had had a conversation with Cojuelo, and that the brigand had told me he meant to kill him by inches and make him die a hundred deaths for having attempted to murder him," resumed Don Carlos at length. "I told him I could ransom him and get him away scot free, but only if he agreed to hand you over to Cojuelo as part ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... height I can mete by inches here, Is a thousand fathoms quite. I must journey to your foot, Grow on you as on my root; Feed upon your silent speech, Awful air, and wind, and thunder, Shades, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... the Statute-Book and Four Courts, with Coke upon Lyttelton and Three Estates of Parliament in the rear of them, got together without human labour,—mostly forgotten now! From the time of Cain's slaying Abel by swift head-breakage, to this time of killing your man in Chancery by inches, and slow heart-break for forty years,—there too is an interval! Venerable Justice herself began by Wild-Justice; all Law is as a tamed furrowfield, slowly worked out, and rendered arable, from the waste jungle of Club-Law. Valiant Wisdom tilling and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... correct. Chambers had shot her bolt. Brimfield secured the ball by inches on a fourth down near the middle of the field and her first desperate attack, a skin-tackle play with St. Clair carrying the pigskin, piled through for nearly ten yards, proving that Chambers was ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the choking response. "Can't you see that you are killing me by inches? Can't you see that I've got to choose between being a man clear through, or a scoundrel as weak and shifty as any of those I have been denouncing? ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... better than to go in that way," remonstrated Snap. "Wet your face and then go in head first—-it's the only right way. If you go in by inches you'll gasp fit to turn ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... where the pressure is greatest, and where lines of fracture and lesser resistance can be found. Because so much detritus is annually added to the ocean floors—enough to raise the levels of the oceans by inches in a century—it is natural that greater pressures should be exerted in these areas than in the slowly thinning continental regions. These are some of the reasons why volcanoes arise almost invariably along the shores or from the floors ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... easily, finding plenty of hand and footholds. They came to rest on one of the shelflike circumvoluting rings, some twenty-five feet above the ground. Soon the blunt brown tentacles slithered in search of them, but failed to reach their refuge by inches. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... the slightest idea, sir. But I must get away from this hum-drum existence. It is killing me by inches. I need adventure, life in the open, where a man can breathe freely ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... and guardy are dying by inches of curiosity. Guardy has concocted a story, and tells it with his blandest air to everybody; and everybody smiles, and bows, and listens, and nobody believes a word of it. And that odious Mrs. Carl—there's no keeping her in the dark. She has the cunning of a serpent, that woman. She has ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But, till then—if you don't believe me, you don't know me—till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... they say, and what Fairfax says. It's the jumping-off place. So I'm leaving in a day or two with Rachel. My husband says he can't leave his business, but I'm not such a fool as he thinks. I won't say anything more about him, except that he hasn't the courage to watch me go down by inches. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... moral convictions, would suffer in so keen a contest waged under such unequal and cruel conditions. It was in truth a year of great passion and great despair. Defeat is bitter when it comes swiftly and conclusively, but when defeat falls by inches like the fatal pendulum in the pit, the agony is a little out of reach of words to define. It was even so. I remember the first day of my martyrdom. The clocks were striking eight; we chose our places, got into position. After the first hour, I compared ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... lie still. Then I caught another pregnant sound, a mumbling of male voices in the adjoining front room. I waited a bit, hearkening laboriously, and then ever so gradually I slid from the bed, put on everything except my boots, and moved by inches to the door between the two rooms. It was very thin; "a good sounding-board," thought I as I listened for life or death and hoped my ear was the only one ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... volition, and with a cry that shot up through the room, rending it like a gash, Mrs. Horowitz, who moved by inches, sprang to her supreme height, her arms, the crooks forced ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... contemplate the scene for a moment. How happy, joyous, and innocent they were, just as God intended his children to be. Two days before, this lovely family had been in the depths of despair, day by day watching a beloved wife and mother dying by inches of a painful, lingering, loathsome disease. Not a sound of music had been heard in the house for many days. The violin, guitar, and dulcimer had lain utterly neglected and unstrung. Now a change has occurred that must have delighted the angels of God. Through the unselfishness, skill, ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... the agonized dream that fiends were staking him down under water and torturing him by letting the water rise higher and higher, until finally he would be drowned by inches. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... I will tell you—I'll explain in words of one syllable. Mind you, I don't undertake to settle the question—Heaven forbid! It may be all right for Marietta Mortimer to kill herself body and soul by inches to keep what bores her to death to have—a social position in Endbury's two-for-a-cent society, but, for the Lord's sake, why do they make such a howling and yelling just at the time when Lydia's got the tragically important question to decide as to whether that's what she wants? It's ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... him. He seemed so strong and resolute. I never had a moment in which to doubt myself. Then, when he died, the agony I suffered was something too dreadful to contemplate. As he lay on the little bed with his life slowly ebbing, and I watched him dying by inches, I was filled with such horror and despair that I thought surely I should go mad. Then it dawned on me that he had been murdered, and my anguish turned to a dreadful feeling of rage and longing to avenge him. Never in my life did I experience such terrible passion ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... to marry her if she will fly with him, indeed does go through some mummery of marriage with her—so she says—and the rest of it. Now he has deserted her and she is in trouble, and what is more, should the priests catch her, likely to learn what it feels like to die by inches in a convent wall. She came to me for counsel and brought some silver ornaments as the fee. ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... praised! I'm a man agin, and not a starvin' machine; and I shall see ye, Mary, mavourneen! but, och, the poor boys that we're lavin'! Hurra! how iver will I ate three males a day, and slape under a blanket, and think of thim on the ground and starvin' by inches!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... too bad to think of, Miss Cynthy; and there's that poor woman dyin' by inches, and Miss Bathsheby settin' with her day and night, she has n't got a bit of her father in her, it's all her mother,—and that man, instead of bein' with her to comfort her as any man ought to be with his wife, in sickness and in health, that's what he promised. I 'm sure ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... down to it, Sagamore, beginning at the spring, and going over the ground by inches. The Huron shall never brag in his tribe that he has a foot ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... little drama of midocean. In spite of himself, Wilbur was excited. He even found occasion to observe that the life was not so bad, after all. This was as good fun as stalking deer. The dory moved forward by inches. Kitchell's whisper was as faint as a dying infant's: "Steady ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... am sick," was the reply—"homesick and sick at heart. I have been in the army nearly two years and a half, and I don't see how I can live to serve out the rest of my time. I am dying by inches." ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... me," resumed Lady Delacour vehemently, seizing Belinda's hand, "that you will never reveal to any mortal what you have seen and heard this night. No living creature suspects that Lady Delacour is dying by inches, except Marriott and that woman whom but a few hours ago I thought my real friend, to whom I trusted every secret of my life, every thought of my heart. Fool! idiot! dupe that I was to trust to the friendship of a woman whom I knew to be without principle: but I thought she had honour; I thought ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... and he strained his ears to catch the words that might follow it. As he listened, his head thrust half in at the door, Obadiah's voice became lower and lower, until at last it ceased entirely. Not a step, not a deep breath, not the movement of a hand disturbed the stillness of the little room. By inches Nathaniel drew himself inside the door. His heavy boot caught in a sliver on the step but the rending of wood brought no response. It was the quiet of death that pervaded the cabin, it was a strange, growing fear of death that entered Nathaniel as he now hurried across the room ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... be afraid—of me!" said the girl, with white-hot scorn. "I'd rather die by inches of leprosy than belong to you now. You are clever, though. And I was easy to deal with, wasn't I? And I cared so much! I dare say it was really your hair and beard, but I honestly thought you a sort of Archangel! Well, you're not. You're not anything I thought you—not ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... was so great that an automobile, rounding a corner, missed him by inches as he crossed the road. The chauffeur shouted angrily at him ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... knife cut well, did it? And the Sioux did not eat you by inches, beginning with your thumbs? Ha! Tres bien! Very good taste! You were not meant for feasts, my solemncholy? Some men are monuments. That's you, mine frien'! Some are champagne bottles that uncork, zip, fizz, froth, stars dancing round your head! That's me! 