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More "Decline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the lovely corner of the island of Jersey where her father, a country doctor, had begotten a large family of lovely creatures and brought them up on the appallingly inadequate proceeds of his totally inadequate practice. Pretty female things must be disposed of early lest their market value decline. Therefore a well-born young man even without obvious resources represents a sail in the offing which is naturally welcomed as possibly belonging to a bark which may at least bear away a burden which the back carrying it as part of its pack will willingly ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Sabbaths, when she worshipped with them in the little chapel, which served the purposes of a church to all the families of the vicinity. There was, about this period (and the fact was undoubtedly attributable to Ellen's influence,) a general and very evident decline in the scholarship of the college, especially in regard to the severer studies. The intellectual powers of the young men seemed to be directed chiefly to the construction of Latin and Greek verse, many copies of ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... look. She turned dead white for a minute, then she spoke: 'I never discuss family matters with perfect strangers.' Those were her words—'perfect strangers.' 'I consider your question impertinent, madame, and decline to answer it.' Then she turned her back upon Mrs. Featherbrain; and shouldn't I like to have seen Mrs. Featherbrain's face. Since then, she just bows frigidly ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... animal vigour with a melancholy vivacity. The remaining energies of Algernon's mind were devoted to animadversions on swift bowling. He preached it over the county, struggling through laborious literary compositions, addressed to sporting newspapers, on the Decline of Cricket. It was Algernon who witnessed and chronicled young Richard's first fight, which was with young Tom Blaize of Belthorpe Farm, three ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Call at the time I was doing a little reporting on the same paper. It happened that a benefit was arranged for some charity. "Nan, the Good-for-Nothing," was to be given by a number of amateurs. The Nan asked me to play Tom, and I had insufficient firmness to decline. After the play, when my face was reasonably clean, I dropped into the Call office, yearning for a word of commendation from Harte. I thought he knew that I had taken the part, but he would not give me the satisfaction of referring to it. Finally I mentioned, casually like, that I was Tom, whereat ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... "Yes. I absolutely decline to encourage the practice of using good horses in four-wheeled cabs. It's a disgrace to the poor animals. It must ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... where not already in the Astronomical Society became Fellows without contribution, all the books and other property of the old Society being transferred to the new one. I was one of the committee which made the preliminary inquiries, and the reason of the decline was soon manifest. The only question which could arise was whether the members of the society of working men—for this repute still continued—were of that class of educated men who could associate with the Fellows of the Astronomical ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Dunstan seeth the diuell often, but now he was become a waiter at the table when Dunstane sat with the king.] the kings death, and the changing of the nobles into dum and insensible beasts betokened that the princes & gouernors of the realme should decline from the waie of truth, and wander as foolish beasts without a guide to rule them. Also the night after this talke when the king was set at supper, Dunstane saw the same spirit, or some other, walke vp and downe amongst ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... Watty was not built to receive merchandise, but he was built to receive food, and the quantity he could consume when he was unfettered was so great that a crew made up of men proportionately as great eaters would have made a captain wince when stores were running out, and shipowners decline to take them again at ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... did not say much about it; but as the king insisted on his wish he did not entirely decline, but said, "I will let you hear, king, what my desire would have been had I gained the wager. It would have been to be received into your body of court-men; and if you will grant me that, I will be the more zealous now in fulfilling your pleasure." The king gave ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... our neighbours' throats, wives, and pockets; still, every year shows that the parson's maxim—"non quieta movere "—is as prudent for the health of communities as when Apollo recommended his votaries not to rake up a fever by stirring the Lake Camarina; still, people, thank Heaven, decline to reside in parallelograms, and the surest token that we live under a free government is when we are governed by persons whom we have a full right to imply, by our censure and ridicule, are blockheads compared ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for your kind intentions, but the misfortune of the rank to which destiny has called me will not allow me to accept the high title with which you honor me. I thank you very much, but I must decline it[34]." ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... until you are better. Whether a doctor can help you or not—forgive me, but you cannot judge of that by your feelings. God's help is certainly decisive, but it is just He who has given us medicine and physician that, through them, His aid may reach us; and to decline it in this form is to tempt Him, as though the sailor at sea should deprive himself of a helmsman, with the idea that God alone can and will give aid. If He does not help us through the means He has placed within our reach, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... father had been describing the last hours of his life in the terms habitual to him. Professor Hyslop had been mistaken again. The doctor had noticed pain in the stomach at 7 a.m. The heart action began to decline at 9.30; this was shortly followed by terrible difficulty in breathing, and death followed. When his father's eyelids fell, James Hyslop said, "He is gone," and he was the last to speak. This last incident seems to indicate that consciousness ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... may have been sabred by the Manchester Yeomanry or shot in the '48? Are we still strong enough to spear mammoths, but now tender enough to spare them? Does the cosmos contain any mammoth that we have either speared or spared? When we decline (in a marked manner) to fly the red flag and fire across a barricade like our grandfathers, are we really declining in deference to sociologists—or to soldiers? Have we indeed outstripped the warrior and passed the ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... he was menaced by Elam and repudiated by Chaldaea, and it remained to be seen whether his resources would prove equal to maintaining the integrity of his empire, or whether the example set by Merodach-baladan would not speedily be imitated by all who groaned under the Assyrian yoke. Since the decline of Damascus and Arpad, Hamath had again taken a prominent place in Northern Syria: prompt submission had saved this city from destruction in the time of Tiglath-pileser III., and it had since prospered ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... nothing to be done. He and his lawyers had no official standing in the case—they could only consult with and advise Niles in an unofficial fashion. And, though Niles held a long conference with Holmes and his party before the bail bond was signed, it proved to be impossible for the court to decline to accept it. Some things the law made imperative, and, much as Niles might feel that he was being tricked, he could not ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... a reputation among his associates. He had read everything, and when his key was not busy, there was in his hand a copy of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... pacifist lines cannot exist if hemmed in by capitalistic and militarist states. Russia's revolution must follow the law of all healthy organisms. It must increase. If it does not increase it will decline.... ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... continue, lest it should grow less; and having had no leisure, while I was in Rome and other parts of Italy, to exercise myself in the Roman language, on account of public business and of those who came to be instructed by me in philosophy, it was very late, and in the decline of my age, before I applied myself to the reading of Latin authors. Upon which that which happened to me, may seem strange, though it be true; for it was not so much by the knowledge of words, that I came to the understanding of things, as by my experience of things I was enabled to follow ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to borrow from Mordecai on interest, but, having regard to the fact that Jacob and Esau were brothers, he refused to lend me upon usury, and I was forced to sell myself as slave to him. If, now, I should at any time decline to serve him as a slave, or deny that I am his slave, or if my children and children's children unto the end of all time should refuse to do him service, if only a single day of the week; or if I should act inimically toward him on account of this contract, as Esau did toward Jacob after selling ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... which Aileen observed was when the customary cards and invitations for receptions and the like, which had come to them quite freely of late, began to decline sharply in number, and when the guests to her own Wednesday afternoons, which rather prematurely she had ventured to establish, became a mere negligible handful. At first she could not understand this, not being willing to believe that, following so soon ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... should proove a pricze) which cannot be cleered so well, any where as at Berbadoes, who have as wee are Informed inquired of hr [?] the value of the prize, and the Rather becawse they broke bulke at Pemequid, out of our Jurisdiccion,[4] and that after they had our order, which they seemed to decline by theire Accepting proteccion from Capt. Gilbert Crane, as appeares by proofe, who was in our harbors under the Imploiment of the Parliament of England for masts ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... kite the Countess pounced upon his character. Would the Honourable and Reverend Mr. Duflian decline to participate in the sparest provender? Would he be guilty of the discourtesy of leaving table without a bow or an apology, even if reduced to extremest poverty? No, indeed! which showed that, under all circumstances, a gentleman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a little, and then rose to the higher slope of Mount Joy. To north the land again dropped, and rose beyond to the deep gulch of the Valley Creek. On its farther side the fires of a picket on Mount Misery were seen. Everywhere were regular rows of log huts, and on the first decline of every hill slope intrenchments, ditches, redoubts, and artillery. Far beyond, this group of hills fell gradually to the rolling plain. A mile away were the long outlying lines of Wayne, and the good fellows with whom I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... periodical censors have been uncommonly lenient, I confess a tribute from a man of acknowledged genius is still more flattering. But I am afraid I should forfeit all claim to candor, if I did not decline such praise as I do not deserve, and this is, I am sorry to say, the case in the present instance. My pretensions to virtue are, unluckily, so few, that, though I should be happy to deserve your praise, I can not accept your ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... mine closed, and a large promising platinum and gold mine was not yet operational. Greenland has signed a contract for its largest construction project, a power plant to supply the capital. To avoid a decline in the economy, Denmark has agreed to pay 75% of the costs of running Sondrestrom Airbase and Kulusuk Airfield as civilian bases after the US withdraws ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... midst of all his triumphs, if not to doubt their reality, at least to distrust their continuance; and sometimes even, with that painful skill which sensibility supplies, to extract out of the brightest tributes of success some omen of future failure, or symptom of decline. New successes, however, still came to dissipate these bodings of diffidence; nor was it till after his unlucky coalition with Mr. Hunt in the Liberal, that any grounds for such a suspicion of his having declined ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... either to walk quietly down to the North River and drown herself or to wait her husband's return and tell him everything and throw herself on his mercy, implore him, adjure him, not to give that woman his play; and then to go into a decline that would soon rid him of the clog and hinderance she had always been to him. It flashed through her turmoil of emotion that it was already dark, in spite of Mr. Sterne's good-morning at parting, and that some one might speak to her on the way to the river; and then she thought how Maxwell ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... was a movement among the elders, and Lord Silverbridge soon found himself walking alone with Miss Boncassen. It seemed to her to be quite natural to do so, and there certainly was no reason why he should decline anything so pleasant. It was thus that he had intended to walk with Mabel Grex;—only as yet he had not found her. "Oh yes," said Miss Boncassen, when they had been together about twenty minutes; "we shall be here all the summer, and all the fall, and all the ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... research and almost our conjecture; which things the generality of philosophers (for the generality are speculative) deem of the first importance. Questions relating to them I answer evasively, or altogether decline. Again, there are modes of living which are suitable to some and unsuitable to others. What I myself follow and embrace, what I recommend to the studious, to the irritable, to the weak in health, would ill agree with the commonality of citizens. Yet my adversaries ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the provinces or from other lands; the next floor had been divided into a succession of private rooms, comfortably furnished, where, screened behind thick curtains, dined somewhat "irregular" patrons: lovers who were in either the dawn, the zenith, or the decline of their often ephemeral fancies. On the top floor, spacious salons, richly decorated, were used for large and elaborate receptions of ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... there lay for two days and nights, without eating a morsel of food. The poor Princess Helena, almost prostrated by the blow, mourned alone, or with Boris, in her own apartments. Her influence, no longer kept alive by her constant presence, as formerly, began to decline. When the old Prince aroused somewhat from his stupor, it was not meat that he demanded, but drink; and he drank to angry excess. Day after day the habit resumed its ancient sway, and the whip and the wild-beast yell returned with it. The serfs even began to tremble as they ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... to allow discipline to decline, or discouragement to grow among the crew; so that, on the 7th of January, Captain Len Guy at my request assembled the men and addressed them ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... Gentlemen should decline an invitation to spend the evening when making a first visit; indeed, such an invitation ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... subtle Spirits he called That near him stood, and gave them thus in charge. Ithuriel and Zephon, with winged speed Search through this garden, leave unsearched no nook; But chiefly where those two fair creatures lodge, Now laid perhaps asleep, secure of harm. This evening from the sun's decline arrived, Who tells of some infernal Spirit seen Hitherward bent (who could have thought?) escaped The bars of Hell, on errand bad no doubt: Such, where ye find, seise fast, and hither bring. So saying, on he led his radiant files, Dazzling the moon; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... those of the old school—that does not necessarily mean that the new tendency is bad and wrong. Any change in fundamentals is apt to be upsetting, for the time being. The new way, in the end, may really be better than the old, and represent progress. Or it may mean deterioration and decline. It will be time enough to discuss that phase of the question, after we have made sure that we thoroughly understand what it is, that has ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... remembered with misgiving some things which at the time had seemed regular and right enough, but which took on a different color in the light in which he found himself recalling them. He debated with himself whether he should not decline to send Mrs. Cullom the notice as he had been instructed, and left it an open question when he ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... since, at this hour. There are now Nine upon our List. What the thoughts of the Dominus Rex may be farther? The Dominus Rex, thanking graciously, sends out word that we shall now strike off three. The three strangers are instantly struck off. Willelmus Sacrista adds, that he will of his own accord decline,—a touch of grace and respect for the Sacrosancta, even in Willelmus! The King then orders us to strike off a couple more; then yet one more: Hugo Third-Prior goes, and Roger Cellerarius, and venerable Monk Dennis;—and now there remain on our List two only, Samson ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... superior to our own maidens? No evidence has been produced from literature, from journals, from family correspondence, and I am pretty certain that no evidence exists. Practically speaking, the complaints of the decline of morality are merely uttered as a mode of showing the talker's ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... herself was going in search for you to secure the boon for which she hoped; no one else would have taken her place, had she not been detained by an illness which compels her to keep her bed. Now tell me, please, whether you will dare to come, or whether you will decline." "No," he says; "no man can win praise in a life of ease; and I will not hold back, but will follow you gladly, my sweet friend, whithersoever it may please you. And if she for whose sake you have sought me out stands in some great ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... anticipated, by a well-bred man. You must never usurp to yourself those conveniences and agremens which are of common right; such as the best places, the best dishes, &c. but, on the contrary, always decline themself yourself, and offer them to others; who, in their turns, will offer them to you: so that, upon the whole, you will, in your turn, enjoy your share ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... praise, O Cheronean Sage, is thine. '(Why should this praise to thee alone belong!) 'All else from Nature's moral path decline, 'Lured by the toys that captivate the throng; 'To herd in cabinets and camps, among 'Spoil, carnage, and the cruel pomp of pride; 'Or chaunt of heraldry the drowsy song, 'How tyrant blood, o'er many a region wide, 'Rolls to a thousand thrones its ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... plot, nor envy, nor sedition in the state, for the love of virtue and the serenity of spirit of the king flowed down upon all the happy subjects. In due time, after a long reign and a peaceful and useful life, Numa died, not by disease or war, but by the natural decline of his faculties. The people mourned for him heartily and honored him with ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Provinces in October 1905, and the two Uriya-speaking states of Gangpur and Bonai were attached to the Orissa Tributary States. There now remain, therefore, only the two states of Kharsawan and Saraikela. At the decline of the Mahratta power in the early part of the 19th century, the Chota Nagpur states came under British protection. Before the rise of the British power in India their chiefs exercised almost absolute sovereignty in their ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... or attempted purchases or transfers; (B) the appropriate course of action to be taken by the ammonium nitrate facility owner with respect to such a purchase or transfer or attempted purchase or transfer, including— (i) exercising the right of the owner of the ammonium nitrate facility to decline sale of ammonium nitrate; and (ii) notifying appropriate law enforcement entities; and (C) additional subjects determined appropriate to prevent the misappropriation or use of ammonium nitrate in an act of terrorism. (2) Use of materials and programs.—In providing guidance ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... many reasons to be compelled to decline participation in the conference at Charlottetown. The season is so far advanced that I find my summer's work would be so seriously deranged by the visit to Prince Edward Island that, without permission from the Foreign Office, I would scarcely be justified in consulting ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... meditating, without having any capacity for thinking; and in such men a particular notion easily fixes itself fast, which may be regarded as a mental disease. To such a fixed view he always came back again, and was thus in the long run excessively tiresome. He would bitterly complain of the decline of his memory, especially with regard to the latest events, and maintained, by a logic of his own, that all virtue springs from a good memory, and all vice, on the contrary, from forgetfulness. This doctrine he contrived to carry out with much acuteness; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... disowned by the latter. The spirit of rhetoric was soon to overspread all Hellas; and Plato with prophetic insight may have seen, from afar, the great literary waste or dead level, or interminable marsh, in which Greek literature was soon to disappear. A similar vision of the decline of the Greek drama and of the contrast of the old literature and the new was present to the mind of Aristophanes after the death of the three great tragedians (Frogs). After about a hundred, or at most two hundred years ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... benefactors of the human race, M. de Moltke goes on to declare that it is not the rulers, but the peoples, who want war to-day. In Germany, it is "the cupidity of the classes whom fate has neglected"; it is also the socialists who decline to vote more soldiers because they desire to trouble the world's peace and expect "to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives in the next war and to threaten the ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... that is not yours; or the delusion which makes you hope for ampler privileges in that country hereafter. Tell us; which is the white man, who, with a prudent regard to his own character, can associate one of you on terms of equality? Ask us which is the white man who would decline such association with one of our number, whose intellectual and moral qualities are not an objection? To both of these questions we unhesitatingly make the same answer: there is no such ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... threatened with decadence more owing to the Peace Treaties than as a result of the War. She is in a state of daily increasing decline, and the causes ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... one more anecdote of a dog, for the present; and that is one for the truth of which I distinctly decline to vouch. It was imparted to me by a calker, who owned a woolly French poodle, which remarkable animal, he informed me, used to swim out regularly once a week,—on Saturday evenings, I think he said,—with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... young besom- maker, now residing at Linton in Craven, who for some years past has himself been one of these rustic actors. From the allusion to the pace, or paschal-egg, it is evident that the play was originally an Easter pageant, which, in consequence of the decline of the gorgeous rites formerly connected with that season, has been transferred to Christmas, the only festival which, in the rural districts of Protestant England, is observed after the olden fashion. The maskers generally consist of five characters, one of whom officiates in the threefold ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... about the probability of his reelection; but with friends he made no secret of his readiness to continue the work he was engaged in if such should be the general wish. "A second term would be a great honor and a great labor; which together, perhaps, I would not decline," he wrote to one of them. He discouraged officeholders, either civil or military, who showed any special zeal in his behalf. To General Schurz, who wrote asking permission to take an active part in the ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... been without any regular, certain course of elevation or decline, we may hope that the British fortune may fluctuate also; because the public mind, which greatly influences that fortune, may have its changes. We are therefore never authorized to abandon our country to its fate, or to act or advise as if it had no resource. There ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... afforded, that his was no barren admiration. "You are in want of money," said he, "I will buy your rod." I hardly know how I looked when this proposition came forth with all imaginable solemnity, but I made haste to decline it, and he had too much native good breeding to ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... stood, a way-worn company, looking at those faint and formidable shapes that blocked their path to the Promised Land. It was a sight to daunt the most high-hearted, and they stared, dropping ejaculations that told of the first decline of spirit. Only the sick woman said nothing. Her languid eye swept the prospect indifferently, her spark of life burning too feebly to permit of any useless expenditure. It was the strange man who encouraged them. They would pass the mountains without effort, the ascent ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... sufficient object of existence. Alas! how cruelly different is the feeble attachment that I have inspired from that all-powerful sentiment to which I live a victim! Countless symptoms, by you unheeded, mark to my love-watchful eye the decline of passion. How often am I secretly shocked by the cold carelessness of your words and manner! How often does the sigh burst from my bosom, the tear fall from my eye, when you have left me at leisure to recall, by memory's torturing power, instances of your increasing indifference! Seek not to calm ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Of course she was uneasy about him; that entered into her role of model spouse: but the excellent lady never suspected the true cause of that habit of sadness which had grown upon her husband during the last few years, a melancholy which anticipated his decline in health. John Jacks had made the mistake natural to such a man; wedding at nearly sixty a girl of much less than half his age, he found, of course, that his wife had nothing to give him but duty and respect, and before ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... described as commercial, we shall find an affirmative answer to be more than dubious. The law was a dead letter when Cicero indicted Verres,[104] but its demise may have been reached through a long and slow process of decline. But, even if the provisions of the law had been adhered to throughout the period which we are considering, the avenue to wealth derived from business intercourse with the provinces would not necessarily ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... a long, cold look. "And if I decline your hand, you will revenge yourself, will you not, by displaying my note to the Emperor and the whole world, you will defame me and all my house? Was not ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... last years shows a diminution, and he thinks the trade to be on the decline. But this evidently arises from the Bornouese caravan being intercepted, or the traffic interrupted by the fugitive Arabs on the route. There has been no large caravan from Bornou for three years. And Mr. Gagliuffi considers the route at the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... people thought to humbug the hard-headed man from the North, he succeeded on one occasion in completely silencing his chief enemy, O'Halloran. That lover of paradox and idle speculation was tracing the decline of superstition to the introduction of the use of steam, and was showing how, wherever railways went in India, ghosts disappeared; whereupon the Darlington man calmly retorted that, as far as he could see, the railways in this country were engaged in making ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... be avenged; of Xenophanes of Elea who had to witness the devastation of his fatherland by Cyrus; of Zeno tortured; of Socrates put to death by poison; of Plato dreaming during the rule of the Thirty Tyrants; of Marcus Aurelius, sustaining the empire whose decline was at hand. Let us think of those who watched the ruin of the old world; of the bishop of Hippo dying when his city was about to fall before the onslaught of the Vandals; of the monks who, in a Europe peopled with wolves, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... excuse me. Others may drop one if they feel like it; but as for me, I decline. The early managers of this institootion were a bad lot, and their crimes were trooly orful; but I can't sob for those who died four or five hundred years ago. If they was my own relations I couldn't. It's absurd to shed ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... already done by her own corruptions, banishments, and dissensions. Rome, republican Rome, whose eagles glanced in the rising and setting sun,—where and what is she? The eternal city yet remains, proud even in her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death. The malaria has travelled in the paths worn by her destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of her empire. A mortal ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... sustain Spain's strong economic growth. Despite the economy's relative solid footing significant downside risks remain, including Spain's continued loss of competitiveness, the potential for a housing market collapse, the country's changing demographic profile and a decline in EU structural funds. ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... together majestically. "This is too gross!" she cried. "We decline to accept your story, sir—we repudiate it. Urbain, open the door." She turned away, with an imperious motion to her son, and passed rapidly down the length of the room. The marquis went with her and held the door open. Newman ...
— The American • Henry James
