"Well-nigh" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... care to remember without finding anywhere a discussion of poetry for the unpoetical. A recent writer, it is true, has done much to show that the general reader daily indulges in poetry of a kind without knowing it. But the voluminous literature of poetics is well-nigh all special. It is written for students of rhythm, for instinctive lovers of poetry, for writers of verse, for critics. It does not treat of the value of poetry for the average, the unpoetical man— it says little of his curious distaste for all that is not prose, or of the share in ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... so easily to be convinced by his report, some old suspicions, some forgotten facts must have rushed out of the dark to foregather with it. French Eva had been afraid of the Chinaman; yet even Follet had pooh-poohed her fears; and her reputation was—or had been—well-nigh stainless on Naapu, which is, to say the least, a smudgy place. Still—there was only one road for reason to take, and in spite of these obstacles it wearily ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... history, dependent upon the great feudatories, who, in Hungary as elsewhere, took all they could get and gave as little as possible in return. In all matters of government, Andrew was equally reckless and haphazard. He is directly responsible for the beginnings of the feudal anarchy which well-nigh led to the extinction of the monarchy at the end of the 13th century. The great feudatories did not even respect the lives of the royal family, for Andrew was recalled from a futile attempt to reconquer Galicia (which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... misadventure he rolled a mass of boulders down the hill, to block the trail. His barrier was crude but efficient. Neither man nor horse could have scaled it readily, and the slopes on either side were not only well-nigh perpendicular, they were also built of crumbling stone that broke beneath the smallest weight. He labored doggedly, persistently, despite his half-starved condition, and when he had finished he looked to his gun, proceeded down the trail some fifty yards or ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... every one, stood that invisible unknown woman, her feet in blood, raised aloft by the trial as it were on a pedestal,—torn, no doubt, by horrible inward anguish and condemned to absolute silence within her home. Who was this Medea whom the public well-nigh admired,—the woman with that impenetrable brow, that white breast covering a heart of steel? Perhaps she was the sister or the cousin or the daughter or the wife of this one or of that one among them! Alarm seemed to creep into the bosom of families. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... hours in such acute mental torture as well-nigh drove her crazy. After a sleepless night, she rose early, wild with excitement, dying to start on her journey, terrified lest further obstacles lay in her way. She rose before anyone else in the house was astir, so frightened was she, lest she should miss the ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that was well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty of the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made them the objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,—the House of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in that mansion, ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... fell [from heaven], and these (i.e. his children, and his brethren, and the maiden) came into the fire which fell with it. I myself was not with those who were burnt in the fire, and I was not in their midst, but I [well-nigh] died [of grief] for them. And I found a place wherein I buried them all together. Now, if thou art strong, and thy heart flourisheth, thou shalt fill both thy arms (i.e. embrace) with thy children, and thou shalt kiss thy wife, and thou shalt ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... unconcernedly remarked that it was put there by some foolish gunner, and was not intended for him. He said, however, that he wanted the matter kept quiet, and admonished us to say nothing about it. We all felt confident that it was an attempt to kill him, and a well-nigh successful one, too. The affair was kept quiet, in accordance with his request. After that, the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... by this reminiscence had well-nigh made Bean forget the dog. Once he had made people afraid. The world had trembled before him. Policemen had been ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... were old and the Latin was in an ancient cramped hand while the impression of the seal was well-nigh obliterated. When sufficient time had elapsed for the Russian to make a complete mental note of their appearance, Josef drew the papers away from him, refolded them carefully and ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... doubt that I had ever been fully conscious before. I had lived till now in a paradise of vivid sense-impressions in which all thoughts came to me saturated with emotion, and in that mental state reflection is well-nigh impossible. Even the idea of death, which had come as a surprise, had not made me reflect. Death was a person, a monstrous being who had sprung upon me in my flowery paradise and had inflicted a wound with ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... well-nigh incredible feat, and she held her breath as one stone followed the other. It seemed to her incredible and impossible, because Stafford's figure was slight and graceful, and he performed the feat with the apparent ease which he had learnt ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... of lemonade and pastries, the hostess requested her guests, several being well-nigh torpid, to attend to a song by Mr. Pumpherston. No one (excepting his wife) wanted to hear it, but the Pumpherston song had become traditional with the McOstrich entertainments. One could not have the ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... the Tallapoosa and Athens wire, I never thought to meet you as a live gorilla; but here I am. After the war was over and the Government discharged so many telegraph operators, it was hard scratching for a while; and after you and I left the Decapolis office, I was well-nigh broke more than once, only a few cents standing between me and beggary. But I kept a stiff upper lip and struggled up to Cincinnati, where I met with Coriander. He was out there with his menagerie and ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... had never occurred to her that local criticism was certain to follow the appearance of a local writer; and she shrank from it with morbid and exaggerated disgust. Even if all had been well, if Roland had been beside her, their notices would have been well-nigh intolerable to her. She could not have endured being stared at and pointed out in the streets of her own little town. But now Fame had come to her with broken wings and a cracked trumpet, and she shuddered at the sound of her own name harshly ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... through the fringe of grasses at the top of the ridge, feeling that now indeed our cup of danger well-nigh was full. For some moments I lay examining the camp, seeking to divine the intent of these people, whom I supposed to be Sioux. The size of the encampment disposed me to think that it was a hunting party and not an ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... looked for thee before, Though what should a woman compass, she one alone and no more, When all we shielded Volsungs did nought in Siggeir's land? O yea, I am living indeed, and this labour of mine hand Is to bury the bones of the Volsungs; and lo, it is well-nigh done. So draw near, Volsung's daughter, and pile we many a stone Where lie the grey wolf's gleanings of what was ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... marvel how it can be that it has not fallen down and has not thrown out cracks. The reason is that this edifice is round both without and within and built in the shape of a hollow well, and bound together with the stones in a manner that it is well-nigh impossible that it should fall; and it is assisted, above all, by the foundations, which have an outwork three braccia wide outside the tower, made, as it is seen, after the sinking of the campanile, in order to support it. I am convinced ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... by gout from taking that species of exercise while he was alive. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, I think, as I approach this spot; but I do not say so, for I am well-nigh speechless with the cold: yes, the cold. It is only my teeth that chatter. What a scream that was! There it comes again, and there is no doubt this time as to who is the owner of that terrified voice. Mrs. B.'s alarms have ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... use for him, a something which he alone could do, and he patiently awaited the Lord's orders. Now he knew that his special work had been put ready to his hand—the deliverance of these two little ones. And although the call to action did not sound until his sands of life were well-nigh run, the answer "Ready!" rang none ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... smaller men, also, but admirable soldiers of progress in their degree, had passed away. The gallant host had done its work. The ground was ploughed, the seed was sown, and the harvest was sure. Famished as they were, and well-nigh desperate at times, the men of the Revolution nursed the crop as a sacred legacy, shedding their blood like water to fructify the soil in ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... of Dumbarton, which was held for Queen Mary by her faithful partisan, Lord Flemyng. On this, Cuthbert Langston asked whether he had heard any tidings of the imprisoned Queen, and he answered that it was reported at Leith that she had well-nigh escaped from Lochleven, in the disguise of a lavender or washerwoman. She was actually in the boat, and about to cross the lake, when a rude oarsman attempted to pull aside her muffler, and the whiteness of the hand she raised ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... evident from these words that each of the speakers was satisfied as to the identity of the one that had fired the well-nigh fatal shot. Gleeson named ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... what the conditions may be, and to follow them. Though in their eyes a glass of beer is quite right and proper when taken as any self-respecting man should take it; though they know that cleanliness is an expensive virtue which can be required of few; though they realize that saving is well-nigh impossible when but a few cents can be laid by at a time; though their feeling for the church may be something quite elusive of definition and quite apart from daily living: to the visitor they gravely laud temperance and cleanliness and thrift and religious ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... thus he, thinking, A little bird, quick drinking Among the crowfoot tufts the river bore, Was tangled in their stringy arms, and fluttered, well-nigh sinking, Near him, ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... filled by about the same crowd which had been present the Friday evening preceding, and of whose conversation on that occasion, some account was given. But the temper of the gathering a week before had been gloomy, foreboding, hopeless and well-nigh desperate; ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... mind—pray for me. You may never learn how right and how wrong you have been to-day; but you cannot be wrong in praying to God for me, for He has vexed me with all His storms, all His waves have gone over me, and I am well-nigh overwhelmed. My only hope is in the mercy of one who has never yet showed mercy either to you ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... imagined myself charged. I refused to read; for to read veiled charges and fail to assert my innocence was to incriminate both myself and others. But I looked with longing glances upon all printed matter and, as my curiosity was continually piqued, this enforced abstinence grew to be well-nigh intolerable. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... off again to plunge in the thick of business. It was supposed the fur company and the concessions ruled most of the bargain-making, but there were independent trappers who had not infrequently secured skins that were well-nigh priceless when they reached the hands of the Paris furrier. And toward night, when wine and whiskey had been passed around rather freely, there were broils that led to more than one fatal ending. Indian women thronged around as well, with ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... see where to steer," Russ exclaimed, when they had paused in their yelling, well-nigh exhausted, "it wouldn't be so bad! But I can't see a thing. It's getting darker every minute. I never ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... against church-going and church people generally. Few dared mention a clergyman in his presence, for his open and successful warfare with the minister of his own parish had been going on for years and had become well-nigh traditional. Looking at him, however, as he sat in his favourite corner of the "Trusty Man's" common room, no one would have given him credit for any particular individuality. His round red face expressed nothing,—his dull fish-like eyes betrayed no intelligence,—he appeared to be nothing ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... perfidiously with me and lure me into these desert mountains, and what wilt thou do with me?" When he heard her words, he hardened his heart and said to her, "O pestilent baggage, wilt thou bandy words with me?" So saying, he took the whip and brought it down on her back, till she well-nigh fainted. Then she bowed down and kissed his feet; and he left beating her and began to revile her, saying, "By my bonnet, if I see or hear thee weeping, I will cut out thy tongue and thrust it up thy kaze, city strumpet that thou art!" So she was silent and made him no reply, for the beating ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... poor crippled boy, teaching him the way of life and sowing the seed which now was bearing fruit. Nor did he regret having accepted Wilford's invitation to dinner, as by this means he saw the home which had well-nigh been little Katy Lennox's. She would be sadly out of place here with these people, he thought, as he looked upon all their formality and ceremony and then contrasted it with what Katy had been accustomed to. Juno would kill her outright, was ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... past her mother with the fleetness of a fawn, calling as she did so, "I'm coming, coming!" In the next instant the wondering woman saw her child running, as only an Indian can run, by the side of a jet-black pony whose coat was flecked with foam, and whose breath was well-nigh spent. As they came nearer into the pathway of light that the pine blaze sent forth from the open door, something that looked like a pennon of gold streamed out, and a clear but rather shaken voice cried, "Lula, Lula, I've kept my promise; I've kept ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... the quaggas that they were well-nigh surrounded by strange enemies. But one course appeared open to them—the way they were wont to go; and barking with affright, the whole drove dashed up the bank, and crowded on towards ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... very dear sir," cried the Colonel, well-nigh hysterical with wonder and delight, "I insist on your coming down at once from that tree and partaking of luncheon with me. I have some excellent '49 port, and we'll discuss the two subjects together. Really, it is very remiss of me not to have suggested your coming ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... family, her husband to care for as he hasted away early to his work, and her children to make ready for school. There were other household duties which filled the poor, weak woman's hands, until her strength was well-nigh utterly exhausted. And she had not gone through it all that morning in a sweet, peaceful way. She had allowed herself to lose her patience, and to grow fretful, vexed, and unhappy. She had spoken ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... they could obtain the dresses of gentlemen, they should less likely be suspected while travelling, at all events, than if they disguised themselves as countrymen, as their dialect and appearance would at once show that they were strangers. The long summer's day was well-nigh closing in when they reached a hilly district, where they hoped to ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... fortune-seekers set eyes on the pony-chaise than off they set in a scamper, strangely forgetful of what had passed. It was wonderful to see how nimble Alan was in spite of his wounded leg; and with what ease Owen and Amy ran along with that heavy load of gold, which before had well-nigh weighed them ...