'Tis I, Louis Laplante, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... idea, Davy," Thad assured him; "suppose, then, we also say the longest fish when measured by inches; that would make ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... have spoken first. I should have died with my love. I know that other women in my place would have done so. I could not; life is strong within me. I could not die here, tortured to death by inches, without telling you. Ah, say to me that I shall ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... report to a superior officer.] No change, sir. [Then, as if remembering himself, comes to the fireplace and slumps down in a chair—agitatedly.] God, Dad, I can't stand her moaning and screaming! It's got my nerves shot to pieces. I thought I was hardened. I've heard them out in No Man's Land—dying by inches—when you couldn't get to them or help—but this is worse—a million times! After all, that ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... and the bear still lives. Talk to me about that, will you, if he didn't shoot its stub of a tail off that time! What next, I wonder? Why not execute the poor beast scientifically, and not murder him by inches?" ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... first half of the eleventh consists entirely of the continued contest between the West Saxons and the Scandinavians. It falls naturally into three periods. The first is that of the English reaction, when the West Saxon kings, Eadward and AEthelstan, gradually reconquered the Danish North by inches at a time. The second is that of the Augustan age, when Dunstan and Eadgar held together the whole of Britain for a while in the hands of a single West Saxon over-lord. The third is that of the decadence, when, under AEthelred, the ill-welded ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... Graham entered the room, finding his wife, who had heard his footsteps, in violent hysterics. He had seen her so too often to be alarmed, and was about to pull the bellrope, when she found voice to bid him desist, saying it was himself who was killing her by inches, and that the sooner she was dead, the better she supposed he would like it. "But, for my sake," she added, in a kind of howl, between crying and scolding, "do try to behave yourself during the short time I have to live, and not go to giving ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... alcohol, because its grip is more speedy and more deadly. It is more deadly than arsenic, because by arsenic the suicide dies at once, while the opium victim suffers untold agonies and horrors and dies by inches. It is all very well for the men who know nothing about the effect of opium to do all the talking about the harmlessness of this pernicious drug; but they should come through this once fair land of Yuen-nan and see everywhere—not ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... together, then we knew just what the life of the boy had cost him. They tell us—these defrauded broken-hearted ones—just how tall the lad was, and how good to look at! That seems to me so sad—as if one reckoned one's love by inches! And yet it is the beauty of youth that I mourn also, and its ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... poison to kill a cat; if it was fixed right, I mean." He passed a thin, shaking hand over his face, and went on: "Do you want to fool with such things?—Not if you are wise. You see, the cigarette habit will kill you sometime, by inches, if not right away, or else drive you crazy; and no sane person wants to kill himself or spoil his health. That is what I am doing, though," he admitted, with a bitter smile and a sad shake of his head. "But I cannot stop it now. I have gone ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... want to kill the men, and I know the rascals deserve it, do it at once. Hanging is the best way. But don't keep them there to die by inches, for it will disgrace us all over ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... you are angry, aren't you—furious—because you haven't got your way! Although you've done everything, everything you possibly could, short of killing us by inches! You pretend to be kind. You spoke kindly to us. You wanted to make me send my husband to the scaffold! [Mouzon has taken up his brief and affects to be studying it with indifference] It's your trade to supply heads to ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... set my teeth till my jaws felt absolutely locked. In the moments when Peter Ivanovitch interrupted his dictation, and sometimes these intervals were very long—often twenty minutes, no less, while he walked to and fro behind my back muttering to himself—I felt I was dying by inches, I assure you. Perhaps if I had let my teeth rattle Peter Ivanovitch might have noticed my distress, but I don't think it would have had any practical effect. She's ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... fountain from him, instead of toward him. He had some trouble lighting his cigarette and was irritated for a second at his inconvenience. But so far as we could see, the fact that death had reached for him and missed him by inches had left no impression upon his mind. Three years in war had wrought some deep change in him. Was it entirely in his nerves or was it deeper than nerves, a certain calmness of soul—or was it merely a dramatic expression of a soldierly attitude? We did not know. But to Henry ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... an end of it," he returned irritably, chewing hard on a chip he had picked up from the ground; "and what's more, I shan't go till I see the use. It's killing me by inches. I tell you I'm not strong enough to stand a life like this. Drudge, drudge, drudge; there's nothing else except the little spirit I get ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... made in the town. The Captain, rebelling against the doctor's order, hugged himself as he thought of it and of the comparatively sparing use he had made of it so far—for fear of being found out. There was no need of him to die by inches while he had that store of life and comfort; so he told himself, and secretly made use of it, with anything but good result. Julia, marking the disimprovement in his health, thought it was the natural ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... that scoundrel's throat as he had dared touch hers; and in my heart I swore by all the gods, by all the stars and moons and other things in the heavens and under the sea, that I would strangle out his miserable life by inches, or leave my bones to bleach on the shore of her unknown island. Wherever it was, I would find it; wherever she was, I would find her!—and God help him when he came my way! It was a classy oath, and I felt a lot better ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... of the seat in a firm grip and leaned forward to break the jar when they struck rough places. Around an elbow turn they went with one warning scream of the Klaxon, skidded horribly at the sharp angle of the curve, and missed by inches a ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... us: sorrow is teaching it some of us now. We surely are beginning to see, that to suffer patiently for conscience sake, is the most beautiful thing on earth or in heaven: we begin to see that those poor soldiers, dying by inches of cold and weariness, without a murmur, because it was their Duty, were doing a nobler work even than they did when they fought at Alma and Inkermann; and that those ladies who are drudging in the hospitals, far away from home, amid ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... he said to Arthur. "This is November, baby's five months old. Send your wife away. Put her out! Something's killing her by inches, and I believe it's just care o' the nest. We must drive her off it, as I drove Leonard Byington off,—which, you remember, you, quietly, were the first to suggest to me to do.... Coming back, you say,—Byington? Yes, but only for a day or ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... by inches. More than once Willie collapsed, groaning, under his burden. Macgregor, racked as he was, shed tears for his friend's sake. Time had no significance except as a measure of suspense and torture. But Willie ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... saw it fall on the shore of Castle Island, and, thinking that it would linger there for days, dying by inches, I started off with the intention of saving it from a lingering death, but a shot had done that. One pellet would have been enough, for the bird was but a heap of skin and feathers, not to be wondered at, its legs being tied together with a piece of stout string, twisted and tied so that ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... women of New York include every grade of their class, from those who are living in luxury, to the poor wretches who are dying by inches in the slums. Every stage of the road ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... harm her in the least—" It was Steve's voice though certainly at first neither Blenham nor even Terry could have recognized it. "If you harm her in the least, Blenham, I'll kill you. Not all at once—just by inches!" ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... mere hirelings toiling for a daily wage, but men who had a stake in that region's future, and would share its prosperity, and, had it been otherwise, they were human still. Toiling long with stubborn patience, often in imminent peril of life and limb; winning ground as it were by inches, and sometimes barely holding what they had won; fulfilling their race's destiny to subdue and people the waste places of the earth with the faith which, when aided by modern science, is greater than the mountains' immobility, they too rejoiced fervently over ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... pinched by hunger, without hope of relief! Better to have been drowned at once; better to have fallen by the paw of a mouser, or to have been caught like my brothers in a trap, than to be dying thus by inches on a barrel, tossed in the midst ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... in or out until the train was safely on the great boat that was to transfer it across the river. There the turbulent stream of humanity was permitted to burst forth, and in another moment a stalwart young soldier, who seemed to have broadened by inches since she last saw him, had flung his arms about Mrs. Norris's neck. Then he shook hands with his father and kissed both the girls, at which Spence Cuthbert ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... It ought to be impossible one person should have power to kill another by inches, like this, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of that poor stricken mother? Wasted to a shadow, feverish and weak, she lay for weeks, counting the dreary hours, till she heard of dear, though unnatural, Maria. Oh! the heartless caitiff, John! will he thus watch his mother die by inches, when one true word from his lips could restore her to tranquillity and health? Yes, he would—he did—the wretch! She gradually pined—waned—wasted; the candle of her life burnt down into the hollow socket—glimmering ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... you're eating your heart out. Oh, I know—you have opened the windows; you want sunshine and air. In six months I shall have to fight to get one open. It gets into the soul; it is stagnation; you die by inches. Better ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... She won't show for that, any more than your watch, when it's about to stop for want of being wound up, gives you convenient notice or shows as different from usual. She won't die, she won't live, by inches. She won't smell, as it were, of drugs. She won't taste, as it were, of medicine. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... most probably had been cooked in a copper vessel not properly tinned. We were all very anxious that he should recover; but, on the contrary, he appeared to grow worse and worse every day, wasting away, and dying, as they say, by inches. At last he was put into his cot, and never rose from it again. This melancholy circumstance, added to the knowledge that we were proceeding to an unhealthy climate, caused a gloom throughout the ship; and, although ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... nucleus to work upon the Government through their agents began a system of terrorism by which they hoped to establish conditions under which their 'magnanimity by inches' would appear in the most favourable possible light. The first petition presented for the signature of the prisoners was one in which they were asked to admit the justice of their sentences, to express regret for what they had done and to promise to behave themselves ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... words of alarm proceed, the main one being battened down and covered with tarpaulin. Then a hurried descent to the "'tween-decks" and an anxious peering into the hold below. True—too true! It is already half full of water, which seems mounting higher and by inches to the minute! So ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... by inches! To tell us all this and then ask us to settle on going up there into the woods for a two-weeks' spin! It's a crime, that's ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... I will not tell you what he said; it must be sacred between my boy and me. Oh, you do not know him! His nature is intense, like mine; he takes nothing easily. When he says that it is killing him by inches, and that we must go away, I know he is speaking the truth. How is he to live here, seeing you every day, and knowing that there is no love for him in your heart? How could any man drag out such ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... by inches, Harkness knew; but he knew, too, that the impact he felt was no shattering of metal upon metal. The heavy windows of the control room went black with the masses of fibrous flesh that crashed upon them; then cleared in an instant as the ship ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... estuary. It seems that the vessels were wrecked on certain shoals at the entrance to the estuary, and the Chinese with all their possessions fell into the power of the Moros, who inflicted on them a severe punishment—seizing them all, and putting them to death by inches in a most cruel manner, flaying their faces, and exposing them on reeds and mats. When the Spaniards entered the town, they encountered not a few similar sights; and so recent was this deed that the flayed faces of the Chinese ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... crowd made retreat a problem. Police and Staff had to resolve themselves into human Tanks, and press a way by inches through the enthusiastic throng to the car. The car itself was surrounded, and could only move at a crawl along the roads, and so slow was the going and so lively was the friendliness of the people, that His Royal Highness once and for all threw saluting overboard as ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... men—earthly men, and not incarnate devils, who thus appeal to Heaven, while they are devouring by inches the life blood of their hapless master!" muttered Catharine, as her two baffled inquisitors left the apartment. "Why sleeps the thunder? But it will roll ere long, and oh! may it be to preserve as well ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... choice rich food—they were before him: he could see them all, he had but to reach out his hand, and take them—and, though the illusion was reality itself, he knew that he was sitting alone in the deserted street, watching the rain-drops as they pattered on the stones; that death was coming upon him by inches—and that there were none to care ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... irons fastened to a stake, tied his neck to another, while two men held his hands; and in this position they put fire to his feet. 9. Every now and then, the tyrant entered and told him, that they would kill him by inches with tortures if he did not give the gold. And thus they did, and killed this lord with tortures. While they were tormenting him, God gave a sign of destestation of that cruelty, by causing all that town, where it was committed to be burnt. 10. The other Spaniards imitated their good captain and, ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... and, pulling his prisoner by inches to the door, felt up the wall till he found the ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... so unexpected as it might have been, for, although I cannot literally say that he had been dying by inches, seeing that he had walked all the way from the frontiers of Portugal, yet he had, nevertheless, been doing it on the grand scale—by miles. I only fell in with him the day before the commencement of the campaign, ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... a fallin'—gwine down by inches at a jump; an in an hour from this, thur'll be bluffs afront o' the camp helf a yurd ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid |
