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Gradual   /grˈædʒuəl/   Listen
Gradual

adjective
1.
Proceeding in small stages.
2.
(of a topographical gradient) not steep or abrupt.



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"Gradual" Quotes from Famous Books



... the gradual Christian re-conquest of the country from the Moors that Portugal came into existence, and only owing to the repeated failure of the attempt to unite the two crowns of Portugal and Castile by marriage that they have remained separated ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... the heavens above us, the sun began to break through the mist, forming a clear space, which, as it grew wider by the gradual retreat of the mist and clouds, was enclosed or surrounded by a complete circle of hazy light, much brighter than the general aspect of the atmosphere, but not so brilliant as the sun itself. This circle was about half as broad as the apparent size of the sun, through which it seemed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... parish churches, and stretching to the river eastwards and westwards. The lower portions of the walls have recently been cleared of earth and exposed to view. It will be noticed that the soil has risen by gradual accumulation to a height of several feet above its original level in the seven hundred and fifty years which have elapsed since the construction. In monastic times this gateway figured in the important ceremony attending the installation of a new abbot. Before ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New

... of the whites. What was formerly a compliance with policy and superstition has been exasperated into a gratification of vengeance. They cannot but be sensible that the white men are the usurpers of their ancient dominion, the cause of their degradation, and the gradual destroyers of their race. They go forth to battle smarting with injuries and indignities which they have individually suffered, and they are driven to madness and despair by the wide-spreading desolation and the overwhelming ruin ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... gradual as scarcely to be perceptible, from day to day, she came back to a knowledge of their loving care, and took up the burden of her life again. Not joyfully, perhaps, having been so near to the attaining of ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Master of the Rolls, the Accountant-General, and the Governor and Deputy-Governor of the Bank of England. To this independent and distinguished body of men the sum of one million sterling was to be handed over annually for the gradual redemption of the existing debt by the purchase ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... chaffing her Styrian ideas with a graceful deference that made her smile. Victoria adored him openly, and Krak did not understand why he was not odious. Thus he conquered the Court, and I was the first of his slaves. It would be tedious to anybody except myself to trace the gradual progress of our four years' intimacy and friendship, of my four years' training and enlightenment. Shall I summarize it and say that Owen taught me that there were folks outside palaces, and that the greatness of a station, even as of a man, stood not in the multitude of the ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... was admirably managed. The gradual surprise, shocked indignation, and reproach of her tones made the tears come ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... gradual amelioration, and peaceful development of ends that must come, did not satisfy the ambition of the conspirators. They saw their last opportunity for a successful rebellion, and they determined not to let it pass unimproved. The vast power of the slave interest; ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the result of a gradual intoxication by the absorption of the active principle of tobacco, the alkaloid nicotine. Excessive smoking conduces to nicotism, more common in Europe than in the tropics, because the natives of Europe smoke the pipe and being confined in closed dwellings, breathe continuously an atmosphere of smoke; ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... yourself—I conjure you by Strawberry, not to trifle with these edge-tools. There is no cure for the gout, when in the stomach, but to throw it into the limbs; There is no relief for gout in the limbs, but in gentle warmth and gradual perspiration." Works, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... only by their fossil and mostly fragmentary skeletons, but it may be said that at least in the ungulate line, the successive geological periods show steady structural progression in certain directions. Of great importance are a decrease in the number of functional digits; a gradual elevation of the heel, so that their modern descendants walk on the tips of their toes, instead of on the whole sole; a constant tendency to the development of deeply grooved and interlocked joints in place of shallow bearing surfaces; and to a ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... The ascent was gradual, and after a few miles the woodland part ceased, and they found themselves upon a plain once more, but from the state of the atmosphere it was evidently far more elevated than that where the town lay. Here for miles and miles they rode through clover and wild flowers that lay as thick as ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... cachalot's tail the descent was gradual. Scarcely perceptible was its declination towards the water, upon which lay the two great flukes, slightly sunk below the surface, and extending on each side to a breadth of ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... were making from without, and while their tenor was discussed by the King, and such nobles and statesmen as he thought proper to consult on the occasion, a gradual sadness and anxiety mingled with, and finally silenced, the mirth of the evening. All became sensible that something unusual was going forward; and the unwonted distance which Charles maintained from his guests, while it added greatly to the dulness that began to predominate ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... was a gradual change; so gradual that its beginnings were hardly noticed; maybe were not noticed at all, except by Jack Halliday, who always noticed everything; and always made fun of it, too, no matter what it was. He began to throw out chaffing remarks about people not looking quite so ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain

... ladies beware of affectation. It is one of the most disgusting qualities that can attach to female character. It will never win esteem, but will excite ridicule. There is reason to believe that it is frequently produced in a gradual and almost imperceptible manner, but it takes the deeper root, and extends the wider influence in consequence of a slow growth. It is not always easy to make the individual herself sensible of possessing it, but the surest way of preventing its baneful ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... traced the history of his wife's family, shewing the gradual gathering of Fate to its culmination in the tragedy of her short life. Her father and grandfather had both been men of violent and tyrannical temper, and tradition gave the same character to their forefathers. Eleanor's mother was one of the meek and saintly women who almost ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... working classes a means of getting money by sharping, instead of by their labour. I no longer found in the people the same probity which had struck me four years before: this paper-money sets the imagination at work with the hope of rapid and easy gains; and the hazardous chances overturn the gradual and certain existence which is the basis of the honesty of the middling classes. During my residence in Austria, a man was hanged for forging notes at the very moment when the government had reduced the value of the old ones; he called out, on his way ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... possible for any one to believe with our forefathers that the earth's surface has always existed as it now exists. For the science of geology has proved to demonstration that seas and lands are perpetually undergoing gradual changes of relative positions—continents and oceans supplanting each other in the course of ages, mountain-chains being slowly uplifted, again as slowly denuded, and so forth. Moreover, and as a closer analogy, within the limits of animate ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... difficulties wholly disappear. Let the reader reflect on the difficulty of looking at whole classes of facts from a new point of view. Let him observe how slowly, but surely, the noble views of Lyell on the gradual changes now in progress on the earth's surface have been accepted as sufficient to account for all that we see in its past history. The present action of natural selection may seem more or less probable; but I believe in the truth of the theory, {14} because ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... 'don't shoot at your brother's nose,' would never have been impressed, had not mamma, on coming in, found Maurice and his pop-gun nearly equally black, and by gradual unfolding of cause and effect, learnt his forgotten offence. She reminded him of ancient promises never to aim at human creatures, assured him that Gilbert was very kind not to have burnt it outright; and to the great displeasure, and temporary relief of all the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... either from Judy's awkwardness, or from the gradual decay and final fracture of some cord, down came the whole shelf with a thundering noise, and the books were scattered hither and thither in confusion about the floor. Ethelwyn was gazing in dismay, and Judy had built up her ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... conflicting testimony. His own peculiar crotchet—the reconstruction of electoral districts, so as to secure the rights of minorities—to increase the purity and diminish the expense and the bitterness of elections in the meantime, and to pave the way for the elevation of the masses by the gradual extension of the suffrage, by securing that the new voters should not have all political power in their hands—was one that, of course, found little sympathy ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... another, and acknowledge only the ideal bond of a common plan in their successive manifestations. But as soon as we examine more closely the literal and logical meaning of the word, we shall find it of most weight when we understand by it the before-mentioned gradual evolution in opposition to the theory of progress by leaps or new creations. Moreover, it is well known that long before this no other term than evolution was used to designate the growth of a single organic individual from the primordial ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... humanity as a final thing nor the Normal Social Life as the inevitable basis of human continuity. They believe in secular change, in Progress, in a future for our species differing continually more from its past. On the whole, they are prepared for the gradual disentanglement of men from the Normal Social Life altogether, and they look for new ways of living and new methods of human association with ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... along the hillside we began to notice frequent basin-like depressions of greater or less size, always perfectly circular, always with the same saucer-shaped dip, always without crack or fissure, yet appearing to have been formed by a gradual receding of the substructure, reminding one of the depression in the sand of an hour-glass or of the grain in a hopper. Many of these concaves were dry; others had a little water in the bottom; all of them had trees growing here and there, quite undisturbed, whether ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... surrounded by the rapid Tagus, and entrance to its narrow confine is only to be gained by two gates. To pass either of these barriers in open day would be to court a publicity singularly undesirable at this time, for Esteban Larralde was slipping down the social slope, which gradual progress is the hardest to arrest. If one is mounting there are plenty to help him—those from above seeking to make unto themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; those from below hoping to tread in the footsteps he may leave. Each step, however, of the upward progress has to be ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... her all the story of the past, and of that night when she had learned that Clarence did not love her, of her wounded vanity, her mistaken belief in the genuineness of her own love for him, and her gradual awakening to the fact that it was not love ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

... continue their pertinacious adherence to their childish attachment, she had tried to wean both him and herself from so rebellious a folly towards her revered guardian, his honored father; and trusting that the gradual shortening of her cousin-like messages to him, through his brother's letters, must have had the effect intended, she now had permission to write one herself to him, to convince him at once of the unreasonableness ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... this corrupt species of Christianity, was the superstitious attachment to Rome, and the gradual subjection of the kingdom to a foreign jurisdiction. The Britons, having never acknowledged any subordination to the Roman pontiff, had conducted all ecclesiastical government by their domestic synods and councils [t]; but the Saxons, receiving their religion from Roman monks, were ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... question of sex knowledge, so widely agitated of late. We cannot guard our girls against contact with some who will exert a harmful influence. We can only forearm them by natural, gradual information on this subject as their young minds reach out for knowledge, so that sex knowledge comes, as other knowledge comes, without solemnity or sentimentality on the one hand or undue mystery and a hint of shame on the other. No course in sex hygiene can ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... this expedition will last fully two years. It must be a gradual advance, and even then, if the Khalifa is beaten, it must be a considerable time before matters are thoroughly settled. There will be many civil posts open to those who, like yourself, are well acquainted with the language of the country; and if you can obtain one of these, you ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... Whose gradual stress would still expand The crevice, and topple upon the sand The temple, while ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... own boldness. She had meant to approach the subject in the most delicate and gradual manner, and now she had rushed into the very thick of it ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... the greatest known rivers, each of which drained a vast range of territory. This narrative reveals the gradual dawning upon Columbus of the fact that he had discovered a hitherto unknown continental mass. In his letter to the sovereigns his conviction is settled and his efforts to adjust it with previous knowledge and the geographical traditions of the ages are most interesting. See Major, Select ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... defect in a telescope intended for astronomical observation, since in general the edge of the field of view is not perceptible at night. The unpleasant nature of the defect may be seen by looking through an opera-glass, and noticing the gradual fading away of light round the circumference of ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... fortuna' with which this pastorello sailed along. The character of the music is ease and largeness: as the shepherd lived, so God Almighty walked on the wind. The music breathes ease: but words must tell us who takes it easy. Beethoven's Sonata—Op. 14—is meant to express the discord and gradual atonement of two lovers, or a man and his wife: and he was disgusted that every one did not see what was meant: in truth, it expresses any resistance gradually overcome—Dobson shaving with a blunt razor, for instance. Music is so far the most universal ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... years before this to remark with pleasure the change in the dress of the people of Illinois: the gradual disappearance of leather and, linsey-woolsey, the hunting-knife and tomahawk, from the garb of men; the deerskin moccasin supplanted by the leather boot and shoe; the leather breeches tied around the ankle replaced by the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... of our paper in proportion as they increase its circulation." We wished merely to state a plain obvious fact. Such must necessarily be the case, and our experience proves it to be so; for the number of Queries which have been solved in our columns, has gone on increasing in proportion to the gradual increase of our circulation;—a result which fully justifies that passage of our opening address which stated, "that we did not anticipate any holding back by those whose Notes were ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various