— The Nursery, July 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 1 • Various
... Harry had well-nigh dislodged Daisy by his vehemence in demonstrating that they were welcome to volunteer, but that the Channel Fleet would prevent the rifles from being seriously put to the proof—a declaration highly satisfactory to the ladies, and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Lilas's catastrophe Mrs. Knight was well-nigh delirious. It was not often that she could roll two such delicious morsels under her tongue, and she patently gloried in the opportunity for gossip. She ended a period of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... and prepares himself (for the journey): they depart with this equipment to Cruachan Ai:[FN57] and the people were well-nigh overcome with their consequence and appearance: their troop was great, goodly, splendid, compact: [fifty heroes, all with that appearance ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... lord, that what you have so graciously called my fiasco is well-nigh forgotten by this time, and wiser policy would ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... henceforth be multiplied incalculably; she durst not, as she valued her soul, so much as let his name enter her thoughts. And to guard against it, was there not a means offered her? The doubt as to what love meant was well-nigh solved; or at all events she held it proved that the 'love' of the marriage service was something she had never yet felt, something which would follow upon marriage itself. Earthly love had surely led Hubert Eldon to ruin; oh, not that could be demanded of her! What ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... pardon me! I knew not what I said; I am well-nigh crazy; I do believe you, I do indeed; forgive me, and think of the despair to which the loss of those papers reduces me. I have no copy, and with them my secret perishes. I am ruined—ruined irretrievably. The mine is known now only ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... who seemed highly pleased with his good manners. The chief then pointed to a shady spot, on which his attendants spread some carpets. Here we thankfully lay down, and I do not think I ever slept more soundly in my life, forgetting all the hardships I had gone through. When we awoke the sun was well-nigh dipping into the ocean, and the Malays had finished the repair of their boat. The old chief was, however, still seated on his carpet, with four or five other individuals, habited much in the same ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... braves, who attempted, to retard our advance by opening fire at long range from favorable places where they lay concealed. This fire did us little harm, but it had the effect of making our progress so slow that the patience of every one but General Rains was well-nigh exhausted. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... howled out Eglantine, now driven to fury—"YOU laugh at me, you miserable cretur! Take THAT, sir!" and he fell upon him with all his might, and well-nigh throttled the tailor, and pummelling his eyes, his nose, his ears, with inconceivable rapidity, wrenched, finally, his wig off his head, and flung it ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was the reply, "save in one particular, but there the difference is tremendous. Endowed otherwise like us, you are destitute of the faculty of foresight, without which we should think our other faculties well-nigh valueless." ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... is there not place for a hopeful thought, that if women have made so little comparative use of their well-nigh irresistible influence in setting a high standard and shaping men to a diviner and less animal type, it has been, as I have already said, chiefly owing to ignorance? The whole of one of the darkest sides of life has been sedulously kept from us. Educated mothers, till lately, have been profoundly ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... very limited extent of their shallow capacities lift them to be useful to whites, to raise cotton, gather rubber, fetch ivory, dig diamonds,—and let them be paid what men think they are worth—white men who know them to be well-nigh worthless. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Empire, unless it was in Asia, and were to some degree in use even as late as the ninth century; before and during the employment of vellum in the Caesarean school, and in localities where it was used in imitation of the mode of writing books which was brought well-nigh to perfection in ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... and justice of his appeal. But he put me off from time to time; persisted in looking upon me as a boy long after I had become acquainted with the penalties of the razor; and counselled me to be patient, till patience was well-nigh exhausted. The result of this treatment was that I became miserable and discontented; spent whole days wandering about the woods; and degenerated into a creature half idler and half misanthrope. I had never loved the profession ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... repeated that those confiscations and extortions were perpetrated upon Catholics as well as Protestants, monarchists as well as rebels; the possession of property making proof of orthodoxy or of loyalty well-nigh impossible. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as impersonal and detached as the details in ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Roger replied. "Their position was a terrible one and seemed well-nigh hopeless. I know that Cuitcatl regarded it as quite hopeless, and deems that all have fallen; but I do not think so. The passages to be crossed were of no great width; and though numbers may have fallen, I believe that some will have made their way ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... with, I was a king; king of all Caria, ruler of many Lydians, subduer of islands, conqueror of well-nigh the whole of Ionia, even to the borders of Miletus. Further, I was comely, and of noble stature, and a mighty warrior. Finally, a vast tomb lies over me in Halicarnassus, of such dimensions, of such exquisite beauty as no other shade can boast. Thereon ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... it until the close of the war. He spent the winter in Valley Forge, and once, in the darkest time, discovered Washington on his knees in a lonely thicket, praying aloud for his country. This gave him hope, when hope was well-nigh dead, and he followed his commander across the Jerseys, one of the two thousand who wrote in blood, from their shoeless feet, their protest against British rule on the soil ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... loyalty, the payment of imposts. Mr. Beauffet told me he was ordered to offer a glass of wine to the person who collected the income tax, and that the poor man was so overcome by a reception so unwontedly generous, that he had well-nigh fainted ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... it must be so; for while, on the one hand, his army was well-nigh exhausted, and was reduced to a state of such privation and distress as to make it nearly helpless, Saladin was established in Jerusalem almost impregnably. While the divisions of Richard's army had been quarreling with each other on the sea-coast, he had been strengthening the ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... absolute, overwhelming, which rushed upon him, had well-nigh led to an explosion of wrath, and perhaps some terrible scene which might have fulfilled some of old Sophy's predictions. This, however, would never do. Dick's face whitened with his thoughts, but he kept still until he could ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Emerson was essentially a prophet and theosophist, and not a man of letters, or creative artist. He could not have written a song or a story or a play. Arnold complains of his want of concreteness. The essay was his chosen medium, well-nigh the least concrete, the least literary of forms. And it was not even the personal essay, like Elia's, that he practised, but an abstract variety, a lyceum lecture, a moralizing discourse or sermon. ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... angry in her expression or manner. They went into the dining-room, and talked together much as usual during dinner. As soon as dinner was over, and the parlor-maid had gone out, having finished her ministrations, which to Dion that night had seemed innumerable and well-nigh unbearable, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... "The journey would be well-nigh impossible, I expect," Raed remarked. "On getting in from the coast, we should probably meet with no sea-fowl, no seals: in fact, I hardly know what we should be able to get for game. I have heard that caribou-deer ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... an international complication does not come from across the sea. The war spirit is well-nigh as rife in this country as at Barcelona and Cadiz. The great mass of the American people would welcome a controversy with any country, with or without good cause. "The glory of the young man is in his strength," and Uncle Sam is young and strong. He longs to grapple with ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of the name. In the register of his birth his name is entered, as are the births of his brothers and sisters, as 'Brunty' and 'Bruntee'; and it can scarcely be doubted that, as Dr. Douglas Hyde has pointed out, the original name was O'Prunty. {29} The Irish, at the beginning of the century, were well-nigh as primitive in some matters as were the English of a century earlier; and one is not surprised to see variations in the spelling of the Bronte name—it being in the case of his brothers and sisters occasionally spelt 'Brontee.' To me it is perfectly ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... stunning roar,—an involuntary gasp, a choking flood of water that came bellowing after them, and hammered them down into the black depths so far that the young man, though used to diving and swimming long distances underwater, had well-nigh yielded to the fearful need of air, and sucked in ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... endeavouring to strike its decisive blow on land! This double paradox will give much food for reflection to future historians. I am coming to the conclusion that without a complete knowledge of the facts it is well-nigh impossible to derive accurate deductions from History. It seems to me you can make History prove anything. To understand History in all its significance, one must be familiar also with literature, languages ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... well-nigh conclusive have already been presented for believing that the people of this tribe were mound- builders, and that they had migrated in pre-Columbian times from some point north of the locality in which they were encountered by Europeans. Taking up the thread of their history where it was dropped, ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... evening, after his guest had gone, Gray took occasion deliberately to put himself in Mallow's way and to get into conversation with him. This was not a difficult maneuver, for it was nearly midnight and the lobby was well-nigh deserted; moreover, it almost appeared as if the restless Mr. Mallow was ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... office expenses, payments to Mrs. Slater and Mr. Pell, and the more or less constant inquiry from some of my moral (as I call them) creditors as to how soon I could commence making them monthly payments, my brain was well-nigh turned. ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... fisherman; "a short time ago it was only a point of land; but now, since the forest-stream and the lake have become well-nigh bewitched, things are quite ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... and austerities had well-nigh brought Bernard to the grave, when the good bishop, finding him inflexible, went to Citeaux, and, prostrating himself before Stephen Harding, begged and obtained leave to direct and manage Bernard for one year only. The young abbot obeyed his new director absolutely, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... dead'—rose up from every heart; the voice of an incredulous age proclaimed the coming end of paganism. The oracles were dumb." There was no vision in the land. All faith in a beneficent overruling Providence was lost, and the hope of immortality was well-nigh gone. The doctrines of a resurrection and a judgment to come, were objects of derisive mockery.[921] Philosophy directed her attention solely to the problem of individual well-being on earth; it became simply a philosophy of life, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Our allotted space is well-nigh exhausted, and we have only now reached the confines of CHINA!—a topic on which we had prepared ourselves for a very full expression of our opinions. We are compelled, however, now to content ourselves with a mere outline of our intended ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... arm, and he was beautiful, full fed from her breasts, formed large and fair, his hair already waved as by a court barber! Her eyes rested on him. Would all the weak and miserable of the world be well-nigh forgotten now? She raised them to me again—Basin eyes—all the weak and miserable of the world ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... known a few weeks of life when, by calendar, the summer was already come; it seemed as if the local weather god had incontinently pushed the season forward with august finger to bring it again into accord with more favoured lands to the south. For torrid heat fell suddenly upon them, heat well-nigh as unmeasured as was the winter's cold. The tops of the spruces and cypresses, forgotten by the wind, were utterly still, and above the frowning outline stretched a sky bare of cloud which likewise seemed fixed and motionless. From dawn ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... august member of the society was so happily disappointed by his concluding with leaving it an undamaged reputation, the whole story was not let out. In truth the society was at that moment in a state of indignation, and its reputation as well-nigh the last stage of disgrace as it were possible to bring it without being entirely absorbed. The Baronet, who enjoyed a good joke, and was not over-scrupulous in measuring the latitude of our credulity, had, it seems, in addition to the little affair with Mrs. Constance, been imprudent ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Novgorod, Moscow, and Jaroslaf. The increase in population together with the growing demand for lumber, have caused extensive clearings; but the area covered by the forests is so large, that the supply is well-nigh inexhaustible. ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... had now a heavy weight to deal with. Then the truth suddenly flashed on him, and he went to work and pulled and pulled till the perspiration rolled down him: the weight got heavier and heavier, and at last he was well-nigh exhausted: looking down, he saw in the moonlight a sight that revived him: it was as it were a great snake coming up to him out of the deep shadow cast by the tower. He gave a shout of joy, and a score ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... twines round the tall stems of the palms, and overspreads the light fronds like some green waterfall. Many of the larger trees are clothed with parasitic ferns; huge bird's-nest ferns grow in the forks of the branches, as do various orchids, the dainty children of the mist, so that the stems are well-nigh as green as everything else in that wilderness of lovely forms. It is a very inanimate paradise, however. I rarely see any birds or butterflies, only a few lizards and an occasional dragon-fly; and the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... tearful—"I offer my hand in penitent gratitude." John took it. "Yes, my dear boy, my feet had well-nigh slipped." ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... voice of merely human birth, E'en here, where shapes immortal throng'd, intrude? Yet ah! thou poorest of the sons of earth, For once, I e'en to thee feel gratitude. Despair the power of sense did well-nigh blast, And thou didst save me ere I sank dismay'd; So giant-like the vision seem'd, so vast, I felt myself shrink dwarf'd ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of a novice. After the ceremony the queen made inquiries touching this new Santa Cecilia; and who dost thou think she is? No; thou wilt never guess!