... crumbling pillars—all these are desolate enough; but then, their condition is picturesque: and I doubt whether Marius in the capitol, and the Coliseum newly finished, and the Temple at the time of its consecration, were half such interesting objects as in the days of their decline and fall. But to me the true representative of desolation was the long tufts of grass that grew in old Frank Edwards's stable-yard, the weeds that choked up the hall door, and the broken panes of the great dining-room windows—the spacious yard, the hospitable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... less than a delusion. If production should be quadrupled,—a thing which does not seem to me at all impossible,—it would be labor lost: if the additional product was not consumed, it would be of no value, and the proprietor would decline to receive it as interest; if it was consumed, all the disadvantages of property would reappear. It must be confessed that the theory of passional attraction is gravely at fault in this particular, and that Fourier, when he tried to harmonize the PASSION for property,—a bad passion, whatever ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... appropriately styled, and defended it with equal logic and grace whenever it was assailed. The young gentlemen when in the society of the young ladies generally join them in this unique use of snuff, as they are always sure to be invited and urged if they decline, and to merit their favor of course they must appear social. I believe, in credit to their taste, however, that they really prefer a good cigar, and think it more in keeping with their ideas of manhood and neatness. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the course of last session. Upon many of these no calls have yet been made, and consequently they are still open to every kind of fluctuation. It cannot, therefore, be said that they have settled down to their true estimated value, and, in all probability, erelong some may decline to a certain degree. Still it is very remarkable, and certainly corroborative of our view, that the amazing influx of new schemes during the last few months—which, time and circumstance considered, may be fairly denominated a craze—has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... squire," remarked Bagby, with a grin. "Lastly, we don't want to be represented in Assembly by such a king's man, and so you're to decline a poll." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the history of those genii of light who strayed from their dwellings in the stars and obscured their original nature by mixture with this material sphere; while the Egyptians connecting it with the descent and ascent of the sun in the zodiac considered Autumn as emblematic of the Soul's decline toward darkness and the re-appearance of Spring as its return ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... in progress of fatal tendency to the Post-office Department, and its decay has commenced. Unless arrested by vigorous legislation, it must soon cease to be a self-sustaining institution, and either be cast on the treasury for support, or suffered to decline from year to year, till the system has become incompetent and useless. The last annual report of the Postmaster-General shows that, notwithstanding the heavy retrenchments he had made, the expenditures of the department, for the year ending June 30th, 1843, exceeded its income by the sum ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... and elegant historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, we are told that "In the decline of the Roman empire, the proud distinctions of the republic were gradually abolished; and the reason or instinct of Justinian completed the simple form of an absolute monarchy. The emperor ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... seasons; for see how, in the great human family, the innocent suffer for the guilty; and not only are the sins of the fathers visited upon the children, but my sins are visited upon your children, and your sins upon some one else's children; so that, if we decline a brotherhood of mutual blessing and honour, we alternatively accept one of mutual injury and ignominy. Eternal justice is in no hurry for recognition, but flesh and blood will assuredly tire before that principle tires. It is precisely in relation ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... easiest or safest in the situation given. Points of dignity only arise between those who are, or assume to be, equals. Indeed, nothing is at times so contemptuous as compliance. It indicates not merely a consciousness of strength, but of strength so superior as to decline comparison ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... warfare are practically synonymous. To-day both are suffering a rapid decline, and a head is seldom taken in the valley of the Abra. In the mountain district old feuds are still maintained, and sometimes lead to a killing, and here too the ancient funerary rites are still carried out in their entirety on rare occasions. However, this peaceful ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... often deplorably misused. One detestable custom, originally borrowed from France, is that of "padding" a journal with tenth-rate novels, pointless anecdotes and would-be humorous feuilletons, such as the weakest "comic annual" would decline without thanks. Another failing of Russian journalism is its fondness for the tu-quoque style of argument, retorting every mention of Poland by an allusion to Ireland. But, despite all this, there is much hope for the future of Russian journalism. It is no slight gain that, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... aware that there are those who decline to admit any influence of mental heredity, and argue that environment is the only factor to be considered. In a clever and well-reasoned work on the subject I lately read, this proposition was substantiated ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... simple, Mr. Gleason. You are believed to be the accuser of Mr. Ray at a moment when it is certain the regiment is going to be so far away that its officers cannot be present at the court,—may not even be able to communicate with it. If you decline to indicate what you know to Major Stannard and me, who are his friends, the immediate protest of the regiment against your conduct must go to headquarters with the request that the court be held until we can appear before it. More than that, in two days we will reach the general commanding ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... that for the favourite this family gathering to which she was bidden presented disagreeable prospects of extreme difficulty, and she craved Eberhard Ludwig to permit her to decline the honour, but Serenissimus implored her to consent. It would be unwise to rebuff the Duchess's overture, and after all, possibly it was her Highness's intention to live peaceably with her husband's mistress. Other ladies had done so. He quoted history and recent events: ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... 'one man alone' shall interpret Christ's teaching to us of the Roman following,—and this man an old frail teacher, whose bodily and intellectual powers are, in the course of nature, steadily on the decline. Why we ask, must an aged man be always elected to decide on the teaching of the ever-young and deathless Christ?—to whom the burden of years was unknown, and whose immortal spirit, cased for a while in clay, saw ever the rapt vision of 'old things ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... to pay his tribute to that anticipated death which is called the absence of those we love. Returned to his house at Blois, no longer having even Grimaud to receive a poor smile when he passed through the parterre, Athos daily felt the decline of the vigor of a nature which for so long a time had appeared infallible. Age, which had been kept back by the presence of the beloved object, arrived with that cortege of pains and inconveniences, which increases in proportion ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... colour; the gold and the rose has faded away with the truer light, and a stern realism takes its place. The human form must be expressed, in all its solidity and truth, not only in its outward semblance, but the hidden soul must be seen through the veil of flesh. And in this lies the reason of the decline; only to a few great masters it was given to reveal spirituality in humanity—the others could only emulate form and colour, ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... basis for legislative action at this time, the aggregate of votes was 5,905. Sincerely anxious for the welfare and prosperity of every Territory and State, as well as for the prosperity and welfare of the whole Union, I regret this apparent decline of population in Colorado; but it is manifest that it is due to emigration which is going on from that Territory into other regions within the United States, which either are in fact or are believed by the inhabitants of Colorado to be richer ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... "I must decline to answer," he said gravely, after a pause. "I understand that you are twenty-three and old enough therefore to judge for yourself, and I do not intend to influence either you or Jean, if I can help it. You will be perfectly free to do exactly what you think right, my dear girl. I will only give ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... of their will and feelings and character; but the history of free thought points to that which has been the product of their characters, the doctrines which they have taught. Science however no less than piety would decline entirely to separate the two;(14) piety, because, though admitting the possibility that a judgment may be formed in the abstract on free thought, it would feel itself constantly drawn into the inquiry of the moral responsibility of the freethinker ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... was right in his surmise, for the time glided on, with the stars rising to the zenith and beginning to decline. The heavens had never seemed more beautiful, being one grand dome of sparkling incrustations. The atmosphere was so clear that it seemed to those who lay back watching as if the dazzling points of light formed by the stars of the first magnitude stood out alone in the midst ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... people were kind and friendly. They informed me there was no other colored family in the city, but my step-mother was continually crowded with friends and customers without distinction. My step-mother had buried her only son, who returned from the war in a decline. The white friends were all in deep sympathy with them. I felt immediately at home among such kind and friendly people, and have never felt homesick, except when I think of my poor mother's farewell embrace when she accompanied ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson
... wonderfully exact and exhaustive knowledge of these subjects, he unites great powers of generalization, a vigorous, spirited, and exceedingly graphic style and keen analytical powers, which give this history a degree of interest and a permanent value possessed by no other record of the decline and fall of the Roman Commonwealth. "Dr. Mommsen's work," as Dr. Schmitz remarks in the introduction, "though the production of a man of most profound and extensive learning and knowledge of the world, is not as much designed for the professional ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... of this period complain of the decline of the Christmas celebrations during the time of the Commonwealth, and some of them contrast the present with former celebrations. In a ballad called "The Old and Young Courtier," printed in 1670, comparing the times of Queen Elizabeth with ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... time when Richard Grant would have desired no better fun than to engage in such a mutiny as that proposed by Nevers and Redman; and he was not yet so far removed from his evil propensities as to be able to decline the proposition. The boys of the Institute believed they had a real grievance, for it seemed harsh and needless to deprive them of some of their best hours for amusement. It looked just as though the principal was angry because he could not ascertain who ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... consideration," pursued Heliet. "If I mistake not—to alter the figure—we have arrived at different points in our education. If one of us can but decline 'puer,' while the other is half through the syntax, is it any wonder if the same lesson be not given to us to learn? Dear Clarice, all God's children need keeping down. I have been kept down all these years by my physical sufferings. That is not appointed to thee; thou art tried ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... many feet; the upper limbs are irregularly disposed, not whorled; they strike downward from the start (so that it is almost impossible to climb one of the trees for want of foothold), then curving outward to the outline of the tree, they are terminated by short, hairy branchlets that decline gracefully, and are decorated with pendant cones which are glaucous purple until maturity, then leather brown, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... longer in his refusal; and indeed it had been far more a feeling of pride than of justice that made him decline accepting it at first. Nor was there any generosity in Mr. Arnold's cheque; for Hugh, as he admitted, might have claimed board and lodging as well. But Mr. Arnold was one of the ordinarily honourable, who, with perfect characters for uprightness, always contrive to err on the safe side of the purse, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... to trust in appearances, and that he has no servant more faithful than I. The Cardinal is on the decline, and my conscience tells me to warn against his faults him who may inherit the royal power during the minority. To give your great Prince a proof of my faith, tell him that it is intended to arrest his friend, Puy-Laurens, and that he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... life of the group. Wives can be got abroad, either by capture or contract, only by those who command respect for their power or who use power. On the other hand, endogamy is both cause and effect of weakness and proceeds with decline. Some cases will be given below in which incestuous marriages occur where the parties are unable to obtain any other wives. Neglect of the incest taboo is rather a symptom than a ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... education and nature had never prepared for much hard encounter. But, though I saw these proofs of feebleness—of a feebleness that might have occasioned reasonable apprehensions of premature decay, and possibly very rapid decline—there were little circumstances constantly occurring—looks shown, words spoken—which kept up the irritation of my soul, and prevented me from doing justice to her enfeebled condition. My sympathies were absorbed in my suspicions. My heart was the debateable land of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Nelson was much gratified by this capture, which reduced the number of French ships that had escaped at the battle off the Nile to the single one of Le Guillaume Tell, then blocked up at Malta, his health appeared daily on the decline. Still, however, his spirits seem to have remained lively; for, in writing on the occasion, to Palermo, he desires Prince Leopold will tell his august father, that he is, he believes, the first Duke of Bronte who ever took ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... was who had disappointed Mrs. Poppit could be thought out later: at present, as Miss Mapp smiled at Withers and hummed her tune again, she had to settle whether she was going to be delighted to accept, or obliged to decline. The argument in favour of being obliged to decline was obvious: Mrs. Poppit deserved to be "served out" for not including her among the original guests, and if she declined it was quite probable that at this late hour her hostess might not be able to get anyone else, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... different names, sir; and, although I may happen to know his right one, you will excuse me if I decline to tell it," answered Dillon, the dark frown still resting on his brow as he spoke.—"His present followers know him as Manuel Bermudez; but he has not a drop of Spanish blood in his veins, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... had hoped that you came here from a higher motive. It will do you no good to know, and I therefore decline telling you." ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... colorless lips which we more often see, indicate weakly constitutions and delicate health, and prophesy a short and suffering life to many. Various causes are at work to produce this unfortunate decline; and while we hope that in the larger share of cases, bad diet, improper clothing, confinement in poorly ventilated rooms with too little exercise, and similar causes, are the active agents, we are obliged to recognize the fact ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... Daphne, after she represented to him what he was losing by such lack of resignation, when the time of rest had come for which he longed, but from which many things still withheld him. Yesterday the King had invited him to the palace for the first time, and to decline ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Miss Spooner, daughter of an eminent banker at Birmingham. Four sons survived him. He died, after a gradual decline, July 29, 1833, in Cadogan Place. He directed that his funeral should be conducted without the smallest pomp; but his orders were disregarded, in compliance with a memorial addressed to his relatives ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... together of politics, of the state of the relations between England and America, of the court to which Redclyffe was accredited; sometimes Redclyffe tried to lead the conversation to the family topics, nor, in truth, did Lord Braithwaite seem to decline his lead; although it was observable that very speedily the conversation would be found turned upon some other subject, to which it had swerved aside by subtle underhand movements. Yet Redclyffe was not the less determined, and at no distant period, to bring up the subject on which his ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this art. And with such a purpose in view, I have chosen, or surrendered myself to, a theme that might well be said to lie outside the partisan strife of the day: for the problem of social ascendancy or decline, of higher or lower, of better or worse, of men or women, is, has been, and will be of lasting interest. In selecting this theme from real life, as it was related to me a number of years ago, when the incident impressed me very deeply, I found it suited ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... judgment on that side called protestors, and therefore was in the beginning of the year 1661. deposed by the synod of Ross, because he would not decline that party judicially; and afterward when he knew he was to be put out of the charge at Killearn anno 1662. he had a farewell sermon to them, where, with the apostle Paul, he took God and their own consciences to witness that he had not shunned to declare the whole counsel of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... confession and bear it, and that all who pray for and claim in faith God's reviving power for His Church, shall humble themselves with the confession of its sins. The need of revival always points to previous decline; and decline was always caused by sin. Humiliation and contrition have ever been the conditions of revival. In all intercession confession of man's sin and God's righteous judgment is ever an ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... best you can get, by any means," insisted Purcell. "I decline the honor for that reason, and also because I don't want the ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... Austria was to be offered the Danubian Provinces upon condition of giving up northern Italy; that Piedmont was to receive Lombardy, and in return to surrender Savoy to France; that, if Austria should decline to unite actively with the Western Powers, revolutionary movements were to be stirred up in Italy and in Hungary. Such reports kindled the King's rage. "Be under no illusion," he wrote to his ambassador; "tell the British Ministers in their private ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... occidental Russia, thus ravaged by interminable wars, desolated by famine and by flame, was rapidly on the decline, and was fast lapsing into barbarism. Davidovitch had hardly ascended the throne ere he was driven from it by Rostislaf, whom Georges had dethroned. But the remote province of Souzdal, of which Moscow was the capital, situated some seven hundred miles north-east of Kief, was now emerging from ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... Representations one of the principal Causes of the Decline, Degeneracy, and Corruption ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... tawdry. In these observations, although they were furiously resented at the time, Cooper was probably correct. There was a period of about fifty years in the nineteenth century, when, in the development of material resources, there was a large indifference to manners in America, and a decline in the love for beautiful things and in the power to create them. This period of neglect toward the refinements of life set in at just about the ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... the power, he could serve his country with manifest advantage to her interests. At this juncture the offer of the King was renewed. It came now just at the right time, and the young statesman was found as ready to accept as he had before been prompt to decline. Mr. Pitt became the Prime-Minister of George III., and henceforth his history is blended with the movements ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... himself and his possessions to the suite of rooms immediately below. This comprised the Gun-Room, a bed and dressing-room, and a fourth room connecting with the offices, which came in handy for his valet. Since his decline upon this more commodious apartment, the old nursery had stood vacant. Katherine could not find it in her heart to touch it. It was furnished now as in Dickie's childish days, when, night and morning, she had visited it to make sure of her darling's health ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... is on the increase, you may let blood at any time day or night; but when she is on the decline, you must bleed ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... progress of the seasons, the birth of vegetation in spring, or its revival after the autumn rains, its glorious fruition in early summer, its decline and death under the maleficent influence either of the scorching sun, or the bitter winter cold, symbolically represented the corresponding stages in the life of this anthropomorphically conceived Being, whose annual ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... Empire. And why? I have been years negotiating my exchange, and it cannot be managed; those who have influence at the Ministry of War continually rush in before me, and I have to wait, and my daughter at home is in a decline. I am going to see my daughter at last, and it is my only concern lest I should have delayed too long. She is ill, and very ill,—at death's door. Nothing is left me but my daughter, my Emperor, and my honour; and I give my honour, blame me for ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prisons for the European ambassadors during tumults or in the event of hostilities, I think the sooner the remaining five tumble down the better; for the European powers will certainly not brook such an insult from the Turks, now in the day of their decline. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... properly—four children! All that is necessary to begin with. They are such convenient excuses. To be a good Prefect one must have four children. They are inexhaustible pretexts for escaping social horrors; if you wish to decline a compromising invitation, your dear little girl has got the whooping cough; when you wish to avoid dining a friend in transitu, your eldest son has a dreadful fever; you desire to escape a banquet unadorned by the presence of the big-wigs—brilliant idea! ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Toronto and Halifax had enabled him to judge of the military capacity of the Dominion and of the "splendid material" at its disposal. Their hearts, he added, were full at leaving Canada and their regrets extreme at having to decline so many kind invitations from different centres. "But we have seen enough to carry away imperishable memories of affectionate and loyal hearts, frank and independent natures, prosperous and progressive communities, boundless productive territories, glorious scenery, stupendous ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... perhaps, that I should explain that I must decline to receive any visit from Sir Marmaduke Rowley. Sir Marmaduke has insulted me grossly on each occasion on which I have seen him ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... shortly; and drawing back a chair, sat down. "If it did, I should insist—or else decline the honour of receiving the addresses of this cosmopolitan committee. Truly, messieurs, you flatter me. Here we have Mr. Wertheimer, representing the swell-mobsmen across Channel; Monsieur le Comte standing for the gratin of Paris; Popinot, spokesman for our friends ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... And there to die, may meet the archer's shaft When next it spreads the wing. The tempest folds O'er the smooth forehead of the summer noon Its undiscover'd purpose, to emerge Resistless from its armory, and whelm In floods of ruin, ere the day decline. ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... establishment, from the fact of his lounging back in a rocking chair contiguous to his desk, and balancing his feet instead of his hands on the latter,—"I suppose it's because I can give no references to former employers here, that all the men I speak to invariably decline ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... down with him soon after that by Wrackham's invitation. I'm not sure that he hadn't his eye on me; he had his eye on everybody in those days when, you know, his vogue, his tremendous vogue, was just perceptibly on the decline. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... hard, visible, tangible facts of scientific research to attract those accustomed to positive investigations. And its methods and conditions are usually of a character to set a scientist beside himself with impatience. Crucial tests do not seem acceptable to spirits in general. They decline to be placed on the microscopic slide or to show their ghostly forms in the glare of the electric light, and prefer to haunt the society of those who do not pester them with too exacting conditions. Thus they have been mainly given over to a class of somewhat credulous and, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... instructor of my sons, and who has always comported himself right reverently and seemly in my house. But inasmuch as there is cause of offence in him, and that he has this day refused obedience to his lawful superior, and has not come at the bidding of the prior, I cannot but own him in fault, and decline to have further dealings with him. I do not know whether he is yet at Chad. I have not seen him since his farewell last evening. But if he be yet there, let the Lord of Mortimer, or you, holy father, send a company of servants ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... can't decline, What's good is often scatter'd far apart. The French your genuine German hates with all his heart, Yet has a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the reader with anecdotes, contrary to my own rule laid down in my preface, I assure him I thought my family was very slenderly provided for; and that my health began to decline so fast that I had very little more of life left to accomplish what I had thought of too late. I rejoiced therefore greatly in seeing an opportunity, as I apprehended, of gaining such merit in the eye of the public, that, if ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... Rhodes and Mr Hubert Howard acknowledging the right of our contention, and the affair gave rise to no break in friendship. Colonel F. Rhodes acted very promptly and generously, for before the Sirdar gave his decision he came to us and offered his individual undertaking, that he would decline to send a line by telegraph, leaving to Mr Howard ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... conquer France and Russia before England was ready. It was the old story as told by Shakespeare. "Our legions are brim full, our cause is ripe. The enemy increaseth every day. We, at the height, are ready to decline." ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... to decline. The living being which still existed in him reflected vaguely on retracing its steps. He believed himself to be far away from Paris; on taking his bearings, he perceived that he had only circled the enclosure of the University. The spire of Saint-Sulpice, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... you have received. But what can you do? It is not your fault. As you truly say, it would be absurd and ungrateful too if you were to decline to take such trifles from your own uncle; especially seeing what he has done for you. It is his manner, and that was always disagreeable; especially in money matters." And so having given to his son the best advice he had to offer, Sir Lionel sipped his coffee. "Very bad—very bad, indeed; ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... naturally inclined to be a little jealous of men like me, who are in the prime of their lives and their faculties. Under these circumstances, it is my duty to be considerate toward you, and not to bear too hardly on your small failings. I decline, therefore, altogether to take offense at the tone of your letter; I give you the full benefit of the natural generosity of my nature; I sponge the very existence of your surly communication out of my ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... the sun keep appearing and disappearing as though he were pursuing the fugitive earth, and ever and anon halting through weariness before his decline into the dark, shadowy vista where the snowclad peaks of the western mountains are rearing their heads, and fast-reddening clouds are reminding one of the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... century a great educational revival manifested itself in western Europe, following upon several centuries of intellectual decline or relative inactivity. Though its beginnings may be traced into the eleventh century, and though its culmination belongs to a much later period, the movement is often called the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. In that century ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... Even in the earliest days of this intimacy, the lads who had been Scott's fellow-apprentices in his father's office, saw with some jealousy his growing friendship with William Clerk, and remonstrated with Scott on the decline of his regard for them, but only succeeded in eliciting from him one of those outbursts of peremptory frankness which anything that he regarded as an attempt to encroach on his own interior liberty of choice always provoked. "I ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... fancy myself wronged. I suffer so little! I needed a sensation! So, shrewd Yankee that I am, I thought I would get one cheaply by taking up that unhappy boy! Heaven preserve me from the heroics, especially the economical heroics! The one heroic course possible, I decline. What, then, have I to complain of? Must I tear my hair because a man of taste has resisted my unspeakable charms? To be charming, you must be charmed yourself, or at least you must be able to be charmed; and that apparently I'm not. I didn't love him, or he would have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... kneeling posture, gazing down stream. The fire was almost upon them, and the smoke too dense for sight. But pressing as was the emergency, neither man touched his paddle to the water, but let the boat go down with the quickening current to the verge of the rapids, where the sharp dip of the decline would send it flying. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... friend. A few weeks later, Senator Edmunds resigned, and Senator Anthony was elected President pro tem., but the precarious state of his health forced him, in a speech prompted by a heart overflowing with gratitude, to decline the honor, and Senator Edmunds was recalled to ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... some link of association, the words I once heard a simple old Scotch-woman utter by her son's deathbed. He was a young man of twenty-two, a pious and good young man, and I had seen him very often throughout his gradual decline. Calling one morning, I found he was gone, and his mother begged me to come and see his face once more; and standing for the last time by him, I said (and I could say them honestly) some words of Christian ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... it is not improbable that the repairs necessary for maintaining the navigation of the canal open began to be neglected, as we know that the population and industry of Egypt began to decline. The tribute of grain to Constantinople, and the public distributions to the people of Alexandria, appear to have exhausted all the surplus produce of the country; and to facilitate their collection, Justinian forbade ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... modern civilization may in some things surpass the ancient, it is certainly not in luxury and splendour. And although the Hellenic States had not, at that period, aimed at the pomp of show and the refinements of voluptuous pleasure which preceded their decline; and although they never did carry luxury to the wondrous extent which it reached in Asia, or even in Sicily, yet even at that time a wealthy sojourner in such a city as Byzantium could command an entertainment that no monarch in our age would ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... operations—animating everything, qualifying everything. Romantic invention lacking in peoples without imagination. The role of analogy and of association through "constellation."—The evolution of myths: ascension, acme, decline.—The explanatory myths undergo a radical transformation: the work of depersonification of the myth. Survivals.—The non-explanatory myths suffer a partial transformation: Literature is a fallen and rationalized ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... in the Middle Ages. Slavery existed in Italy in the thirteenth century, by war, piracy, and religious hatred. The preaching friars, by preaching against all property, helped to break it down, and it began to decline.[863] The religious hatred is illustrated by the act of Clement V ([Symbol: cross] 1314). When he excommunicated the Venetians for seizing Ferrara he ordered that wherever they might be caught they ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... American side. Still the country was without anything fit to be called a general government. The Articles of Confederation, which were intended to establish a league of friendship between the thirteen states, had not yet been adopted. The Continental Congress, continuing to decline in reputation and capacity, provoked a feeling of utter weariness and intense depression. The energies and resources of ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... lines of Chaucer's poem, to say nothing of thousands in the course of it, make it instantly plain that it was no case of secular revels still linked by a slight ritual to the name of some forgotten god, as may have happened in the pagan decline. Chaucer and his friends did think about St. Thomas, at least more frequently than a clerk at Margate thinks about St. Lubbock. They did definitely believe in the bodily cures wrought for them through St. Thomas, at least as firmly as the most enlightened and progressive ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... and size, while, as stated above, few remains of the actual buildings of that period survive, we still have abundant records describing their character, their size and their position. With the last century of the caliphates began a more rapid decline. From the records of that period it seems that the present city is identical in the position of its walls and the space occupied by the town proper with Bagdad at the close of the 12th century, the period when this rapid decline had already advanced so far that the western city ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Scottish woman bereft of her husband, with her eldest son just getting a start and a second in his early teens, whose misfortunes appealed to this man, and who in the most delicate manner sought to mitigate them. Although my mother was able to decline the proffered aid, it is needless to say that Mr. McCandless obtained a place in our hearts sacred to himself. I am a firm believer in the doctrine that people deserving necessary assistance at critical periods in ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... on a bank, which, it would seem, Nature had created for the convenience of lovers. The softest moss, and the brightest flowers decked its elastic and fragrant side. A spreading beech tree shaded their heads from the sun, which now was on the decline; and occasionally its wide branches rustled with the soft breeze that passed over them in renovating and gentle gusts. The woods widened before them, and at the termination of a well-contrived avenue, they caught the roofs of the village and the ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... had been detained a few minutes behind them, now entered, and on hearing that he had refused to decline the battle, exclaimed— ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... way. Her ladyship did not seem to like living at the castle; she stayed only to regulate matters with the factor at Martinmas, and went back again to London. Before she went, a report began to rise, that poor Menie had drooped and pined into a real sickness. They said it was a rapid decline, and a dog would have pitied the father and mother's grief. How strangely they strove to keep that only child, asking the prayers of the congregation, and sending for the best doctors; but all was in vain, for Menie died some days before Christmas. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... induced to draw from these premises is very different. The decline, and, finally, the total extinction nearly, of these pustules, in my opinion, are more fairly attributable to the cow-pox virus, assimilating the variolous, [Footnote: In my first publication on this subject I expressed an opinion that the smallpox and the cow-pox ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... after this there came another telegram—this time from Mr. A. Fisscher, a member of the Executive Council, and a man whom I respected greatly on account of his official position. He urged me not to decline the appointment, but to proceed at once to the Western borders. I did not know what to do. However, after deliberating for a short time, and with great difficulty overcoming my disinclination to leave my present associates, I decided ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... oyster-shell took a long time to fill, and patience seemed a harder virtue than ever. Perhaps the last fact had something to do with the rapid decline of Monsieur the Viscount's health. He became paler and weaker, and more fretful. His prayers were accompanied by greater mental struggles, and watered with more tears. He was, however, most positive in his assurances to Monsieur Crapaud ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... of Brunei's influence peaked between the 15th and 17th centuries when its control extended over coastal areas of northwest Borneo and the southern Philippines. Brunei subsequently entered a period of decline brought on by internal strife over royal succession, colonial expansion of European powers, and piracy. In 1888, Brunei became a British protectorate; independence was achieved in 1984. The same family has ruled Brunei for over six centuries. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... his friends. Even Squire Pemberton seemed kindly disposed towards him, and asked him many questions in regard to Fred. Before he went home, he was not a little startled to receive an invitation to meet some of his friends in the town hall in the evening, which it was impossible for him to decline. ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... when the great houses had attained the summit of their prosperity, and were beginning the slow decline to dissolution, learning and book-culture were freshly encouraged by the ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... flask, Brent caught the glitter of his eye, and knew that this time it would not be easy to decline. The crowd was drifting forward, and through the closing lane of humanity, Bud Sellers glided rapidly to a place near its front. His hand was inside his coat now—where ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... instruction advocated in this book. If it is unwise to remove this obstacle from a boy's path it is equally unwise so to instruct him as to prevent the obstacle from arising. In trustworthy hands hypnotic suggestion is a beneficent power which has no dangers and no drawbacks, and to decline to use it is to accept a very ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... known that there was to be any great increase in the product of silver, its relative value ran down till it was below that of gold. Can any one doubt the cause? Surely not if he observes the additional fact that the relative decline of silver continued despite the greater value production of gold, and that 1882, ten years after demonetization, was actually the first year since 1849 in which the world's production of silver exceeded that of gold. What one hundred and ninety years ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... lie and ponder, as I feel my life decline, On the happy days that there I spent when health and strength were mine; When I climbed the mountain-side, and roved the valley and the plain, And my bosom never knew a pang of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the toss of his head, as in the morning. A boy in the next box tries to provoke you into familiarity by dropping pellets of gingerbread through the bars of the pew; but as you are not accustomed to that way of making acquaintance, you decline all overtures. ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... champion he was—had so little to gain and so much to lose. They wanted him to wait patiently for the moment of destiny which they felt sure would come. But it was never easy for Roosevelt to wait. It was the hardest thing in the world for him to decline an invitation to enter a fight—when the cause was a ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... physical as they are. I have witnessed certain transactions effected by means unknown to me—possibly by the action of a natural law not yet fully expounded by science. If there was anything spiritual in the affair, it has not been manifest to my apprehension: and I must decline to lend my countenance ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... Not events Exasperate me, but the funest conclusions I draw from these events; the sure decline Of art, and all the meaning of that word: All that embellishes and sweetens life, And lifts it from the level of low cares Into the purer atmosphere of beauty; The faith in the Ideal; the inspiration ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Waterloo, and admits that "he did his sire some wrong." But, according to Medwin ('Conversations', 1824, p. 362), who prints an excellent parody on Carlisle's lines addressed to Lady Holland in 1822, in which he urges her to decline the legacy of Napoleon's snuff-box, Byron made fun of his "noble relative" to the end of the chapter ('vide post', ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... are out of the question: and I must positively decline to be stabbed or poisoned or anything of that kind, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Master Rattlin is very singular. All clever boys are. He knows already his five declensions, and the four conjugations, active and passive. Come, Master Rattlin, decline for the lady the adjective felix—come, begin, nominative hic et ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the year Mr Montefiore was invited by a friend to go to Paris, to be present at the bidding for a new French loan, but he thought proper to decline, remaining firm in his resolution not to ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... of the West!—'tis well for me My years already doubly number thine;[16] My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee, And safely view thy ripening beauties shine; Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline; Happier, that, while all younger hearts shall bleed, Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign To those whose admiration shall succeed, But mixed with pangs to Love's even loveliest ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... engines stopped, we were silently descending the long decline which runs for miles towards Sospel, when my companion suddenly ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... Directors have suspended their EYRE, we are not called upon to suspend our anger. We decline to believe that he can justify himself in leaving the Oneida, however blameless he may have been in the matter of the collision. Because the Oneida was Left it does not follow that the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... still retain, In sleeping, or in waking, Until I see my love again, For whom my heart is breaking. If ever I return that way, And she should not decline me, I evermore will live and stay With the ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... death which is called the absence of those we love. Returned to his house at Blois, no longer having even Grimaud to receive a poor smile when he passed through the parterre, Athos daily felt the decline of the vigor of a nature which for so long a time had appeared infallible. Age, which had been kept back by the presence of the beloved object, arrived with that cortege of pains and inconveniences, which increases in proportion as it makes itself looked for. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... frequently debated point whether at home in Great Britain the feeling for books, in the collector's sense, is not on the decline; and, indeed, the causes of such a change are not far to seek. The acute pressure of business among the wealthy mercantile class, which principally contributes to the ranks of book-buyers, and the decrease of resources for such luxuries among the nobility and ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... "I decline to shrink," with unparalleled bravery. "I prefer to rush upon my fate. Life has no longer any flavor for me until I hear what the old ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... she would think no more of the error, but told her that to avoid its renewal, she must decline calling upon her again till her brother was gone. She begged therefore to see her in Portman- square whenever she had leisure, repeatedly assuring her of her good opinion and regard, and of the pleasure with which she should seize every opportunity ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... and sugared portraiture; it was manifestly designed less for simpering out of a gilt frame or the dribbling of stock phrases over three hundred pages than for gibes and laughter and cheery gossip and honest, unromantic eating, as well as another purpose, which, as a highly dangerous topic, I decline even ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... seems that this orderly did decline to say which flank Rosecrans was turning, as he must have had doubts after what had transpired as to his instructions; nevertheless Pegram decided Rosecrans was passing around his right, and so notified Garnett.— War Records, vol. ii., ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... at decline of day, The wheels that bore us, roll'd away, To cross the MALVERN HILLS. 'Twas night; Alternate met the weary sight Each steep, dark, undulating brow, And WORC'STER'S gloomy vale below: Gloomy no more, when eastward sprung The light that gladdens heart and tongue; When morn ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... so straight, and her hair, which it was a sheer impossibility to care for, was losing its soft vitality. She was still pretty, but not the beauty she had been when she was ejected from the class in which she was bred. However, she gave the change in herself little thought; it was the rapid decline of Etta's prettiness and freshness ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... their mental faculties, but in form. Captain Williamson (1/75. 'Oriental Field Sports' quoted by Youatt 'The Dog' page 15.), who carefully attended to this subject, states that "hounds are the most rapid in their decline;" "greyhounds and pointers, also, rapidly decline." But spaniels, after eight or nine generations, and without a cross from Europe, are as good as their ancestors. Dr. Falconer informs me that bulldogs, which have been known, when first brought into the country, to pin down even an elephant by ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... soothe us, sleep more terrible than day, Where dead delights, and fair lost faces stray, To make us weary at our wakening; And of that long lost path to the Divine We dream, as some Greek shepherd erst might sing, Half credulous, of easy Proserpine, And of the lands that lie 'beneath the day's decline.' ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... from Yorktown, Pa., arrived at Cambridge about one o'clock today, and since has made proposals to General Washington to attack the transport stationed at Charles River. He will engage to take her with thirty men. The General thinks it best to decline at present, but at the same time commends the spirit of Captain Dowdle and his brave men, who, though they just came a very long march, offered to execute ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... "if my father should unhappily conceive a prejudice in regard to this elopement, and decline to know any thing of the happy pair, six hundred dollars, in the present liberal style of life incumbent upon a man who has moved in the circles to which your son has been accustomed, would be a very limited income for your ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... B.C.), nephew of Demosthenes, Athenian orator and statesman, was one of the few distinguished Athenians in the period of decline. He is first heard of in 322, when he spoke in vain against the surrender of Demosthenes and the other anti-Macedonian orators demanded by Antipater. During the next fifteen years he probably lived in exile. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... shot back Dick, "I shall decline to fight you. It would be against regulations and against all the traditions of the corps for me to arbitrate, by a fight, the question of whether I ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... flattering and delightful, that, fraught with temptation, and exposed to danger, as they are, scarcely any virtue is so cautious, or any prudence so timorous, as to decline them. Even those that have most reverence for the laws of right, are pleased with shewing that not fear, but choice, regulates their behaviour; and would be thought to comply, rather than obey. We love to overlook the boundaries ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... 8, the first marginal note begins,) Now the Duke seeing the Queen's partie decline, and the Protestant party grow strong, he once more changeth the profession of his religion, and joyneth with the Protestants, as strongest.—(And at line 24,) How true this is, the constant course of the ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... two men where they need keep but one. Thus, the main point of difference between the two countries seems to me to be that, here work is more or less on the increase, though to nothing like the extent represented at home, and in England it is on the decline. Even that is not quite right, for work here at present is certainly getting slacker every day. There has been a great "boom" on Canada lately as a field for labour, thousands and thousands of people have come, and been sent out by Colonization Societies, ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... Lord Rokesle observed; "I begin to fear these heroics are contagious. Possibly I, too, shall begin to rant in a moment. Meanwhile, as I understand it, you decline to perform the ceremony. I have had to warn you before this, Simon, that you mustn't take too much gin when I am apt to need you. You are very pitifully drunk, man. So you defy me and my evil courses! You defy me!" Rokesle laughed, genially, for ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... sun began to decline towards the west she put on her hat, thrust the card Count Anteoni had given her into her glove and set out towards the big hotel alone. She met Hadj as she walked down the arcade. He wished to accompany her, and was ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... fearing most a fit of black depression consequent on Stevie missing his mother very much at first, she did not altogether decline the discussion. Guiltless of all irony, she answered yet in a form which was not perhaps unnatural in the wife of Mr Verloc, Delegate of the Central Red Committee, personal friend of certain anarchists, and a votary of ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... has been a decline and degradation in these things. First came the old drinking days which are always described as much more healthy. In those days men worked or played, hunted or herded or ploughed or fished, or even, in their rude way, wrote ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... heart with the recollection that she had been the unconscious instrument of injuring the only being whom she loved, and embarrassing and encumbering her with duties foreign to her experience and her nature. The marriage of Coningsby had greatly affected her, and from that day she seemed gradually to decline. She died towards the end of the autumn, and, subject to an ample annuity to Villebecque, she bequeathed the whole of her fortune to the husband of Edith. Gratifying as it was to him to present such an inheritance to his wife, it was not without a pang that he received ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... equivalent to her for the transfer of such a weight into the scale of her enemy? Will not the amalgamation of a young, thriving nation, continue to that enemy the health and force which are at present so evidently on the decline? And will a few years' possession of New Orleans add equally to the strength of France? She may say she needs Louisiana for the supply of her West Indies. She does not need it in time of peace, and in war she could not depend on them, because they would be so easily intercepted. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and Jill shall dance to my whimsy like dolls upon a wire. It would be rare sport if Mistress Katherine disdained Louis to decline upon this beggar. He shall hang for mocking me. But he carried himself like a king for all his tatters and patches, and ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... faculties, certainly possess choice minds and hearts; but the mere difference of age opens an abyss between us. As to the young men and the men of my own age whom I meet here, they all march with more or less eager step in Madame de Palme's wake. It is enough that I should decline to follow them in that path, to cause them to manifest toward me a coolness akin to antipathy. My pride does not attempt to break that ice, though two or three among them appear well gifted, and reveal instincts superior to the life ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... vulgar villainy, ambition glozed over by degrading humility, and sensuality all the more disgusting from the saintly robes in which it was paraded and but half concealed. My faith, already enfeebled, died of rapid decline, stifled by these monstrous fooleries. Disenchanted, revolted, disgusted, I resigned my position, and abandoned the Pope and his ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... at its height on the fourth day;—it begins to decline on the fifth, when the interstices widen, and the florid hue fades;—on the sixth, the rash is very indistinct; and on the eighth day ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... the subject, but thought it good for her, and went on to tell her of a case at Whitford, cramming the subject into her ear at first against the stomach of her sense, but it could not but exact attention, a widow sinking in a decline after sorrows which, by comparison, made all young lady troubles shrink into atoms. Emma became interested, and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... if he has duly studied the history of the age, will know that the Duke did make an offer to Madame Goesler, pressing it with all his eloquence, but that Madame Goesler, on mature consideration, thought it best to decline to become a duchess. Of all this, however, the reader who understands Madame Goesler's character will be quite sure that she did not say a word to Phineas Finn. Since the business had been completed ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... really vanished out of human form," said Mrs. Hoops, "none of the ladies of the party can very well remain. I absolutely decline to be chaperoned by ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... but she did not speak. "Still I will say that I think a fellow who can make his own fortune is better than a man with twice that fortune made for him. My dear, if Lossing has the right stuff in him and he is a real good fellow, I shan't make you go into a decline by objecting; but you see it is a big shock to me, and you must let me get used to it, and let me size the young man up in my own way. There is another thing, Esther; I am going to Europe Thursday, that will give me ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... never known for any other race. It was an admixture of friendship, admiration, and pity—of affection for their beautiful natures, of appreciation of the magnificence of their physical equipment, and of sympathy for them in their decline and inevitable passing under the changed conditions of environment made by the sudden smothering of their instinctive needs in the sepia of commercial civilization. I saw that those natives remaining, laughing and full of the desire ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... or left his work for two moments although it was plain from his appearance that his health was declining, and he was growing thinner from day to day. The brothers pitied him very much. At length Mochuda questioned him—putting him under obedience to tell the truth—as to the cause of his decline. The monk thereupon showed him his sides which were torn by a twig tied fast around them. Mochuda asked him who had done that barbarous and intolerable thing to him. The monk answered:—"One day while we were drawing logs of timber from the wood my girdle broke from the strain, so ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... land of all wonders: Egypt. Herodotus tells us of a linen corselet, presented to the Lacedemonians by King Amasis, each thread of which commanded admiration, for though very fine, each was twisted of three hundred and sixty others! And if you decline ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... until their intellects are really shallower and their hearts emptier than they were at twenty, Dudley Veneer was stronger in thought and tenderer in soul than in the first freshness of his youth, when he counted but half his present years. He had entered that period which marks the decline of men who have ceased growing in knowledge and strength: from forty to fifty a man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him rapidly downward. At this time his inward: nature was richer and deeper than ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... these men had tacitly, or in some other well-understood way, accepted the first invitation. They gave no intimation that they intended to decline—they gave the provider of the feast reason to expect their presence. Probably they were well pleased to be invited; if they met any of their poorer neighbours in the interval, it is probable they would take occasion to show their own importance. These common people in the town, and ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... such a feeling in the Maharajah's zenana, that one day as Dr. Roberts passed along a corridor to His Highness's apartment, a curtain opened swiftly, and some one in the dark behind spat at him. Amongst them they managed to make His Highness extremely uncomfortable. But the old man continued to decline obstinately to send ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... picture and other object that they had removed from the room. These told them nothing, and presently they restored the chamber in every particular, re-laid and nailed the carpet, and placed each article as it had stood when they arrived. They continued to decline assistance, and made it clear that nobody was to approach the end of the corridor in which they worked. Alive to the danger, but believing that, whatever its quality, four men could hardly be simultaneously destroyed, they prepared ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... the ornamenting balls from her mother's high-post bedstead. Perhaps the one element of tragedy lay in the fact that Della was no mechanician, and she had not foreseen that, having one flat side, her balls might decline to roll. But that dismay was brief. A weaker soul would have flinched; to Della it was a futile check, a pebble under the wave. She laid her balls calmly aside. Some day she would whittle them into shape; for there were always coming to Della days full of roomy leisure ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... without supervision and without scrutiny. Some are located where it has pleased those who located them to reside, without much reference to relative necessities; and some are located so unwisely that the Association has been compelled to decline to take them, when through fatigue or failure they have been given up. Some of them owe their existence to the fact that certain workers were found to be not adapted to the work, or were uncomfortable under supervision ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... lawyer's right to clear a known criminal (with the several questions involved) is not answered affirmatively by showing that the law forbids him to decline a case for reasons personal to himself—not even if we admit the statute's moral authority. Preservation of conscience and character is a civic duty, as well as a personal; one's fellow-men have a distinct interest in it. That, I admit, is an argument rather ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... role had changed from the benefited to the benefactor. And, as if this were not enough for one morning's developments, it revealed also that Gabriella's fictitious value as a saleswoman was beginning to decline; for Madame was disposed to scorn the sort of sensational advertisement which the newspapers had devoted of late to the unfortunate Fowlers. At one moment there had been grave doubt in Madame's mind as to whether or not she should ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... from?—Could your Ladyship believe that a man, who, to all appearance, has made a good husband to your agreeable neighbour upwards of twelve years, and preserv'd the character of a man of honour;—could you believe in the decline of life he would have fallen off? No, he cannot have fallen: such a mind as his never was exalted.—It is the virtues of his wife that has hitherto made his vices imperceptible;—that has kept them in their dark cell, afraid to venture out;—afraid to appear amidst ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... games, than the regular drama of the Chinese will admit of being measured by the softer, but more refined and rational amusements of a similar kind in Europe. It is true the scenic representations in the decline of the Roman empire, as they are described to us, appear to have been as rude and barbarous as those of the Chinese. They began by exhibiting in their vast amphitheatre the rare and wonderful productions of nature. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... just like one of your crazy notions," she said "What a creature you are! For my part, I decline with thanks. I have to get a Moscheles ETUDE ready by to-morrow afternoon, and need all my wits. But don't let me hinder you. Walk to Grimma if ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... weapon has been lost, and even its name is gone. A proof of the decline into which the present Filipinos have fallen is the comparison of the weapons that they manufacture now, with those described to us by the historians. The hilts of the talibones now are not of gold or ivory, nor are their scabbards of horn, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... these regions was thus in the course of losing its nationality, and was languishing and pining withal under a political and economic oppression, the intolerable nature of which is sufficiently attested by their hopeless insurrections, the decline of the native population here went hand in hand with the naturalizing of the same higher culture which we find at this period in Italy. Aquae Sextiae and still more Narbo were considerable townships, which might probably ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... by his expressive reading a fictitious interest to the dull, tedious tragedy. Gradually, however, the feeling of disappointment and boredom among his audience communicated itself to him. He lost confidence; his beautiful reading began to decline in pathos and interest; and when at last he finished, and, glancing at the downcast faces round him, found that even Laure could not look up at him with a smile of congratulation, he felt a chill at his heart, and knew that he had not triumphed after all. Nevertheless, he very ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... away with the truer light, and a stern realism takes its place. The human form must be expressed, in all its solidity and truth, not only in its outward semblance, but the hidden soul must be seen through the veil of flesh. And in this lies the reason of the decline; only to a few great masters it was given to reveal spirituality in humanity—the others could only emulate form and ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... quantities that each adventurer might return with a bushel. Hardship, illness, short commons, the need of occasional labor, the heart-breaks over the gold failure, the retaliations of the natives for the cruelties and injustices of the invaders, led to the rapid decline of the city of Isabella. Its foundations may still be visible; at least they were a few years ago; but it is peopled only by ghosts. Some years after it had been deserted, two Spaniards, who had been hunting in that part of the island, entered its ruined ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... but they grew thickly round the glade: there was no outlook, except north-eastward upon distant hill-tops, or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and private like a room. By the time I had made my arrangements and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal; and as soon as the sun went down I pulled my cap over my eyes and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... councils. That is, until recently Kelly-House had been able to accomplish this. But they were seeing the approaching end of their domination. The "army of education" was proving too powerful for them. And they felt that at the coming election the decline of their power would be apparent—unless something ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... Although his bluff and hearty manner secured to him the good-will of the people, yet censures on his administration were both frequent and severe; for during his rule commenced that astonishing decline of the colony which continued, with scarcely any interruption, for nearly ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... But Austria is a kind of Empire; a Holy Roman Empire that never came, an expanding and contracting-dream. It does feel itself, in a vague patriarchal way, the leader, not of a nation, but of nations. It is like some dying Emperor of Rome in the decline; who should admit that the legions had been withdrawn from Britain or from Parthia, but would feel it as fundamentally natural that they should have been there, as in Sicily or Southern Gaul. I would not assert that the aged Francis Joseph imagines that he is Emperor of ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... overview: Gabon enjoys a per capita income four times that of most nations of sub-Saharan Africa. This has supported a sharp decline in extreme poverty; yet because of high income inequality a large proportion of the population remains poor. Gabon depended on timber and manganese until oil was discovered offshore in the early 1970s. The oil sector now accounts for 50% of GDP. Gabon continues to face fluctuating prices ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... schooner well in sight, so that I was really trusting to you as much as to myself. But now I shall have to depend upon myself, and if I had not felt certain that you will polish me up during the few days that we may be in port together, I should have been obliged to decline the admiral's very kind offer. What a brick the old fellow is, to be sure; and yet see what a name he has ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... inhabitants have traditionally earned their livelihood by fishing and by servicing fishing fleets operating off the coast of Newfoundland. The economy has been declining, however, because of disputes with Canada over fishing quotas and a steady decline in the number of ships stopping at Saint Pierre. In 1992, an arbitration panel awarded the islands an exclusive economic zone of 12,348 sq km to settle a longstanding territorial dispute with Canada, although it represents only 25% of what France had sought. ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... course for an inferior force to accept battle by thinning its line, to be able by extending to meet the long lines of the enemy, would involve the greatest risk of being broken through at the center. The best remedy for inferior numbers was manifestly to decline a ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... to read Tully, or such like classical Latin author EXTEMPORE, and make and speak true Latin in verse and prose suo (ut aiunt) Marte, and decline perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, then may he be admitted into the College, nor shall any ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... was so tentative and humble, so much that of one who scarce feels a right even to plead, so different from that of the old petted and radiant Madge, that 'twould have taken a harder man than Philip to decline. And so, when the servant had placed additional chairs, down we sat to supper with Miss Warren, of Drury Lane Theatre, who had sent her maid to answer the inquiries of the alarmed house concerning the recent tumult in ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of the Edict of Nantes granting tolerance to the Huguenots, brought great reverses upon Saumur, whose inhabitants were driven into exile. And thereupon (1685) the town fell into a decline which was not arrested until Louis XV, in the latter part of his reign, caused this cavalry school to ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... need not fear, sir; I did of purpose humble myself against your coming, to decline the pride of ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... status of Spain during the reigns of the monarchs named. This was followed by a long period of decline, which reduced that kingdom from its position of supremacy into that of one of the minor powers of Europe. Various causes contributed to this change, the chief being the accession of a series of weak monarchs and the false ideas of the principles of political economy which then prevailed. The ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... the nature of doctors; poked me about, and asked if there were decline in the family;' and in spite of the smile, the great blue eyes looked ghastly; 'and he forbade exertion, and ordered ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... departments of State affairs; he favoured, by protectionist measures—free trade not yet being heard of—French industry and commerce; was to the French marine what Louvois was to the army, and encouraged both arts and letters; from 1671 his influence began to decline; he was held responsible for increased taxation due to Louis XIV.'s wars, while the jealousy of Louvois weakened his credit at Court; he became so unpopular that on his death his body was buried at night, but a grateful posterity has recognised ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... decline of the Egyptian power, which sets in after the death of the second Rameses, a change takes place. External pressure being removed, ambitions begin to develop themselves. In the north Aradus (Arvad), in the south Sidon, proceed to exercise a ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... join him in intervening between the warring parties of the United States there was other reason, besides the strong and vigorous activity of Charles Francis Adams, for the British Ministry to postpone or decline cooeperation. ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... of the Dutch War the reign of Louis XIV enters on a period of manifest decline. The cost of the war had been tremendous. In 1677 the expenditure had been one hundred ten millions, and Colbert had to meet this with a net revenue of eighty-one millions. The trade and commerce of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Khrisna in the Gita) has said, "Oh, descendant of Bharata, whenever there be a decline of righteousness and the rise of unrighteousness, then I shall become incarnate again. I shall be born in every Yuga [era] to rescue the good, to destroy the wrongdoer, and ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... of Claud Halcro (to whom few do justice), and again, the excellent keeping of story and scenery to character and incident. The Fortunes of Nigel (May 1822) originated in a proposed series of 'Letters of the Seventeenth Century,' in which others were to take part, and perhaps marks a certain decline, though only in senses to be distinctly defined and limited. Nothing that Scott ever did is better than the portrait of King James, which, in the absence of one from the hand of His Majesty's actual subject for some dozen years, Mr. William Shakespeare of New Place, Stratford, is probably the most ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... suppose your love for repose," returned Dan, "will oblige you to decline an offer which I thought of ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Majesty's Government duly appreciate the services rendered by your lordship to the Crown of Brazil, they consider it to be on general principles so undesirable that distinguished officers of the British navy should have foreign titles, that they feel themselves compelled to decline complying with the request." "I beg to assure your lordship," wrote Lord Dundonald in reply, on the 18th of October, "that I feel more gratitude in being informed of the sentiments of her Majesty's Government in regard to my faithful and zealous services in Brazil than I ever experienced from the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... "But I can't take wine. I hardly ever do. It—it goes to my head always. And tonight—well, I couldn't decline. You saw. Then afterward—oh, I felt so buoyant, so full of life, that I couldn't go to sleep. I simply had to do something to let off steam. I wanted to play the cornet. So I came out here, as far away from anyone ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... struggling blindly in bonds of its own making—had perhaps restored to him that more dramatic element which his personality had possessed in his sulky, gifted youth. He had expressed himself with a bitter force on the decline of his inspiration and the weakening of his will. He was going to the dogs, he declared; had lost all his hold on the public; and had nothing more to say or to paint. And she had been very, very sorry for him, but conscious all ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the Apollo was quite as imposing as the house itself,—a fallen nobleman, in fact, though by no means fallen so far as most of those whose possibilities of decline had been immeasurably less. He was stately and uplifting in his demeanor. So much so that I found myself unconsciously imitating his high-born manner and mode of speech. I had a feeling that he was altogether ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the recollection of how professional athletics of all kinds (with the remarkable exception of cricket) are now conducted, and their low associations, woe betide football when the professional element is introduced. It will assuredly be the signal for its decline and fall. As for the greed of gate-money, of which some clubs are so fond, much might be said. When I refer to the clubs who try to gather as much cash as they can during the season in order to pay their legitimate obligations and meet the heavy ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... in the cost of living of a British working man's family has been 40 points, while that of the German working man shows a decline of only 12 points. It is, on the whole, surprising that there has not been more ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... their deaths with brave hearts and morning faces, because they were not prepared to reconsider or review the greatest decision they had ever made. There are some things on which no wise man will think of changing his mind. And he will decline to contemplate a change because he knows that his wardrobe holds no better garb. It is of no use doffing the robes of princes to don the rags of paupers. 'Eighty and six years have I served Christ,' exclaimed ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... I'm afloat on the coaly black Tyne! The draft licence sent me I begged to decline; Though other chaps had 'em, they were not for me; I prefer a free flag, on the strictest Q.T. A sly "floating factory" thus I set up (I'm a mixture of RUPERT the Rover and KRUPP). At Jarrow Slake moored, my trim wherry or boat I rejoiced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... what you mean," said George; "if you wish to see Mr. Charles Holland walk in and see him. He is in this house; but, for myself, as you are strangers to me, I decline answering any questions, let their ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... the plains, and stretch proudly up to the very summits of the mountains. It is impossible to exaggerate the autumnal beauty of these forests; nothing under heaven can be compared to its effulgent grandeur. Two or three frosty nights in the decline of autumn transform the boundless verdure of a whole empire into every possible tint of brilliant scarlet, rich violet, every shade of blue and brown, vivid crimson, and glittering yellow. The stern, inexorable fir tribes alone maintain their ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... said the old man thoughtfully and with some hesitation, "the curiously rapid decline of intelligence, or if you will have it differently, the clouding of thought that has marked the last thirty years. Men in my youth knew what they held and what they did not hold. They knew why they held it or why they did not hold it; but the attempt to enjoy the advantages ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... Providence has cast their lot. Innumerable indications of this disposition among the masses of the Southern people are visible in the events of every day; and these will multiply in proportion to the success of our arms and the decline of power in the rebellion. If we are mistaken in this view, then our argument falls to the ground. If, upon a full consideration of all the circumstances and with perfect freedom to act according to their understanding of their best interests, the people of the Southern States should ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... actual breach was due to a woman. The Crown Prince of Titia had come a wooing of the Princess Royal of Valeria, and had been twice refused by her. King Frederick had left the question entirely in her hands. Her choice was her own, to marry or to decline. As a matter of state policy the match was greatly desired by him and his Ministers. They were becoming very weary of Murdol and the turmoil it maintained on the border, and the great force of troops required there to preserve order. Then, too, Titia had grown vastly ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... Claret deemed himself constitutionally bound to decline all presents from his subordinates, the sense of gratitude would not have operated to the prejudice of justice. And, as some of the subordinates of a man-of-war captain are apt to invoke his good wishes and ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... no power to speak, sir. Wol. What, amazed At my misfortunes? Can thy spirit wonder, A great man should decline? Nay, an you weep, I am fall'n indeed. Crom. How does your grace? Wol. Why, well; Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell. I know myself now; and I fed within me A peace above all earthly dignities, A still and quiet ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... have added to the number of bad examples, I answer that my relative situation, as well in public as in private, enforcing all the considerations which constitute what men of the world denominate honour, imposed on me, as I thought, a peculiar necessity not to decline the call. The ability to be in the future useful, whether in resisting mischief, or effecting good, in those crises of our public affairs which seem likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular."[147] The pathway of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... advanced and offered his hand, saying that he was glad to see me, and proposed to introduce me to his commander, General Cleburne. I replied, that I was not particularly pleased to see him, but, under the circumstances, should not decline his invitation. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... or more, the tragedy of the childless home would be realized. There are localities and even nations where the birth-rate is so small that population is little more than stationary. In the United States the native birth-rate tends to decline, while the rate of immigrant foreigners greatly exceeds it. The higher the degree of comfort and luxury in the home the smaller the birth-rate seems to be a principle of social experience. There are selfish people who shirk the responsibilities ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... far more real consequence to us than the possible change from coal gas to oil gas, however, as long as we remain manufacturers of the former, is the value of our residual products, which has suffered so great and sudden a decline in value, for which various remedies have been proposed, though none of them, I regret to say, have as yet restored anything like the former value. A statement of the highest prices realized for coal tar products, and a comparison with those obtained on the 30th of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... she said, "my father was robust and active in spite of his age. He was cheerful, busy, and optimistic. But he fell into a decline. It has not been a sudden sapping of his strength. If it were that I should not worry so much; I'd attribute it to disease. But every day something of vitality goes from him. He is fading almost from hour to hour, as slowly ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... my travels I am ofttimes asked if I desire my meals sent to my room, presupposing, as would be naturally inferred, the possibility of great awkwardness in my manner of eating; hence I invariably decline this offer of privacy, as there need be nothing in our manner of eating ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... to see their mother weep, Fettering their father with their little arms; What are to him the wars alarms? What are to him the distant foes? He at the earliest dawn of day To daily labor went his way; And when he saw the sun decline, He sat in peace beneath his vine:— The king commands, the peasant goes, From all he lov'd on earth he flies, And for his monarch toils, and fights, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... they shall divide without partiality, and share in common with the upright and holy, all such things as they receive in accordance with the just provisions of the order, down even to the mere contents of a begging bowl; . . . so long may the brethren be expected not to decline, but to prosper." ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... I am not attempting to sum up all the many reasons for and against this proposal, but only to deal with the particular virtue claimed for it, bearing upon the increasing burden of the debt as prices decline. ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... wages which will substantially be paid in other branches of business. Wages, like water, seek a level; if manufacture pays best, labor will quit agriculture; if agriculture pays best, manufactures will decline, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... to hold out "the idea of singularity as a shield;" and the great ROBERT BOYLE was compelled to advertise in a newspaper that he must decline visits on certain days, that he might have leisure to finish some ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... matter was considered as the elementary cause of all beings, by which they expected literally to work miracles, to transmute the base into noble metals, to metamorphose man in his animal state by chemical processes, to render him more durable, and to secure him against early decline and dissolution. Millions of vessels, retorts, and phials, were either exposed to the action of the most violent artificial heat, or to the natural warmth of the sun; or else they were buried in some dunghill or other fetid mass, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... little more of it would do for him, Mackenzie thought, noting with surprise the change that had come over Reid since they last met. The improvement that had begun in him during his first weeks on the range had not continued. Opposed to it, a decline appeared to have fastened upon him, making his flaccid cheeks thinner, his weary eyes more tired, his slight frame lighter by many pounds. Only his voice was unchanged. That was hearty and quick, resonant of enjoyment in life and a keenness ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... the head of the princes of Rajast'han. A terrible battle ensued, which long inclined in favour of the Rajputs, until, through the treachery of a Tuar chief, they were defeated, and the star of Mewar began to decline, although so severe had been the struggle that Baber dared not follow up ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... and tens of thousands of hand-bills at the ferries. No task was ever more welcome. I went to the trustees man by man. The majority of the trustees very cheerfully accorded the permission. One or two of them were disposed to decline and withhold it. I made it a matter of personal friendship. "You and I will break, if you don't give me this permission." And they signed. So the meeting glided from the Graham Institute to this house. A great audience assembled. We had detectives in disguise, and every arrangement ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... ought to decline further discussion. But she was tongue tied. Spencer was regarding her so fixedly that she began to fear lest he might notice the embarrassed perplexity that she herself was quite ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... traced the gradual decline of the drama in Rome, until it consisted but of buffooneries and mimes; and so its revival in modern times commenced with performances in dumb show, the low intellectual character of the age being reflected in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... maintain your rights or perish in the glorious struggle. However difficult the combat, you will never decline it when freedom is the prize. Independence of Great Britain is not our aim. Our wish is that Britain and the Colonies may, like the oak and the ivy, grow and increase in strength together. If pacific measures fail, and it appears that the only ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... sincere respect and affection for her, but be kept in the background by the overzealous attention of his rivals. Still, if she has sufficient self-command to patiently and calmly investigate their general private character, she may find reason to decline their suit, and may discover that the more modest and retiring youth is the one that is ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... for the favourite this family gathering to which she was bidden presented disagreeable prospects of extreme difficulty, and she craved Eberhard Ludwig to permit her to decline the honour, but Serenissimus implored her to consent. It would be unwise to rebuff the Duchess's overture, and after all, possibly it was her Highness's intention to live peaceably with her husband's mistress. Other ladies ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... to the stair and calling down—"Danna Sama, has the time come?... Ah! The sky is light. The streets at night will be full of people with lanterns. Plainly O'Tento[u] Sama (the Sun) has forgotten to decline in the West. Alas! This Densuke is most unlucky." At last the hour of the dog was passing (7-9 P.M.). Daihachiro[u] appeared. "Now for the corpse! Wrap it up in this matting.... Coward! Is Densuke afraid of a dead man?" He took the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... must have accepted many local cults, but that they adopted the whole aboriginal faith and its priests en bloc is not credible. M. Reinach also holds that when the Celts appear in history Druidism was in its decline; the Celt, or at least the military caste among the Celts, was reasserting itself. But the Druids do not appear as a declining body in the pages of Caesar, and their power was still supreme, to judge by the hostility of the Roman Government to them. If the military ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... myself. I recalled to mind the Archbishop of Granada, and I thought I could hear Gil Blas predicting the failure of my works. We can not dismiss the public as we can our secretary; meanwhile, I surrendered to a too severe justice in order to decline others' opinions. A horrible thought suddenly came into my mind; my artistic life was ended, I was a worn-out man; in one word, to picture my situation in a trivial but correct manner, I had reached the end of ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... not venture to apply to the institutions of Germany. While Prussia and Austria were perilous topics for discussion, liberal and innovating doctrines might be promulgated in lectures on the progress and decline of liberty in the ancient world. Accordingly, the study of universal history, to which the philosophical views of Herder gave the impulse, has been industriously prosecuted during the last fifty years, and learned and diligent collectors ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... of raw sugar is nearly 1,000,000 tons more than sufficient to meet the demands of the entire refining industry of the country. There appears to have been considerable manipulation, foreign sugar being imported with the view of producing a panic, followed by a decline of market prices, after which Marseilles refiners would buy. All sound arguments are in favor of protecting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... complete starch of rectitude. He was a pillar of Society, and whatever age he had been born in, he would have accepted its orthodoxy. He was as grave a man as Holy Willie. Stevenson has commented on the gradual decline of his primness in the later years of the Diary. "His favourite ejaculation, 'Lord!' occurs," he declares, "but once that I have observed in 1660, never in '61, twice in '62, and at least five times in '63; after which the 'Lords' may be said to pullulate like herrings, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... quite so straight, and her hair, which it was a sheer impossibility to care for, was losing its soft vitality. She was still pretty, but not the beauty she had been when she was ejected from the class in which she was bred. However, she gave the change in herself little thought; it was the rapid decline of Etta's prettiness and freshness that worried ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... from such a profession of friendship in Sir Charles, an offer of correspondence in absence? And if he made the offer, ought I to decline it? Would it not indicate too much on my side, were I to do so?—And does it not on his, if he make not the offer? He corresponds with Mrs. Beaumont: nobody thinks that any thing can be meant by that correspondence on either side; because Mrs. Beaumont must be at least forty; Sir ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... the decline of day he bent his solitary way home, emotions and passions to which his life had hitherto been a stranger, and which, alas! he had vainly imagined a life so tranquil would everlastingly restrain, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... labourers. When the society declines, they fall even below this. The order of proprietors may perhaps gain more by the prosperity of the society than that of labourers; but there is no order that suffers so cruelly from its decline. But though the interest of the labourer is strictly connected with that of the society, he is incapable either of comprehending that interest, or of understanding its connexion with his own. His condition leaves him no time to receive the necessary ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Duryodhana invites them to Hastinapura to join in a great gambling festival. The passion for play was as strong apparently with these antique Hindus as that for fighting or for love: "No true Kshatriya must ever decline a challenge to combat or to dice." The brothers go to the entertainment, which is to ruin their prosperity; for Sakuni, the most skilful and lucky gambler, has loaded the "coupun," so as to win every throw. Mr. Wheeler's excellent summary ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, and from time immemorial Persian trade has made its way to the Black Sea by the road which still runs through Tabriz to Teheran, a distance of 800 miles. This traffic is now on the decline, for modern means of communication have taken the place of the old caravans, and most of their trade has been diverted to the Suez Canal and the Caucasian railways. Many large caravans, however, still journey to and fro along this road, which is so well made ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... [324:2] Gibbon, "Decline and Fall," chap. ii. Some writers, such as Zumpt and Merivale, consider this estimate quite extravagant. Others again think it quite too low. See Schaff's "History of the Christian Church," p. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... to himself became unfortunately verified; for his constitution, after this, began to decline, till at length his mortal destiny, in the eyes of his medical attendants, was sealed. But even then, when removed by pain and sickness from the discussion of political subjects, he never forgot this cause. In his own sufferings he was not unmindful of those of the injured ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... gradual rise of empires trace, Till they seem founded on Perfection's base; Then (for when human things have made their way To excellence, they hasten to decay) 560 Let me, whilst Observation lends her clue Step after step to their decline pursue, Enabled by a chain of facts to tell Not only how they rose, but why they fell. Let me not only the distempers know Which in all states from common causes grow, But likewise those, which, by the will of Fate, On each peculiar ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... and the other. But if, in connection with the mortality, care be taken to isolate cases, and to divide them into groups according to the ages of those who die, a singular and significant series of facts follow, which show that after a given age a sudden decline of the temperature influences mortality by what may be considered a definite law. The law is, that variations of temperature exert no marked influence on the mortality of the population under the age of thirty years; but after the age of thirty is reached, a fall of temperature, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... modesty, he was so fundamentally patriotic, that even his faults are transformed to virtues, and the very failures of his declining years are popularly accounted successes. He alone was conscious of his mental decline, and gave this as a reason for not accepting a third nomination for the Presidency. This humility has established an unwritten law of limitation on vaulting presidential ambitions. Indeed, intrigue and corruption in America must ever struggle ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... hand and head Whose might is as light on a dark day shed, On a day now dark as a land's decline Where all the peers ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... I may so call it) the acquaintance of the mother confirmed the view I had already taken of the son. The family blood had been impoverished, perhaps by long inbreeding, which I knew to be a common error among the proud and the exclusive. No decline, indeed, was to be traced in the body, which had been handed down unimpaired in shapeliness and strength; and the faces of to-day were struck as sharply from the mint, as the face of two centuries ago that smiled upon me from the portrait. But the intelligence ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my companion, "how dark it is here,"—looking into each hut that was shown him. "Misericorde! if I were to ensconce myself in this leafy cabin, this gloomy sombre hole, I should fancy myself seated at the bottom of a blacking-bottle—I respectfully decline the ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... people find cause for grousing, no matter how good their luck is," Jim answered. "I believe you and old Bob would decline to recognize bad luck even if it did come ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... now. I did not mean to-night,' Elfride responded, with a slight decline in the firmness of her voice. 'It is not light as you think it—it troubles me a great deal.' Fearing now the effect of her own earnestness, she added forcedly, 'Though, perhaps, you may ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... [Decline of colony.] The downfall of Portugal occasioned the loss of her colonies once more. Spanish policy, the government of the priests, and the jealousy of the Spanish merchants and traders especially, did everything that remained to be done to prevent the development ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over the infant backslider until my lord was due from Court, and she must resume that air of tremulous composure with ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mesozoic era is shorter than the Paleozoic, as measured by the thickness of their strata, yet its duration must be reckoned in millions of years. Its predominant life features are the culmination and the beginning of the decline of reptiles, amphibians, cephalopod mollusks, and cycads, and the advent of marsupial mammals, birds, teleost fishes, and angiospermous plants. The leading events of the long ages of the era we can sketch only in the most ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... was "for avoiding offence, they should neither meddle with matters of state nor religion." "But before our next meeting," says Spelman, "we had notice that his majesty took a little mislike of our society, not being informed that we had resolved to decline all matters of state. Yet hereupon we forbore to meet again, and so all our labour's lost!" Unquestionably much was lost, for much could have been produced; and Spelman's work on law terms, where I find this information, was one of the first projected. James the First has ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Government to assume the exercise of powers which it does not possess.... We trust, therefore, that no unnecessary discussions on this matter will be introduced into your negotiations. If, unfortunately, this reliance should prove ill-founded, you will decline continuing negotiations on your side, and transfer ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... a shroud, denotes sickness and its attendant distress and anxiety, coupled with the machinations of the evil-minded and false friends. Business will threaten decline after this dream. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... pull'd her together, I press'd her, and she Shot down the decline to the Company's yard, And on by the paddocks, yet under my knee I could feel her heart thumping the saddle-flaps hard. Yet a mile and another, and now we were near The goal, and the fields and the farms flitted past; And 'twixt the two fences I turned with a cheer, For a green grass-fed mare ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Stannard had given Billings anything to do, he bothered himself no further about the matter, instead of going along and supervising as was his wont with most of the others. "If he's good enough for Stannard, he'll do for me," was the colonel's comment, and when Billings sought to decline the appointment offered, hinting, with well-meant but awkward delicacy, that perhaps it ought to go to some man of more established reputation and record in the regiment, the colonel cut him short with, "Here, Mr. Billings, I must have some one at once; old Bucketts has been doing office-work ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... if you please,' she said. 'You can put them in a pot by the grate, but I like no litters made by flowers or anything else. You may sit down while I talk to you,' Mrs Lambert added. 'You look very delicate; I hope you are not in a decline.' ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... rather than creation became the method adopted, resulting in an increased poverty of design and feeble execution. The art of the sixteenth century deteriorated rapidly till the baroco style was in evidence. One reason, too, for the decline was in that art was no longer so exclusively dedicated to the high service of religion, but aimed, instead, to please and to procure patrons, and thus were all worthy standards lowered ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... kitchen busied with our supper, when she suddenly fell down and died in a few minutes. Heart disease was the cause, but in our part people only die of three complaints—a seizure, an inflammation, or a decline. The difference between these is purely one of time, so that Joe Roscorla, learning the suddenness of the attack, judged it forthwith a case of ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the change which physical and mental suffering had wrought in the Conde de Villabuena. His form was bowed and emaciated, his cheek had lost its healthful tinge; his hair, in which, but a short three months previously, only a few silver threads were perceptible, telling of the decline of life rather than of its decay, now fell in grey locks around his sunken temples. For himself individually, the Count grieved not; he had done what he deemed his duty, and his conscience was at rest; but he mourned the ingratitude of his king ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... late coldness and threats of Miss Stewart. He long since had offered her all the settlements and all the titles she could desire, until he had an opportunity more effectually to provide for her, which she had pretended only to decline, for fear of the scandal they might occasion, on her being raised to a rank which would attract the public notice; but since the return of the court, she had given herself other airs: sometimes she was for retiring from court, to appease the continual uneasiness ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... I want you should decide to accept the proposition. Keimer has made an apology, so that you can return without compromising your manhood at all. It looks to me as if it were wiser to accept his proposal than to decline it." ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... It was a curious thing to see him have recourse to all kinds of expedients to escape from the necessity of tracing a few lines. Many times he preferred traversing Paris from one end to the other in order to decline a dinner or give some slight information, to saving himself the trouble by means of a little sheet of paper. His handwriting remained almost unknown to most of his friends. It is said that he sometimes deviated from this habit in favour of his ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Egypt inundates, Running its sevenfold course unto the sea. Nature hath given two lights To this small earth for governance; But thou, perverter of eternal law, Hast turned them into everlasting streams. But Heaven is not content to see her law Decline before unbridled violence. ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... that is not at least as physical as they are. I have witnessed certain transactions effected by means unknown to me—possibly by the action of a natural law not yet fully expounded by science. If there was anything spiritual in the affair, it has not been manifest to my apprehension: and I must decline to lend my ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... conflict. Beyond taking a few soldiers out of the country such quarrels are productive of no good. There must be some strong excitement in which every one can take a part and feel a personal interest, and then Nihilism will decline." ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... has been playing "HAMLET" and "OTHELLO" at NIBLO'S GARDEN. So graceful and elegant is he in his stage presence, that I have been obliged to decline to take MARGARET to see him. There is nothing so annoying as to escort one's cousin (I think I have mentioned that MARGARET is my cousin) to the theatre and to hear her express the most ecstatic admiration of that "perfectly lovely Mr. MONTGOMERY." I have suffered from this sort ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... itself in foam, it is compressed immediately into a bed of ninety-three yards in width: it continues for three hundred and forty poles to the entrance of a run or deep ravine, where there is a fall of three feet, which, added to the decline during that distance, makes the descent six feet. As it goes on, the descent within the next two hundred and forty poles is only four feet; from this, passing a run or deep ravine, the descent in four hundred poles is thirteen feet; within two hundred and forty poles, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... long, quiet talk with Henry Warner, and, wishing the Englishman anywhere but there, she answered coldly, "I cannot well decline your escort, Mr. Carrollton, so of course ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... The more important was, I remember, a view of Paris seen from a suburb—a green railing and two loitering nursemaids in the foreground, the middle of the picture filled with the city faintly seen and faintly glittering in the hour of the sun's decline, between four and six. It was no disagreeable or ridiculous parody of Corot; it was Corot feminised, Corot reflected in a woman's soul, a woman's love of man's genius, a lake-reflected moon. But Corot's influence ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... before, there is not much to tell," I answered. "I was compelled in honor to tell Julia I loved another woman more than herself; and I presume, though I am not sure, she will decline to ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... saw such an expedient would be certain death, and I wound one arm round her waist, and held her forcibly down in her seat, while with the other I endeavoured to assist her in the hopeless task of stopping the runaway ponies. Everything was against us: the ground was slightly on the decline; the thaw had not yet reached the sheltered road we were travelling, and the wheels rung against its frozen surface as they spun round with a velocity that seemed to add to the excitement of our flying ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... Balmoral, and its bracing outdoor avocations and amusements, the Prince-Consort's health seemed to decline again. He suffered from rheumatic pains and sleeplessness, and he began to feel the chill shadows of the valley he was nearing, creeping around him. The last work of his beneficent life was one of peculiar interest to Americans. It ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... the remarkable "Letter to Liszt in Regard to the Goethe Memorial," wherein he confidently asserted that painter as well as sculptor would decline to compete with the poet acting in harmony with the musician, and that they would with reverential awe bow before an art-work in comparison with which their own productions would seem but lifeless fragments. For such an art-work ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... The neighbourhood of Leamington, a watering-place of some celebrity, has obliged the family to decline showing the Castle after ten o'clock. I tried the virtue of an old acquaintance with Lord Warwick and wrote to him, he being in the Courthouse where the assizes were sitting. After some delay we were admitted, and I found my old friend ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the lights of the scattered villages. The bells in the water were still ringing languidly, and their voices emphasised the pervading silence, a silence full of the pensive melancholy of Nature in decline. ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... Midshipmen are not in the habit of carrying much money about with them, but I have heard of Guerillas carrying people off to the mountains and getting ransoms. There, we are at the place where that fellow said the road turned. It doesn't turn. Now, I vote we both get off our mules and decline ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... In fact, on the 11th, at 9.11 a.m., the moon would enter her last quarter. After this delay she would decline every day, and even if the sky should clear the chances of observation would be considerably lessened—in fact, the moon would then show only a constantly-decreasing portion of her disc, and would end by becoming new—that is to ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... a misfortune in the fourteenth century. The decline in fertility had made it impossible for a villain to support himself and his family and perform the accustomed services and pay the rent for his land. Sometimes heirs were excused on account of their poverty. Page has made note ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... wench;[211] but others were of a loftier and better and truer apprehension, whereof it booteth not to tell at this present. Thereafter the king let kindle store of flambeaux upon the grass and among the flowers and caused sing divers other songs, until every star began to decline, that was above the horizon, when, deeming it time for sleep, he bade all with a good night betake ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... gallant young officer of Philadelphia, is our leader, but, in this instance, I don't feel the need of consulting him. I know that your offer is kindly, that it comes from a generous soul, but however much it may disappoint you I must decline it. Our resistance in the night has been quite successful, we have inflicted upon you much more damage than you have inflicted upon us, and I've no doubt the day will witness a battle continued ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... warm, and the thought of Dick's misfortunes swept away the recollection of his insults. Joker had, of his own initiative, soon turned aside from the high road into a grassy lane, and he moved along it in the relentless manner in which many horses will decline to stand still while Larry, deep in thought, allowed the reins to lie on the horse's neck while he lit a cigarette and tried to fix in his memory Father David's exact words. He thought he would talk to Dr. Mangan about it. Things might be better than the old priest ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Ashrafis, boys from 9 to 150: the worst are kept for domestic purposes, the best are driven and exported by the Western Arabs [36] or by the subjects of H. H. the Imam of Muscat, in exchange for rice and dates. I need scarcely say that commerce would thrive on the decline of slavery: whilst the Felateas or man-razzias are allowed to continue, it is vain to expect ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... men felt themselves overtaken by a speedier chastisement. As day by day they sank deeper in their wickedness, it was but right they should daily, as it were, stick faster in their woe. The very change in nourishment made manifest their decline and degradation, since as they became feebler they became also ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... he lingered before her erect, then, shrugging his shoulders, said: "What's the good, since you decline?" ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... turnips, leeks, lilies, horseradish, saffron, and other plants, are said to increase during the fulness of the moon; but onions, on the contrary, are much larger and are better nourished during the decline. [328] To recur to Plutarch is to find him saying: "The moone showeth her power most evidently even in those bodies, which have neither sense nor lively breath; for carpenters reject the timber of trees fallen in the ful-moone, as being ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... And he cried, "My good sword have I girt, In Roncesvalles to dye it red. Let Roland but in my pathway tread, Trust ye to me that I strike him dead, His Durindana beat down with mine. The Franks shall perish and France decline." Thus were mustered King Marsil's peers, With a hundred thousand heathen spears. In haste to press to the battle on, In a pine-tree forest their arms ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... said, wheeling in his chair, "I am not worried. I decline to be worried. And I am going ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... of the alphabet and first reading lesson, Abraham appeared at the door of the room brandishing a very long thin knife, and with many bows, grins, and apologies for disturbing me, begged that I would go and cut up a sheep for him. My first impulse of course was to decline the very unusual task offered me with mingled horror and amusement. Abraham, however, insisted and besought, extolled the fineness of his sheep, declared his misery at being unable to cut it as I wished, and his readiness to conform for the future to whatever patterns of mutton 'de missis ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... would promote it with all his influence; but when I took notice that there seemed to be an aversion on the side of Liddy, he said he would sound her on the subject; and if her reluctance was such as would not be easily overcome, he would civilly decline the proposal of Mr Barton; for he thought that, in the choice of a husband a young woman ought not to sacrifice the feelings of her heart for any consideration upon earth — 'Liddy is not so desperate (said he) as to worship fortune at such ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... truth is incapable of being applied to another case: the essential is unique. Perhaps that is why it is so neglected: because it is useless. What we learned about that Spaniard is incapable of being applied to any other Spaniard, or even recalled in words. With the decline of orthodox theology and its admirable theory of the soul, the unique importance of events has vanished. A man is only important as he is classed. Hence there is no tragedy, or no appreciation of tragedy, which is the same thing. We had been talking of young Bistwick, ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... are with infinite pains overcome, the jury will not convict, no matter what the crime. Before he commences his career of crime, the moonlight marauder knows the chances of being caught are immensely in his favour, that should luck in this matter be against him, his very victim will decline to identify him, nay, will affirm that he is not the man, and that when the worst comes to the worst, no jury in the counties of Kerry, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... will come fast enough after a while. We are all tired of the sea just now," said Jack. "What about Captain Bonnet and meeting him at Sullivan's Island to pass the word that we must decline his courteous invitation?" ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... really serious ladies of the family, sided with Tiberius. But it is easy to understand that this situation could not long endure. A power which defends itself weakly against the attacks of its enemies is destined to sink rapidly into a decline, and the party of Agrippina would therefore quickly have gained favor and power had there not arisen, to sustain the vacillating strength of Tiberius, a man whose name was to become sadly famous—Sejanus—the commander of the ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... it seems to me that the British footman has relaxed a trifle since we were last here; or is it possible that he reaches the height of his immobility at the height of the London season, and as it declines does he decline and become flesh? At all events, I have twice seen a footman change his weight from one leg to the other, as he stood at a shop entrance with his lady's mantle over his arm; twice have I seen one stroke his chin, and several times ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wanted you just to mention that it was not true I was going to be married to him," she murmured, with a slight decline in her assurance. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... he could not decline to make a friend of the storekeeper, who had taken an interest in the voyage of the little Tramp. Maurice was only a boy, but he knew that one could never have too ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... where I am willing to continue, lest it should grow less; and having had no leisure, while I was in Rome and other parts of Italy, to practice myself in the Roman language, on account of public business and of those who came to be instructed by me in philosophy, it was very late, and in the decline of my age, before I applied myself to the reading of Latin authors. But to appreciate the graceful and ready pronunciation of the Roman tongue, to understand the various figures and connection of words, and such other ornaments, in which the beauty of speaking consists, is, I doubt ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... kind Tom Wested. He had stayed over night with them several times, and had come to them for consolation after his wife died. It seemed to her that his decline in health and loss of courage, Mr. Wheeler's fortuitous trip to Denver, the old pine-wood farm in Maine; were all things that fitted together and made a net to envelop her unfortunate son. She knew that he had been waiting impatiently for the autumn, and that for the first time he ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... "I am willing to draw it up in conjunction with you, or to let it be drawn up by you alone, but, from past experience, I must decline to ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... The decline of Issoudun is explained by this spirit of sluggishness, sunken to actual torpor, which a single fact will illustrate. When the authorities were talking of a highroad between Paris and Toulouse, it was natural to think of taking it from Vierzon to Chateauroux ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... than those of the same year, who may be the teachers in forming the new comb. Now, in a scientific inquiry, a point which can be proved should not be assumed, and a totally unknown power should not be brought in to explain facts, when known powers may be sufficient. For both these reasons I decline to accept the theory of instinct in any case where all other possible modes of explanation ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the Squire denominated true old English fare. He indulged in some bitter lamentations over modern breakfasts of tea-and-toast, which he censured as among the causes of modern effeminacy and weak nerves, and the decline of old English heartiness; and though he admitted them to his table to suit the palates of his guests, yet there was a brave display of cold meats, wine and ale, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... developed as already this monarch of rivers gave signs of opening out like a sea! Plants from eight to ten feet high clustered along the beach, and bordered it with a forest of reeds. Porto de Mos, Boa Vista, and Gurupa, whose prosperity is on the decline, were soon among the ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... told me, that being with him a little after Melitus had accused him, he observed, that he seemed to decline speaking of that affair: from whence he took occasion to tell him that it would not be amiss for him to think of what he should answer in his own justification. To which Socrates replied: "Do you believe I have done anything else all my life than think ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... thing for which I looked in vain. I looked in vain for anything in the nature of statistical precision, except here and there in connection with minor and scattered details. Frequent references were made, for example, to the decline of the Highland population; but no attempt had apparently been made by anyone to state by reference to extant official documents what the total of the alleged decline had been, or whether or why in some districts it had been greater or less than in others. The two voluminous works ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... down upon them, the odor of apple blossoms and the hum of bees seemed to make it all the more incongruous. And still the elderly Quaker skipper talked on and on with hardly an interruption, till the warm sun slanted to the west and the day began to decline. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... But with the decline of the Egyptian power, which sets in after the death of the second Rameses, a change takes place. External pressure being removed, ambitions begin to develop themselves. In the north Aradus (Arvad), in the south Sidon, proceed to exercise ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Hills, as we found also to be the case on many Polynesian islands, it is closely associated with female infanticide.[1353] The Todas in 1867 showed a proportion of two men to one woman, but later, with the decline of infanticide under British rule, a proportion of 100 men to 75 women, and a resulting modification of the institution of polyandry.[1354] It may well be that the paucity of women suggested this form of marriage, whose expediency as ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... ignorance of the vernacular, and cause me no end of vexatious delay. To this the quick-witted Frenchman replies by at once offering to go with me to the resident pasha, explain the matter to him, and get a letter permitting me to wear the uniform; which offer I gently but firmly decline, being secretly of the opinion that these excessive precautions are all unnecessary. From the time I left Hungary I have been warned so persistently of danger ahead, and have so far met nothing really dangerous, that I am getting sceptical about there being anything like the risk people ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the Germans, and their strict regard to the laws of marriage, are witnessed by all their ancient codes of law. The purity of their manners in this respect afforded a striking contrast to the licentiousness of the Romans in the decline of the empire, and is exhibited in this light by Salvian, in his treatise ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... the menaces of Commodus, maintained towards Pertinax a stately ambiguous reserve, and instantly declared against the usurpation of Julian. The convulsions of the capital added new weight to his sentiments, or rather to his professions of patriotism. A regard to decency induced him to decline the lofty titles of Augustus and Emperor; and he imitated perhaps the example of Galba, who, on a similar occasion, had styled himself the Lieutenant of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... administered will more than repay its cost. The use of the hoe will greatly help the growth, and a little earth may be drawn towards the stems, not to the extent of 'moulding-up,' for that is injurious, but to 'firm' the plants in some degree against the gales that are to be expected as the days decline. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... with a less suspicious eye than most people hereabouts, for he invited me into his house to take a petit verre with him. But the sun was getting near the end of his journey, and I had to fare on foot to the next village; so I thought it better to decline the offer. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... opposed the French policy of President John Adams in 1798, and were conspicuous for their British sympathies. Four years before his death he was chosen president of Harvard College, an honour which his broken state of health obliged him to decline. He died on the 4th of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Junkett, he shall beginne it again." "By no Means," said I, "for I love Talking more than Reading." However, it was not soe to be, for Rose woulde not be foyled; and as it woulde not have been good Manners to decline the Hearinge in Presence of the Poet, I was constrayned to suppresse a secret Yawne, and feign Attention, though, Truth to say, it soone wandered; and, during the last halfe Hour, I sat in a compleat Dreame, tho' not unpleasant one. Roger having made an End, 'twas diverting ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... When she came out she was very angry, and set about making an image of the woman whose sheep she had taken. When the image was made she burned it and put the ashes in a burn. And it is a very curious thing, but the woman she made it on fell into a decline, and ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... he was so carefull that he tried all orders of men, in placing them in roomes of iustice. And lastlie, trusting to find among the cleargie such as would not be corrupted with bribes, nor for respect of feare or freendship decline from right iudgement, [Sidenote: Bishops chosen principall iustices.] he chose foorth the bishops of Winchester, Elie and Norwich to be principall iustices of the relme, so as they might end and determine all matters, except in certeine cases reserued to ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... can not yet put words into correct grammatical form, decline, or conjugate. They like to use the indefinite noun-substantive and the infinitive, likewise to some extent the past participle. They prefer the weak inflection, ignore and confound the articles, conjunctions, auxiliaries, ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... the sight of a sunset does not beget as much meditative melancholy as contemplative pleasure, the human decline and death that it illustrates being too obvious to escape the notice of the simplest observer. The sketcher, as if he had been brought to this reflection many hundreds of times before by the same spectacle, showed that he did not wish to pursue it just now, by turning away his face ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... ships, and consisted in carrying people to America. The increasing population of the country made it an increasing trade, but when the linen trade was low, the passenger trade was always high. At the time of Lord Donegan letting his estate in the north, the linen business suffered a temporary decline, which sent great numbers to America, and gave rise to the error that it was occasioned by the increase of his rents. The fact, however, was otherwise, for great numbers of those who went from his lands actually sold those leases for ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... the vision was near the beginning of the Third Punic War, when Scipio, no longer in his early youth, was just entering upon the career in which he gained pre-eminent fame, thenceforward to know neither shadow nor decline. ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... and loved. He also was the author of those well-known text-books, "The Founders of Islam," and "The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire." This latter work, in five volumes, had been not unfavorably compared to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The original newspaper comment, dated some thirty years back, the doctor had preserved, and would produce it, now somewhat frayed and worn, and read it to visitors. He knew it by ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... 1550 under Suleyman the Magnificent, when, with its eastern frontier in the heart of Asia, its European frontier touching Russia and Austria, it held in its grasp Egypt, the northern coast of Africa, and almost every city famous in biblical and classical history. Then commenced a decline; and when its terrible Janizaries were a source of danger instead of defense, when its own Sultan was compelled to destroy them in 1826 for the protection of his empire, it was only a helpless mass in the throes ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... he takes so much interest in my affairs, I will now tell Aemilianus why I have examined so many fishes already and why I am unwilling to remain in ignorance of some I have not yet seen. Although he is in the decline of life and suffering from senile decay, let him, if he will, acquire some learning even at the eleventh hour. Let him read the works of the philosophers of old, that now at any rate he may learn that I am not the first ichthyologist, but follow in the steps ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... abolitionists has been mentioned, and will occasionally be referred to hereafter, the following historical statement of its rise and decline, and of the commencement of the present abolition movement, will probably be interesting to the anti-slavery reader on this side of the Atlantic. It is from the pen of my valued coadjutor ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... as the family spokesman. I can see them now in solemn conclave. They think it their indisputable right to select a husband for me, to pass upon him, to accept or decline him as they see fit, to say whether he is a proper man to hang up his hat and coat in the offices ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... longer considered necessary to send ticket men in their stead when they were taken out, and as a matter of fact less than a dozen such men were that year put on board ships passing the Downs. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1453—Capt. Anderson, 31 Aug. 1811.] Pressing itself was in its decline, and as for the vocation of the man in lieu, it had gone ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... idea how I am relieved, and I shall not go back empty-handed. But the relief I feel admonishes me never to return to the full charge. How little do people know or conceive what it is! One case, like what I fear Mrs.-'s is, of slow decline,-one such case weighs upon the mind and heart for months. If you could go and make the call, without any sad anticipation or afterthought; but you cannot. And then, when it is not one case that draws upon your sympathies, but several, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... American novel. You got your brush in the wrong pot of local colour when you daubed me. No offence intended, or taken, I hope. God bless you! strike your pencil through all that came after the spree part. You're welcome to that, but I decline to let you ruin your reputation by offering up the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... agreeable for the inferior ranks of mankind to claim merit from the contempt of that pomp and pleasure which fortune has placed beyond their reach. The virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty and ignorance."—Gibbon, Decline And ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... me no more messages from Miss Charteris," she replied. "I do not like her—she would only come to triumph over me; I decline to see her. I have no message ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... considerable portion of the night. Some species of birds are partly nocturnal in their habits. Such is the Chimney Swallow. This bird is seldom out at noonday, which it employs in sleep, after excessive activity from the earliest morning dawn. It is seen afterwards circling about in the decline of day, and is sometimes abroad in fine weather the greater part of the night, when the young broods require almost unremitted exertions, on the part of the old birds, to procure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... carries on with China and India. Efforts have been made in Spain to suppress the former commerce, as being detrimental to that of Spain and the Indias. He admits that this last is decreasing, but claims that Filipinas is not responsible therefor. The causes of that decline are, rather, the greatly lessened yield of the precious metals in America, the enormous decrease of the Indian population in the colonies, the smaller consumption of goods among the Spaniards therein, and the exorbitant imposts ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... prosecution," urged Paul, "has mentioned something about giving me the benefit of a doubt. There is no matter of benefit in it, and I decline to accept the term. It is only a matter of justice. It is only justice I desire. My lord and gentlemen of the jury, I have refused to enter the witness-box, not because I desired to keep back anything in relation to the murder, for in truth I know absolutely nothing, but because I might be, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... approaches its climax, the note of warning sounds again (ver. 25). The convert, fresh from the reminder of the "voice" of the sprinkled blood of the better covenant, is cautioned not to "refuse" it, not to "decline" it ([Greek: me paraitesesthe]). The primary reference is manifestly to that perpetual danger of the Hebrews, the temptation to turn back from the Gospel, with its spiritual order and its hopes of things not yet seen, ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... reasons to be compelled to decline participation in the conference at Charlottetown. The season is so far advanced that I find my summer's work would be so seriously deranged by the visit to Prince Edward Island that, without permission from the Foreign Office, ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... they were inclined to be costive, gave mild Purges, or emollient laxative Clysters. We afterwards applied Blisters; and if the Pulse began to sink, gave Cordials, Wine, and other Remedies commonly employed in such Cases;—and towards the Decline of the Fever endeavoured to promote such Evacuations as were pointed out by Nature, and likely ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... read that once in Africa A princely wight did reign, Who had to name Cophetua, As poets they did feign: From nature's laws he did decline, For sure he was not of my mind, He car-ed not for women-kind, But did them all disdain. But mark what happened on a day: As he out of his window lay, He saw a beggar all in gray, The ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... have assumed metropolitan importance in their densely populated districts. Only Plymouth in the south-west is now of first-class consequence to the nation; and Plymouth is a parvenu compared with Looe and Fowey. The actual decline of these two little towns may not be great, but relatively it is enormous. Yet it deserves a milder term than decay, for the present-day life here is still wholesome and in a certain sense prosperous. It is a gentle ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... have been times in France when the study of color produced artistic effects in costume worthy of attention, and resulted in styles of dress of real beauty. But the present corrupted state of morals there has introduced a corrupt taste in dress; and it is worthy of thought that the decline of moral purity in society is often marked by the deterioration of the sense of artistic beauty. Corrupt and dissipated social epochs produce corrupt styles of architecture and corrupt styles of drawing and painting, as might easily be illustrated by the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil, which no honest government should decline. There is another strong feature in the new Constitution, which I as strongly dislike. That is, the perpetual re-eligibility of the President. Of this I expect no amendment at present, because I do not see that anybody has objected to it on your side the water. But it will be ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... headache, and often in an almost fainting condition. And the same cause which brings about these extreme cases, on a smaller scale causes such physical discomfort to many delicately organized persons that a large class exist who absolutely and resolutely decline to have gas as an illuminant or fuel in any of their living rooms; and if the use of gas, more especially as fuel, is to be extended, and if gas is to hold its own in the future against such rivals as the electric light, then those interested in gas and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... eighteenth century the highway fell upon decline. No doubt in its silver age, the century's beginning, many a brilliant deed was done. Something of the old policy survived, and men of spirit still went upon the pad. But the breadth of the ancient style was speedily forgotten; ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... what the squire denominated true old English fare. He indulged in some bitter lamentations over modern breakfasts of tea and toast, which he censured as among the causes of modern effeminacy and weak nerves and the decline of old English heartiness; and, though he admitted them to his table to suit the palates of his guests, yet there was a brave display of cold meats, wine, and ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... goodness was glory, that goodness was happiness, that goodness was heaven. The truth was never pressed on us that the want of goodness was deformity, dishonor and shame,—that it was pain, and wretchedness, and torment, and death,—that goodness in full measure would make earth heaven—that its decline and disappearance would make earth hell. Yet a careful and long-continued perusal of the Scriptures left the impression on my mind, that this was really the case. When I compared the eternal talk about all our goodness being of no account in the sight of God,—of all our righteousness being but ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... generally willing to give any quantity of water, but they object to lay down large mains without any prospect of remuneration. The warehouse keepers decline to be at the expense of laying the pipes, and there the matter seems to rest. In most other places of importance, the water is under the management of the civic authorities, and they, of course, endeavour to obtain a good supply of water at ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... men. I repeat it. But just a tiny spark of animation might be retained in the feminine eye when it alights upon an old friend who is debarred from taking arms. Just a spark, otherwise we shall go into a melancholy decline. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... them all in constitutional learning. More precocious still was Alexander Hamilton of New York, who was only thirty, one of the most remarkable examples of a statesman who developed very early and whom Death cut off before he showed any signs of a decline. One figure we miss—that of Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, tall and wiry and red-curled, who was absent in Paris as ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... laws of Pennsylvania, which relate to the object of the Society. I hope that you and the Society will accept my thanks, and believe that I am truly sensible of the honor done me. As for any services I can do, they are indeed but small; for I find, that, far from possessing, in the decline of life, your vigor of body and mind, every kind of business is becoming more and more an incumbrance to me. At the same time, the calls of business increase upon me, as you will learn in some measure from the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... northern ideal in portraiture, underlining the truth with singular accuracy, yet with some sacrifice of graciousness and charm. The daughter of the learned and brilliant Isabella looks here as if, in the decline of her beauty, she had become something of a precieuse and a prude, though it would be imprudent to assert that she was either the one or the other. Perhaps the most attractive feature of the whole composition is the beautiful landscape so characteristically stretching away into the far blue distance, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... preceding tale the rise of Christianity in Japan, and the remarkable rapidity of its development in that remote land. We have now to describe its equally rapid decline and fall, and the exclusion of Europeans from Japanese soil. It must be said here that this was in no sense due to the precepts of Christianity, but wholly to the hostility between its advocates of different sects, their jealousy and abuse of one another, and to the quarrels between nations in the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... immediate successors of Shalmaneser the Assyrian prestige was maintained at a high level by dint of the same lavish bloodshed and truculent energy; but towards the eighth century it began to decline. There was then a period of languor and decadence, some echo of which, and of its accompanying disasters, seems to have been embodied by the Greeks in the romantic tale of Sardanapalus. No shadow of confirmation for the story of a first destruction of Nineveh ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... for me—speaking as an artist, and also, perhaps, a little bit as a man—pootiness is almost a wirtue in itself. I don't think I shall ever weary of trying to depict it, from its dawn in the toddling infant to its decline and setting and long twilight in the beautiful old woman, who has known how to grow old gradually. I like to surround it with chivalrous and stalwart manhood; and it is a standing grievance to me that I have to clothe all this masculine escort in coats ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... but must decline this offer; her daughters, she said, must learn betimes to moderate their desires to ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Nancy at this period is not so easily drawn. The decline of the family fortunes seemed to have had as little effect upon her as upon her father, although their characters differed sharply. Something of that spontaneity, of that love of life and joy in it she had possessed in youth she must have inherited from McAlery Willett, but these ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... history concerns the origin of prose fiction among the Romans. We can trace the growth of the epic from its infancy in the third century before Christ as it develops in strength in the poems of Naevius, Ennius, and Cicero until it reaches its full stature in the AEneid, and then we can see the decline of its vigor in the Pharsalia, the Punica, the Thebais, and Achilleis, until it practically dies a natural death in the mythological and historical poems of Claudian. The way also in which tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, biography, and the other types of literature ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... bear: while, with respect to amplifications and embellishments, anything rather than, with the good farmer, experience that most signal of mortifications, 'to gape for AEschylus and get Theognis.' I should especially decline,—what may appear to brighten up a passage,—the employment of a new word for some old one—[Greek: phonos], or [Greek: megas], or [Greek: telos], with its congeners, recurring four times in three lines.... Further,—if I obtained a mere strict bald version ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... obeyed; in the fall he left New York, and during the cold months wandered through the West India islands. For a while his health improved, but when the novelty produced by change of scene began to decline he grew worse again, and brooded more deeply than ever over his bitter disappointment, and consequently derived but little benefit from the change; the spirit was too much broken for the body to mend—his heart was too sore ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... of seeking the best "forties" or directing the operations of his log-drivers. His wife and daughters make extensive visits to Europe, his sons go to some university, and he himself is likely to acquire political position, or to devote his energies to saving the town from industrial decline, as the timber is cut away, by transforming it into a manufacturing center for more finished products. Still others continue their activity among the forests of the South. This social history of the timber ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... fishing. The country is vulnerable to devastating storms. Agriculture employs two-thirds of the labor force, and furnishes 90% of exports, featuring coconut cream, coconut oil, and copra. The manufacturing sector mainly processes agricultural products. The decline of fish stocks in the area is a continuing problem. Tourism is an expanding sector, accounting for 25% of GDP; about 88,000 tourists visited the islands in 2001. The Samoan Government has called for deregulation ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... least. The practical disappearance in any vital form of the lecture-lyceum, the sermon, the essay, and the poem, the annihilation of the imagination or organ of comprehension, the disappearance of personality, the abolition of the editorial, the temporary decline of religion, of genius, of the artistic temperament, can all be summed up and symbolised in a single trait of modern life, its separated men, interested in separate things. We are getting to be lovers of contentedly separate things, little things in their little places all by themselves. The modern ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... simply made a movement that had the result of placing his hand on her own—presently indeed that of her feeling herself firmly enough grasped. There was no pressure she need return, there was none she need decline; she just sat admirably still, satisfied for the time with the surprise and bewilderment of the impression she made on him. His agitation was even greater on the whole than she had at first allowed for. "I say, you know, you mustn't think of leaving!" he at ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... Toward the decline of the tenth day following the meeting of Viscount Effingston and Sir Thomas Winter in the garden of the Gentleman-Pensioner, four men might have been seen riding through one of the stretches of woodland used by the King as a hunting ground and known as the forest of Waltham. ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... seldom there seemed to be a gap between him and the people born to refinement who were his associates, his friends. That phase of feeling was rather strong in him just now; disguising itself in the form of sundry plausible motives, it had induced him to decline Mrs. Tyrrell's invitation, and was fostering his temporary distaste for the society in which he had always found much pleasure. What if in strictness he belonged to neither sphere? What if his life were to be a struggle between inherited ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... tailor rushed up eagerly to admit him, forgetting, however, to put on his coat! As he threw open the door he must have been astonished at Forster's greeting "No, no, my good friend, I altogether decline. I am not your match in age, weight, or size," a touch of his pleasant ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... interrupted the president of the deputation: "Marshal, permit me to decline this advice; I have not come so far to be discouraged, like a child, before the first obstacle. I am weary of a disgrace which I have not deserved, and still more weary of enforced idleness. Let the Emperor ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... neither the one nor the other, with my consent, Price, I assure you," said I. "And unless my conditions are absolutely complied with I shall decline to help ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... to give from time to time in the City, yet one is compelled to assist some of those for the sake of business; but as for any outside charity, pooh! it's all rot, it's been proved long ago they are all frauds. I shall always decline absolutely to give anything or do anything for any outside charity. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... show that the goodness of action must be determined with reference to nothing less than the totality of all affected interests. For this highest principle I have reserved the honored term, good-will. Neither you nor I can reasonably decline to consider the bearing of our actions on any interest whatsoever. Right conduct, since it is inconsistent with the least ruthlessness, must inevitably in the end assume the form of humanity ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... account of culinary blunders. The moon was in the beginning of her second quarter, and my cook's brain tolerably undisturbed. Lady Bernard offered me her cook for the occasion; but I convinced her that my wisdom would be to decline the offer, seeing such external influence would probably tend to disintegration. I went over with her every item of every dish and every sauce many times,—without any resulting sense of security, I confess; but I had found, that, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... enemies with whom to contend, and as a result his later history was one of decline and fall, in which he lost all that he had won and remained for years practically a prisoner in a ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... peace at home or to unite the nation against a foreign invader. The oath he had sworn to William, although obtained partly by force partly by fraud, weighed upon him, but he was powerless to keep it. Did he decline the crown it would fall upon some other Englishman, and not upon the Norman. The vote of England had chosen him, and it was clearly his duty to accept. The die had been cast when Edith had bade him sacrifice her and himself for the good of England, and it ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... class is the topic of many of these monodies: either the virtues of the loyal slave are extolled[140], or the knavery of the cunning slave[141]. The parasite is "featured" too, when Ergasilus bewails the decline of his profession[142], or Peniculus and Gelasimus indulge in haunting threnody on their perpetual lack of food[143]. Bankers, lawyers and panders come in for their share of satire[144]. Our favorite topic today, ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... comparatively quiet Giro. From the windows and door could be heard the buzz and hum of the Lungara, where everybody—men, women, children, cats and dogs—were out with every species of work and play when the sun began to decline. This was the part of the house most frequented and liked by the family. They could see their neighbors even when they were at work in their houses, and could exchange gossip and stir the polenta at the same time. The other side of the house ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... last agony of the expiring Parliament. He at length repeated, in an emphatic tone, 'As many as are of opinion that THIS BILL do pass, say ay! The affirmative was languid, but indisputable. Another momentary pause ensued. Again his lips seemed to decline their office. At length, with an eye averted from the object he hated, he proclaimed, with a subdued voice, 'The, AYES have it.' The fatal sentence was now pronounced. For an instant he stood statue-like; then indignantly, and with disgust, flung the bill upon the table, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... accurately indicates the current mortality impact on population growth. This indicator is significantly affected by age distribution, and most countries will eventually show a rise in the overall death rate, in spite of continued decline in mortality at all ages, as declining fertility results in ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... this failure are to be found in the internal causes of the Portuguese decline. The union with Spain brought their rivals into the Eastern seas, but it was their own weakness which let those rivals triumph. The primary cause of that weakness was the complete exhaustion of the Portuguese nation. Year after year this ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... occasions throughout the year. The festivities were held in the Spring, Autumn, or Winter. These were to commemorate the activities of the sun, his renewed activity in the Spring calling forth rejoicing and his decline in the Fall being the cause of sorrow and lamentation. As well as the festivities, there were the various mysteries, such as the Eleusinia, the Dionysia and the Bacchanalia. These were conducted by the priests who ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... princess Badoura, put her into unexpected perplexity. She thought it would not become a princess of her rank to undeceive the king, and to own that she was not prince Kummir al Zummaun, whose part she had hitherto acted so well. She was also afraid to decline the honour he offered her, lest, being so much bent upon the conclusion of the marriage, his kindness might turn to aversion, and he might attempt something ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... education, then, as a producer of wealth, it follows that the more educated a people are, the more will they abound in all those conveniences, comforts, and satisfactions which money will buy; and, other things being equal, the increase of competency and the decline of pauperism will be ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... coup-de-main. The English have entire command of the river, and have only to effect a landing on this side, where the city without defences is situated. Imagine them in a position to offer me battle! which I could no longer decline, and which I ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... both the civil ruler and the military leader of his people. Under him there were exercising authority throughout the land about 150 feudal lords. Feudalism of one kind or another prevailed in Japan until 1868. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the feudal principle was apparently on the decline. In the year 1600, however, Tokagawa Iyoyasu, with an army composed of the clans of the east and north defeated the combined forces of those of the west and south at the battle of Sakigahara and proclaimed himself Shogun. The feudal lords of the various clans ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... Byron, in the midst of all his triumphs, if not to doubt their reality, at least to distrust their continuance; and sometimes even, with that painful skill which sensibility supplies, to extract out of the brightest tributes of success some omen of future failure, or symptom of decline. New successes, however, still came to dissipate these bodings of diffidence; nor was it till after his unlucky coalition with Mr. Hunt in the Liberal, that any grounds for such a suspicion of his having declined ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... witnessing her return, and for the dearer chance of receiving her in my arms from the saddle. I have noticed (again it is to this page only I would make the remark) that she will never permit any man but myself to render her that assistance. I have seen her politely decline Sir Philip Nunnely's aid. She is always mighty gentle with her young baronet, mighty tender for his feelings, forsooth, and of his very thin-skinned amour propre. I have marked her haughtily reject Sam Wynne's. Now I know—my heart knows it, for it has felt it—that she resigns herself to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... people's actions upon American civilization. When you ask me to believe that I oughtn't to try to rescue a woman from the misery to which a villain has left her, simply because some justice of the peace consecrated his power over her, I decline to be such a fool. I use my reason, and I see who it was that defiled and destroyed that marriage, and I know that she is as free in the sight of God as if he had never lived. If the world doesn't like my open shame, let it look to its own secret shame,—the marriages made and maintained from ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... can understand, but measles, pneumonia, and smallpox are witchcraft. Winnenap' was medicine-man for fifteen years. Besides considerable skill in healing herbs, he used his prerogatives cunningly. It is permitted the medicine-man to decline the case when the patient has had treatment from any other, say the white doctor, whom many of the younger generation consult. Or, if before having seen the patient, he can definitely refer his disorder to some supernatural ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... warm that our moccasins were wet with melting snow; but here, as soon as the sun begins to decline, the air gets suddenly cold, and we had great difficulty to keep our feet from freezing—our moccasins being frozen perfectly stiff. After a hard day's march of 27 miles, we reached the river some ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... and sell dear," or its practical equivalent—so scary and imitative are investors—Buy during the last of a selling movement and sell during the last of a buying movement, resolves itself, we venture to repeat, into: Buy when the decline caused by a panic has produced such liquidation that discounts and loans, after steady and long-continued diminution, either become stationary for a period or else increase progressively coincident with a steady increase in available funds; and sell ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... weapon, and appoint circumstances and an hour for our meeting; which, whether early or late—on foot or horseback—with rapier or backsword—I refer to yourself, with all the other privileges of a challenged person; only desiring, that if you decline to match my weapon, you will send me forthwith the length and breadth of your own. And nothing doubting that the issue of this meeting must needs be to end, in one way or other, all unkindness betwixt two near neighbours,—I remain, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... speedier chastisement. As day by day they sank deeper in their wickedness, it was but right they should daily, as it were, stick faster in their woe. The very change in nourishment made manifest their decline and degradation, since as they became feebler they became ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Ogden, born in 1716 at Winchester, was the son of Thomas Ogden, a man of very humble origin: but he had the merit of giving a liberal education to one whose natural talents well deserved culture; and both his parents, in the decline of life, owed their support to Ogden's filial piety and affection. Cole is quite mistaken in fixing the father's residence at Mansfield, and in stating that he had been in the army. The monument, spoken ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... soon," observed Adair. "Then if you have an appointment offered you, surely you would not wish to decline it. It will be some time before Jack and I become admirals, although I shall scarcely feel myself neglected if I do not get a ship. In the mean time, I have paid several visits to the Admiralty lately to ascertain by ocular demonstration what ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... place what new objects should enter: 'twas Saul as before. I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, we watch from the shore, At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean—a sun's slow decline Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine Base with base to knit strength more intensely; so, arm folded arm O'er the chest whose ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... ceremony became the formal rite of royal installation in Babylonia. "To seize the hands of Bel" was equivalent to legitimizing one's claim to the throne of Babylonia, and the chroniclers of the south consistently decline to recognize Assyrian rulers as kings of Babylonia until they have come to Babylon and "seized the hands of Bel."[1548] That this ceremony was annually performed by the kings of Babylonia after the union of the southern states is quite certain. It marked a renewal of the pledge between the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... which was by incorporating foreign cities and nations into their commonwealth; but this way is not without its mischiefs. For the strangers in Rome by degrees had grown so numerous, and to have so great a vote in the councils, that the whole Government began to totter, and decline from its old to its new inhabitants, which Fabius the censor observing, he applied a remedy in time by reducing all the new citizens into four tribes, that being contracted into so narrow a space, they might not have so malignant an influence ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... wrote to Mr. Rassam requesting him to write for workmen, and to await their return. Until that date all had been plain sailing. I acknowledged that the letter was rather a "damper" on Mr. Rassam. Two courses were left open to him: to decline, in courteous terms, on the ground that his instructions did not warrant his making such a request; or accept, on condition that the former captives should be allowed to depart, himself remaining with one of his companions until the workmen arrived. Instead of that Mr. Rassam took a ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... now, and get something to eat," said Sneak. This was an invitation that Joe was never known to decline. After casting another admiring glance at the blue vapour that issued from the bough some ninety feet from the ground, he passed through the ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... made by His Majesty's Government from a belief that the substitution of a river for a highland boundary would be useful in preventing territorial disputes in future; but although the President coincided in this view of the subject he was compelled to decline the boundary proposed as inconsistent with the known wishes, rights, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... the market values of all farm products during the past twenty-five years, has in the same ratio, affected the selling value of the farm to such an extent, that from forty to fifty per cent of its value at the commencement of the decline, has been swept away and lost to the farmer, from the credit side of his available resources. This alarming shrinkage, has in the aggregate, amounted to many millions, yes, billions of dollars! The financial distress which has followed, has correspondingly ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... from his willingness to associate with man, and there are comparatively few birds with whom he must share them. Few birds select the immediate neighborhood of man's home for their nests. They may live in the neighboring trees, they may haunt his orchard, but his house, for the most part, they decline to frequent. ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... said the counsellor with great earnestness, "the art of eating, the skill men may attain in it, has its epochs, its classical ages, and its decline, corruption, and dark ages, just as much as every other art; and it seems to me that we are now again verging to a kind of barbarism in it. Luxury, profusion, rarities, new dishes, overpeppering, overspicing, all these, my good sirs, are the artifices now commonly made use of to obtain ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... so flattering and delightful, that, fraught with temptation, and exposed to danger, as they are, scarcely any virtue is so cautious, or any prudence so timorous, as to decline them. Even those that have most reverence for the laws of right, are pleased with shewing that not fear, but choice, regulates their behaviour; and would be thought to comply, rather than obey. We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass; and, as the Roman satirist remarks, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... your mother, do you mind, or to any other person living. The gentleman is liberal, and if you can just hold your tongue, you will have little trouble in satisfying him upon all other points. But if you can't be quite silent, you had better, I frankly tell you, decline the situation, excellent in all respects as ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... are not all constituted this way; I am speaking now of the impression created in California by tourists in bulk. They decline to do the things for which this country is best adapted; they will not see the things for which it is most famous. Few of them take the roughing trips up into the mountains; fewer still visit the desert country. All about them the tremendous engineering contracts that have made this land a ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... Blaize; "but I won't decline the offer. I heard a man crying a new anti-pestilential elixir, as he passed the house yesterday. I must find him out and buy a bottle. Besides, I must call on my friend Parkhurst, the apothecary.—You are a good girl, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... charge? My respect for you inclines me to the belief that you are laboring under a momentary excitement; for when you reflect that I am a prominent, not to say famous, author, you will realize how absurd it is that I should be an embezzler, and why I decline to lower myself by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... place, Rebecca gave way to some very sincere and touching regrets that a piece of marvellous good fortune should have been so near her, and she actually obliged to decline it. In this natural emotion every properly regulated mind will certainly share. What good mother is there that would not commiserate a penniless spinster, who might have been my lady, and have shared four thousand a year? What well-bred young person is there in all Vanity Fair, who will not feel ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my proposition, Mr. Sharpman," he said; "it is the only one I shall make, and I must decline to discuss the matter further. My time, as I have already intimated, is ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... leaves and delicate blossoms bud out from naked stems, had noted their rich luxuriance as the summer heat came on—their mature beauty; and when the first breath of autumn sighed through the land she saw them flush and decline, and gradually die and rustle down to their graves. Now, where green boughs and perfumed petals had gayly looked up in the sunlight, all was desolate. The piercing northern wind seemed to whisper as it passed, "Life is but the germ of death, and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... in order to secure an attention to Homer and Virgil, we must catch up every man, whether he is to be a clergyman or a duke, begin with him at six years of age, and never quit him till he is twenty; making him conjugate and decline for life and death; and so teaching him to estimate his progress in real wisdom as he can scan the verses of the ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... Theign could tell him. "Because it was a tissue of expressions that may pass current—over counters and in awful newspapers—in his extraordinary world or country, but that I decline to take ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... and said: "It is better for thee to give up this enterprise which thou hast begun and worked on so long, and it is not yet come to an end: and to seek peace and quiet in thy own mind." Then the soul ought to reply boldly, hungering for the honour of God and the salvation of souls, and decline personal consolation, and say: "I will not avoid or flee from labour, for I am not worthy of peace and quiet of mind. Nay, I wish to remain in that state which I have chosen, and manfully to give honour to ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... communication, but, so inextricably is expression entangled with feeling, it leaves nothing to communicate. Inanity dogs the footsteps of the classic tradition, which is everywhere lackeyed, through a long decline, by the pallor of reflected glories. Even the irresistible novelty of personal experience is dulled by being cast in the old matrix, and the man who professes to find the whole of himself in the Bible or in Shakespeare had as good ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... of the felucca, assuring me there was "good picking" along the coast, and he would put me in the way of doing well. I felt flattered by his good opinion; but under the circumstances thought proper to decline the invitation. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... for all the information you have given me; I had already met with a few of the same lights as I have received, Sir, from you, as I shall mention in their place. The very curious accounts of Lord Fairfax were entirely new and most acceptable to me. If I decline making use of one or two of your hints, I believe I can explain my reasons to your satisfaction. I will, with your leave, go regularly ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... small shop, in a shabby basement, in a side-street already doomed to decline; and from the miscellaneous display behind the window-pane, and the brevity of the sign surmounting it (merely "Bunner Sisters" in blotchy gold on a black ground) it would have been difficult for ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... your kind attention to my little girl," he replied courteously, "but while fully appreciating your kindness in extending the invitation, I must beg leave to decline it, as I am satisfied that home is the best place for ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... pursue my own inclinations, with a fervent conviction that they are at least as innocent as the pursuit of athletic exercises; and I can also, as I have said, wave a little flag of revolt, and rally to my standard the quieter and more simple-minded persons, who love their liberty, and decline to part with it unless they can find a better reason than the merely comfortable desire to do what ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... see once, for an hour, into the mind of a butterfly," I thought, "it would be to me worth all the natural history I ever read. If I could but see why he changes his mind so often and so suddenly—what he saw about that flower to make him seek it—then why, on a nearer approach, he should decline further acquaintance with it, and go rocking away through the air, to do the same fifty times over again—it would give me an insight into all animal and vegetable life that ages of study could not bring me up to." I was thinking all this behind my daughter's umbrella, while a ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... such in a thousand forms of death; and he hath made it his aim that the preaching of the knowledge of God be not once heard in your midst. But in all other tongues these doctrines are sung and glorified, by some in perfect truth, but by others perversely; for the enemy of our souls hath made them decline from the straight road, and divided them by strange teachings, and taught them to interpret certain sayings of the Scriptures falsely, and not after the sense contained therein. But the truth is one, even that which was preached by the glorious ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... "I can decline those, father. I'd be glad to go!" was Donald's reply. "I always promised Sandy I would come West again some time, and I should really enjoy another glimpse ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... happen if one does not imitate this life, but prefers some more modern type of usefulness?" the answer seems to be: "Nothing in particular will happen." In other words, the preaching of the Gospel divorced from the means of grace tends more and more to decline to the presentation of a humanitarian ideal of life which has little, and constantly less, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... was one day attending the trial of Warren Hastings in Westminster Hall, and Sheridan, having perceived him there, took occasion to mention "the luminous author of The Decline and Fall." After he had finished, one of his friends reproached him with flattering Gibbon. "Why, what did I say of him?" asked Sheridan. "You called him the luminous author."—"Luminous! Oh, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... At my misfortunes? can thy spirit wonder A great man should decline? Nay, an you weep, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... object of a dozen love affairs, and been jilted twice, report went, though I had my suspicion from the first that it was the other way. Certainly Miss Peggie Stuart (and he had once been engaged to her) went into a decline immediately after our marriage—but in affairs of the heart, as I have mentioned often before, the only reliable witnesses are those who never tell what they know. Now, as for Christopher, are you quite sure he is as handsome as you say?" "Quite, quite, he's splendid—like the picture ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Barbarians fled; and Julian, who was foremost in every danger, animated the pursuit with his voice and gestures. His trembling guards, scattered and oppressed by the disorderly throng of friends and enemies, reminded their fearless sovereign that he was without armor; and conjured him to decline the fall of the impending ruin. As they exclaimed, [93] a cloud of darts and arrows was discharged from the flying squadrons; and a javelin, after razing the skin of his arm, transpierced the ribs, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... was rather sorry. The Triumphal Arch at the farther end of the avenue was in full view, and thus he felt sure of his way; and he was ambitious of the honor of being the sole guide in the excursion which he and Jane were taking. He, however, could not well decline his uncle's invitation; so, when the two gentlemen moved on, Rollo and ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... we can depend upon Fran Van der Werff too. At first she wanted to decline, but when I proposed a pretty madrigal, yielded ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... vein in his arm is opened. A basin is held beneath his arm, into which is allowed to drip and gurgle water from a tube so as to imitate the sounds made by the departing life-blood. Again the death-watch is set and the stages of his decline are called off: "Now he weakens! Now his heart is failing!" until finally, with the solemn pronouncement, "Now he dies!" he falls over, gasps a few times and is dead, though the total amount of blood lost by him does not ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the west lay Cadover and the fields of his earlier youth, and over them descended the crescent moon. His eyes followed her decline, and against her final radiance he saw, or thought he saw, the outline of the Rings. He had always been grateful, as people who understood him knew. But this evening his gratitude seemed a gift of small account. The ear was deaf, and what thanks of his could ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... night out at the Badgeley Farm with Steve. You see, four fellows have asked me, and I hardly knew which one I wanted to accept; but after what Steve has done to cheer up Chester this day, of course I couldn't decline his invitation." ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... unappreciated merit, and, deeper sting still, of folly preferred. In spite of himself, Locksley Hall and those musings which have become, by no fault of the poet's, the expression of a despair which is half ridiculous, came into his mind. He did not see the ridicule. "Having known me to decline"—his eyes became moist with a dew of pain—"If you think ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... of the power of Art to refine men, to soften their manners, and make them less of wild beasts. Some have thought it omnipotent for this; others have given it as a sign of the decline and fall of the nobler part of us. Neither is, and both are true. Art does, as our Laureate says, make nobler in us what is higher than the senses through which it passes; but it can only make nobler ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... The crater was situated not in the centre of the island, but quite close to its south-eastern side, which accounted for the steepness of the acclivity that the explorers had been obliged to climb. Northward of the crater, after the first five hundred feet of steep decline that formed the summit proper, the ground, undulating picturesquely, fell away in quite a gentle slope to the most northerly extremity of the island, which Leslie judged to be a fairly bold headland. The barrier reef, upon which the brig lay stranded, was visible with startling distinctness ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... I must decline to remove General Schofield. In this I decide nothing against General Butler. I sincerely wish it were convenient to assign him to ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... her Moods, and her Tenses: I'le Grammer with you, And make a trial how I can decline you: By ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the Louvre and Saint Germain for the crown of an unruly and half-civilized kingdom. As for Charles, the gratification he could not conceal at the prospect of being soon freed from the presence of a brother whom he both disliked and feared was more than counterbalanced by the rapid decline of his own health. The boy of eleven, whom the Venetian ambassador had described about the time of his accession to the throne as handsome, amiable, and graceful in appearance, quick, vivacious, and humane—in short, as possessing every quality from which a great prince and a great king might ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... and disappointment, when she realised that Denis Quirk was impervious to her attractions, Sylvia Jackson suddenly awoke to a new interest in life. At the moment she was hesitating between an interesting decline and a fearful vendetta. But this did not deter her from attending the Grey Town Intellectual Society's lecture on Art and Artists, which was delivered by George Custance, R.A., nor did it prevent the lecturer ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... Jellicoe as saying at this time, "They will win unless we can stop these losses—and stop them soon."[2] Definitely adopted in May following, the convoy system was in general operation before the end of the summer, with a notable decline of sinkings in both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The following table, based on figures from the Naval Annual for 1919, indicates the number of vessels sunk for each submarine destroyed. It shows the decreased effectiveness of submarine operations after September 1, 1917, which is taken ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... most interested in your criticism of "Queen Mary." I have not read it, but the choice of subject is entirely morbid and wrong, and I am sure all you say must be true. The form of decline which always comes on mental power of Tennyson's passionately sensual character, is always of seeing ugly things, a kind of delirium tremens. Turner had it fatally ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... have previously described as placing the peasantry entirely at the mercy of agitators, the total absence of any class of persons, or any organisation of authority that could counteract this mischievous influence, and the serious decline in the district of Montreal of the influence of the clergy, concur in rendering it absolutely impossible for the Government to produce any better state of feeling among the French population. It is even impossible ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Every one does not get a Bingley, or a Darcy (with a park); but a good many sensible girls like Elinor pair off contentedly with poor creatures like Edward Ferrars, while not a few enthusiasts like Marianne decline at last upon middle-aged colonels with flannel waistcoats. George Eliot, we fancy, would have held that the fates of Elinor and Marianne were more probable than the fortunes of Jane and Eliza Bennet. That, of the remaining characters, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the air of a man who confers a favor!—[Aloud.] Sir, you are very condescending—I thank you humbly; but, being duly sensible of my own demerits, you must allow me to decline the honor you ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... damage Lionel's reputation is a something too mean," said Lady Esmondet indignantly; "in Mrs. Clayton's last letter to me she asks me to 'decline to receive him, unless he publicly acknowledges his hidden wife;' she says, though 'the women still will pet him, their husbands are down upon him;' she further says, 'Clayton says he has no right to run loose with a hidden wife somewhere;' she says it has been in two ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... partridges till the 14th. Turkeys, capons, pullets with eggs, fowls, chickens, tame rabbits, woodcocks, snipes, all sorts of wild-fowl, which begin to decline in this month. ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... up boots, also, for most of the townsmen wore shoes, thus marking the decline of the military spirit. I never again owned a pair of those man-killing top-boots—which were not only hard to get on and off but pinched my toes, and interrupted the flow of my trouser-legs. Thus one great era fades into another. The Jack-boot ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... frequently made that laws are passed in the United States in order that they might not be obeyed, and political regulations are obeyed by the public for, at most, seven weeks. Of course, the United States is no exception; it seems as if the respect for law is declining everywhere, and if this decline occurs in one field no other is likely to be free from it. A certain subjective or egoistic attitude is potent in this regard, for people in the main conceive the law to be made only for others; they themselves are exceptions. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... barrier to general appreciation and popularity, will never deter those who truly love the "dainties that are bred in a book" from holding him in affection and reverence. His chief work, the "Canterbury Pilgrimage," "well of English undefiled" as it is, was written in the decline of life, when its author had passed his sixtieth year. For catholicity of spirit, love of nature, purity of thought, pathos, humor, subtle and minute discrimination of character and power of expressing it, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... allusion to the subject. The young fellow, however, knew enough of the king's headstrong disposition to be aware that the matter was settled, and that he could not, without incurring the king's serious displeasure, decline to accept the commission. He walked back, with a serious face, to the hut that the officers of the company occupied, and asked Harry Jervoise to ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... the mother that he can right her and restore the property, but must have, as his reward, her daughter's hand in marriage. She replies: "I cannot promise my daughter to a man of whom I know nothing. The gain would be an unspeakable happiness, but I resolutely decline the bargain." The daughter, however, has observed all, and she comes forward and says: "Do what you have promised my mother you can do, and I am yours." Then the piece goes on to its development, in an admirable way, through the unmasking of all the hypocrites. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Dumont had to go to New York. He asked her to go with him, assuming that she would decline, as she had visitors coming. But she was only too glad of the chance to give her increasing restlessness wider range. They went to the Waldorf—Scarborough and Pierson had been stopping there not a week before, making ready for that sensational descent upon Battle Field which has already ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... emotional genius of music, a spiritual thing unfettered by rules, and utterly misunderstood by the world. You cultivate this faculty, regardless of cost; you suffer, and you will suffer more. In proportion as your powers in music grow, so will your health decline. Go to Heliobas; he will do for you what he did for me. Surely you will not hesitate? Between years of weak invalidism and perfect health, in less than a fortnight, there can be no question ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... returned quietly. "As far as the financial argument goes, I think you discovered long ago that its appeal to me is based upon a different point of view than your own. You forget that I am not a servant of the public, but a private citizen, free to accept or decline such offers as are made to me in my line of business, as I choose. This affair is not a public charge, but a business proposition, which I decline. As to my reputation depending upon it, I differ with you. My reputation will stand, I think, upon my record in the past, even if every ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... first of the kind that has ever been attempted in Scotland: and though, as already avowed in the Prospectus, the Editor has no wish to detract from the merits of similar publications, it might appear an overstrained instance of false delicacy to decline a statement of the circumstances which, he presumes to hope, will give some prospect of the work being received with attention and indulgence, perhaps with favour. It certainly is the only General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels that has ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... document; it would have narrowed the necessary area of inquiry and given a definiteness to his assertions which must have carried added weight with Mr Iver. As it was, he began to be convinced that Mina would decline to remember any dates even approximately, and this was all she had professed to do in her first disclosure. Duplay acknowledged that, as matters stood, the betting was in favor of ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... has had his day and is now on the decline. One often hears the older people say, as they shake their heads, that he is not the wonderful man he was in the days of old. The young people, through their growing enlightenment, are also losing confidence in the man and his claims. Of those who were confirmed by the Bishop of Alaska ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... who wanted, like you, to see life, was killed in a brawl, and I have never forgiven myself for having taken him to the tavern where he lost his life. Thus, I say that, though willing enough to earn a crown or two outside my own work, I must decline to take you to places where, as it seems to me, you are likely to ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... be the proprietor of the carriage," replied Henry, assuming an important air, "and if you decline to leave it I shall call the Sergent de Ville." Then turning to the porter, he told him to put the bags in ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... command in the East Indies, which I should be most happy to profit by, did the state of my health hold out any prospect of my fulfilling so important a trust with satisfaction to myself or to the benefit of my country. I am therefore, though reluctantly, compelled to decline this mark ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... remuant); but the exercised fortune maketh the able man. Fortune is to be honored and respected, and it be but for her daughters, Confidence and Reputation. For those two, Felicity breedeth; the first within a man's self, the latter in others towards him. All wise men, to decline the envy of their own virtues, use to ascribe them to Providence and Fortune; for so they may the better assume them: and, besides, it is greatness in a man, to be the care of the higher powers. So Caesar said to the pilot in the tempest, Caesarem portas, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... always with the lofty port of protection and superiority, no longer satisfies my heart or gratifies my pride. I try to avoid her. She follows me about meekly, confused by my coldness. Her long-lashed eyes look at me distrustfully and are suffused with tears when I decline to play. What do I care? My heart is harder than a stone. Moreover, I have transferred my affections; I am in love with a woman of twenty-three, seventeen years older than myself. To be with her makes me perfectly happy; I ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... in any way obtrusive. It had grown with his growth, and strengthened with his expanding strength; and although there had of course been many slips and falls—for what was he but an impulsive boy?—there had been no decline, but steadfast progress as the years of his boyhood glided past. It stood him in good stead when death waited for him in the depths of Halifax harbour, and it was with him now, as hour by hour he drew nearer the dark valley ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... and weighed down with hardship and cruel bereavement, they were still human, and their human hearts beat within them with as true an affection as ever caused a human heart to beat. And their anticipated separation now, in the decline of life, after the last child had been torn from them, must have been truly appalling. Another privilege was granted them-that of remaining occupants of the same dark, humid cellar I have before described: otherwise, they were to support themselves as they best could. And as her mother was still ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... vnknowne field? Are you a god? would you create me new? Transforme me then, and to your powre Ile yeeld. But if that I am I, then well I know, Your weeping sister is no wife of mine, Nor to her bed no homage doe I owe: Farre more, farre more, to you doe I decline: Oh traine me not sweet Mermaide with thy note, To drowne me in thy sister floud of teares: Sing Siren for thy selfe, and I will dote: Spread ore the siluer waues thy golden haires; And as a bud Ile take thee, and there lie: And in that glorious ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... unhappily another of those rash utterances in which the Bishop of Durham indulges throughout these volumes; for assuredly it is the very extravagance of folly to tax Jerome with "extreme ignorance of early Christian literature." Those who are acquainted with his writings will decline to subscribe any such depreciatory certificate. He was undoubtedly bigoted and narrow-minded, but he had a most capacious memory; he had travelled in various countries; he had gathered a prodigious stock ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... Low's fruit garden, the only other European attempt at planting was made by my Cousin, Dr. TREACHER, Colonial Surgeon, who purchased an outlying island and opened a coco-nut plantation. I regret to say that in neither case, owing to the decline of the Colony, was the enterprise ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... congratulate the public upon the final accomplishment of a work, that must constitute one of the greatest ornaments of the present age. We have now before us, in one view, and described by the uniform pencil of one historian, the stupendous and instructive object of the gradual decline of the greatest empire; circumscribed by degrees within the narrow walls of a single city; and at length, after the various revolutions of thirteen centuries, totally swallowed up in the empire of the ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... shallower and their hearts emptier than they were at twenty, Dudley Veneer was stronger in thought and tenderer in soul than in the first freshness of his youth, when he counted but half his present years. He had entered that period which marks the decline of men who have ceased growing in knowledge and strength: from forty to fifty a man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him rapidly downward. At this time his inward: nature was richer and deeper than in any earlier period of his life. If he could only be ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... since Jack Witherspoon's departure in every defensive measure against the secret plotters. And so his voice was suave and measured as he simply said, "I think, Mr. Wade, that I shall have to regretfully decline this promotion. I am perfectly well satisfied as I am. I know nothing of the details of our great Western business. I ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... not. In any case," she added, rising, "I must thank you for being so good as to think of me; and if I feel obliged to decline your proposition, I must ask you to believe that my motives are not petty ones. Now ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... civilization, depend for their permanence and perpetuity, not so much on the culture of the arts, sciences, literature, or philosophy, as on the general diffusion of the salutary and vivifying principles of religion. History tells us in its every page, that the decline and downfall of nations have ever been caused by irreligion ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... in July, I believe, since I first saw her, and her conversation and faultless manners gave assurance of a good and happy future. As I have not witnessed any decline, I can hardly believe in any, and still recall vividly the youthful wife, and her blithe account of her letters and homages from Goethe, and the details she gave of her intended visit to Weimar, and its disappointment. Her goodness to me and to my friends was ever ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... come over thee of late? Thou art of a mien as sorrowful as that of a sick steer. Can it be that thy stomach refuses longer to digest thy food? Come; permit me to examine thy teeth. Yes, by my soul; therein lies the secret. Thou hast a toothache and decline to complain, thinking that, by thy silence, I shall be saved a dentist's bill." But Pablo shook his head in negation. "Come!" roared old Don Miguel. "Open ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... to abandon, deliver up, forsake. abattre, to beat down. abme, m., abyss, chasm. abolir, to abolish, wipe out. abondance, f., abundance. abri, m., shelter; mettre l'—, to shield. absolu, absolute. abuser, to deceive. accabler, to overwhelm, crush. accepter, to accept; ne pas —, to decline. accompagner, to accompany. accord, m., chord (of music). accorder, to grant. accourir, to run, flock. acheter, to buy. achever (de), to finish. acte, m., act. action, f., action, deed. adieu, farewell. admettre, to admit. admirer, to ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... beat his brains out! Fear and piety, Religion to the Gods, peace, justice, truth, Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood, Instructions, manners, mysteries and trades, Degrees, observances, customs and laws, Decline to your confounding contraries; And let confusion live!—Plagues, incident to men, Your potent and infectious fevers heap On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica, Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt As lamely as their manners! Lust and liberty Creep in the minds ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... about Madam Schurman[424] and others, with which he was delighted, and could not restrain himself from praising God the Lord, that had raised up men, and reformers, and begun the reformation in Holland. He deplored the decline of the church in New England, and especially in Boston, so that he did not know what would be the final result. We inquired how it stood with the Indians, and whether any good fruit had followed his work. Yes, much, he said, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... order the Marriott at once. I decline to accept it as off the debt I owe you. It will do as a twenty-first birthday present, as I have received no news re Lovat Fraser. As soon as the book comes ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... east Portcullis, Ludgate, Temple Bar, and other places of public resort, according to the then bloody-minded custom, and the statute in that case made and provided. But after Colonel Guido Faux, Back, Thumbscrews, boots, and wedges, and Scavenger's daughters fell into a decline, from which, thank God, they have never, in this fair realm of England, recovered. I question even if the Jesuit Garnett and his fellows, albeit most barbarously executed, were tortured in prison; but it is certain that when Felton killed the Duke of Bucks at Portsmouth, and was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... enough to decline the invitation. He was well aware that nobody could see his light when the sun was shining. And he was afraid that other merrymakers in the farmyard might make matters far from merry for him. For Freddie Firefly feared all birds. At night ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... relative to himself became unfortunately verified; for his constitution, after this, began to decline, till at length his mortal destiny, in the eyes of his medical attendants, was sealed. But even then, when removed by pain and sickness from the discussion of political subjects, he never forgot this cause. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... wealthier proprietors of the district was getting built for himself, not on contract, but by the old mode of employing operatives on day's wages; and my master was to be permitted to rate as a full journeyman, though now considerably in his decline as a workman, on condition that the services of his apprentice should be rated so much lower than their actual value as to render master and man regarded as one lot—a fair bargain to the employer, and somewhat more. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... is gradually seen to be improper, but which at one time did not conflict with the generally accepted morality, then the warfare on the system should not include warfare on the men themselves, unless they decline to amend their ways and to dissociate themselves from the system. There are many good, unimaginative citizens who in politics or in business act in accordance with accepted standards, in a matter-of-course way, without questioning these standards; until ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... about ten days in London, and had been confined to the house on account of my studies, my health began again to decline; and I saw that it would not be well, my poor body being only like a wreck or brand brought out of the devil's service, to spend my little remaining strength in study, but that I now ought to set about actual engagement in the Lord's work. I wrote to the committee of the ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... said huskily. "I wanta dance with you—you—you blond beast." Seeing no way to decline to dance with the half-drunk girl, he put his arm around her and started off. Hester's tongue was no longer in control, but her feet followed his unerringly. When the music stopped, she whispered, "Take me—ta-take me to th' th' ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... Dr. Franklin, Mr. Jay, and Mr. Laurens, a Minister Plenipotentiary for negotiating peace, then expected to be effected through the mediation of the Empress of Russia. The same reasons obliged me still to decline; and the negotiation was in fact never entered on. But, in the autumn of the next year, 1782, Congress receiving assurances that a general peace would be concluded in the winter and spring, they renewed my appointment on the 13th ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... The chapter was closed. She saw nothing in front of her but decline and ruin. She had escaped the five scourges of her profession, but part of the price of this immunity was that through keeping herself to herself she had not a friend. Despite her profession, and because ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... look the withering disgust of the modern world in a conservative gentleman who has been lured to go with it a little way, only to be bitten. 'I decline to believe it,' he said ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gathering-place for honest folk from the provinces or from other lands; the next floor had been divided into a succession of private rooms, comfortably furnished, where, screened behind thick curtains, dined somewhat "irregular" patrons: lovers who were in either the dawn, the zenith, or the decline of their often ephemeral fancies. On the top floor, spacious salons, richly decorated, were used for large and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... glade; there was no outlook, except northeastward upon distant hilltops or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and private like a room. By the time I had made my arrangements 15 and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal; and as soon as the sun went down, I pulled my cap over my eyes ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... notwithstanding its income having been largely augmented by fines of aldermen and chamber and bridge-house leases, which within the last fifteen years had exceeded L200,000. It was clear that when these extraordinary accessories to the City's income ceased—and they had already begun to decline—the City's debt would increase and would indeed become desperate unless some remedy were found. The committee, therefore, made certain suggestions with the view of cutting down expenses. The City ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Twain's home. The beautiful house in Hartford was a place of welcome and merriment, of many guests and of happy children. Especially of happy children: during these years—the latter half of the 'eighties—when Mark Twain's fortunes were on the decline, his children were at the age to have a good time, and certainly they had it. The dramatic stage which had been first set up at George Warner's for the Christmas "Prince and Pauper" performance was brought over and set up in the Clemens ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a further step in which disciples of Mr. Russell would perhaps decline to follow me. We have already seen what is meant by the co-ordination of the sciences into a single body of deductions from definite ultimate postulates, though in what we have said about the task we were content to speak provisionally as if the sciences of 'what is' were all ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... and morning faces, because they were not prepared to reconsider or review the greatest decision they had ever made. There are some things on which no wise man will think of changing his mind. And he will decline to contemplate a change because he knows that his wardrobe holds no better garb. It is of no use doffing the robes of princes to don the rags of paupers. 'Eighty and six years have I served Christ,' exclaimed the triumphant Polycarp; and he mounted the heavens in wreathing smoke and leaping ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Republic (GDR). The democratic FRG embedded itself in key Western economic and security organizations, the EC, which became the EU, and NATO, while the Communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The decline of the USSR and the end of the Cold War allowed for German unification in 1990. Since then, Germany has expended considerable funds to bring Eastern productivity and wages up to Western standards. In January 1999, Germany and 10 other ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... dispensation of God that I should be in the battle," he said; "but it is not to my taste. I never had any option in the matter. I dislike contests, but I could not decline this controversy without disgrace. When Ireland showed herself ready to adopt a righteous constitution, and do her full duty, I ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... before the war. He is the Chairman of a ridiculous body that calls itself the County War Agricultural Committee, that lays absurd eggs in the shape of sub-Committees to vex landlords. They have been going about among my farmers and want me to turn out three of them. I decline, so I suppose they'll do it for me. And they're going to plough up a lot of the park—without my leave. And Chicksands is the head and front of the whole business. He came here to-day to try and coax me into submission. ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... liberties, the light in which I contemplated my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From this resolution I have in no instance departed, and being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline as inapplicable to myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive department, and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I am placed, ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... behalf of his country was always a grateful employment; but to leave his home for months, and to be engaged in the monotonous routine of deliberative bodies, was most distasteful to him; but, true to the great maxim of his life—never to seek or to decline a public trust—he accepted the appointment; and took his seat in the early part of January, 1825. A casual view of his career in that body, which extended from 1825 to 1833—a period of nearly eight ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... perhaps one-third above the Yugoslav average. The economy emerged from a mild recession in 2000 with tourism, banking, and public investments leading the way. Unemployment remains high, at about 17%, with structural factors slowing its decline. While macroeconomic stabilization has largely been achieved, structural reforms lag because of deep resistance on the part of the public and lack of strong support from politicians. Growth, while impressive at about 3% to 4% for the last several years, has been stimulated, in part, through high ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... story, master; but it was this way. You see, my father died quite young in a decline, and left my mother to struggle on with eight of us as she could. She buried six, one after another; and then she died herself, and brother Ben and I were left alone. But we were mighty fond of one another, and got on very well. I got plenty of employment, weaving ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... our gracious Master, that those who, by reason of invincible ignorance, cannot read, yet may share in the reward promised to such as "hear and keep" the sayings of this book. And no doubt thousands have received this reward since the begun decline of Popery, who were privileged to hear and to "know the joyful sound" of the gospel proclaimed by the heralds of the Reformation. In the times of Luther, Calvin, Knox, and others, who were their compeers and successors, many were ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... compare it with the present; and then what satisfaction I feel at having followed your counsels! For, indeed, without you, I should have played the miserable and ridiculous part which a woman always plays in her decline from having been beautiful and surrounded by admirers. What could I have done at this hour? I should have vainly striven to retain around me a selfish and ungrateful world of gross and shameful men, who court women only that they may turn them to the service ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... facts were as you so confidently state them to be, I might possibly be induced to cast in my lot with yours; but, fortunately for humanity, they are not so, and I must therefore most emphatically decline." ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... wars stimulate, and what kinds depress the intellectual life of nations. The subject is very wide. It would embrace a discussion of the effects of war when it occurs during a period of great literary and artistic splendor, as in Athens and in the Italian Republics; whether intellectual decline is postponed or accelerated by the interests and passions of the strife; whether the preliminary concentration of the popular heart may claim the merit of adding either power or beauty to the intellectual forms which bloom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... playing, "I'll be in Scotland before ye!" and something within me, a lurking hope, I suppose, seemed to founder and collapse—but only for a moment. It was after four in the afternoon. Soon day would be declining. And I seemed to remember that the decline of day in Egypt had moved me long ago—moved me as few, rare things have ever done. Within half an hour I was alone, far up the long road—Ismail's road—that leads from the suburbs of Cairo to the Pyramids. And then Egypt took me like a child by ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... manufactures of flannels, stockings, and cloth. The cotton trade, formerly the great staple of the Netherlands, has of late years been greatly on the decline. ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... the unmanly fear of envious Tempers. They apprehend being traduced or sneer'd at, by the common Herd of Mankind for their insolent Zeal, and their daring to set up to serve others, and improve their Countrymen, and therefore they decline it. It is odd how any good, not to say any great Mind, can be overaw'd by so mean a Modesty, by so poor a Terror, as the Censure or Malice of those he labours to serve, and yet Hundreds (I speak from long Experience) ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... ne'er relate, Nor what he did, nor how he left his mate; And since contemp'raries decline the task; 'Twere folly, such details of me to ask. We're told, howe'er, when ready to depart, With flowing tears she press'd him to her heart; And on his arm a brilliant bracelet plac'd, With hair around her picture nicely trac'd; This guard in full remembrance of my love, She ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... hand may fail him not— The other's strength decline No task of succor that his lot May claim from son ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... Receive my thanks, lady, for your intended favors, and believe me not the less grateful though I may decline ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... considered it his duty not to delay a moment longer than was necessary, he was compelled to decline Madame Paskiewich's invitation to remain for breakfast, and, accompanied by Herr Groben, who wished to bid farewell to Green, he hurried to the boats. In a few minutes they were again pulling down towards ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... madame! In two weeks Isabel Valois will be eighteen. If she is not forthcoming I will invoke the law. If I am forced to fight you, you will not have a cent from me. I will never marry you! I decline to provide for you or yours, unless you yield this girl up. You must leave the country before the senatorial election. That ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... calm. Her calmness seemed to say to those responsible, and even to the not-responsible passenger: "You got me into this and it is inconceivable that you should not get me out of it. I have always been looked after and protected, and I must be looked after and protected now. I absolutely decline to be worried." But Miss Thompkins was worried, she was very seriously alarmed; ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... The only muss now common to them is the mus tribe, comprising the mus ratus, or ordinary rat (so called from its haunting ordinaries, we suppose), and the timid mouse, with which the Bird of Wisdom is contented to put up when the sparrows decline to come to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... treat it with scorn, if it did not seem to deserve some credit from a reference to you. Prejudiced, as I know you are, I should be sorry to suppose you capable of propagating such a sentiment, or decline the opportunity of doing justice to my character, and in some degree your own. And this for two reasons: first, the gross falsehood of the insinuation; and, secondly, to preserve a consistency in your own character, which must suffer from your placing such confidence in ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... aged 56 years, of an excessively corpulent habit, had been affected for a great number of years with a scirrhus of the right breast. Finding her health decline, she at last disclosed it, and in coincidence with the opinion of Dr. WARREN, sen. I amputated it on the 30th of May, of the present year. We however informed her friends, that the probability of eradicating the disease was extremely small. ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... retirement! friend to life's decline, Retreats from care, that never must be mine, How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labor with an age of ease; Who quits a world where strong temptations try, And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly! For him no wretches, born ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... follow that University Extension, as the germ of it, presents a field for the very highest academic ambition? To my mind it appears that existing types of university have reached a point where further development in the same direction would mean decline. In English universities the ideal is 'scholarship.' Scholarship is a good thing, and we produce it. But the system which turns out a few good scholars every year passes over the heads of the great mass of ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... knowledge can be so incessantly appealed to by the incidents of every day, as the knowledge of the processes by which he lives and acts. At every moment he is in danger of disobeying laws which, when disobeyed, may bring years of suffering, decline of powers, premature decay. Sanitary reformers preach in vain, because they preach to a public which does not understand the laws of life—laws as rigorous as those of Gravitation or Motion. Even the sad experience of others yields us ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... no one could possibly understand that a prima donna just on the edge of decline could possibly wish to advertise a rising light. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... our inquiry into the origin of the French Monarchy or the decline of oligarchic Venice, we examined not only the characters, incidents, policies immediately connected with the subject, but attempted an answer to the question—What is the place of these incidents in the universal scheme of things? so in the treatment of the theme now before ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... esteem the half-blown rose, The image of thy blush, and summer's honour! Whilst yet her tender bud doth undisclose That full of beauty Time bestows upon her: No sooner spreads her glory in the air, But straight her wide-blown pomp comes to decline; She then is scorn'd, that late adorn'd the fair. So fade the roses of ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... seventy-two thousand rupees a year paid by the Company, the said Phousdar received but thirty-two thousand, and that the remainder was received by the said Warren Hastings and his banian. That the Phousdar, though repeatedly ordered to attend the board, did, under various pretences, decline attending, until the 19th of May, when, the letters stated be his, that is, under his hand and seal, being shown to him, it was proposed by a member of the board that he should be asked whether he had ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Spiridion swung a censer full of perfumes around the chamber. At length the duke requested Count Frill to give them a song. The Bird of Paradise would never sing for pleasure, only for fame and a slight check. The count begged to decline, and at the same time asked for a guitar. The signora sent for hers; and his Excellency, preluding with a beautiful simper, gave them some slight ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Fish, was in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. moving from the Bull into the Ram. Now the Bull, Marduk, was the special god of Babylon, and the time when he yielded his place to the Ram was also, as a matter of fact, the time of the decline of Babylon. The gradual advance of the Ram not only upset the calendar, and made all the seasons wrong; but seemed, since it coincided with the fall of the Great City, to upset the world in general! Of course Euripides would know nothing of this. ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... heartless seducer—a shame, a blot, a stigma upon the aristocracy of Florence;—and now that you are acquainted with his real character, you will recognize the prudence of the step which I shall take to-morrow—that is, to inform him that henceforth the Count and Countess of Arestino must decline to receive him again at their villa. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... witnessing today what happened in the Roman empire during the decline of polytheism. Draper states: "Between that period during which a nation has been governed by its imagination, and that in which it submits to reason, there is a melancholy interval. The constitution of man is such that, for a long time after he has ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... independent of mine—in some degree incompatible with mine. Even if his society were given to me, his heart must be at his home, and with his family. You see I am no proud stoic, but a man who dares to look at life—the decline of life, such as it is—as it must be. Different, Mr. Percy, in ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... degree with that of the theatre," George remarked; "because other amusements do not possess such an infatuation. For my own part, I should not mind going to a concert; but I very much disapprove of the theatre, and should never hesitate to decline going there." ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... triumph sound, Well might the voice of gladness ring around; Where sickness raged, or want allied to shame, Sure as the sun his well-timed succour came; Food for the starving child, and warmth and wine For age that totter'd in its last decline. From him they shared the embers' social glow; He fed the flame that glanced along the snow, When winter drove his storms across the sky, And pierced ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... taught and sent them ringing through the schools and salons and wherever thinking people gathered themselves together. Yes, persecution has its compensation. In its state of persecution a religion is pure, if ever; its decline begins when its prosperity commences. Prosperous men are never wise and seldom good. Woe unto you when all men shall speak ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... have some friends, some golden friends, Whose worth will not decline: A tawny Irish terrier, a purple shading pine, A little red-roofed cottage that So proudly I ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... that, is not likely to fear any living son of skirting Ishmael; but as to meddling with dead men's bones, why it is neither my calling nor my inclination; so, after thanking you for the favour of your choice, as they say, when they make a man a corporal in Kentucky, I decline serving." ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... attempt to gauge the duration of the King's life, and when it is considered that he was a skilled physician, and Edward a sickly boy, fast sinking into a decline, it is to be feared that he let sincerity give way to prudence when he proclaimed that, in his fifty-sixth year the King would be troubled with divers illnesses. "Speaking generally of the whole duration of ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... and held her forcibly down in her seat, while with the other I endeavoured to assist her in the hopeless task of stopping the runaway ponies. Everything was against us: the ground was slightly on the decline; the thaw had not yet reached the sheltered road we were travelling, and the wheels rung against its frozen surface as they spun round with a velocity that seemed to add to the excitement of our flying steeds. Ever and anon we bounded and bumped over some rut or inequality that was deeper than usual. ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the quasi-integral parts of justice, which are to do good, and to decline from evil, and the opposite vices. Under this head there are ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... value of its own. Without greatly stretching a point it might be taken to represent a social condition, a phase, as it were, in our development. In a certain obscure way, it was an epoch-marking structure. Its building closed the era of primitive Newport, its decline corresponded with the end of the pre-palatial period—an era ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... may also indicate difficulties for families, in some situations, to feed and educate their children and for women to enter the labor force. Rates below two children indicate populations decreasing in size and growing older. Global fertility rates are in general decline and this trend is most pronounced in industrialized countries, especially Western Europe, where populations are projected to decline dramatically over ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... missiles. Then, in the dark of night, at the instance of some so-called politicians, the mob moved on to the Parliament buildings, and, most unfortunately for Montreal, deliberately set them on fire; which act resulted ultimately in the removal of the seat of government to Ottawa and the decline of the glory of the ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... "You decline! All is over then!" murmured the British agent sadly. "The United Kingdom falls to the share of the Americans; ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... to share in your generous devotion to our common Father, and to assist you as best I could. You are now—thanks to your own valor—victorious and secure. I must decline your bounty, for from this moment I renounce the soldier. Here is my sword, madam; since Rome and you no longer require it, I shall not need it; nowhere would I more willingly resign it than thus at ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... wished to have her time uninterrupted, since as she had no prospect of any other means of support, it was necessary, by such little additions as she could make to her small fund, to prevent its quick diminution, yet she could not decline the civilities so obligingly offered her, but avoided all intimacy with any of them as foreign to her plan, and hurtful to her interest. Thus was she circumstanced in respect to the neighbourhood ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... statements made by her on a different occasion, and which were rather different from the statements she made here: did she make any different statement to you at any time from what she made here yesterday?-Unless compelled, I would decline to say anything that would criminate myself or her; but give it as my opinion generally that the witnesses, without naming any of them, gave a statement which I won't call untruthful, but which I say was not at statement ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... to flavor, too often makes its vengeful protest in dyspepsia. It is said underdone mutton cost Napoleon the battle of Leipsic, and eventually his crown. I wonder, now and then, if the prevalence of divorce has any connection with the decline of home cooking? ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... rupture at which we have been present he found him in no state to deal with worries: he was seriously ailing, it was the beginning of worse things and not a time to put his attention to the stretch. After this excursion Nick had gone back to town saddened by his patient's now unmistakably settled decline, but rather relieved that he had had himself to make no confession. It had even occurred to him that the need for making one at all might never come up. Certainly it wouldn't if the ebb of Mr. Carteret's strength should continue unchecked. He might pass away in the persuasion that ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... came. After we have eaten the Junkett, he shall beginne it again." "By no Means," said I, "for I love Talking more than Reading." However, it was not soe to be, for Rose woulde not be foyled; and as it woulde not have been good Manners to decline the Hearinge in Presence of the Poet, I was constrayned to suppresse a secret Yawne, and feign Attention, though, Truth to say, it soone wandered; and, during the last halfe Hour, I sat in a compleat Dreame, tho' not unpleasant one. ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... island. Moreover, I saw that my presence was becoming a source of serious inconvenience to my host and to his family. They were attached to me, that I could not doubt; but neither could I doubt that it was unpleasant to them to have old acquaintances decline any further intercourse with them because they had allowed a Batrachian to sit at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... for beheading a marshal. It was not a question of peculation, but of offending the great cardinal, for which he was really put on trial, and the case ended in his being found guilty of malfeasance in office and executed. His brother died in prison three months afterwards,—of decline, so the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... which they attend is but a fallen University; it has doubtless some remains of good, for human institutions decline by gradual stages; but decline, in spite of all seeming embellishments, it does; and what is perhaps more singular, began to do so when I ceased to be a student. Thus, by an odd chance, I had the very last of the very best of ALMA MATER; the same thing, I hear (which ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 21-December 1, Mrs. Ellis Meredith of Denver a principal evening speaker. With the withdrawal of Miss Gregg and the conviction that no amendment of any kind could be carried under the existing law, the interest of the local organizations began to decline and the two brave and faithful women who had carried the heaviest part of the burden were now finding it too heavy for their strength. Mrs. Young took the headquarters to her own home in Broken Bow and Mrs. Marble did all kinds of work at ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... his domestic peace, and now exposed to peril of his life, by the falsehoods your wife has told. I tell you that we do not impute her crimes to you. If this is justice, you will prove it by doing your full duty to my husband. If you decline any part of this duty—if you countenance her slanders—if you shrink from my husband's side in whatever we may have to go through—if you do not either compel your wife to do us right, or do it yourself in opposition to her—you are her partner ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... permission we will decline your offer," Albert said. "My father is detained at the Tower, and my mother and sister are alone, and will ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... citizen to make his choice whether, and in what manner, he shall serve his country. Never have responsibilities so arduous and so urgent been laid upon the citizens of any community: and never have the citizens been so free to choose or to decline the burden. The world will judge Great Britain, and judge Democracy, according to the measure of our ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... his admission to the French Academy until his death he wrote little of value. A Lettre a une dame sur la perte d'un perroquet, in verse, may serve to represent the decline of his genius. His popularity waned and was eclipsed by that of the vigorous writers and philosophical thinkers that followed him. His graceful sketches were soon to be forgotten in those terrible scenes that closed the century, which the most morbid and foreboding ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... by that time started back to shirt-sleeves, through a sudden decline in the sugar-market, and it had already unbuttoned its vest, so to speak, when Samuel went to work. His mind was that exquisite TABULA RASA that a university education sometimes leaves, but he had both energy and influence, so he used his former ability as a dodging half-back in twisting through ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... rule of Rome it would not be easy to find thirty cases of martyrs burned at the stake by "the bloudie Bishops," between the fifteenth century and the martyrdom of Myln. By 1560 the old Church was in such a hideous decline—with ruffianly men of quality in high spiritual places; with priests who did not attend Mass, and in many cases could not read; with churches left to go to ruin; with license so notable that, in one foundation, the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... vice versa, which, of course, refers also to any ordinary delivery contract. In fact, all transactions for delivery are settled either by previous transfer or by fulfilment. It is noticeable how the stocks in New-York increase or decline, in accordance with the tenders, against "futures". No doubt, the great majority of the dealers intend to close their contracts before they fall due, and the opportunity to do this, presents itself every ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... embrace; In vain his children round his bosom creep, And weep to see their mother weep, Fettering their father with their little arms; What are to him the wars alarms? What are to him the distant foes? He at the earliest dawn of day To daily labor went his way; And when he saw the sun decline, He sat in peace beneath his vine:— The king commands, the peasant goes, From all he lov'd on earth he flies, And for his monarch toils, and fights, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... into consideration, and if you are able, upon such terms, to again meet my son, we will wait upon you together, where and when you will appoint; but if the gentleness of your nature will make the effort too severe for you, scruple not to decline it, for Mortimer, when he knows your pleasure, will submit to it ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... town after town and country after country where he had taken part in the festivities given and received by the officers, yet no one knew this for a certainty. There was no prudery about him; he would not decline to join a pleasure party; he in no way offended against military standards; but when questioned as to his affairs of the heart, he either kept silence or answered with a jest. To the words, "How are you, commandant?" ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... cats. And so we find this family of five women living in peace and comfort, with their books and pictures and cats, at Thirty Torrington Square, in a drowsy, faded, ebb-tide mansion. Maria was never strong; she fell into a decline and passed away. The management of the household then devolved on Christina. Her burdens must have been heavy in those days, or did she make them light by cheerful doing? She gave up society, refused the thought of marriage, and joined that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... of sunshine had been swiftly followed by storms. The Governor Absolute had, from the outset, been placed in a false position. Before he came to the Netherlands the Queen had refused the sovereignty. Perhaps it was wise in her to decline so magnificent an offer; yet certainly her acceptance would have been perfectly honourable. The constituted authorities of the Provinces formally made the proposition. There is no doubt whatever that the whole population ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... reached its climax and then the curve began to decline, until in the eighteenth century and in the early part of the nineteenth century glass-making reached its ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... good for our fighting men. I repeat it. But just a tiny spark of animation might be retained in the feminine eye when it alights upon an old friend who is debarred from taking arms. Just a spark, otherwise we shall go into a melancholy decline. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... canal and round Point Conception, stopping at San Luis Obispo to land my friend, as I may truly call him after this long passage together, Captain Wilson, whose most earnest invitation to stop here and visit him at his rancho I was obliged to decline. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... that he was very ill. At nine in the morning his laundress entered his chamber; he asked her, with a dying voice, if his fire was kindled? and a few moments after he died." His disease was an hereditary consumption, and his decline must have been gradual; speaking had become with him a great pain, but he laboured with the same tranquillity of mind to his last hour; and, with Bayle, it was death alone which, could interrupt ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... bloom in the Spring, Tra la, To purchase henceforth I decline. The hawkers those blossoms who bring— Ah! bah!— Will "swop 'em for most anything," Ha! ha! But as soon as you've bought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... you ought not to decline! It isn't a question of enjoyment; it's a question of justice to Ruth and to me. You accuse us of being disloyal and ungrateful, so it's only fair you should hear our defence. I will bring down the ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... said Bella, taking refuge in a touch of timely resentment, 'that I may not be questioned. You must excuse me if I decline ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... time of the Saxons," (that is, from the commencement of the reign of William the Conqueror,) "till the reign of Edward the first, (1272 to 1307,) the several county courts and sheriffs courts did decline in their interest and authority. The methods by which they were broken were two-fold. First, by granting commissions to the sheriffs by writ of JUSTICIES, whereby the sheriff had a particular jurisdiction granted him ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... clash. There is but one right thing to be done, but one right cause to pursue, all things considered; and whatever is in conflict with this cannot be a duty, whatever may seem to be its claim. In some parts of this country, the sacraments are refused to those who decline to have their children attend Catholic schools where such are convenient; but there is not, so far as I am informed, in those parts, any rule making it obligatory upon pastors to establish such schools. In other sections, to withhold ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... the day who has a Perryian pen in hand, is pleased to exercise it on the decline of the drama; one of the legitimate targets of penny-a-liners. But how inadequately are the goose quills, and ostrich quills, phoenix quills, and roc quills, of the few standard critics of the age, directed towards the monstrous abuse of public patience which will render the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... grandmother ever tells me about the beginning of this story is that when the lovely Ann Mary was nineteen years old she "fell into a decline," as they called it. She grew pale and thin, never smiled, could not eat or sleep, and lay listlessly on the bed all day, looking sadly at Hannah as she ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... go to his house now is very pleasant. For a long time after their first baby died on the day they entered a new house, before even the beds were up, it seemed as if Mrs Luscombe, a gentle, delicate woman, 'with the deuce of a will of her own,' Luscombe says, was going to decline and die too. The new baby, which was to have killed her, has put new life into her instead. They are touchingly proud of it, and very happy altogether. I do like ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... had made! He could never get over this gulf which he himself had thrust between them. This was no guise in which to meet a woman of her high breeding. Under his breath he cursed the impulse that had urged him to decline to attend the ball at the British embassy. There he would have met her as his own true self, a soldier, a polished gentleman of the world, of learning and breeding. Nancy would have brought them together, calls would have been exchanged, and he would have defied Karloff. Then ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... political conditions in the South during the decline of the Reconstruction regime many Congressmen spoke with seeming authority. Two speeches of note on Southern conditions were made, during the Forty-second Congress, by Robert Brown Elliott. On May 30, 1872, he ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... Nothing is so fascinating as the study of a progress—a development or a decline. The inevitability of the end makes it more engrossing, for it relieves it of the undue eagerness of curiosity, the ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... though indefatigable, could not keep pace with his invention. 'Il Flauta [Transcriber's Note: Flauto] Magico,' 'La Clemenza di Tito,' and a 'Requiem' which he had hardly time to finish, were among his last efforts. The composition of the 'Requiem,' in the decline of his bodily powers, and under great mental excitement, hastened his dissolution. He was seized with repeated fainting-fits, brought on by his extreme assiduity in writing, in one of which he expired. A few ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... sensational periodicals left on every doorstep twenty years ago; while publishers of children's books are trying to give us a clean, safe, juvenile literature, and while some nickel novel publishers are even admitting a decline in the sale of their wares; in spite of these evidences of success, a warfare is still on, though its character ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... reasonable time for it, and which, if it contain their decision to come through without further condition, will be your warrant to ask General Ord to pass them through, as directed in the letter of the Secretary of War to him. If by their answer they decline to come, or propose other terms, do not have them pass through. And this being your whole duty, return ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... flesh and blood endure that those who but the other day had skulked unobserved in their antechambers, scornfully insulting men illustrious in their rank, sacred in their function, and venerable in their character, now in decline of life, and swimming on the wrecks of their fortunes,—that those miscreants should tell such men scornfully and outrageously, after they had robbed them of all their property, that it is more than enough, if they are allowed what will keep them from absolute ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... effect which the abrupt intelligence of this calamity might have on the queen, caused letters to be sent at brief intervals, containing accounts of the gradual decline of the prince's health, so as to prepare her for the inevitable stroke. Isabella, however, who through all her long career of prosperous fortune may be said to have kept her heart in constant training for the dark hour of adversity, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... The sovereign or his stadholder was to appear before the estates in person, and make his request for money. It was for the estates, after consultation with their constituents, to decide whether or not this petition (Bede) should be granted, and should a single branch decline compliance, the monarch was to wait with patience for a more favorable moment. Such had been the regular practice in the Netherlands, nor had the reigning houses often had occasion to accuse the estates ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... long forenoon Fernando Stevens remained behind the works occasionally picking off a gunner at long range. When the hot August sun began to decline in the West, the roar of artillery seemed to increase rather than diminish. At last he heard ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... the place of constant activity; it had frightened her, had set before her a vision that her life had reached its peak, and henceforth would go down the decline. Into that empty place had come a ringing, peremptory call back to personal and physical youth and excitement and burning sensations. And with that blinding rebirth of physical youth had come a doubt of all that had ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... much, and neglected the slow, solid work of preparation, and the no less important follow-up work; this had much to do with the early decline of the entire organization. The women's end of the movement suffered first and most quickly. From 1890 on, the women's membership became smaller and smaller, until practical interest by women and for women in the body ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... is war, and I have learned a little about that game 'over there.' And I have learned something about it in my athletic activities. The first essential is to decline to play the enemy's game. Let's discover his plan of campaign. As I read this document, the thing that hits my eye is this: do they really want the things they ask for, or is the whole thing a blind? What I mean is, do they really want war or peace? I say let's feel them out. If they are after ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... I think I get the idea. You have no blame for the lucky few who naturally decline to vacate the pleasant nest they were born into, you only despise the all-powerful and stupid mass of the nation for allowing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sir?" exclaimed little Mr. Crampton, bouncing off his chair. "You don't mean to say that you are such a fool as to decline the place?" ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... role in the group of memory in the individual. Without history social groups would, no doubt, rise and decline, but they would neither ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... and better in style as your writing deteriorates. I am very sorry to gather from your last that you look coldly on my scheme. I am sure that those to whom I have mentioned the idea would decline to entertain it if it lacked your active support, so I trust you will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... respect to my complexion. If it had been as dark as any nigger's, I should have been just as happy and as useful, and as much respected by those whose respect I value; and as to his offer of bleaching me, I should, even if it were practicable, decline it without any thanks. As to the society which the process might gain me admission into, all I can say is, that, judging from the specimens I have met with here and elsewhere, I don't think that I shall lose much by being excluded from it. So, gentlemen, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... sharply, "just have a care how you use that tongue of yours. This is a free country, and if I choose to decline your whiskey, there's no law against it ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Nothing can happen to our machines here. For one, I decline to stay out of the rescuing party. Besides, perhaps I may get a chance to snap off a lovely picture of the Good Samaritans ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... not and I never had any pension or allowance chargeable on the department of Foreign Affairs. I am therefore not necessitated to decline keeping it. I cannot comprehend how your mistake has arisen. I request you to rectify it, as regards yourself and the other Ministers, for I cannot suffer such an ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... rather extraordinary that in this age of superlative refinement, the drama should rather be upon the decline than otherwise in regard to the talent of the performers, but it appears to me that such is really the case both in England and France. I can just remember when Mrs. Siddons, John Kemble, Charles Kemble, Young, Mrs. Jordan, Irish Johnson, Munden, Emery, etc. ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... with concentrated indignation, "I decline to continue this game. A human fool I can tolerate for a partner, but if I am to be hampered ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... the proprietor of the carriage," replied Henry, assuming an important air, "and if you decline to leave it I shall call the Sergent de Ville." Then turning to the porter, he told him to put the bags in ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... to the great problems of the day. Such an excess of sensibility, again, as makes a man nervously unwilling to reveal his real thoughts, or to take part in a frank discussion of principles, would be an obstacle to intimacy. Fitzjames might not improbably decline to take the trouble necessary to soothe the vanity, or thaw the shyness of such a person, and might perhaps too hastily set him down for a coward or a 'poor creature.' But when, as was often the case, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... sale of them was his expression, but I must do Dr. Johnson the justice to say, that, that advice was given me with a proviso that no person was in the secret but himself, for on my informing him to the contrary, he declined or seemd to decline the affair of getting them printed for me, which I perceiving sent to him for the manuscript, foolishly entertaining a slight suspicion which I much reproach myself for, that some other motives besides ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... occasion required, rebuke with seriousness as well as point. Always a welcome guest at the houses of both clergy and gentry, he is said on one occasion to have met with a laird whose hospitality he had thought it proper to decline, and on being asked the reason for the interruption of his visits, answered, 'Ye ken, an' I ken; but, laird, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... the arts of Europe went forth from that chamber, and it was brought about in great part by the very excellencies of the man who had thus marked the commencement of decline. The perfection of execution and the beauty of feature which were attained in his works, and in those of his great contemporaries, rendered finish of execution and beauty of form the chief objects of all artists; and thenceforward ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... Palmer—A native of New Jersey—An earnest worker, visiting and aiding soldiers' families and dispensing the charities of the Society among them and the destitute families of refugees—Her labors were greater than her strength—Her death occasioned by a decline, the result of over exertion in ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... find that its bad character has brought about its practical extinction in this country save in the mountain fastnesses of Wales and the craggy moors of Yorkshire. I also learn that its extended wings measure thirty-six inches on an average. I must decline to provide an asylum for such an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... MISS WOOLER,—I have delayed answering your letter in the faint hope that I might be able to reply favourably to your inquiries after my sister's health. This, however, is not permitted me to do. Her decline is gradual and fluctuating, but its nature is not doubtful. The symptoms of cough, pain in the side and chest, wasting of flesh, strength, and appetite, after the sad experience we have had, cannot but be regarded by ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... and you know very well that I have always been the first to rejoice in the very friendly relations between us and—er—my good tenants. This Gallup person is not one of them. There is not the smallest necessity to know him, and what's more, I decline to know ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... existence. They are merely Mental Images, or Thought-Forms in the Infinite Mind of the Absolute. Their whole existence and appearance depends upon their Mental Conception and Retention in the Infinite Mind. In It they have their birth, rise, growth, decline and death. ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... some forty years pastor of a great New York church, warning me that it was worse than folly to extend our plants and our operations. He was sure we were running unwarranted risks, that our oil supply would probably fail, the demand would decline, and he, with many others, sometimes I ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... century B.C.; what eddies and whirlpools of controversies were surging in the chaos of thought, what transformations of the old philosophies were taking place everywhere, what eclecticisms and syncretisms and realisms and nominalisms were affecting the mind of Hellas. The decline of philosophy during this period is no less remarkable than the loss of freedom; and the two are not unconnected with each other. But of the multitudinous sea of opinions which were current in the age of Aristotle we have no exact ...
— Philebus • Plato
... for the long vacations, a little group of five would vow that during the summer we would read all of Motley's "Dutch Republic" or, more ambitious still, all of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." When we returned at the opening of school and three of us announced we had finished the latter, each became skeptical of the other two. We fell upon each other in a sort of rough-and-tumble examination, in which no quarter was given or received; but the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... bowing low, with pointed formality, "excuse me if I decline either to disclaim or acquiesce in the knowledge you impute to me. If I am acquainted with any secret intrusted to me by Dr. Riccabocca, it is for me to use my own discretion how best to guard it. And for the rest, after the Scotch earl, whose words your ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have quilted or net armour. The initial letters are sometimes large, in the fashion of those in the Bible of Charles the Bald, but very inferior in execution. In this MS. we may trace something, I think, of the decline ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... relationship to the Great Sun. At that time they had diminished to an insignificant power, and were overawed by their more numerous and more powerful neighbors, the Choctaws and Muscagees or Alabamas. Their legends recorded this constant decline, but assigned no reason for it. They could now not bring more than two thousand warriors into the field. Gayarie says not more than six hundred; but those contemporaneous with planting the colony of Orleans say, some two thousand, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... and seemly in my house. But inasmuch as there is cause of offence in him, and that he has this day refused obedience to his lawful superior, and has not come at the bidding of the prior, I cannot but own him in fault, and decline to have further dealings with him. I do not know whether he is yet at Chad. I have not seen him since his farewell last evening. But if he be yet there, let the Lord of Mortimer, or you, holy father, send a company of ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city, rather than of the empire: and, tho my reading and reflections began to point toward that object, some years ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... burning hydrogen, which in consequence of some great convulsion had been liberated in prodigious quantities, and then combining with other elements, had set this hapless world on fire? In such a fierce conflagration, the combustible gas would soon be consumed, and the glow would therefore begin to decline, subject, as in this case, to a second eruption, which occasioned the renewed outburst of light on the ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... passed: years of work and travel and constant growing fame. The youth had grown into a man, and his return to the scene of his former triumphs was the signal for a regathering of the clans to note his progress—or decline. The verdict was that from "Le Petit Prodige," he had evolved into something far more interesting—"Le Grand Prodige." Tall, handsome, strong, and with a becoming diffidence and a half-shy manner, his name went abroad, and he became ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... the judge, will permit me," interrupted Mr. Elder, "I should like to decline serving as a juryman on ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... disposed towards him, and asked him many questions in regard to Fred. Before he went home, he was not a little startled to receive an invitation to meet some of his friends in the town hall in the evening, which it was impossible for him to decline. ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... in spite of these memories of an extended connection, a sense as of some shrinkage or decline in the beaux jours of the Institution; which seems to have found its current run a bit thick and troubled, rather than with the pleasant plash in which we at first appeared all equally to bathe. I gather, as I try to reconstitute, that the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... judged me as I judged myself. I recalled to mind the Archbishop of Granada, and I thought I could hear Gil Blas predicting the failure of my works. We can not dismiss the public as we can our secretary; meanwhile, I surrendered to a too severe justice in order to decline others' opinions. A horrible thought suddenly came into my mind; my artistic life was ended, I was a worn-out man; in one word, to picture my situation in a trivial but correct manner, I had reached ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... golden, the sea was silver, on that October morning. It was the brilliant decline of the year. Edith stood with Jack on the veranda. He had his grip-sack in hand and was equipped for town. Both were silent ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... any modern writer who has yet undertaken the glorious task, to write a history of the Rise and Progress of the Roman Republic. What a work would eight volumes such as that before us on Hannibal have formed, in conjunction with Gibbon's immortal Decline and Fall! His ardent love of truth, his warm aspiration after the happiness of the human race, his profound and yet liberal religious feeling, as much gave him the spirit requisite for such an undertaking, as his extensive scholarship, his graphic power, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... time, in their more modern style of living, they do not require so many baskets, and the industry of making them is fast on the decline. Some of the old women, however, still continue to make such as are required for their own use, and a few others ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... They have in fact fluctuated in their dress. The English Quaker wore formerly a round hat. He wears it now with stays and loops. But even this fashion is not universal, and seems rather now on the decline. The American Quaker, on the other hand, has generally kept to the round hat. Black hoods were uniformly worn by the Quaker-women, but the use of these is much less than it was, and is still decreasing. The Green aprons also were ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... suggested evidently, as was the fight of Marduk with Tiamat, by the annual storms raging in Babylonia. Gilgamesh triumphs as does Marduk, but when once the summer solstice, which represents the sun's triumph, is past, the decline of the sun's strength begins to set in. This is indicated by the subsequent course ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... mine and thine Hastening quick to their decline: Thine 's a summer, mine 's no more, Though repeated to threescore. Threescore summers, when they're gone, Will appear ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.' The latter part of the eighteenth century produced not only the greatest of all biographies but also the history which can perhaps best claim the same rank, Edward Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.' History of the modern sort, aiming at minute scientific accuracy through wide collection of materials and painstaking research, and at vivid reproduction of the life, situations and characters of the past, had scarcely existed anywhere, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... maxims aside. And I liked this, for it got things done! I was bored to find, as I often did, these men in their homes quite old-fashioned again to suit sober old wives who still went to church. I remember one such elderly lady and the shock I unwittingly gave her. She had deplored the decline of churches; her own, she said, was barely half full. And I then tried to cheer her by an account of my last story, which was of an advertising man, a genius who in the last two years had made churches his especial line and by his up-to-date methods had packed ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... call, Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all. Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally The common interest, or endear the tie. To these we owe true friendship, love sincere, Each home-felt joy that life inherits here; Yet from the same we learn, in its decline, Those joys, those loves, those interests to resign; Taught half by reason, half by mere decay, To welcome death, and calmly pass away. Whate'er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf, Not one will change his neighbour with himself. The learned is happy nature to explore, The fool ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... a note from the Duke of Wellington declining to attend the Council on Wednesday, and desiring I would impart the same to Lord Grey and the King. He says that it would give rise to misrepresentations, and so it would. He is right to decline. It is, however, Peel who has prevented him, I am certain. When I told Peel on Saturday, he looked very grave, did not seem to like it, and said he must confer with the Duke first, as he should be sorry ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... on the sharp decline leading to the shore, and Jacques de Wissant got up and touched the ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, nor any bugle-call but 'lights out.' You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline, if you prefer—and without prejudice—for ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... trading vessel the previous fall, and which he had reserved for cases of emergency! I didn't believe that there was a Cossack in all north-eastern Siberia who was capable of reserving a bottle of liquor for any such length of time, and in view of his evident uneasiness we thought best to decline to partake of the liquid refreshments and to ask no further questions. It might be vodka, but it was not free from suspicion. Upon our return home I called our boy and inquired if he knew anything about the Cossack's liquor—how he obtained it, and where it came from at that season of ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... our point unnecessarily, we are anxious to make it perfectly plain. In the phase through which {29} religious thought is passing to-day there are few things more urgently needed than to dispel that interpretation of immanence which obliterates the line of demarcation between God and man. We may decline the mechanical dualism which placed the Creator altogether outside the universe, and yet embrace a view which for want of a better name might be called spiritual dualism, and which maintains the distinction of which we are speaking. What happens when that distinction ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... years in July, I believe, since I first saw her, and her conversation and faultless manners gave assurance of a good and happy future. As I have not witnessed any decline, I can hardly believe in any, and still recall vividly the youthful wife, and her blithe account of her letters and homages from Goethe, and the details she gave of her intended visit to Weimar, and its disappointment. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... nature of doctors; poked me about, and asked if there were decline in the family;' and in spite of the smile, the great blue eyes looked ghastly; 'and he forbade exertion, and ordered ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
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