... military, and chiefly related to the probable conquest or subjugation of Great Britain, and the probable consequence to mankind in general of such a great event. No difference of opinion was heard with regard to its immediate benefit to France and gradual utility to all other nations; but Berthier seemed to apprehend that, before France could have time to organize this valuable conquest, she would be obliged to support another war, with a formidable league, perhaps, of all other European nations. The issue, however, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... shade, they rode, scorched by dazzling sunshine, across the limitless plain. In the afternoon George began to look eagerly for the bluff that the rancher mentioned. They had found no water, and the cattle seemed distressed. The glare and heat were getting intolerable, but the vast, gradual rise in front of them ran on, unbroken, to the skyline. Its crest, however, must be crossed before ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... of cultivation are such as to point to constantly increasing production at a diminished cost per quarter for some time to come, inasmuch as the introduction of improved machinery will more than compensate for the gradual application of manure to the soil. There are, however, many obstacles to progress. For political reasons the Government discourages immigration from other countries, and therefore the untilled lands will have to be idle ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... a grayish scum appears on the surface just before the boiling point is reached. This scum is caused by the gradual extraction of a part of the soluble albumin that is present in the hollow fibers of the muscle tissue. After its extraction, it is coagulated by the heat in the water. As it coagulates and rises, it carries with it to the top particles of dirt ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... suffer rather from swellings or from the dry spasm, which they relieve with plenty of good and juicy food. They heal fevers with pleasant baths and with milk-food, and with a pleasant habitation in the country and by gradual exercise. Unclean diseases cannot be prevalent with them because they often clean their bodies by bathing in wine, and soothe them with aromatic oil, and by the sweat of exercise they diffuse the poisonous vapor which corrupts the blood and ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells

... recovery of Venetia, though slow, was gradual. She experienced no relapse, and in a few weeks quitted her bed. She was rather surprised at her altered appearance when it first met her glance in the mirror, but scarcely made any observation on the loss of her locks. During this interval, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... expended upon them. I took the sanitation of cowsheds for the text of my sermons. I showed them how an animal that is properly housed and well cared for is more profitable than a lean neglected beast, and the comparison wrought a gradual change for the better in the lot of the cattle in the Commune. Not one of them was ill treated. The cows and oxen were rubbed down as in Switzerland and Auvergne. Sheep-folds, stables, byres, dairies, and barns were rebuilt after the pattern of the roomy, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... quite so well. Before this he had been making a gradual progress, and he could move about with more ease. He spoke much better than he did at first. His countenance was animated; but I fear this was the beginning of the most dangerous symptoms, and I saw that the surgeon now became uneasy at the appearance of the blood; and ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey

... north. Henry lingered at Bordeaux until September, when he returned to England.[1] Meanwhile the French dictated peace to the remaining allies of Henry. On the death of Raymond of Toulouse, in 1249, Alfonse quietly succeeded to his dominions. The next twenty years saw the gradual extension of the French administrative system to Poitou, Auvergne, and the Toulousain. English Gascony was reduced to little more than the districts round Bordeaux and Bayonne. Even a show of hostility was no longer useful, and on April 7, 1243, a five ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... the unspoken agony of loss suffered when she married; for her, the memories of her marriage, of the dreary languor into which its wreck had plunged her, and of the gradual revival in her of the old intellectual pleasures, the old joys of the spirit, under the influence of Arthur's life and Arthur's companionship. How simply he had offered all that his art, his tact, his genius had to give!—and how pitifully, how hungrily ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the ridge, and, mounting their horses, rode through among the scattered rocks. They entered the ravine, and kept up its edge until the gradual narrowing brought them into the same path by which the horseman had lately descended. Up this they rode, keeping their eyes bent on the cliff to the right—for on that side ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... by no means the supreme in criticism or in anything else, but it is certain there has no critic appeared among us since who was worth naming beside him and his influence for good and for evil in literature and otherwise has been very great. Nothing in my time has so forwarded all this—the 'gradual uprise and rule in all things of roaring, million headed &c Demos'— "as Jeffrey and his once famous Edinburgh Review'—Ib ] But he is discreetly silent on their severity and short-sightedness. [Footnote: ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... hours of silence and repose,—geraniums and the click of knitting-needles in the sitting-room; faint odors of a fragrant pipe from the shed kitchen; no stir of boisterous fun, except when some bronzed, solemn joker, with his wife, came in for a formal call, and solemnity gave way, by a gradual descent, to merriment. Joe had given no new departure, only an impulse. "James used to behave himself quite well," Mrs. Parsons would say, archly raising her eyebrows, "before Joe's time; but now there 's two boys of 'em together, and the one as bad as the ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... prospect of these north-western tribes remaining in their present primitive state, indeed of their gradual improvement, for nothing can induce them to touch spirits. They know that the eastern Indians had been debased and conquered by the use of them, and consider an offer of a dram from an American trader as an indirect attempt ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... civilized states; ought always to be identical with the scales of divine justice. The splendid empire of Charles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty. It is a consolation to those who have hope in humanity to watch, under the reign of his successor, the gradual but triumphant resurrection of the spirit over which the sepulchre had so long been sealed. From the handbreadth of territory called the province of Holland rises a power which wages eighty years' warfare with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... a more gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes his eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither bends his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and boldness. You see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; if near, you hear ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... owe my first clear apprehension of the gradual evolution of the preservative and altruistic elements in nature, arising from the struggle for existence, to a sermon of Dr. Abbott's called The Manifestation of the Son of God, now, I fear, out of print. Of course Darwin ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... sign of damage, and both of them were making excellent practice. At the third round it planted a shell in the enemy's battery, and the fifth put "Long Tom" out of action for a time by disabling some of its gunners. Sir George White's gradual withdrawal of his forces to positions prepared for defence was therefore not harassed by shell fire from beyond the range of our own ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... its bearings. It is one that I would not ask any man to take. I now think that the probabilities are that it would restore Mrs. Hilland to health eventually. A year of foreign travel might bring about a gradual ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... laid her cheek upon his hand. "Do something to make it easier. Must it be that when you go you go completely? Promise me at least that it will be gradual, that you will try to see me when you have ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... "all over India at the present moment there is going on a process of the gradual and insensible transformation of tribes into castes. The stages of this operation are in themselves difficult to trace.... They usually set up as Rajputs, their first step being to start a Brahman priest, who invents for them a mythical ancestor, supplies them with a family miracle connected with ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... went on for several months. Mrs. Mayberry working late and early. The natural result was, a gradual failure of strength. In the morning, when she awoke, she would feel so languid and heavy, that to rise required a strong effort, and even after she was up, and attempted to resume her labors, her trembling frame almost refused to obey the dictates of her ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... either side into vistas half overhung with clematis and rose, through whose arcades the prospect closed with statues and gushing fountains; in front, the lawn was bounded by rows of vases on marble pedestals filled with flowers, and broad and gradual flights of steps of the whitest marble led from terrace to terrace, each adorned with statues and fountains, half way down a high but softly sloping and verdant hill. Beyond, spread in wide, various, and luxurious landscape, the vineyards and olive-groves, the villas and villages, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... his admirable History of England, speaking of the gradual and silent extinction of villenage, then, towards the close of the Tudor period, fast ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various

... would be a painful one, such vigilant precaution does it require, such constant foresight, such calculation and preparation against possible difficulty on every hand; but the true artist, happy in the daily gain of knowledge which his experience brings him, and delighted with the gradual mastery of his work, as a rule lives along enjoyably, retaining more than most men the freshness of youth while he gains in power as he advances in years. So pleasant a fate as this for each of his readers is the closing wish of ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt

... was generally agreed that if the "madman" of science were to become the husband of a woman multi-millionaire, he would not have to be considered so mad after all! But the expected romance did not materialise,—there came apparently a gradual "cooling off" in the sentiments of both parties concerned,—and though Roger Seaton was still occasionally seen with Morgana in her automobile, in her opera-box, or at her receptions, his appearances were fewer, and other men, ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... it gradual, lad; it can't be done in a day. Make the lessons hard, pile the Latin on heavy. Lord, I remember it, back in the old country, old Father MacGuire layin' it on the lads under his thumb. Devil a word of it sticks to me now, not even the word for sheep. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... contrary, with certain people, so brilliant that reality cannot compare with it. These spots spread and shrink, changing form and color, constantly displacing one another. Sometimes the change is slow and gradual, sometimes again it is a whirlwind of vertiginous rapidity. Whence comes all this phantasmagoria? The physiologists and the psychologists have studied this play of colors. "Ocular spectra," "colored spots," ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson

... asked when I first conceived the idea of trying to reach the North Pole. That question is hard to answer. It is impossible to point to any day or month and to say, "Then the idea first came to me." The North Pole dream was a gradual and almost involuntary evolution from earlier work in which it had no part. My interest in arctic work dates back to 1885, when as a young man my imagination was stirred by reading accounts of explorations by Nordenskjoeld in the interior of Greenland. These studies took full ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... certainly within the last fifty or sixty years. The plant is PLUKENETIA CORNICULATA, one of the Euphorbiaceae, and it is cultivated as a vegetable; its Kayan name is JALAUT. We have here a good example of the gradual degradation of a design leading to a loss of its original significance and even of its name, another name, which originated probably from some fancied resemblance between pattern and object, being applied at a subsequent date. IPA OLIM, I.E., open fruit of a species ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... little songs, to the delight of all his relatives. The singer's progress, from the musical child on and up to that of an operatic artist, has been rational and healthy, with nothing hectic or overwrought about it; a constant, gradual ascent of the mountain. And while an enviable vantage ground has been reached, such an artist must feel there are yet other heights to conquer. For even excellence, already achieved, requires constant effort ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... their day, it is plain now how it has come to pass. The highest greatness surviving time and storm is that which proceeds from the soul of man. Monarchs and cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of courts and the circumstance of war, in the gradual lapse of time disappear from sight; but the pioneers of truth, tho poor and lowly, especially those whose example elevates human nature and teaches the rights of man, so that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... quite beyond his prowess or his skill, for Martians are at best but poor climbers. Upon the entire surface of that ancient planet I never before had seen a hill or mountain that exceeded four thousand feet in height above the dead sea bottoms, and as the ascent was usually gradual, nearly to their summits they presented but few opportunities for the practice of climbing. Nor would the Martians have embraced even such opportunities as might present themselves, for they could always find a circuitous ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... in height, surmounted by a great structure, called the Giant's Castle, on the summit of which is a pyramid ninety-six feet high, supporting a statue of Hercules, copied after the Farnese, and thirty-one feet in height. By a gradual ascent through beautiful woods, we reached the princely residence, a magnificent mansion standing on a natural terrace of the mountain. Near it is a little theatre built by Jerome Buonaparte, in which he himself ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... (4.) From David to the Babylonish captivity. (5.) From that time till the coming of Christ. (6.) From Christ to the end of time, which is called the gospel dispensation. From the commencement you will see a gradual development of God's designs of mercy, and a continually increasing light. Take notice of what period of the church you are reading; and from this you may judge of the degree of obligation of its members; for this has been increasing with the increase of light, from the fall of ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... formed in the mind as the result of human experience operating on human feeling—the practical wisdom which we call common sense. Human conduct, individual and aggregate, must be regulated and determined by the consensus of the judgment of the wisest made effective through its gradual acceptance as the judgment of the majority. Private ownership of land, with its accompanying rent, is justified, not by an imaginary inherent right in the individual, which has no real existence and so cannot be conveyed, but because the interests of Society ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

... always despised them. But he did not desire that she should go on despising them, any more than he desired that her indifference should survive the marriage ceremony. He pictured with satisfaction her gradual yielding to the modest luxury he had to offer her, just as he pictured the exquisite delaying ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... the gradual extension of Spanish domination and settlements in Central America and along the shores of the Pacific, soon bestowed upon the Isthmus an importance, vividly suggestive of its rise into political prominence consequent upon the acquisition of California by the United States, and ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... crossing the hall, threw open a door opposite to that by which Lionel entered, and the lake (we will so call it) lay before them,—separated from the house only by a shelving gradual declivity, on which were a few beds of flowers,—not the most in vogue nowadays, and disposed in rambling old-fashioned parterres. At one angle, a quaint and dilapidated sun-dial; at the other, a long bowling-alley, terminated ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... epitome of the War as seen through one pair of eyes and one particular temperament. I don't recall another War novel that is so convincing. The almost incredible confusions of the early days of the making of K.'s army; the gradual shaping of the great instrument; the comradeship of fine spirits and the intrigues of meaner; leadership good and less good; action with its energy, glory and horror; reaction (with incidentally a most moving analysis of the agonies of shell-shock and protracted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various

... Company,' while Campbell belonged to the 'Queen's Service.' From the time of the establishment of a local army there had existed an absurd and unfortunate jealousy between the officers of the Queen's and Company's services, and one of the best results of the Mutiny was its gradual disappearance. This ill-feeling influenced not only fellow-countrymen, but relations, even brothers, if they belonged to the different services, and was distinctly prejudicial to the interests of the Government. It is difficult to understand ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... have come; now starvation, the slow, unwilling, recourse to more shame and deeper vice; then the forced hilarity, the unreal smile, which in so many of these poor creatures hides a canker at the heart; the gradual degradation—lower still and lower—oblivion for a moment sought in the bottle—a life of sin and death ended in a hospital. The will of Providence turned the frolic of three voluptuaries to good account; the prince ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... the Gospel of John, which mother dearly loved; and though she did not take much notice, but lay in a stupor most of the time, the holy words were comfort and company to me. At other times I sat in mute grief, watching her painful breathing, and the gradual pinching and sharpening of her features as the relentless disease worked upon them. O, it was hard! I don't think many lives know so much and such utter misery. In my anxiety and grief, and the mental bewilderment resulting from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... bitterness of spirit; and ended by quite ceasing to speak, simply shrugging his shoulders and whistling disdainfully, without condescending to combat the absurdities vented in his presence. What exasperated him more than anything else was the gradual way in which he had been ousted from his position of predominance without being conscious of it. He could not see that Florent was in any way his superior, and after hearing the latter speak for hours, in his gentle and somewhat sad voice, he often ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... mountainous country, not many miles away, the declivities in some places slight and gradual, in other places abrupt. Cultivated spots appeared here and there, and white villages, and old castles. It was not, however, an inviting country, and the nearer he drew to it the less he liked it. The road here was not so broad, and smooth, and easy as the one he had just left, but was narrow and ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... the exceeding goodness and loveliness of the Saviour, Redeemer, Benefactor: from the affections flow the deeds, or rather the affections overflow in the deeds, and the rewards are but a continuance and continued increase of the free grace in the state of the soul and in the growth and gradual perfecting of that state, which are themselves gifts of the same free grace, and one with the rewards; for in the kingdom of Christ which is the realm of love and inter-community, the joy and grace of each regenerated spirit becomes double, and thereby augments ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... and William Molyneux; of the former, Ludowick Barry, Sir John Denham, the Earl of Roscommon, and Richard Flecknoe,—the Mac Flecknoe of Dryden. It is true there appeared as yet no supreme name like Swift's; but as indicating the gradual extension of the English language into Ireland, the popular pamphlets and pieces written for the stage, are illustrations of our mental life not to ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down The ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... be regarded as the sure foundation upon which the artist's later education was to rest, owed not a little, perhaps, of its effectiveness to its casual and desultory nature. The natural bent was allowed to reveal itself: development was gradual, and (as it were) automatic. Individuality was neither crushed nor cramped. On the contrary, it was given full play, and that the work of Frank Reynolds is invested with so definite a quality of personality is due in no small degree to the special circumstances ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson

... material bears evidence of having already undergone similar treatment, before it passed out on those two lines of further development which resulted in the canonical Hebrew text and the Greek Version respectively. The signs of gradual compilation are everywhere upon the material which they share in common. Now and then a chronological order appears, and indeed there are traces of a purpose to pursue that order throughout. But this has been disturbed by cross-arrangements ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... how you and me made all that money? It's a proof of what industry and economy can do when they can't help theirselfs. When Tug Patterson wished this range on me forty years ago I hated him sinful. Yet we run the ditches in from year to year, gradual, ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough

... reasons why some classes of plants cannot be well grown continuously in the same piece of ground. One is the depletion of available plant food, the other the formation of injurious compounds by the plants, or the gradual increase of fungoid, bacterial or animate pests in the soil, which finally become abundant enough to seriously hinder growth. Different plants take the plant foods, as nitrogen, lime, potash, phosphates, ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... it conveyed to the cattle was unknown until it was discovered that similar trypanosomes exist in the blood of the wild animals which inhabit the region, but these have acquired by long residence in the region immunity or adaptation to the parasite and no disease is produced. With the gradual extension of settlement of the country and the accompanying destruction of wild life the disease is diminishing. Some of the inter-relations of infections are interesting. The destruction of wild animals in South Africa which, by removing the sources of nagana, rendered the ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... whom are workmen. It has long been known for its noble and successful endeavors to promote the well-being of the working class. One of the first building and loan associations was started here to enable the operatives to earn their homes by gradual payments. Other organizations whose object is the moral elevation of the employees have united the different social circles by strong ties of sympathy. It was an easy matter, therefore, to raise a subscription of two hundred thousand francs to provide a home for ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... dawnings of unlawful ambition to the cynical melancholy of his impenitent remorse. Yet, in these pieces, there are no unnatural transitions. Nothing is omitted: nothing is crowded. Great as are the changes, narrow as is the compass within which they are exhibited, they shock us as little as the gradual alterations of those familiar faces which we see every evening and every morning. The magical skill of the poet resembles that of the Dervise in the Spectator, who condensed all the events of seven years into the single moment during which the king held his head ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... yourself to the tone of the place which you have made your home. St. Louis is full of excellent people, but they are not precisely Abolitionists. We are gathering, it is true, a small party who are for gradual emancipation. But our New England population here is small yet compared to the Southerners. And ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the thirteenth century, or reign of Edward the First, and to have prevailed about a century. The transition from the Early English style to this, and again from this to the succeeding style, was however so extremely gradual, that it is difficult to affix any precise date for the termination of one style, or ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... change are usually small, curled, streaked, or spotty clouds, followed by an overcasting of vapour, that grows into cloudiness. This murky appearance, more or less oily or watery, as wind or rain will prevail, is a sure sign. The higher and more distant the clouds seem to be, the more gradual, but extensive, the coming change of weather ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy

... drawers, Tom observed, were tightly shut,—probably for very good reasons. The table, at which he sat, was a curiosity to the speculative mind. The cloth was two-thirds off, and slipping, by a very gradual process, to the floor. On the remaining third stood an inkstand and a bottle of mucilage, as well as a huge pile of books, a glass tumbler, a Parian vase, a jack-knife, a pair of scissors, a thimble, two spools of thread, a small ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... gloomy view endless years of incompatibility stretched ahead; and for the first time I began to rehearse with a certain cold detachment the chain of apparently accidental events which had led up to my marriage: to consider the gradual blindness that had come over my faculties; and finally to wonder whether judgment ever entered into sexual selection. Would Maude have relapsed into this senseless fit if she had realized how fortunate she was? For I was prepared to give ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... as little about each other and each other's lives as though they had occupied different planets. He had forgotten that Helen must be shocked by June's inaccuracies of speech and in a hundred other ways to which he had become accustomed. With him, moreover, the process had been gradual and, moreover, he had seen beneath it all. And yet he had foolishly expected Helen to understand everything at once. He was unjust, so very wisely he held ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... intense, but not for long. Soon a gradual lightening became visible in the east, and suddenly a flash of light glanced along the surface of the sea, as the moon slowly rose to give a weird aspect to the long row of dusky warriors sluggishly urging the ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... from the House of Commons—the disqualification of revenue-officers from voting at elections—the disfranchisement of corrupt voters at Cricklade, by which a second precedent [Footnote: The first was that of the borough of Shoreham in 1771.] was furnished towards that plan of gradual Reform, which has, in our own time, been so forcibly recommended by Lord John Russell—the diminution of the patronage of the Crown, by Mr. Burke's celebrated Bill [Footnote: This Bill, though its circle ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... such origin as an injury received from his progenitors, worthy Hiram looked back from the comfortable eminence of prosperity whereunto he had attained, and loved to retrace the gradual steps of labour which led thither. He could remember most of them; to his memory's eye the virgin forest stretched for unknown and unnumbered miles west and northward of the settler's adventurous clearing, and the rude log shanty was his home beside the sombre pines. Now ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... perhaps so brilliant and sensational as Berlioz, was equally a great master of orchestral coloring and poetic suggestion by means of appropriate instruments; often, too, more delicate and refined. In measure 15 begins for sustained strings the stately march which typifies the gradual approach of Orpheus. The second phrase of the march, beginning in measure 38, has received the compliment of being appropriated, almost literally, by Wagner in the second act of the Valkyrie for the march motive with which Wotan is ushered in. ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... the vision disappeared, and Ralph expressed vehemently in his turn the conviction that he only loved her shadow and cared nothing for her reality. If the lapse was on her side it took the form of gradual detachment until she became completely absorbed in her own thoughts, which carried her away with such intensity that she sharply resented any recall to her companion's side. It was useless to assert that ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... conservative. While these agencies, which are concerned primarily with the welfare of the individual, the family, and society, have made some efforts to solve the problems, and to discover a safe and gradual transition from the old order to the new, other agencies, concerned primarily with making money, have rushed in to exploit the new freedom and the universal interest in matters of sex. This passing of the old order, and the invasion ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... but men lived in a horde very much like gregarious brutes.[64] I have shown that the essential difference between this primeval human horde and a mere herd of brutes consisted in the fact that the gradual but very great prolongation of infancy had produced two effects: the lengthening of the care of children tended to differentiate the horde into family-groups, and the lengthening of the period of youthful ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... March a reduction in the allowance of spirits took place; the half pint per diem, which had hitherto been issued to each man who was entitled to receive it, was to be discontinued, and only the half of that allowance served. Thus was the gradual decrease in our stores followed by a diminution of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... snows extending farther down the sides of the mountain than in summer, we were equipped, under the direction of our guide, with coarse woollen stockings to be drawn over the pantaloons, thick-soled shoes, and woollen caps. Mounting our mules, we left Catania in the morning. The road was good and of gradual ascent until we reached Nicolosi, about fourteen miles up the mountain. We saw little that was particularly interesting on our route except that the hamlets through which we passed bore fearful evidences of the effects of earthquake. Arrived at Nicolosi, the place where travellers usually ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... people in raptures with him, and with the world on his side, was now so humble and abject as to disgust even himself, not to say his hearers. Crassus enjoyed the scene, but no one else. Pompey had fallen down out of the stars—not by a gradual descent, but in a single plunge; and as Apelles if he had seen his Venus, or Protogenes his Ialysus, all daubed with mud, would have been vexed and annoyed, so was I grieved to the very heart to see one whom I had ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... Washington, the new Ministry at Westminster announced its intention of immediately suspending the orders-in-council. Had President Madison yielded to those moderates who advised him in April to send a minister to England, he might have been apprized of that gradual change in public opinion which was slowly undermining the authority of Spencer Perceval's ministry and commercial system. He had only to wait a little longer to score the greatest diplomatic triumph ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... the message. As he drew near the spot he thought he heard the sound of tools, and the hum of many voices, just as he used to hear them a year or two before. He listened with surprise. Yes. Instead of the still solitude he had expected, there was the clink of iron, the heavy gradual thud of the fall of barrows-full of soil—the cry and shout of labourers. But not on his land—better worth expense and trouble by far than the reedy clay common on which the men were, in fact, employed. He knew it was ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... France and the United States, at least among the older Colonial families. In three or four generations the women of a family in which the practice of suckling has ceased, are altogether unable to give the breast; and the 'bottle' ensues, with its thousand evils and a gradual deterioration ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... fulfilled. We believe that in the very falsity of the doctrine of a carnal resurrection and judgment there lurks a truth yet to break out in overwhelming refulgence and perfectly satisfy every soul of man. But it will be brought about by the gradual culmination of the means and processes which God is now visibly carrying forward, and not by any sudden ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... deportment were so also. He was tall, dark, and thin; had an aspect pensive, slow, and somewhat mean; with very fine and expressive eyes. He deplored the signal faults that he saw succeed each other unceasingly; the gradual extinction of all emulation; the luxury, the emptiness, the ignorance, the confusion of ranks; the inquisition in the place of the police: he saw all the signs of destruction, and he used to say it was only a climax of dangerous disorder that could ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... provoked by the theory, look for and consider the converse picture (now that the Indian lives in much the same manner as the ordinary poor husbandman, and now that we have certainly no warrant for imputing to him uncleanly habits) the gradual approach in his complexion to the Anglo-Saxon type? If we entertain this counter-proposition, it will then be a question between its operation, and his marriage with the white, as to which explains the fact of the decline now of the dark complexion ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... temples, and is not mentioned at the cataracts; though in later times he became the leading deity of Abydos and of Philae. Thus in all directions the recognition of Osiris continued to increase; but, looking at the antiquity of his cult, we must recognise in this change the gradual triumph of a popular religion over a state religion which had been superimposed upon it. The earliest phase of Osirism that we can identify is in portions of the Book of the Dead. These assume the kingdom of Osiris, and a judgment preceding admission to the blessed ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... one so imperious, Braddell's imperfect comprehension of character saw but fear, and his stupidity exulted in his triumph. Lucretia returned with him. A few days afterwards Braddell became ill; the illness increased,—slow, gradual, wearying. It broke his spirit with his health; and then the steadfast imperiousness of Lucretia's stern will ruled and subjugated him. He cowered beneath her haughty, searching gaze, he shivered ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... absolutely illiterate. It seems, possible, however, to avoid both these evils by combining physical training or physical work with intellectual culture; and there are various signs abroad which seem to mark the gradual adoption of this ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... The gradual fluctuations are probably caused by the variable amount of rain which falls in the vast area of country drained by the Lakes. Thus, at Fort Brady, where the mean of five years' observations is 29.68 inches, the extremes are 36.92 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... has, for these past three years, created a gradual deduction from the consumption of coffee, which has augmented the stock on hand throughout every commercial city of the northern part of the globe, so as to present a future unfavorable prospect to the importers of that ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... phrases; yet, as a matter of fact, women have voted more than a generation, and are now voting, in various of our states and in foreign countries all over the world without the slightest "governmental change" or "overturning of social order" other than a gradual improvement through ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... angry reflection or seditious movement, and even when unjustly punished himself, the occasional result of a certain backwardness in self-defence, never showed any resentment—a most improbable statement, I admit, but nevertheless true—and I think the rest of his character may be left to the gradual ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... skirmish; and she sadly departs to the camp of the Greeks, vowing that she will make her escape, and return to Troy and Troilus within ten days. The Fifth Book (1869 lines) sets out by describing the court which Diomedes, appointed to escort her, pays to Cressida on the way to the camp; it traces her gradual progress from indifference to her new suitor, to incontinence with him, and it leaves the deserted Troilus dead on the field of battle, where he has sought an eternal refuge from the new grief provoked ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... through the shows of things into the things themselves." Uriel, keenest of vision 'mid all the host of heaven, is his guardian angel. To follow him into the sanctuaries of great souls and become familiar with all their hopes and fears; to pass the portals of master minds and watch the gradual evolution of great ideas in these cyclopean workshops; to mount the hill of Mirza and from it view the Tide of Time rushing ever into the illimitable Sea of Eternity, and comprehend the meaning of that mighty farce-tragedy enacted on the Bridge of Life, were scarce so easy as listening to the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... Octavia and I were put into a two horse fly because it was very windy and cold. It always is, we are told, and the motors for hire were all open. So we started to go to Fairmount, the big hotel right up on the hill. At first it was a sort of gradual slope past such sad desolation of levelled houses, with hardly the foundations left. The results of the earthquake and the fire are so incredible that you would think I was recounting travellers' tales if I described them, so I won't. ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... its prettiness with no woman's eye to keep its jealous watch on it? The process of reversion to its old desolation would be gradual. The curtains, the bright ribands, the cushions would slowly become soiled and faded. And there would be no one here to renew them. For a moment, the thought of asking Mrs. Sharp to look after them came ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett

... is a storehouse of food for crops; the stores it contains are, however, only partly available for immediate use. In fact, by far the larger share is locked up, as it were, in insoluble combinations, and only by a slow and gradual change can it become accessible to the plant. This change is largely brought about by the united action of water and carbonic acid gas. Nearly all the rocks and minerals out of which fertile soils are formed,—which ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... from his window see his capital, the city which had been stolen from him, and the restitution of which he never ceased to demand; that Pope who, day by day, beheld the changes effected in the city—the opening of new streets, the demolition of ancient districts, the sale of land, and the gradual erection of new buildings which ended by forming a white girdle around the old ruddy roofs; that Pope who, in presence of this daily spectacle, this building frenzy, which he could follow from morn till eve, was himself finally overcome ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... fell the voices of guardian angels. There was not a flagstone in the halls, not an ashlar of the walls, not a bough of the plane-trees, but it spoke to him of the delights of his contemplative life, his lispings of tenderness, his gradual initiation, the favours vouchsafed him in return for self-bestowal, all that happiness of ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... and encouraged by the promise of nice clothes and other presents. And it would be unnatural to expect that the innocent heart of a child of his age, now between eight and nine years, could remain insensible to the caresses and favors bestowed. The little lad felt quite content; nay, a gradual sunshine began to spread over the calm melancholy ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... might lie down and breathe, but a long way and a great snowy wind were betwixt him and rest. He fell into a reverie, and seemed to get on better for not thinking about the exertion he had to make. The monotony of it at the same time favoured the gradual absorption of his thoughts in a dreamy meditation. Alternately sunk in himself for minutes, and waking for a moment to the consciousness of what was around him, he had walked, as it seemed, for hours, and at length, all ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... residence a pretty cottage on the banks of the Hudson. The region abounded in natural beauty and stately homes. There was an infusion of Knickerbocker blood in the pre-eminently elect ones of society, and from these there was a gradual shading off in several directions, until by some unwritten law the social line was drawn. Strangers from the city might be received within the inner circle, or they might not, as some of the leaders practically ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... from my soul that the Legislature of the State could see the policy of a gradual abolition of slavery," he wrote to Lawrence Lewis three years later. "It ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... "It's been coming on gradual for a year or more, sir. Creeping paralysis is what the doctors call it. He's no use left in his legs, and very little in his arms or hands; but his brain seems as active as ever. He took a turn for the worse last week, and the end, they ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford

... hope that lies in these words is the certainty of a gradual but complete attainment of all the Christian aspirations ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... evidence and was sustained in so doing by both the circuit court of appeals and the Supreme Court. Three Justices, speaking by Justice Black, dissented in an opinion in which it is asserted that "today's decision marks a continuation of the gradual process of judicial erosion which in one-hundred-fifty years has slowly worn away a major portion of the essential guarantee of the Seventh Amendment."[55] That the Court should experience occasional difficulty in harmonizing the idea of preserving the historic common ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... their great trouble." Supplications were sent up alike in Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues. On the night of Wednesday the 14th, a date which had been dreaded as that of the Prince Consort's death ten years before, a slight improvement took place, sleep at last was won, and gradual recovery established. The Queen returned to Windsor on the 19th, and wrote on the 26th of December to thank her people ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... With the gradual recovery of Peru from the effects of her late disastrous conflict with Chile, and with the restoration of civil authority in that distracted country, it is hoped that pending war claims of our citizens will ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... was as gall and wormwood to Ada. Nellie's gradual triumph, and Winnie's malicious delight thereat, roused every evil passion in her nature; and out of her deadly hatred she meditated a sure revenge when the opportunity came in her way. What form it would take she hardly knew; events would shape themselves somehow; and then—the ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... Wesleys, Fletcher, Hester Ann Rogers, and others, greater light on his Word, showing the privilege not only of justification but also of sanctification. As the departure from the light and whole truth in the morning of the gospel day was a gradual process, so the return to the light has been gradual. The Lord shed some light on the world through Huss, some through Luther, and some through the Wesleys and others, thus restoring the full light according to ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... estates which were held by the abbeys and the clergy in and around Paris; and this transfer might perfectly well have been brought about by steady and systematic means without shaking the foundations of property and of order. We might then have seen throughout France what we see in England—the gradual and pacific evolution of a great industrial and commercial society on lines not contradicting, but conforming to, the traditions of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... works, imposing a direct tax, and pledging a portion of the canal revenues as a sinking fund for the payment of the existing debt. It was a drastic measure, and leading Conservatives, with much vigour, sought to obtain a compromise permitting the gradual completion of the most advanced works. Bouck favoured sending an agent to Holland to negotiate a loan for this purpose, a suggestion pressed with some ardour until further effort threatened to jeopardise his chance of a renomination for governor; and when Bouck ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... Frenchmen rather than Scots, and had surrounded themselves solely with Frenchmen. This is the real explanation of the support given to the Celtic pretenders. A new civilization is not easily imposed upon a people. Elsewhere in Scotland, the process was more gradual and less violent. In the eastern Lowlands there were no pretenders and no rebellions, and traces of the earlier civilization remained longer than in Galloway and in Moray. "In Fife alone", says Mr. Robertson, "the Earl continued in the thirteenth century to exercise the prerogatives of ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... degrees east. As Captain Wallis and Captain Cook had both passed near the south side, I ran along the north side, which is remarkably steep. The island is high and round and not more than three miles in its greatest extent. The south side, where the declivity from the hill is more gradual, is the chief place of residence of the natives; but the north side, from the very summit down to the sea, is so steep that it can afford no support to the inhabitants. We steered pretty close in to the northward of the east end, where we saw but ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... thick fingers sought for a grip, found places, worked down through the soft dirt and the pulpy bark to solid wood, and then he began to lift. It was a gradual process. His knees gave, sagging under the strain from the arms. Then the back began to grow rigid, and the legs in turn grew stiff, as every muscle fell into play. The shoulders pushed forward and down. The forearms, revealed by the short ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand



Words linked to "Gradual" :   easy, steep, Western Church, gentle, Roman Catholic Church, antiphony, sloping, stepwise, gradatory, sudden, Roman Catholic, gradational, antiphon, Church of Rome, Roman Church, gradualness, grade, inclined, graduated, slow, step-by-step, bit-by-bit, piecemeal, in small stages



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