—the once celebrated singer—the beautiful, the inimitable Beatriz Coello! Ah! you may well look surprised; when actresses turn nuns, it is well-nigh time for Calderon and Philip to turn monks. Now, you must know, Roderigo, that I, unworthy though I be, am the cause of this conversion. There is a certain Martin Fonseca, a kinsman of Lerma's—thou ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... As for me, feeling that I had nothing pleasant to say, I pretended to have the toothache as an excuse for not talking. Sick at heart, absent-minded, and feeling the effects of a sleepless night, I was well-nigh mad with love, jealousy, and despair. Mdlle. de la Meure did not speak to me once, did not so much as look at me. She was quite right, but I did not think so then. I thought the dinner would never come to an end, and I do not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... knowledge or the unified opinion on this subject to protect itself against the greedy lobby in this process of tax revision. And so, selfish commercial interests could get nearly what they asked for in Congress, and the politicians at Washington, who had come to have a well-nigh superstitious faith in the efficacy of very high protective duties, could quietly use the opportunity to raise the people's taxes ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... service, you were promoted to the rank of lieutenant for a deed of extraordinary gallantry. You had attacked and killed, with your own hand, six marauding soldiers; who had entered the chateau of Count Eulenfurst, well-nigh murdered the count, killed six of his servants, and were occupied in plundering the house. In token of his thankfulness, that the life of so distinguished and enlightened a nobleman had been saved by you; as well as of approbation for the gallantry of your conduct, his majesty ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... away from all this foulness! Would to God he could get away from it all! But they could not run away together, and so he, too, must stay to please her. It was not easy; it was no honour to serve such a fellow, as he had done now for well-nigh three-quarters of a year. But he was doing it to please Mikolai and her—yes, ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... the treasurer of which had levanted with the greater part of the capital. Here, too, was a memorandum of the sums sunk upon the Evening Star and the Providence, whose unfortunate collision had well-nigh proved the death blow of the firm. It was melancholy reading, and perhaps the last page was the most melancholy of all. On it the old man had drawn up in a condensed form an exact account of the present condition of the firm's finances. Here it is exactly word for ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shaken to its foundations. So the two great sections of the English people parted company, perhaps to their mutual profit. Certainly each government has now enough to do without solving the other's problems, and it is well-nigh impossible to conceive a state maintaining its equilibrium or its equanimity with two such partners as the British Empire and the United States struggling ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... southwest, through Treptow Gollnow and other wild little Prussian Towns is about 100 miles; from Landsberg south, 150: Friedrich himself is well-nigh 300 miles away; in Stettin alone is succor, could we hold the intervening Country. But it is overrun with Russians, more and ever more. A Country of swamps and moors, winter darkness stealing over it,—illuminated by such a volcano as we see: a very ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with a sigh, "I trust they're none the less safe for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me, well-nigh threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being drownded. Why, they might ha' been cast on a desert island, and wasted to skin an' bone, and got home again wi' the loss of half the wits they set out with. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... first to hear such further details as were allowed to circulate among the now well-nigh frenzied guests. No one knew the perpetrator of the deed nor did there appear to be any direct evidence calculated to fix his identity. Indeed, the sudden death of this beautiful woman in the midst of festivity ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... property of every sort, was destroyed to prevent capture by the Union forces. On every battlefield incalculable damage was done to woods, villages, farmhouses, and crops. Bridges were burned; cities, such as Richmond, Atlanta, Columbia, Charleston, were well-nigh destroyed by fire; thousands of miles of railroad were torn up and ruined. The loss entailed by the emancipation of the slaves, supposing each negro worth $500, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... fast approaching maturity, with no adequate provision for its payment. Some policy for dealing with this debt with a view to its ultimate collection should be at once adopted. It is very difficult, well-nigh impossible, for so large a body as the Congress to conduct the necessary negotiations and investigations. I therefore recommend that provision be made for the appointment of a commission to agree upon and report a plan ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Whereat the ring well-nigh breaks with applause, and the knowing ones nod one at another, and Heathcote leaps for joy and beams like the sun at mid-day as his hero returns to his knees and girds himself ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Gray, Esq. Wordsworth was justified in naming Gray a 'friend' of Burns. He was originally Master of the High School, Dumfries, and associated with the Poet there. Transferred to the High School of Edinburgh, he taught for well-nigh a quarter of a century with repute. Disappointed of the Rectorship, he retired from Edinburgh to an academy at Belfast. Later, having entered holy orders, he proceeded to India as a chaplain in the East India Company's ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... boy, "sometimes I've had the fellows hint to me that I had bats in my belfry; but sure not that many. Why, I reckon there must have been well-nigh a thousand ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... its true character, and Herschel was awarded the honor due to the author of a discovery of such importance. His diligence and pertinacity alone had enabled him to search out from among the multitude of stars thickly strewn over the firmament this unknown and well-nigh invisible planet which, during all the preceding years of the world's history, had eluded human perception. Men had been all unconscious of its existence as it had been slowly completing its circuits around the sun, obedient to the same laws as the other ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... when it is wanted," he said. "The coachman is pretty old now. He has been in the family well-nigh fifty years. He is all right behind the carriage-horses, he says, but he does not like trusting himself ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... assured, and a face as strikingly handsome as that of Harris was severely plain. Willett's eyes and hair were of a deep, lustrous brown, his eyebrows thick and heavily arched, his mouth soft, sensitive, with lips that were beautifully curved and teeth that were white and well-nigh perfect. His mustache, though long and curling, was carefully trained away so as to hide none of the charms that lurked beneath. He looked at once the knight of the ballroom and the battlefield, a man to make his mark in either contest, love or war, and make it he had. Life had been ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... sympathetic power, which was always the first title of Madam Urso—as of every great violinist—to the highest rank in her art. Her violin in these fine concerted pieces spoke with the same "golden mouth" as of old, commanding, inspiring, defying and pleading by turns. And in such music as that of the well-nigh incomparable "Tema con variazioni" of the Schubert quartette, the highest eloquence of the king of instruments is ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... complacent, musing upper thought in the mind and on the lips of the proletary as he wended his way through the quiet and well-nigh deserted streets to the older part of the town. How much it might have been modified if he had known that the man whose face Miss Farnham had seen at the window was silently tracking him through the tree-shadowed streets is a matter for conjecture. Also, it is ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Caesar restored and rebuilt the ruined city, than it sprang at once again into importance, and among the societies addrest in the Epistles of St. Paul, none seems to have lived in greater wealth or luxury. It was, in fact, well-nigh impossible that Corinth should die. Nature had marked out her site as one of the great thoroughfares of the old world; and it was not till after centuries of blighting misrule by the wretched Turks that she sank into the hopeless decay from which not even another ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... Hayti. There was an insurrection in 1796; and in 1831 again the Negroes of northwest Jamaica, impatient because of the slow progress of the emancipation, arose in revolt and destroyed nearly three and a half million dollars' worth of property, well-nigh ruining the planters there. The next year two hundred and fifty-five thousand slaves were set free, for which the planters were paid nearly thirty million dollars. There ensued a discouraging condition of industry. The white officials ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... Krabbetje, the Little Crab, born 1610, master-potter of Delft and Haarlem] did not trouble his head about that," said the Haarlem jar, proudly. "The Krabbetje made me for the kitchen, the bright, clean, snow-white Dutch kitchen, well-nigh three centuries ago, and now I am thought worthy the palace; yet I wish I were at home; yes, I wish I could see the good Dutch vrouw, and the shining canals, and the great green meadows ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... outlay soon exhausted the meagre resources of young Glazier and, at the end of the time mentioned, he went over into Rensselaer County, to look up a school, in order to replenish his well-nigh empty purse, and to enable him to continue in his efforts to acquire an education. It was a bright clear morning in November when he left his boarding-place on Lydius street in quest of his self-appointed work, and, crossing the Hudson on a ferry-boat, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... details. You invite me, by the part you take in what regards me, to open my heart to you. Alas, hope is well-nigh banished from it. Fortune, when she changes, is as constant in her persecutions as in her favors. History is full of those examples:—but I have found none equal to the one we now see; nor any War as ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... thought a moment. "He was a classic, you say, and his name was—Oh, yes, I know—Dante," he declared, with difficulty controlling the laughter that well-nigh convulsed him. "And you found Dante ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... would be greater than in allowing matters to remain as they are. It is certain that the house is watched. As you know, servants going in and out after nightfall have been rudely hustled and thrown down. Some have been beaten, and returned well-nigh stripped to the skin. I doubt not that these attacks were made in order to discover if they had anything concealed under their garments. Were Jethro to venture upon such an attempt he might either be attacked and the cat found ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... paid to children, but it is quite certain that a similar number of THE STUDIO could scarce have been compiled a century ago, for there was practically no material for it. In fact the tastes of children as a factor to be considered in life are well-nigh as modern as steam or the electric light, and far less ancient than printing with movable types, which of itself seems the second great event in the history of humanity, the use of fire ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... except by, those who are in immediate contact and know the responsibilities. Our tasks would be less difficult if we had only ourselves to consider, but so much of the world was involved, the disordered conditions are so well-nigh universal, even among nations not engaged in actual warfare, that no permanent readjustments can be effected without consideration of our inescapable relationship to world affairs in finance and trade. Indeed, we should be unworthy of our best ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... was well-nigh spent; his cave was near, Where he had spent so many weary years, And as he thither turned and upward climbed, The shepherd's little child who watched the flock His love had rescued from the bloody knife, Upon a rock that ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... Justice Chase? Would the recreancy of President Johnson to his own party and his hope of Democratic support find any considerable response? And aside from the issue of virtually repudiating the public debt, would the party now re-assert its hostile and revolutionary attitude towards the well-nigh completed work of Reconstruction? These various possibilities left a degree of uncertainty which surrounded the Convention with ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... could give a man—the most powerful editor in the Union, surrounded by friends and admirers, feared or courted by nearly everybody in public life, and in the full enjoyment of widespread popular confidence in his integrity. In six short months he was well-nigh undone. He had endured a humiliating defeat, which seemed to him to indicate the loss of what was his dearest possession, the affection of the American people; he had lost the weight in public affairs which he had built up by thirty years of ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... examining chaplain and theological professor, with the interludes of voyages which involved intense anxiety and watchfulness, as well as the hardships of those unrestful nights in native huts, and the exhaustion of the tropical climate. No wonder then that he was already as one whose work was well-nigh done, and to whom rest was near. And though the entrance into that rest was by a sudden stroke, it was one that mercifully spared the sufferings of a protracted illness, and even if his friends pause to claim for it the actual honours (on earth) ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and jaw beneath; life at the stroke Left him, and darkness overspread his eyes. So raged the battle like devouring fire. But Hector dear to Jove not yet had learn'd, Nor aught surmised the havoc of his host 820 Made on the left, where victory crown'd well-nigh The Grecians animated to the fight By Neptune seconding himself their arms. He, where he first had started through the gate After dispersion of the shielded Greeks 825 Compact, still persevered. The galleys there Of Ajax and Protesilaues stood Updrawn above the hoary Deep; the wall ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... inherited the problem? I had long ago thrown aside illusions and theories, and was willing to meet the facts face to face, and to do whatever in God's name a man might do towards saving the next generation from such a burden. But I felt the weight of twenty well-nigh hopeless years of thought and reading and observation; for the old difficulties remained and new ones had sprung up. Then I saw clearly that the way out of a century of blunders had been made by this man who stood beside me ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... by the Governor. As the special session had been called specifically for good roads, the State Equal Suffrage League intended to await the regular session of 1920 to press for action but to test the legislators a questionnaire was sent to them. Answers proved that it would be well-nigh impossible to obtain ratification at this time, even though substantial petitions from all sections of the State were shown to men representing the localities from which these came. Spurred on, however, by efforts of the National Woman's Party to secure action at any cost, the opponents succeeded ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the thought that, after what she had said that morning on the island, after she had forced on him, stripping it of the uttermost rag of disguise, the realization of how his position appeared to her, he should have come, under orders, to bring her back, was well-nigh unendurable. But to have met him, to have seen the man she loved plunging still deeper into shame, would have been pain beyond bearing. Better a thousand times than that this panic flight into the ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Up to this date, then, there could not have been any considerable falling off in the size of the gathering. Indeed, from my friend's observations upon the Belmont roost, to be mentioned later, it seems well-nigh certain that it was still upon ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... him as easy to manage as a kitten or as relentless as a panther, stalking his prey. She knew that it was in her power to say the word that would calm him until the return of his mother and his sister. And yet she found it well-nigh impossible to ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... a particular account of the names of the soldiers that were slain in the town, for many were maimed and wounded, and slain; for when they saw that the posts of Ear-gate did shake, and Eye-gate was well-nigh broken quite open; and also that their captains were slain, this took away the hearts of many of the Diabolonians; they fell also by the force of the shot that were sent by the golden slings into the midst of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the rocking horse couplets of Pope, and it is well-nigh unreadable to-day. It is doubtful if twenty-five people in our times have ever read it through. Even where the author essays fine writing, as ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... surrender reached England, the disappointment and chagrin were well-nigh universal. The British ministry were astounded by the unexpected tidings. Lord Germain announced the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... three days after this ridiculous scene, on a certain afternoon, when Adrian had been out for the second time, that the evil tidings came. Dirk had heard them in the town, and returned home well-nigh weeping. Elsa saw his face and knew ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... that democracy is for the nation a true embodiment of that life, and wears its characteristics upon its sleeve. In it the individual mingles with the mass, and becomes one with mankind, and mankind itself sums the totality of individual good in a well-nigh perfect way. In it there is the slow embodiment of a future nobly conceived and brought into existence on an ideal basis of the best that is, from age to age, in man's power. It includes the universal wisdom, the reach of thought ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... the small wiry ponies of the country, their servants clearing a way before them with their parangs as they advanced. Their route, for the most part, lay through jungle, in places so dense that it was well-nigh impossible for them to force a way through it. It was as if nature were doing her best to save the ancient city from the hand of the spoiler. At last, and so suddenly that it came upon them like a shock, ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... history, in these dread days, Is sore sore sad in the making; We are building the future with our dead, We are binding it sure with the brave blood shed, Though our hearts are well-nigh breaking. We can but pray that the coming day Will reap, of our red sowing, The harvest meet of a world complete With the peace of God's bestowing. So, with quiet heart, we do our part In the travail ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... poor children out into the air without exposing the dear innocents to reproaches, what a situation is ours, my dear heart! And when you think that I suffer not for myself alone, but have to tremble for the king as well, and for our friends who are with us, you will see that the burden is well-nigh unbearable! But, as I have told you before, you absent ones, you keep me up. Adieu, dear heart, let us hope in God, who looks into our consciences, and who knows whether we are not animated by the truest love for this land. ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... they discovered people still living! They are marvelously developed people, infinitely more advanced than the people of the earth, and enjoying a civilization that is well-nigh incredible. Among other things, they have learned how to visit other worlds without themselves leaving their planet. They do it by a kind of telepathy; they know all about us here on the earth; and they have accumulated data regarding the ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... gave orders for the horses to be cast into the sea, and, despite their masters' entreaties, favourite chargers of priceless value were slaughtered and thrown overboard. The famous breed of Spanish horses was well-nigh ruined. It was but one tragedy more. On the 2nd of November most of the troops were on board. Charles resolved to be the last to leave the strand; but the wind was getting up, the sea rising, and at last he gave the order to weigh anchor. Often is the story told in Algiers how the great ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... find a place for Dionea, and in this neighborhood well-nigh impossible. The people associate her somehow with the death of Father Domenico, which has confirmed her reputation of having the evil eye. She left the convent (being now seventeen) some two months back, and ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... shoes removed. The tools of his trade were placed before Simon, but he cast glances so piteous, first at his brother's feet, and then at the shoes, as again gave rise to an amount of merriment that surpassed all, my pages in particular well-nigh forgetting my presence, and rolling about in a manner unpardonable at another time. However, I rebuked them, and was about to order the sentence to be carried into effect, when the remembrance of the many pleasant simplicities which the smith had uttered ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... say, he used such fundamentally national words as occur only in the Old Church Slavonic, well-nigh untranslatable here, also ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... Friend, my Friend,—You behold before you a remorseful man! It is well-nigh a year now since I despatched some hurried rag of paper to you out of Scotland, indicating doubtless that I would speedily follow it with a longer letter; and here, when gray Autumn is at hand again, I have still written nothing to you, heard nothing from you! It is miserable ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable. I could not get away from men: their voices came through windows; locked doors were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, craving men glance jealously at me; weary, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... much-coveted point—the crown of the last ascent; and when he smelled fire and the savory odor of the jerked buffalo meat, it well-nigh caused him to waver! But he must not fail to follow the custom of untold ages, and give the game scout's wolf call before ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... there until the maid returned; and registered to the woman's credit the discreet soft closing of the front-door and afterward the well-nigh inaudible swish of the rear door of the dining-room as the maid ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... only, purely, merely; at least, at the least, at most, at the most; ever so little, as little as may be, tant soit peu[Fr], in ever so small a degree; thus far, pro tanto[It], within bounds, in a manner, after a fashion, so to speak. almost, nearly, well-nigh, short of, not quite, all but; near upon, close upon; peu s'en faut[Fr], near the mark; within an ace of, within an inch of; on the brink of; scarcely, hardly, barely, only just, no more than; about [in an uncertain degree], thereabouts, somewhere ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... monarch was in that disdainful mood which sometimes lasts him for months together. From those perilous heights came down a breath that chilled the air and tempered the sunshine falling upon Chamouni, now silent and deserted, for the season was well-nigh over. With the birds, their brothers, the summer tourists had flown southward at the rustling of the first autumnal leaf. Here and there a guide leaned idly against a post in front of one of the empty hotels. There was no ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... used to a life of ease, or easier, if she had wished to make it that, would find the life of the factory worker well-nigh unbearable. An emotional girl longing for the higher things of life would find factory life galling beyond words. It is to be regretted that there are not more educated and cultured people—that more folk ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... was the position of the human species in zoological classification. "It was a burning question in the sense that those who touched it were almost certain to burn their fingers severely." In the fifties Sir William Lawrence had been well-nigh ostracized for his book On Man, "which now might be read in a Sunday-school without surprising anybody." When Huxley submitted the proofs of Man's Place in Nature to "a competent anatomist, and good friend of his," asking him, if he could, to point ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... hence, would be the wife of one entirely unknown to me as yet, but destined hereafter to become a closer friend than even herself, more intimate than that unmannerly lad of seventeen, by whom I was collared in the passage, on coming down, and well-nigh jerked off my equilibrium, and who, in correction for his impudence, received a resounding whack over the sconce, which, however, sustained no serious injury from the infliction; as, besides being more than commonly thick, it was protected by a redundant ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... natural man, can be borne over the thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the tide of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to rise from reading Epictetus[185]or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet have borne it! Yet, even for the sage, this sense of labor and sorrow in his march towards the goal constitutes a relative inferiority; the noblest souls of whatever creed, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... It is well-nigh impossible for one who has played but a small part in a big engagement to give a coherent description of the whole. He can tell only of such happenings as came under his own observation. Of the broader issues and general ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... horrible. With the stare went the shuffling walk, the wagging jaw, the saying of words meaning nothing. On the wall of a building opposite the door of the restaurant hung a banner marked "Socialist Headquarters." There where modern life had found well-nigh perfect expression, where there was no discipline and no order, where men did not move, but drifted like sticks on a sea-washed beach, hung the socialist banner with its ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... forest, but without the power of penetrating into its recesses, which hung rich with heavy dewdrops, and were beginning on some of the trees to exhibit the varied tints of autumn; it being the season when Nature, like a prodigal whose race is well-nigh run, seems desirous to make up in profuse gaiety and variety of colours, for the short space which her splendour has then to endure. The birds were silent—and even Robin-redbreast, whose chirruping song was heard among ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... regret to say, that even Dr. Webster, with all his obligations and pretensions to literature, has well-nigh taken ground with Neef and Cardell, as above cited; and has not forborne to throw contempt, even on grammar as such, and on men of letters indiscriminately, by supposing the true principles of every language to be best observed and kept by the illiterate. What marvel then, that ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... day. But scarcely had day begun to dawn when I sallied forth, without either arms or guide, except a pocket compass, leaving my fellow-travellers to bring on the waggon as soon as they should arouse from their slumbers. This impatience had, however, well-nigh cost me my life; for having to wade through many miles of deep sand with a vertical sun over my head, I had not accomplished half the journey before my strength began to fail, and an indescribable thirst was induced. Nevertheless, ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... olden days of dalliance, When I wantoned with my fate; When I trifled with the knowledge That had well-nigh ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... wi' gulls and kittiewakes. What d'ye think they come ashore for except to escape having all the feathers blown out o' them? I mind a day like this when I was wi' Charlie Napier off Cronstadt. It well-nigh blew us under the guns of the forts, for all our engines ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... No. 10—a small marsh-surrounded knob in the Mississippi river—had been selected by General Beauregard, and fortified with all the appliances of his great engineering skill, until deemed well-nigh impregnable. It was looked upon as the key to the defenses of the river, and of the line of railroad communication between New Orleans and the West with the Capital. In the middle of March the Federal flotilla commenced a furious bombardment of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the Ocean service are heated with steam and lighted with electricity; all have pianos and a well-selected library. The beds on these boats are well-nigh perfect, woven-wire springs and heavy mattresses. They are kept scrupulously clean—the company is noted for that—and the steerage is as neat as ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... east and his waistcoat west, as far as he could hurl them, and it was plain he would have shouted had he been a complete mile from Saunders' room. Any less distance was useless for adequate expression. He struck Drumsheugh a mighty blow that well-nigh levelled that substantial man in the dust, and then the doctor ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... anything else in Europe. The influence of these things on Searle it charmed me to note. His observation I soon saw to be, as I pronounced it to him, searching and caressing. His almost morbid appetite for any over-scoring of time, well-nigh extinct from long inanition, threw the flush of its revival into his ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... John Carmichael drank ale, and talked with the guards, and waited;—and waited, and talked with the guards, and drank ale, until his patience was well-nigh gone. At last, just when the day was breaking, he went to the door of the ante-room to listen, and hearing nothing, he knocked, and receiving no answer, he unlocked the door and peeped in, not wishing to ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... description of the famous upper hall with the four-and-twenty windows is one of the most contused and incoherent parts of the Nights and well-nigh defies the efforts of the translator to define the exact nature of the building described by the various and contradictory passages which refer to it. The following is a literal rendering of the above passage: "An upper chamber (keszr) and (or?) a kiosk (kushk, a word explained by a modern ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... beauty, such an one as those Greeks carved in the statues of their god Apollo. Never, I think, was a man more beautiful in face and form, though in soul he was not great, as often happens to men who have all else, and well-nigh always happens to women, save myself and perhaps one or two others that history tells of, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... civilized Europe is still in a transition state about marriage; not only in practice but in thought. It is idle to speak with contempt of the nations where polygamy is an institution, or seraglios a custom, while practices far more debasing haunt, well-nigh fill, every city and every town, and so far as union of one with one is believed to be the only pure form of marriage, a great majority of societies and individuals are still doubtful whether the earthly bond must be a meeting of souls, or only supposes a contract of convenience and utility. Were ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli |
