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More "Withering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... free; we know the utter folly of appealing to the morality or humanity of a pro-slavery party, where the rights of a black man are involved; but when you insist on taking slaves into a free Territory, and smiting the land with this blighting, withering curse, we plant ourselves on our constitutional rights, and say, thus far shall you go, and ...
— Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do - Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio • Cydnor Bailey Tompkins
... cowardice. He tells how the enemy held out the white flag to coax our men to stop firing. Then, in awe-inspiring tones, he sobs forth a tale of dark and dismal war, how our soldiers respected the white flag and rested on their arms, only to be mowed down by a withering rifle fire from the canaille who represent the enemy in the field. Having got so far, he does not feel justified in stopping until he has thrown in some flowery language concerning a Boer cannonade upon British ambulance waggons, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... known sound of cartouches in the roof—one or two at first; then a trill, and last of all one loud noise and the thatch blew here and there, and the captives would have crawled aside on account of the heat that was withering the thorn-trees, and on account of wood and bricks flying at random. But I said, "Abide! Abide! Ye be Sahibs, and this is a Sahibs' war, O Sahibs. There is no order that ye should depart from this war." They did not understand my words. Yet they ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... long as they ought to be, and he tears up bits of moss and fern, and flings them at yer, and if any of them, even the tiniest bit, touches yer, why you're dead before the year is out. Then there's the walking ghost and the shadowy maid, and the brown lady, the same color as the bracken when it's withering up, and—and—why, what's the matter, ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... have been women who have crucified their very souls and the lineal ancestors of the present-day "antis" with withering scorn and criticism opposed every step. Yet some of those modern anti-suffragists possess a college degree, an opportunity which other women won for them in the face of universal ridicule; they ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... flower Blooming, withering in an hour, Ere thy gentle breast sustain Latest, fiercest, mortal pain, Hear a suppliant! Let me be Partner in thy destiny: That whene'er the fatal cloud Must thy radiant temples shroud; When deadly damps, impending now, Shall ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... scornful rage. "I should just like to see the fellow who first said that. Maybe I wouldn't enlighten him, and tell him what a hypocrite he was. Whoever said it, it is a decided untruth, and I know I wish to goodness I was grown up, because then," with withering emphasis, "I should not be trampled ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... ladies. Ladies withering into old maids. Nursing old women. Running errands for old men. Good for nothing else at last. Oh, you cant imagine the fiendish selfishness of the old people and the maudlin sacrifice of the young. It's more unbearable than any poverty: more horrible than any regular-right-down ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... for, no sooner had he made her thoroughly cognizant of the fact that he was not an innocent, but a willing, instrument in the abduction of poor Kate, than she sprang to her feet, and with a glance the most withering, and full of unconquerable hate and aversion, without a single other word, left the apartment and ascended to that of ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... turned towards him, in the crowd, from the first sight of the axe, and stamped upon his mind a look which he has stamped on mine as though I had stood beside him in the concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci: blighting a whole quarter of the town, as it stands withering away by grains: had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, and at its black, blind windows, and flitting up and down its dreary stairs, and growing out of the darkness of the ghostly galleries. The History is written in the Painting; ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... apparently fadeless quality of the pink bell-heather which had been given me by the weird-looking Highland fellow who called himself Jamie, for though three or four days had now passed since I first wore it, it showed no signs of withering. As a rule the delicate waxen bells of this plant turn yellow a few hours after they are plucked,—but my little bunch was as brilliantly fresh as ever. I kept it in a glass without water on the table in my sitting-room ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... of the green taxi, saw that. And he was so fearful lest the driver of the red omnibus should lose one withering participle of the apostrophe he had provoked, that he could not be bothered with the exigencies of traffic and the Rule ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... its powers. Instead of flying straight before it, and being inevitably overtaken, she ran at once to the river and galloped madly down the shallow margin. Before the flames were actually upon her, she was beyond the zone of their fury. But she felt the withering blast of them, and their appalling roar was in her ears. With starting eyes and wide, palpitating nostrils, she ran on and on, and stopped only when she sank exhausted in a rude cove. There she lay with panting sides and watched far behind her the wide red arc of ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... generous of guardians. But even they could not very long endure him; for, in His adverse moods, he was incarnate Distrust, and, having conceived a foul suspicion, his genius enabled him to give it such withering expression that it was not in the nature of a young man to pass it by as the utterance of transient madness. So they too left him, and he was utterly alone in the midst of a crowd of black dependants. We see from ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... her jam Captain Polkington hoed; at least he did for a little while, then he gradually ceased and stood leaning upon his hoe, lost in unhappy thought. At last he moved, and, gathering the withering weeds that lay beside the path, carried them to an old basket which he had left beside the garden wall. With the weeds he picked up the torn fragments of card which Julia had dropped beside the doorstep; he let them fall into the basket with the ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... person who congratulated Lothair, though the high-sheriff had pushed forward for that purpose, but, in his awkward precipitation, he got involved with the train of the Hon. Lady Clotworthy, who bestowed on him such a withering glance, that he felt a routed man, and gave up the attempt. There were many kind and some earnest words. Even St. Aldegonde acknowledged the genius of the occasion. He was grave, graceful, and dignified, and, addressing ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the humble house, Thou hast awaked; but who will tend thee? O Mother, wilderness about thee! Thy children, withering; and something, Like humming bees, sounds ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... grossest materials into a fuel, that imperceptibly feeds hopes, which aspire above common enjoyment. Despair, since the birth of my child, has rendered me stupid—soul and body seemed to be fading away before the withering ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... custom of this clime, Even from immemorial time, We, or our forefathers old (As in Withering's list enrolled) Have in occupation been Of all nooks and corners green Where the swelling meadows sweet With the waving woodlands meet. There we peep and disappear, There, in games to fairies dear All the spring-tide hours we spend, Hiding, seeking without end. And sometimes a merry ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... began to break over the desolate hills, the fun began. From three sides the Indians poured into the camp a withering fire. As a result the entire command became panic stricken. Seven men were knocked down, almost at the first fire, and it has always been a matter of surprise to me that Hasbrook, old campaigner as he was, should ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... well-furnished room. A lady with taste must at one time at least have presided in it—but then withering does so much for beauty—and that not of stuffs and THINGS only! The furniture of it was very modern compared with the house, but not much of it was younger than the last James, or Queen Anne, and it ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... gate's rusty latch. The grass was crushed enough to form a path to the front door, which stood open. She led the way into a large, low room off the little hall. The floor was bare. There was a large table in the centre, heaped with books, and some withering flowers stood in a glass. A couple of common chairs, a mattress, on which was thrown an antique curtain of faded blue as a drapery; on the white-washed wall, a tiny and coquetish slipper of yellowish silk, nailed through the sole. This ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... inconceivable that the Christian fathers should have copied Buddhism. They resisted Persian mysticism as the work of the Devil, and it was in that mysticism, if anywhere, that Buddhist influence existed in the Levant. Whoever has read Tertullian's withering condemnation of Marcion may judge how far the fathers of the Church favored the heresies of the East. Augustine had himself been a Manichean mystic, and when after his conversion he became the great theologian of the Church, he must have known whether the teachings of the Buddha were being palmed ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... gives dignity to the foreground. A picture without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree- tops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on. But when we see that all paths lead to heaven, and that our eternity is affected by our acts in time, then it is blessed to gaze, it is possible to love, the earthly ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the wretched mother, gazing upon the still quivering remains. At intervals, she stooped down and kissed the pale, withering lips. She did not weep. I have said she was an Indian. They do not act as whites do; but, anyhow, her anguish was too keen to allow her tears to flow. She did not scream or call for help. It could be of no use now. It was too late. She knew there was no one near—no one ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... not arrive till the following Tuesday, by which time he had become distracted by fears and doubts. Yes, doubts! No rational being could have been more loyal than Edwin, but these little doubts would keep shooting up and withering away. He could not control them. The second letter was nearly as short as the first. It told him nothing save her love and that she was very worried by her friend's situation, and that his letters were a joy. She ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... who had a snowy head and a Roman nose, was called "the bald eagle of the House." Although under fifty years of age, his white hair and bent form gave him a patriarchal look and added to the effect of his fervid eloquence and his withering sarcasm. A man of iron heart, he was ever anxious to meet his antagonists, haughty in his rude self-confidence, and exhaustive in the use of every expletive of abuse permitted by parliamentary usage. In debate he resembled one of the old soldiers who fought on foot or on horseback, with ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... your wish, then, in the name of all you love, set your wish against it. If you know any incantations suitable for the occasion, oh, practise them now at once, for look, even the very grass is withering; birds are dropping from trees; fishes, horribly bloated, are beginning to float down the steaming rills; and I, with all others, have a ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... battle-struggle earn One kind glance from thine eye, How this withering heart would burn, The heady ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... the great be call'd the bless'd: My gate, an emblem of my open soul, Embraced the poor, and dealt a bounteous dole. Scorn not the sad reverse, injurious maid! 'Tis Jove's high will, and be his will obey'd! Nor think thyself exempt: that rosy prime Must share the general doom of withering time: To some new channel soon the changeful tide Of royal grace the offended queen may guide; And her loved lord unplume thy towering pride. Or, were he dead, 'tis wisdom to beware: Sweet blooms the prince beneath Apollo's care; Your deeds ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... found "looks" attractive, began to be obvious to Eleanor, who, night after night, at the dinner table, watched the smiling, shining, careless thing—Youth!—sitting there on Maurice's right, and felt herself withering in the dividing years. As a result, the annoyance which, when Edith was a child, she had felt at her childishness, began to harden into irritation at her womanliness. "I wish I could get her out of the house!" she used ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... skies, now sunny, cloudless, an hour hence convulsed with lightnings and deluging the earth with passionate rain; or like its winds, to-day soft, balmy, with healing on their wings, to-night the wind fiend, the destroying simoom, rushing through the land, withering and scorching every flower and blade of herbage on its way. On the other hand, the calm, phlegmatic temperament of the North accords well with her silent mountains, her serener skies, and her less vehement, but chilling winds. The South, too, is the native home of the most violent acute diseases, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... gallantry of her neighbours, passed an evening of delirious happiness. In those days I had an aesthetic soul above the 'Eventreurs de Paris,' and I made fun of it to Paragot, whose thoughts were far away. When I perceived this, I kept my withering sarcasm to myself, and realised that a flattened man cannot be blown like a bladder into permanent rotundity even by the faith and affection of a little art-student. But I marvelled all the more at his gaiety during the intervals, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... had our day at Dead-Horse Lake, but it wasn't the happy event I had anticipated. Worldly happiness, I begin to feel, usually dies a-borning: it makes me think of wistaria-bloom, for invariably one end is withering away before the other end is even in flower. At any rate, we were off early, the weather was perfect, and the sky was an inverted tureen of lazulite blue. Dinkie drove the team part of the way, his dad smoked ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... Tom, catching him ardently by the hand, "the sentiment does honour to your head and heart; for to such men, in general, is attached a heart-broken wife, withering by their side in the shade, as the leaves and the blossom cling together at all seasons, in sickness or in health, in affluence or in poverty, until the storm beats too roughly on them, and prematurely destroys the weakest. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... carbon acts as functionary of the alternation between oxidation and reduction. During the first half of the year, when vegetation is unfolding, there is a great reduction process of oxidized carbon, while in the second half of the year, when the withering process prevails, a great deal of the previously reduced carbon passes into the oxidized condition. As this is connected with exhaling and inhaling of oxygen through carbon, carbon can be regarded as having ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... countenance! Her eye glared out, and was fixed on the vacant wall, as if a spirit had arisen before her, and arrested her regard. There was a spirit there. It was the form of the young Augustus, whom she saw withering and wasting in his dungeon; a dungeon which would deliver him up only to the scaffold. After the events which had occurred all idea of a union with Augustus, presuming that his life should be spared, had been resigned. How could he, on whom the maxims ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Monsieur de Vasselot that such frankness is imprudent; he may regret it," put in the notary with a solemn face. And Denise gave him a glance of withering pity. The poor man, it seemed, was quite ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Spain in favour of France has given universal joy to every Whig; while the poor Tory droops like a withering flower under a declining sun. We are anxiously expecting to hear of great and important events on your side of the Atlantic; at present, the imagination is left in the wide field of conjecture, our eyes one moment are turned to an invasion of England, then of ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... chill of horror invading her. Something fearful and terrible was happening before her eyes; her aunt was shrinking, withering, growing old in a moment. The stiffness had gone out of her pose, her head had begun to droop; the proud contempt in her face was giving way to the moping, resentful reminiscence of the aged. She still held up her lorgnette, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... I never had seen him so moved before. He appeared to rise at least a foot more in stature, his eyes sparkled, his great nose turned red, his nostrils dilated, and his mouth was more than half open, to give vent to the ponderous breathing from his chest. His whole appearance was withering ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... buried her face in the fragrant coolness, and with her hands drew the purple heads in circling splendor about her own. And she was not ashamed. She had wandered away amid the complexities and smirch and withering heats of the great world, and she had returned, simple, and clean, and wholesome. And she was glad of it, as she lay there, slipping back to the old days, when the universe began and ended at the sky-line, and when she journeyed over the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... I remember, as if it were but yesterday, the silent response which my heart made, when my uncle pronounced that withering sentence on me. "No!" was my indignant exclamation; "I may deserve a hundred public deaths; but if I know myself, I would never undergo one!—NOR WILL I." When that which I have written shall be read—other hopes and fears—other punishments, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... a pleading look on the twins, but when Lucian granted him only a withering smile, and Julian with his cane in his folded arms said majestically, "Go, you ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Georgia [Mr. Iverson], an eloquent man, and a man of learning, so far as I can judge, not being learned myself, came down upon us astonishingly. He spoke in what the 'Baltimore American' calls the "scathing and withering style." At the end of his second severe flash I was struck blind, and found myself feeling with my fingers for an assurance of my continued existence. A little of the bone was left, and I gradually revived. He eulogized Mr. Clay in high and beautiful terms, and then declared that we had deserted ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... she sung:—but with a frown, Revenge impatient rose: He threw the blood-stained sword in thunder down; And with a withering look The war-denouncing trumpet took And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe! And ever and anon he beat The doubling drum with furious heat; And, though sometimes, each dreamy pause between, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... brained the man with an empty whiskey bottle. He threw the bottle at another of his fellows, and, stumbling down the steps, called to Lorry. The three riders paused for an instant as Waco ran forward. The riders had won almost to the gun when Waco stooped and jerked it round and poured a withering ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... than it was, stronger and more withering now that the sun's faint warmth is withdrawn, and that the small and chilly stars possess the sky. Nevertheless, both the school-room windows are open. We are all huddled shivering round the hearth, yet no one talks of closing them. The fact is, that amateur cooking, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... "Tea-Pot") will take an opportunity in tomorrow morning's paper, of convincing him (the "Gazette") that he (the "Tea-Pot") both can and will be his own master, as regards style; he (the "Tea-Pot") intending to show him (the "Gazette") the supreme, and indeed the withering contempt with which the criticism of him (the "Gazette") inspires the independent bosom of him (the "TeaPot") by composing for the especial gratification (?) of him (the "Gazette") a leading article, of some extent, in which the beautiful vowel—the emblem of Eternity—yet so offensive to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... foot-rest, and without so much as a drop of cold water for herself, wearily climbed the hill. The captain making room for her to pass looked with anxious sympathy into her face, but spake no word, and again the withering hours passed on, and the elder prayed in a husky and broken whisper, and his hearers muttered an Amen, hollow and mournful as the echo from an ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to-day (as we venture to define him) views all this with some regret, and more concern. He sees that fine traditions are withering, that fine things are being marred by ignorant handling. He fears debasement, he hates vulgarity, and his realist soul admits the high probability of both in a society whose standards are broader than they are high. But he also sees new energies let loose and new resources ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... at one moment came under a particularly withering fire. For a moment—not more—it wavered. Its most gallant commanding officer, Lieut. Col. Burchill, carrying, after an old fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully rallied his men and, at the very moment when his example had infected them, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... didn't leave long ago," suggested Jack Rynson, between whom and Amy there existed a sort of armed truce, "so that you could discover what a country morning was like." But before Amy could form a sufficiently withering reply, a tiny bird, perched on the topmost bough of a neighboring tree, had burst into such music that the little party stood silenced, and even playful bickering ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... continued in connection with disease or accident, this sometimes leads to a partial withering of the limb up to its very root. In such a case it is best to deal first with the roots of those nerves which supply the limb, which are, in the case of the legs, in the lower part of the back. It is important to apply light pressure to these roots ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... the whole movement of life would end. It is unthinkable that it should ever embody them absolutely. For it is in the inherent nature of such a vision that it should be growing, living, inexhaustible. The most withering and deadly of all conceivable dogmas is the dogma that there is such a thing as absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute good ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... marksmen. Dick's and Tom's revolvers barked viciously, and the deadly rifles wielded by Bert and the stage driver made havoc in the ranks of the attacking braves. Sam, the guard, wielded his heavy Colts with the skill and sure aim of a veteran, and the Indians broke ranks under the withering hail of bullets. They wheeled their horses off to either side of the stoutly defended fortification and galloped out of range, leaving a number of ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... said the sibyl, "her winding sheet is up as high as her throat already, believe it wha list. Her sand has but few grains to rin out; and nae wonder—they've been weel shaken. The leaves are withering fast on the trees, but she'll never see the Martinmas wind gar them dance in swirls like the fairy rings." "Ye waited on her for a quarter," said the paralytic woman, "and got twa red pieces, or ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... I've a withering reply, And vanity I always do my best to mortify; A charitable action I can skilfully dissect; And interested motives I'm delighted to detect. I know everybody's income and what everybody earns, And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns; But to benefit humanity, however much I plan, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... plants; the conductors and elevators of sap; and nothing can be more injurious than to take them away from the fruit at the very time when they are most needed. The consequence of such an unwise course will be the wilting and withering of the bunches, and, should they ripen at all, they will be deficient in flavor. Good fruit must ripen in the shade, only thus will it ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... indulged in an inward laugh, for he well knew the reply that would be made. The dark face of the Huron assumed an expression of withering scorn as he answered: ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... 'A withering fire from hundreds of rifles mowed down the troops like grass. Their gallant commander, Yeodskeemoff, fell dead, pierced by a dozen bullets. The captain of the grenadier company strode over his body and gained the top of the breach, to fall in turn; the men ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the sun, with a lurid glare spread far and wide over the cloudless sky, rises above the arid plains, drawing up every particle of moisture, and withering with the intense heat of his rays every blade of grass and green leaf, till it seems as if the whole region were doomed to eternal desolation. At length, however, a wonderful change takes place over the hitherto arid waste. A thick veil of mist is drawn across the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... for a second of deep silence; and then followed a peal of laughter so long and so vociferous, that in my momentary anger I prayed some one might burst a blood-vessel, and frighten the rest. I put on a look of indescribable indignation, and cast a glance of what I intended should be most withering scorn on the assembly; but alas! my infernal harlequin costume ruined the effect; and confound me, if they did not laugh the louder. I turned from one to the other with the air of a man who marks out victims for his future wrath; but with no better success; at last, amid the continued mirth of the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... Don't swear, and don't ever get frightened because I am out of sight." Then she cast one withering glance at Rhodes, adding,—"and if you engage range bosses like this one no one on Granados will ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the hot winds which in South Australia, or opposite the centre of the continent, always blow from the north, to those, who have experienced the oppressive and scorching influence of these winds, which can only be compared to the fiery and withering blasts from a heated furnace, I need hardly point out that there is little probability that such winds can have been wafted over ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... passed between this young woman and the count, when there was no longer any doubt of the crime of Florestan. Extending his arm toward the room where his son remained, the old man smiled with bitter irony, cast a withering look on Madame de Lucenay, and ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... soul that looks out with burning eyes through the most gross fleshly filament. Whosoever should portray truly the life and death of a little flower—its birth, sucking in of nourishment, reproduction of its kind, withering and vanishing—would have shaped a symbol of all existence. All true facts of nature or the mind are related. Your little carving represents some mental facts as they really are, therefore fifty different true stories might be read from it. What your work wants is ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... its two parent-forms. Negative results are not of much value; but Reisseck, Caspary, and myself, tried in vain to cross C. laburnum and purpureus; when I fertilised the former with pollen of the latter, I had the nearest approach to success, for pods were formed, but in sixteen days after the withering of the flowers, they fell off. Nevertheless, the belief that C. adami is a spontaneously produced hybrid between these two species is supported by the fact that such hybrids have arisen in this genus. In a bed of seedlings from C. elongatus, which grew near to C. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... is not quite so clear as that translator's work usually is. "One of them all I knew not" is an awkward periphrasis for "I knew none of them." Dante's indignant expression of the effect of avarice in withering away distinctions of character, and the prophecy of Scrovegno, that his neighbor Vitaliano, then living, should soon be with him, to sit on his left hand, is rendered a little obscure by the transposition of the word "here." Cary has also been ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... cultured lawns and dreary wastes 200 Retiring Autumn flings her howling blasts, Bends in tumultuous waves the struggling woods, And showers their leafy honours on the floods, In withering heaps collects the flowery spoil, And each chill insect sinks beneath the soil; 205 Quick flies fair TULIPA the loud alarms, And folds her infant closer in her arms; In some lone cave, secure pavilion, lies, And waits the courtship of serener skies.— So, six cold ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the town of Nijni-Novgorod. Blount, on the contrary, having in vain hunted for a supper, had been obliged to find a resting-place in the open air. He therefore looked at it all from another point of view, and was preparing an article of the most withering character against a town in which the landlords of the inns refused to receive travelers who only begged leave to be flayed, ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... sky to let her make much of herself yet. It was one of those Spring evenings which you could not tell from an Autumn one except for a certain something in the air appealing to an undefined sense—rather that of smell than any other. There were green buds and not withering leaves in it—life and not death; and the voices of the gathering guests were of the season, and pleasant to the soul. Of course Nature did not then affect me so definitely as to make me give forms of thought to her influences. ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... from whose cloudy seat The fiery winds of Desolation flow; Father of vengeance, that with purple feet Like a full wine-press tread'st the world below; The embattled armies wait thy sign to slay, Nor springs the beast of havoc on his prey, Nor withering Famine walks his blasted way, Till thou hast marked the ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Mr. Blithers succinctly and with a withering glare. Red Rover must have been surprised by the unusual celerity with which he was saddled and bridled. If there could be such a thing as a horse looking shocked, that beast certainly betrayed himself as he was yanked away from his ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... loyaltie 's beginning for to fa', The bonnie White Rose it is withering an' a'; But I'll water 't wi' the blude of usurping tyrannie, An' green it will graw ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... and very wilful young lady, her cousin, would never have made such an appeal to me. I did not care to conjecture the way in which she, long before this stage of the conversation, would have been expressing her indignation and withering me with her ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace; for happy days bring in Another morn; but oh, methinks how slow This old morn wanes! she lingers my desires Like to a step-dame, or a dowager, Long withering out a ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... temple stood, in fact, almost as men had left it in the long ago, when the breath of annihilation had swept a withering blast over the face of the earth. The broad grounds and driveways that had led up to the entrance had, of course, long since absolutely vanished under ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... nests. The larvae feed directly upon the young bees, according to Curtis (Farm Insects). The Spindle-worm moth (Gortyna zeae), whose caterpillar lives in the stalks of Indian corn, and also in dahlias, flies this month. The withering of the leaves when the corn is young, shows the presence of this pest. The beetles of various cylindrical Bark borers and Blight beetles (Tomicus and Scolytus) appear again this month. During this ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... on the meeting. Some of the members looked at each other and showed signs of hysterics. Mrs. Blanderocks flashed a withering glance at the corner, but ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... great fig-tree in the courtyard, his grave was waiting for him. It had been dug in the night by unwilling hands; and tears had fallen on the spade. As he passed he looked down, smiling, at the black pit and the withering grass beside it; and drew a long breath, to smell the scent of ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... too, coming in on a charge as fearless and reckless as any the Confederates had delivered in the past. With the sharpness of one of their own sabers, they slashed out a trotting arc of men, cutting at Armstrong's veterans in the earthworks to be curled back under a withering fire, losing a general, senior officers, and men. But the rebuff did ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... missile to hurl at him, but there being nothing handy, she tried the effect of a withering glance, to which he responded by making a face at her. A storm was evidently brewing, but fortunately just at that moment the tea arrived, and caused a diversion which prevented further demonstrations. Happily for those in charge of the twins, their outbursts of feeling were ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... somewhere off the broader thoroughfare, a single voice sang out in serenade. The Corso was bright with unusual lights, and strewn with the birdseed and plaster-of-Paris 'confetti,' with yellow sand and sprigs of box leaves, and withering flowers, and there was about all the neighbourhood that peculiar smell of plaster and crushed flower-stalks which belonged then to the street carnival of Rome. Further on, in the dim quarters by the Tiber, the wine shops were all crowded, and men stood and ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... writer brought her charge triumphantly to safety, and you will be inclined, with me, to throw your critical cap into the air and thank Heaven for such women of our race, which would be to invite, not unsuccessfully, some withering snub from the very lady you were endeavouring to praise. But that can't be helped. Meantime of her exploit and the book that recounts it I can sum up my verdict in the only Serbian that I have gleaned from its pages—Dobro, Dobro! For a translation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... her womanly dignity, Eve gave Cerizet a withering look and went upstairs again. At ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... offered no further reply than a withering rebuke of the waiter, a genteel abstraction, and a lofty change of subject. He pressed upon them two tickets for the performance, of which he seemed to have a number neatly clasped in an india-rubber band, ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... o' loyaltie's begun for to fa', The bonnie white rose it is withering an' a'; But I'll water 't wi' the blude of usurping tyrannie, An' green it will grow in my ain countrie. Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be, O hame, hame, hame, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... his hand and sprinkled on it earth and gravel, and commenced scanning it curiously. As she scanned it her forehead wrinkled up, and a shot like black lightning travelled across her countenance, withering its beauty: she cried in a forced voice, 'Aha! it is well, O youth, for thee and for me that thou lovest me, and art ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dead! Poor wretched Outcast! I will weep for thee, And sorrow for forlorn humanity. Yes I will weep, but not that thou art come To the stern Sabbath of the silent tomb: For squalid Want, and the black scorpion Care, Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there. I sorrow for the ills thy life has known As thro' the world's long pilgrimage, alone, Haunted by Poverty and woe-begone, Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on: Thy youth in ignorance and labour past, And thine old age all barrenness ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... had noted it, his relentless foot had followed up the tracks, and he had discovered, on reference to the original, that the criminally-deleted line of print embodied a reference to the Oxus. That was all. "Only the Oxus!" he said, with withering sarcasm. Then changing his tone and manner, he shook a minatory forefinger at the shrinking form of the PREMIER, and cried aloud, in voice strengthened with long warring with the winds on the Pamirs: "Sir, the stream of the Oxus ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... red to the roots of her hair and shot a look of withering scorn at her husband's unconscious face. "It would be charming," she said, sarcastically, "but after all I don't know that I care to go so much—oh, don't stare at me like that, for goodness' sake! A woman may change her mind, I suppose—at least, in a trifle here and there if she ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... a mere matter of fact—and old man Packard knew it well enough down in his soul—he would have guessed nothing of the sort. So long had he held her in withering contempt, just because of her relationship to her father, so long had he invested her with all thinkably distasteful attributes, so long had he in his out-of-hand way named her squidge-nosed, putty-faced, ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... to feel the sun; And where the ilex spreads a gracious shade We placed him, wrapped and pillowed; and he heard The charm of birds, the whisper of the vines, The ripple of the blue Propontic sea. Placid and pleased he lay; but we were sad To see the snowy hair and silver beard Like withering mosses on a fallen oak, And feel that he, whose vast philosophy Had cast such sacred branches o'er the fields Where Athens pastures her dull sheep, lay fallen, And never more should know the spring! Confess You too had grieved ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... had unvaryingly cherished her—now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when she locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to her unhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn and ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... first upon that frail bridge, unable to stay their steps, plunged also into the trench; those who were latest to clear the tunal surged forward in consternation and confusion. Suddenly, from a low earthwork hastily raised in the shadow of the fortress wall, and masked by bushes, burst a withering fire of chain-shot from cannon and culverin, of slighter missiles from falcon and bastard and saker, caliver and harquebus. The trench, dug in a half-circle, either end touching the tunal, made with the space it enclosed, and which was now crowded by the English, an iron trap, into which ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... and decidedly, without appearing to notice his aristocratic sire's look of withering contempt. "I have no wish to be a poor gentleman. Place me in my Uncle Drury's counting-house, and I will work hard ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... with his deadly Luger. Seemingly only by a miracle did they escape each time. The sergeant had his hat perforated in similar fashion to his companions. Yorke had a shoulder-strap torn from his stable-jacket. Adroitly shifting their positions each time he fired, they greeted his shots with such withering blasts of carbine fire that they finally silenced their enemy's battery. Throughout he had remained as mute as a trapped wolf. Only an occasional cough indicated that so far, apparently, he was unharmed and, like them, still grimly ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... have my aunt's money, because he's lived all his life with her, and is her nephew as much as I am. You see, my father went wrong." He stopped, amazed at himself. How easy it had been to say! He was withering up: the power to care about this ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease: 580 Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, When fenced by power and master of the world. Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind, Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, 585 Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee, And therefore art thou worthy of the boon Which thou hast now received: virtue shall keep Thy footsteps in the path that thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... shrieked the colonel, writhing in the grasp of the men who held him, "are you going to allow a senseless, wounded man to be murdered before your eyes? Oh, how could anybody ever mistake you for a gentleman for an instant?" he added, with withering contempt; and then turning his head toward the fierce soldiery, "Stop, stop, you bloody ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... apathy the dearth of statesmen was painfully conspicuous. Only true grandeur of character can defy the withering influences of an age of disillusionment; and France had for a time to rely upon Sieyes. Perhaps no man has built up a reputation for political capacity on performances so slight as the Abbe Sieyes. In the States General of 1789 he speedily ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... this folk, flown guests and masters of the still-abiding palace-chambers, haunt us as we hurry through. They are but filmy shadows. We cannot grasp them, localise them, people surrounding emptiness with more than withering cobweb forms. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... With life and thought each speaking feature glow'd. Fair was the flower, and soft the vernal sky; Elate with hope, we deemed no tempest nigh; When lo! a whirlwind's instantaneous gust Left all its beauties withering in the dust! All cold the hand, that soothed Woe's weary head! And quenched the eye, the pitying tear that shed! And mute the voice, whose pleasing accents stole, Infusing balm into the rankled soul! O Death! why arm ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... leaves on trees, the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies, They fall successive, and successive rise. So generations, in their course, decay, So flourish these, when those ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... sight of his face, glowering back on her over his shoulder, was enough to dry up the speech in Mrs. Polwhele or any woman. But Bligh, it seems, couldn't be content with this. After withering the poor soul for ten seconds or so, he takes his eyes off her, turns to his friend again in a lazy, insolent way, and begins to talk loud to him ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... raised his eyes, fixed a withering look on his fettered brother, and said in a dull hollow voice: "High-priest, tell us what awaits the man who deceives his brother, dishonors and offends his king, and darkens his own heart by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for the President's interference with the Senate, Mr. Wilson said: "Sir, there was a time when a Senator who should have said what we have recently heard on this floor would have sunk into his seat under the withering rebuke of his associates. No Senator or Representative has a right to tell us what the Executive will do. The President acts upon his own responsibility. We are Senators, this is the Senate of the United States, and it becomes us to maintain the rights and the dignity ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Plato has been largely responsible for the hue and cry against the poet throughout the last two millennia. Various as are the counts against the poet's conduct, they may all be included under the declaration in the Republic, "Poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of withering and starving them; she lets them rule instead of ruling them." [Footnote: Book ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Aeneid, the spirit and majesty of it, I mean, owing to the pestilential numbers of grammatical reminiscences recalled by almost every line. When once you begin to set examination papers on a subject, the romance seems to evaporate. There is something withering about test-questions. This modern disease of grammatical annotation, engendered largely by prosaic examiners, who have published grammars, is spreading to the English Classics, and we may soon expect Burns to furnish a text for exceptional scansion, bob-wheel ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... one chestnut that was toppling over and the leaves were withering. The rats had taken it off just below the ground. I couldn't find a root anywhere, but it was callused. I cut it back and planted it again. It must have roots now for it is still green. Otherwise it ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... grow holier through his grief, The early grief that lined his withering brow, As one by one her stars were quenched. And now He that so mourned can play, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere, The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year; 5 It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir: It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... feelings of the men engaged that the inexperienced may be pardoned the thought, that, having donned the insignia of a soldier, a man instantly becomes filled with martial ardor, and eager to face the most withering fire of musketry or artillery. But the reality is far different; very few men are so constituted, or are so reckless of their lives, that they can listen to the unearthly screech of the shell or the crash of solid shot, mingled with the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... not speak but folded her arms and looked at her "friend." Mrs. Toomey had the physical sensation of shrivelling: as though she were standing naked before the withering heat ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... means us to be happy; He fills the short-lived years With loving, tender mercies— With smiles as well as tears. Flowers blossom by the pathway, Or, withering, they shed Their sweetest fragrance over The bosoms ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... generosity of relatives and the goodness of neighbours as kind as ever breathed, our furniture was our own again, but what were we to do for a living? Our crops were withering in the fields for want of rain, and we had but five cows—not an over-bright outlook. As I was getting to bed one night my mother came into my room and said seriously, "Sybylla, I want to have ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... to further it, I shall do,' she determined, and at that moment died away the last fast-withering remains of jealousy in her heart that the Harpers might in any way replace her in ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Mlle. Armande. "Oh, Chesnel, no one but you would think of such a thing!" she added, with a withering look; before such a look from a woman's eyes no mortal can stand. "There is but one crime that a noble can commit—the crime of high treason; and when he is beheaded, the block is covered with a black cloth, as ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... are, here we are again!" carolled the Surgeon lustily. "Come alongside, skiff! The landing of the Lancashire Fusiliers is about to commence under a withering fire!" ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... opinions respecting them. Some, among whom are Dr. Priestly and Mr. Jessop, upon practical and scientific observations, attributed them to lightning, but their experiments did not prove altogether satisfactory. Drs. Wollaston, Withering, and others, who had duly examined these spots, ascribed them to the growth of fungi, which opinion seems undoubtedly the best.—The rings vary in size and shape, some having seven yards of bare, with a patch of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... likewise abates; the falling thunderbolt at your command moves back to the clouds. Oh, I implore you, who in the air can keep up the beneficent dew or let it pour its welcome freshness on the withering plant, impart fresh vigor to my old limbs. See me; I am dying; revive my drooping energy; stretch ye out your arms to me, touch ye those livid features of mine, and the spell of your hands will cause my ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... from a rude platform addressed the excited multitude. Partisan spirit at that time ran high in the foot-hills; crimination and recrimination, challenge, reply, accusation, and retort had already inflamed the meeting, and Colonel Bungstarter, after a withering review of his opponent's policy, culminated with a personal attack upon the career and private character of the eloquent and chivalrous Colonel Culpepper Starbottle of Siskiyou. That eloquent and chivalrous gentleman ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... support my wearied frame, Ah, wretched me! I pantingly exclaim, And from her atmosphere new strength embrace; I think on her I leave—my heart's best grace— My lengthen'd journey—life's capricious flame— I pause in withering fear, with purpose tame, Whilst down my cheek tears quick each other chase. My doubting heart thus questions in my grief: "Whence comes it that existence thou canst know When from thy spirit thou dost dwell entire?" Love, holy Love, my heart then answers brief: "Such privilege I do on ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... hands were frozen: For she, the woeful mother, had gone mad, And laid it down, regardless of its fate And of her own. Yet had she many days Of sorrow in the world, but never wept. She lived on alms; and carried in her hand Some withering stalks, she gathered in the spring; When they asked the cause, she smiled, and said, They were her sisters, and would come and watch Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke Of her deceiver, father, mother, home, Or child, or heaven, or hell, or God; but still In lonely places ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... This is a withering rebuke to a conceited though clever young statesman, Lord Nugent, who, in a previous part of the debate, insisted that the honour and dignity of the kingdom obligated them to compel the execution of the Stamp Act, "unless the right ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... with fairy frosting; the wintry morning light did not yet penetrate the gloom. The woman, suspended in mid-air an instant, cast only one agonized glance beneath,—but across and through it, ere the lids could fall, shot a withering sheet of flame,—a rifle-crack, half heard, was lost in the terrible yell of desperation that bounded after it and filled her ears with savage echoes, and in the wide arc of some eternal descent she was falling;—but the beast fell under her. I think that the moment following ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... the first reason. "What do you mean, young lady, about slammin'; that's what I want to know." His tone was belligerent. Mrs. Reynolds threw him a withering look. "Here, Suzanna," she said; "give me the bag, and you sit down. Take your hat off, my brave little lass. 'Twas but you and you alone could think of this ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... poet, no doubt in obedience to a law dictated to him by his public, kept his characters in communication with earth and heaven, with the dawn he described, the moon he painted, the evening he caused to be seen, the plants he portrayed as withering or reviving, the birds which he showed everywhere in the country or returning to ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... the church, and from the ground to the window; and, within the bars, six monster demons—spirits of the unrepentent dead, the forms of wretches who had died without owning the name of their Saviour, were withering in the torments of hell-fire; awful indeed was the appearance of these figures; they were larger than human, and twisted into every variety of contortion which it was conceived possible that agony could assume. Their eyes were made to protrude from their ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... asked for it with the insolence of a robber, and wrenched it from the recusant with the atrocities of a devil. Here there was no pretence of equivalent given or promised: and this was so exquisite an outrage, a curse so withering, that in 1817 we were obliged to exterminate the foul horde (a cross between the Decoit and the Thug) root and branch. Now between these two poles lie two different forms of mitigated spoliation. One was the Mahratta chout, the other the black mail of the Scottish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... not flourish in the temperature and light to which it has been accustomed, you investigate the soil—the source of nourishment—and thus determine why the downy or velvety appearance has left the flower; why the leaves are yellow, dry or falling; why the stems are withering. Even the most ignorant person knows that the symptoms the plant presents did not bring about the unsuitableness of the soil; that, on the contrary, the condition of the soil is responsible for the plant's present ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... was not very desirable. Can there be any doubt that whatever may be lost, cannot be properly classed in the number of those things which complete a happy life? for of all that constitutes a happy life, nothing will admit of withering, or growing old, or wearing out, or decaying; for whoever is apprehensive of any loss of these things cannot be happy; the happy man should be safe, well fenced, well fortified, out of the reach of all annoyance, not like a man under trifling ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... hopelessly roused. "Never did that before," gurgled out of his net, just as we were dropping off once more; but a withering request from the Dandy to "gather experience somewhere else," silenced him till dawn, when he had the wisdom to rise without ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... go peaching to his big brother. Never mind, we'll pay you out, see if we don't! Go and kiss your mammy, and tell your big brother what they did to little duckie Steevie, did they then? they shouldn't! Give him a suck of his bottle! oh, my!" and he finished up with a most withering laugh. Then, suddenly remembering his errand, he walked up to the table, and said, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Great Spirit worshipped there: But one, one fellow-throb with us he felt; To one divinity with us he knelt; Freedom, the self-same freedom we adore, Bade him defend his violated shore; He saw the cloud, ordained to grow, And burst upon his hills in wo; He saw his people withering by, Beneath the invader's evil eye; Strange feet were trampling on his fathers' bones; At midnight hour he woke to gaze Upon his happy cabin's blaze, And listen to his children's dying groans: He saw—and maddening at the sight, Gave his ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague
... yield, my love, my friend, To Fate's implacable eyes and withering breath. We still are yours and mine, though, by Time's theft, My arms are empty and your arms bereft. It is not hard to part—not harder than Death; And each of us must ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... Jane cast a withering look after her retreating skirts, and picking the coin from the table, turned to the hired man. "Run to the stable after that dandified young feller, Dick, and hand that back to him. Ye kin say that Jane Mackinnon don't run arrants fur money, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... we made our way on foot, with those quick transitions from the present to the past, from the rush and roar of business thoroughfares to the deep tranquillity of religious interiors, or the noise-bound quiet of ancient church-yards, where the autumn flowers blazed under the withering autumn leaves, and the peaceful occupants of the public benches were scarcely more agitated by our coming than the tenants of the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... knowledge or speculation: perhaps it excludes materialists, because they have no common ground with religion, but it tolerates even the Sankhya philosophy which has nothing to say about God or worship. It is truly dynamic and in the past whenever it has seemed in danger of withering it has never failed to bud with new life and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... much as your father. When do you expect to pay the rest, I'd like to know? I s'pose you expect me to go on trustin', and mebbe six months from now you'll pay me another eight dollars," said the storekeeper, with withering sarcasm. ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... jury, to bribe the hangman, and to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible a doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with the fear before it of the withering scorn of ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... said the demon, with a look of contumely and scorn so wild and withering that Michael started back ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... more destructive to health and longevity than to indulge in the revengeful passions of our nature; and that constant fear, grief and melancholy are also destructive to the human constitution, and withering to the dearest joys of life. We have shown that violent anger, revenge and most of the malignant passions originate from the bad use of the tongue; and that if we would live long and see good, we must give heed to our ways by following the injunctions ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... conferred on the federal judiciary, the apex of which was the Supreme Court at Washington. Thus the old federation of "independent states," all equal in rights and dignity, each wearing the "jewel of sovereignty" so celebrated in Southern oratory, had gone the way of all flesh under the withering blasts of Civil War. ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... it reaped Imperialists among Republicans. However, a second and third blast were better gauged, and these carpeted the new alley-way with Republican bodies. Also, the Imperialists were re-forming, and under a withering fire the little band of victors had to draw back ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... green leaf o' loyaltie's begun for to fa', The bonnie white rose it is withering an' a'; But I'll water 't wi' the blude of usurping tyrannie, An' green it will grow in my ain countrie. Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be, O hame, hame, hame, to my ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... Greenhouse. I love to see everything in its Perfection, and am more pleased to survey my Rows of Coleworts and Cabbages, with a thousand nameless Pot-herbs, springing up in their full Fragrancy and Verdure, than to see the tender Plants of Foreign Countries kept alive by artificial Heats, or withering in an Air and Soil that are not adapted to them. I must not omit, that there is a Fountain rising in the upper part of my Garden, which forms a little wandring Rill, and administers to the Pleasure as well as the Plenty of the Place. I have so conducted it, that it visits most of my Plantations; ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... under this indifferent or hostile scrutiny, he thought how much easier it would be to face a rain of bullets than this withering glare of criticism. A sudden longing to escape, to be done with it all, came over him with sickening force. His nerves ached with the physical strain of holding himself upright on his horse, of preserving the statuesque erectness proper to the occasion. He felt like ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... I am the same within that I am without. 'Tis one main obligation I have to my fortune, that the succession of my bodily estate has been carried on according to the natural seasons; I have seen the grass, the blossom, and the fruit, and now see the withering; happily, however, because naturally. I bear the infirmities I have the better, because they came not till I had reason to expect them, and because also they make me with greater pleasure remember that long felicity of my past life. My wisdom may have been ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the fearful influence of worn-out cloth! Can a long series of unchanging kindness balance patched elbows? are not cracked boots receipts in full for hours of anxious love and care? does not the kindness of a life fade "like the baseless fabric of a vision" before the withering touch of poverty's stern stamp? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and would have gone to the house of her brother and have expended herself in nursing her nephews and nieces. But luckily for her—or unluckily, as it may be—this money had come to her before her time for withering had arrived. In heart, and energy, and desire, there was still much of strength left to her. Indeed it may be said of her, that she had come so late in life to whatever of ripeness was to be vouchsafed to her, that perhaps the period ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... ever green, its leaves never withering, it served as pasture-ground not only for Odin's goat Heidrun, which supplied the heavenly mead, the drink of the gods, but also for the stags Dain, Dvalin, Duneyr, and Durathor, from whose horns honey-dew dropped down upon the earth and furnished ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... her a withering glance. "You—Woodfordite!" was the worst epithet she dared trust herself to before a stranger. "Then you'll have to hold the horses. There's no river to spill into here—and you don't have to pull ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... can talk about money!" retorted Allison, with withering scorn; "but for me, who makes every penny I earns, he may think hisself well off to get the five shillin's I gives him every year for those blessed schools. I'll stick to that five, neither more nor less, unless the squire gets his way; and then I won't give nothink but ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... you, they were not "living beyond their means." That was the first thing. That is one of the best rules you can follow. Who has not known of the premature withering of young business men and lawyers (yes, and sometimes men not so young, alas!) who have suddenly blossomed out with houses and clothes and horses, and a lot of other things which their business or practise ought not reasonably ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... her father a withering glance, and broke her silence. "That isn't true," she declared. "I wanted the apples. Father has been standing here the whole evening holding onto my hand so ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... of different tints, and heaped up minute pebbles, a darkly clad, tastefully picturesque form would approach,—a form to which I bowed down in spirit as, fortunately for me, my father. He would look askance at my utterly useless, time-frittering amusement, which I already knew was withering my brain and soul. In his tacit reproach my small intellect delighted, and loftier thoughts than those of the counter would refresh me for the rest of the day; and I thankfully returned to the heights and lengths of wide nature, full ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... fruit come to perfection, and only wanted to be ripened. They exceeded the ordinary fruits of our gardens very much in bigness; and, lastly, those channels that watered the trees whose fruits were ripe, had no more moisture than what would just preserve them from withering. I could never be weary to look at and admire so sweet a place; and I should never have left it, had I not conceived a greater idea of the other things which I had not seen. I went out at last with my mind filled with those wonders; I shut ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... he squatted himself down on the stool of a large hemlock, which, being recently cut down, cumbered the woodside with its giant stem, and secured him, with its evergreen top now lowly laid and withering, from the most narrow scrutiny; while I, giving the gallant horse his head, went at a brisk hand-gallop across the firm short turf of the fair sloping hill-side, taking a moderate fence in my stroke, which Peacock cleared in a style that satisfied me Harry had by ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... her—now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when she locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to her unhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn and not reproach. But she needed time to gather up her strength; she needed ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the north end above the river, as a signal to attack. It was answered by another at the south end, when the troops, rising from behind the cover which had concealed them from the enemy, rushed forward towards the pah, those who had just landed joining them on their right. They were received by a withering fire from the fortifications, which brought many to the ground, but, nothing daunted, they pushed forward to plant their scaling ladders against the palisades. The first line was quickly gained. ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... but to live Romance, and when fate threw in his way a world-historic opportunity, he seized it with delight. He knew that he was dicing with Death, but that was the very essence of his ideal; and he knew that if Death won the throw, his ideal was crowned and consummated, for ever safe from the withering touch of time, or accidental soilure. If it had been given to Swinburne to fall, rifle in hand, on, say, the field of Mentana, we should have been the poorer by many splendid verses, but the richer by a heroic life-story. And would his lot have been the less enviable? ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... done wrong. Adam and Eve, in their perfect state, might have got along without work, or only such slight employment as a perfect garden with no weeds in it demanded. But as soon as they had sinned, the best thing for them was to be turned out where they would have to work. We know what a withering thing it is for a man to have nothing to do. Old Ashbel Green, at fourscore years, when asked why he kept on working, said: "I do so to keep out of mischief." We see that a man who has a large amount of money to start with has no chance. Of the thousand prosperous ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... once was lost A world for Woman, lovely, harmless thing![ey][146] In yonder rippling bay, their naval host Did many a Roman chief and Asian King[15.B.] To doubtful conflict, certain slaughter bring: Look where the second Caesar's trophies rose![147][16.B.] Now, like the hands that reared them, withering: Imperial Anarchs, doubling human woes![ez] GOD! was thy globe ordained for such to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... contrary, having in vain hunted for a supper, had been obliged to find a resting-place in the open air. He therefore looked at it all from another point of view, and was preparing an article of the most withering character against a town in which the landlords of the inns refused to receive travelers who only begged leave to be ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... parent-forms. Negative results are not of much value; but Reisseck, Caspary, and myself, tried in vain to cross C. laburnum and purpureus; when I fertilised the former with pollen of the latter, I had the nearest approach to success, for pods were formed, but in sixteen days after the withering of the flowers, they fell off. Nevertheless, the belief that C. adami is a spontaneously produced hybrid between these two species is supported by the fact that such hybrids have arisen in this genus. In a bed ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... hand, presenting so much altogether the same appearance which the Lady Helen Oswald had thought fit to assume in her first interview with him, that for an instant Wilton doubted whether it was or was not herself. A second glance, however, at the old woman's face, showed the withering hand of time too strongly for him ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... in its native soil. Unscrupulous persons take advantage of this extraordinary accident. From a country so near and so readily accessible they can get plants home, pot them up, and sell them, before the withering process sets in. May this revelation confound such knavish tricks! The moral is old—buy your orchids from one of the great dealers, if you do not care to "establish" ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... Fantails: their tail-feathers are fixed in a radiating position, but they can depress and elevate them. I remember in a pigeon-book seeing withering contempt expressed at some naturalist for not knowing this important point! Page 111 (156/2. The reference is to the original little green paper books in which the lectures first appeared; the paging in the bound volume dated 1863 is slightly different. The ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... was known that Christianity was under the ban of a legal proscription, it was not strange that "the love of many" waxed cold; and the persecutions of Nero and Domitian must have had a most discouraging influence. But though the Church had to encounter the withering blasts of popular odium and imperial intolerance, it struggled through an ungenial spring; and, in almost every part of the Roman Empire, it had taken root and was beginning to exhibit tokens of a steady and vigorous growth as early as the close of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Nat Turner might be in every family,—that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place,—that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension, —nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependents to protect,—nothing but this could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... the nations stand, Fresh in the morning light; The flowers beneath the mower's hand Lie withering ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... of the forces gives the historian an opportunity of dropping a withering sneer at an unfortunate man, so provincial in his notions as to suppose that a hundred pounds or two would be of any avail in ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... swamps, sending up their foul steam to pollute the common light; there are kennels of uncleanness, running with the waste of human lives, sweeping along with the death-gurgle of human souls; there is a dry-rot of impurity infecting the town-air, withering the dearest sanctities of society and of home—and over this kind of evil we cannot be facetious. Think how much is risked here, and how much is lost! Domestic happiness, reputation, honor, health, order, the prospects of the ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... very desirable. Can there be any doubt that whatever may be lost cannot be properly classed in the number of those things which complete a happy life? for of all that constitutes a happy life, nothing will admit of withering, or growing old, or wearing out, or decaying; for whoever is apprehensive of any loss of these things cannot be happy: the happy man should be safe, well fenced, well fortified, out of the reach of all annoyance, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... psalm-singing from morning till night. My little Josey takes kindly to the life there, and I left her behind, poor little darling! It was not fair to bring three of us to take possession of your house, dear James; but my poor little Rosey was just withering away there. It's good for the dear child to see the world a little, and a kind uncle, who is not afraid of us now he sees us, is he?" Kind Uncle James was not at all afraid of little Rosey; whose pretty face and modest manners, and sweet songs, and blue eyes, cheered and soothed the old ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gladioles make up bright mounds Of flowers, with juniper and aniseed; While sage, all newly cut for this great need, Covers the Persian carpet that is spread Beneath the table, and so helps to shed Around a perfume of the balmy spring. Beyond is desolation withering. One hears within the hollow dreary space Across the grove, made fresh by summer's grace, The wind that ever is with mystic might A spirit ripple of the Infinite. The glass restored to frames to creak is ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... in favour of France has given universal joy to every Whig; while the poor Tory droops like a withering flower under a declining sun. We are anxiously expecting to hear of great and important events on your side of the Atlantic; at present, the imagination is left in the wide field of conjecture, our eyes one moment ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... and as the weeks went by his sorrow took on a wistful, vague longing for the past. Through the gate of memory he reentered the world of his youth and walked once more with William and David and Luke. The mists which filled his eyes had nothing hot or withering in their touch—they comforted him. Whether he hoped to meet his love in some other world or not I do not know—but I think ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... eagerness with which all sorts of assertions are made—the eager earnestness with which apparently all creation, above, around, and beneath, is called on to attest the truth of what they allege—and then the intense surprise and withering scorn cast on those who despise their goods: but they show no concern when the buyers turn up their noses at them. Little girls run about selling cups of water for a few small fishes to the half-exhausted wordy combatants. To me it was an amusing scene. I could not understand the words ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... the open ground that they increase by five to six feet in height per annum. The stem of those palms which develop a terminal inflorescence have ended their apical growth by doing so, and wither gradually, In addition to this (withering) in the case, e.g. of Arenga saccharifera, new inflorescences are developed from the original axils (Blattachseln) from above downward, so that one sees at last the already leafless trunk still developing inflorescences in the direction toward the base ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... there came to Billy Byrne the withering, numbing knowledge that his love must forever be a hopeless one—that this girl of the aristocracy could never be for such ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... restraint which is put over the feelings by a strong nature, and yet can not hide that consuming passion which underlies all the words, and makes them burn with intensest heat. Here the hot fire of his indignation seemed to be expressed in a blighting and withering power; and Hilda shrank within herself involuntarily in fear, trembling at this ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... contracts into the murk is the road to China, though that is, perhaps, the last place you would guess to be at the end of it. The train runs over a wilderness of tiles, a grey plateau of bare slate and rock, its expanse cracked and scored as though by a withering heat. Nothing grows there; nothing could live there. Smoke still pours from it, as though it were volcanic, from numberless vents. The region is without sap. Above its expanse project superior fumaroles, their drifting vapours dissolving great areas. When ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... present is subtly welded into the past, My love of you with the purple Indian dusk, With its clinging scent of sandal incense and musk, And withering jasmin flowers. My eyes grow dim and my senses fail at last, While the lonely hours Follow each other, silently, one by one, Till the ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... continuing: "My son, sir, is on the spindle side of the house a Googe, and a Googe, sir, has the blood of the Champneys and the Lord knows of how many noble immigrants" (the last word was emphasized by a fleeting glance of withering scorn at the small-headed Wiggins) "in his veins which, fortunately, cannot be said of you, sir. If, at any time in the distant future, my son should see fit to ally himself with a scion of the noble and long-suffering Hibernian race, I assure you"—his voice was increasing in dimensions—"both ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... another cup, set it on a tray, and approached me with his old-time ornate manner. I faced him with a withering look, but, unmindful, he bowed, presenting me the cup, and interposing his bulky person between me and the deeply-quaffing pirates. At the same time his voice reached me, pitched in a low ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... another most memorable period in newspaper history—the appearance of the Letters of Junius. The interest in the discovery of the source of these withering diatribes has been almost as great as in that of the Nile, but, unlike that 'frightened and fugitive' river, their origin will probably never be discovered with any certainty. A neat little library might be formed of the books and pamphlets that have been written upon this 'vexed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... turned the body over again, And said, while he rose upright, "May the brand of Cain, with its withering stain, On the murderer's forehead light, For he never was slain on the open plain, Nor yet in the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... indeed; and the danger was enhanced by the fact, that the majority of recluses were any thing but indifferent to the world which they had renounced. The convent was too often the refuge of disappointed worldliness, the grave of blasted hopes, or the prison of involuntary victims; a withering atmosphere this in which to place warm young hearts, and expect them to expand and flourish. The evil effects would be varied according to the different characters submitted to its influence. The sensitive entered upon life oppressed with fears and terrors; with a conscience morbid, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... message that the venerable Kanwa has sent me by these hermits?— Perchance their sacred rites have been disturbed By demons, or some evil has befallen The innocent herds, their favorites, that graze Within the precincts of the hermitage; Or haply, through my sins, some withering blight Has nipped the creeping plants that spread their arms Around the hallowed grove. Such troubled thoughts Crowd through my mind, and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... of men, but of a kind of human beavers. Churches themselves had died away into a godless mechanical condition; and stood there as mere Cases of Articles, mere Forms of Churches; like the dried carcasses of once swift camels, which you find left withering in the thirst of the universal desert,—ghastly portents for the present, beneficent ships of the desert no more. Men's souls were blinded, hebetated; and sunk under the influence of Atheism and Materialism, and Hume and Voltaire: the world for the present was as an extinct world, deserted ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... "She has probably been 'waiting and watching.' Don't you see already one of the results of my sinning? Good night," I said, extending my hand to the fisherman, who had fixed on that innocent and unconscious nightcap a darkly withering gaze. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... have pointed out that the diversion of local funds to the Imperial Exchequer was one of the proximate causes which led to the downfall of the empire. Whilst the municipal system lasted, it produced admirable results. Dealing with Northern Africa, whose progress was eventually arrested by the withering hand of Islam, Mr. Reid speaks of "the contrast between the Roman civilisation and the culture which exists in the same regions to-day; flourishing cities, villages, and farms abounded in districts which are ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... peaching to his big brother. Never mind, we'll pay you out, see if we don't! Go and kiss your mammy, and tell your big brother what they did to little duckie Steevie, did they then? they shouldn't! Give him a suck of his bottle! oh, my!" and he finished up with a most withering laugh. Then, suddenly remembering his errand, he walked up to the table, and said, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... men and women were shouting themselves hoarse, while the red emblem of terror still waved lazily from the top of the barricade. The men manning the improvised defence kept up a withering fire upon the troops, who, in the open road, were afforded no cover. Time after time the place shook as those terrible bombs exploded with awful result, for the yellow-haired girl seemed to keep up a continuous supply of them. They were only ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... Gray, he met Miss Fleming on the day succeeding, and if withering glances ever really withered anything, he would have been as a dry leaf. But he did not wither. He went East, and is now connected with the Pennsylvania Broad Gauge. Miss Fleming married Mr. Muggles, and I understand ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... "Wuss!" was the withering retort. "Wy, when I tells yer that some o' them Naval 'Umming-birds, t'other side o' Popinjay, fitted out an ole Blue 'Ammersmith with a pair o' propellers ... Wuss!" He exhaled scornfully and gave a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... a man, coming down from that "vast uplandish country" to the main; of nameless age, with flaxen hair, and vigorous, weather-bleached countenance, in whose wrinkles the sun still lodged, as little touched by the heats and frosts and withering cares of life as a maple of the mountain; an undressed, unkempt, uncivil man, with whom we parleyed awhile, and parted not without a sincere interest in one another. His humanity was genuine and instinctive, and his rudeness only a manner. He inquired, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... soon they grow again and leave their nest. 'Oh!' saith the Psalmist, 'that I had a dove's Pinions to flee away, and be at rest!' And who that recollects young years and loves,— Though hoary now, and with a withering breast, And palsied fancy, which no longer roves Beyond its dimm'd eye's sphere,—but would much rather Sigh like his son, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... journey home, and I have never since returned to London; but when I got back to the place I had so foolishly left I found it sadder than before. Many friends were gone away or dead. Some honest lads, with whom I had jested at fair-times, hung withering on the ghastly gallows by the wayside; others lay in unknown graves; others languished in gaol or on board ship. My father's own brother, though his life was spared, had been sent away to the plantations to be sold, and to ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... their enemy with a stony and an ironic wonder. And here, too, among these cast-up bodies of the drowned, lay many women who had loved the prey of the sea, and kissed the cheeks turned acrid by its winds and waters. Some of them had died from heart-sickness, cursing the sea. Some had faded, withering like the pale sand roses beside the sea. Some had lived to old age by empty hearths, in ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... raised. The cattle keep increased, and with it came the farmer's wealth. Marl changes the character of the heath soil; with manure to fertilize it there was no reason why it should not grow crops—none, except the withering blast of the west wind. The time for Dalgas to preach tree planting ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... Ken staggered to a bench, and Weir leaned hard against the fence. They were all blowing like porpoises and regarded each other as mortal enemies. Weir gazed grandly at the other two; Raymond glowered savagely at him and then at Ken; and Ken in turn gave them withering glances. Without a word the three contestants for a place on the varsity then went their ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... direction the imagination took, the conviction forced upon the mind was, that you were in an inheritance, and that what the wisdom and energy of one generation had gathered together, succeeding generations had not yet scattered to the winds by the withering blast of infinitesimal division. With the imagination thus forcibly filled with home and its associations, you involuntarily feel disposed to take a stroll on the lawn; but on reaching the door, your ears are assailed by wild shouts of infantine laughter, and, raising your eyes, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... by narrow views and unworthy aims. In its old age there is nothing genial or lovely, and in its death one could almost believe that soul as well as body perishes. Simplicity improves in mind as it grows old in body. There are no wrinkles on the brow of its sunny spirit; there is no withering of its intellect. Its life, in time, is a perpetual advance in all that is gracious and intelligent,—a steady ripening for eternity,—and its death is but a birth into a fuller ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... to meet the reinforcements coming up; but we had also a force coming to join us; so, when the enemy had joined hands and came on again, we of the wagon-train had two troops for our protection, who, coming on at a walk behind, readily faced round, dismounted, and poured forth a withering fire, which again sent the enemy scuttling ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... thank God, and not me,' he said with a withering sneer, 'you owe me no gratitude for ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... the word, as did Chester, Captain Anderson and all of the troop. They did not fall a moment too soon, for there now came from the bushes a scattering and withering volley that would have done terrible execution among the little troop of British, but for the fact that they were beneath the line ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... his drink down, and his pipe smoking, resumed, with no attention to McHenry, and a withering glance at Fung Wah, who was bored and walked over to the wall to ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... heard it drop into the sea, With a heavy splashing sound, And I saw the captain's bloody hands As he quickly turned him round; And he drew in his breath when me he saw Like one convulsed, whom the withering awe Of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... still on our column kept, Through walls of flame, its withering way; Where fell the dead, the living stept, Still charging on the guns which swept ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... when a further advance without opening fire is impossible; and even in defence, when access to the ammunition reserve is likely to be far easier than in an attack, withholding fire until close range is reached is generally more effective than opening at a longer range. The tactical value of a withering fire at close range from a hitherto passive defender has again and again been proved in battle. On the Heights of Abraham (September 13, 1759) General Wolfe had assembled his troops and he awaited ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... lips unkissed, of sunsets which have not yet painted the clouds in their setting—above all, along the passed path of his life are neglected flowers of love lying which he has walked on with scarce a smile of thanks for the throwers, whose hands, perchance now withering, he longs to kiss. ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... evil is extremely limited. The very opposite is the ordinary estimate. When we mark the career of a conqueror like Napoleon, or the withering effects of an organization like that of Rome, and compare these with the feeble results of a preacher like Savonarola, whose body the fire reduced to ashes, and whose disciples persecution speedily scattered, we say that man's power to destroy his species is almost omnipotent,—his ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... as the warm weather closed in, in the summer of 1604, the malaria in the Tower began to affect Raleigh's health. As he tells Cecil, now Lord Cranborne, in a most dolorous letter, he was withering in body and mind. The plague had come close to him, his son having lain a fortnight with only a paper wall between him and a woman whose child was dying of that terrible complaint. Lady Raleigh, at last, had been able to bear the terror of infection no longer, and had departed with little Walter. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... yokes and dragged the plow point through the bosom of the earth, been half so genuine and deep. It was good to be alive, to sleep, to eat, to toil! Cities had lost their charm. David's sin was no longer a withering and blasting, but a chastening and restraining memory. His clearing was a kingdom, his cabin a palace, and he was soon to have a queen! He had reserved his sowing for the last day of his self-imposed seclusion, which ended ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... were beginning to feel tired, she suggested to Bell that she might start a dance if she had a mind to, either in the kitchen or parlor, it did not matter where, and "Ephraim would not care an atom," a remark which brought from Mrs. Deacon Bannister a most withering look of reproach, and slightly endangered Aunt Betsy's standing in the church. Perhaps Bell Cameron suspected as much, for she replied that they were having a splendid time as it was, and as Dr. Grant did not dance, they might as well dispense with it altogether. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Antony's oration over the body of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and taking the War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It was not with me then, as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions, and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... apparently rendering the clay so soft that the entire road for about thirty yards had been worked into a perfect quagmire, into which we sank above our knees at every step, the tenacious clay holding our feet almost as though they had been in a vice—when, without the slightest warning of any kind, a withering volley of musketry was poured in upon the devoted band from the bushes on both sides of the road, and while the smoke still enveloped us out dashed some thirty or forty Corsicans, armed, some only with their clubbed muskets, others flourishing in addition ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... he might have required that they should pass through his chapel yard on the Raise before leaving the parish, but he had waived his right to this tribute to episcopacy. After offering a suitable blessing, he turned away, not without a withering glance at the weaver, who was muttering rather too audibly an ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... his window and contemplated the pink glow of the dawn. In one direction was the far Orient, Jerusalem, the invisible ruins of Solomon's Temple, Palestine weeping for her sons and the withering ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... burning, blistering, withering shame that the cross of St George should be found floating on American soil?" [Here Mr L. H. SIMS exclaimed, "Yes, and it will blister on our foreheads like ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Kirsty John, the cruel object of his hopeless love, was there. A fine, big, strapping young woman she was, with a strong face, and a pair of fearless, black eyes. She sat bolt upright against the log wall, talking to Mary Lauchie, a sweet, pale-faced girl; and occasionally casting a withering glance in the direction of the bench behind the stove, where the Weaver was alternately striving to efface himself and to attract ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... anything of this nature. But beyond a doubt it is the humid saline atmosphere of this section which makes the cultivation of this vegetable a success. Protracted drouths are here almost unknown, and even during the temporary absence of rain in the summer months the air does not seem so dry and withering, so to speak, as in sections more remote from the ocean, the Sound and the great salt water bays by which we are surrounded." The varieties he mentions are Early Erfurt and Early Paris for the first crop, the Nonpareil and [or] Half Early Paris for a succession, with ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... means true, but Lady Ogram had always been a bad sitter to the camera, and had destroyed most of its results. The oil painting in the dining-room she regarded with a moderate complacency. Many a time during the latter years of withering and enfeeblement her memory had turned to that shining head in marble, which was hidden away amid half a century's dust under the roof at Rivenoak. There, and there only, survived the glory of her youth, when not the face alone, but all her faultless ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... Through Gorgona, the Pittsburg of the Zone with its acres of machine-shops, rumbled the train and plunged beyond into a deep, if not exactly rank, endless jungle. The stations grew small and unimportant. Bailamonos and San Pablo were withering and wasting away, "'Orca L'garto," or the Hanged Alligator was barely more than a memory, Tabernilla a mere heap of lumber being tumbled on flatcars bound for new service further Pacificward. Of Frijoles there remained barely enough to shudder at, with the collector's nasal ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... indignation, had permitted Venetia to listen even to this tirade. Pale as her companion, but with a glance of withering scorn, she exclaimed, 'Passionate and ill-mannered boy! words cannot express the disgust and the contempt with which you inspire me.' She spoke and she disappeared. Cadurcis was neither able nor desirous to arrest her flight. He remained rooted to the ground, muttering to himself ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... the little rascal did was to write a withering leader denouncing Mr. Scandril as a "demagogue, the degradation of whose political opinions was only equaled by the disgustfulness of the family connections of which those opinions ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... himself had barely passed his fortieth year, and was a superb specimen of English manhood, standing full six feet two in his stockings, with a fine athletic figure, blue eyes that ordinarily beamed with kindliness and good-humour, but which could, upon occasion, flash withering scorn or scathing anger upon an offender, and curly golden hair, with beard and moustache to match, that made him look like a viking got up in the style of a twentieth-century ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... civilization in the most thickly- populated workshop in Europe, counting every blade of grass and every kernel of wheat and making its pleasures go a long way at small cost; a hothouse of a land, with the door about to be opened to the withering ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... with a book, an apple, and Tabitha the cat. Will mended a skate-strap and discoursed of "Old Jack." "It's a fact, ma'am! Wilson worked the problem, gave the solution, and got from Old Jack a regular withering up! They'll all tell you, ma'am, that he excels in withering up! 'You are wrong, Mr. Wilson,' says he, in that tone of his—dry as tinder, and makes you stop like a musket-shot! 'You are always wrong. Go to your seat, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... fine porte-cochere or entrance gate, flanked by little lodges which guarded the charming "sejour" (to use a word of the olden time), and proceeded, with the industry of a Parisian proprietor, to impress his withering mark on the elegance of the old building. What a curious study might be made of the successive title-deeds of property in Paris! A private lunatic asylum performs its functions in the rue des Batailles in the former dwelling of the Chevalier Pierre Bayard du Terrail, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... apparatus lay about on the marble dressing-table. The atmosphere of the room was almost oppressive for the rich odors of perfumes in bottles whose gold stoppers had not been replaced. A bunch of hot-house flowers was withering upon a tiny writing-table. Two or three handsome dresses lay in a heap upon the ground, and the open doors of a wardrobe revealed the treasures within. Jewelry, ivory-backed hair-brushes, and exquisite ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... a ghastly and withering glance at the punters, and cried, in a sharp voice, "Make your game!" as the young man came in. The silence seemed to grow deeper as all heads turned curiously towards the new arrival. Who would ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... her, then from one to another of the rest with a withering scorn.] Ha! Now you think you have conquered, do you? No, I'm not going to stay! Do you think your vile slander could influence me to give up my work? And neither shall you influence the life of my son. I leave him here. I must. But not to your tender ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... she cried at length, horrified at the bold assertion, and endeavouring to quail her audacious pupil with one stern, withering glance, "this is dreadful!" But the angry child only pouted, and repeated doggedly, ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... petty spirits of region low, Offend our hearing; hush! How dare you ghosts Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt, you know, Sky-planted batters all rebelling coasts? Poor shadows of Elysium, hence, and rest Upon your never-withering banks of flowers. Be not with mortal accidents opprest: No care of yours it is; you know 'tis ours. Whom best I love I cross; to make my gift, The more delay'd, delighted. Be content; Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift. ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... one art thou. Who wisely wed, Wed happily. The love thou speak'st of, A flower is only, that its season has, Which they must look to see the withering of, Who pleasure in its budding and its bloom! But wisdom is the constant evergreen Which lives the whole year through! ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... His smile was sarcastic, and his remarks were often bitter. If he had not been charming, he would have been odious; and to have been loved at all, he must have been passionately loved, for no feeling short of passion could have withstood the withering influence of his profound selfishness. He was well versed in the language of feeling, in the theory of enthusiasm; he could speak of "whatsoever things are pure, of whatsoever things are lovely, of whatsoever things are honest, of whatsoever things are of ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... dress; what a powerful auxiliary it is to speech and manner when harmonizing with them. On this occasion he appeared in a blue coat, a buff vest, black pants and white cravat; a costume strikingly in keeping with his face and expression. The human face never wore an expression of more withering, relentless scorn than when the orator replied to Hayne's allusion to the "Murdered Coalition"—a piece of stale political trumpery ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... presents that petition from slaves, we shall yet see him within the walls of the penitentiary." All these attempts at brow-beating moved him not a tittle. Firm he stood to his duty, despite the storms of angry passion which howled around him, and with withering rebukes repelled the assaults of hot-blooded opponents, as the proud old headland, jutting far into ocean's bosom, tosses high, in worthless spray, the dark mountain billows which in wrath ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... me the next day, and my heart beat quicker as he entered. I never had seen the old man tread with so majestic a step. He seated himself and looked at me with withering scorn. My children had learned to be afraid of him. The little one would shut her eyes and hide her face on my shoulder whenever she saw him; and Benny, who was now nearly five years old, often inquired, "What makes that bad man come here so many times? Does he ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... stop here. Death rarely lays his withering hand upon one household flower without touching another, and causing it to droop, wither, and fall to the ground. So it was in this case. William, the manly, intelligent, promising boy, upon whom the father had ever looked with ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... dreams of emulating Saint Theresa, to comradeship with the glossy occupant of the hearth-rug. George Eliot, as a true artist, sees what is faulty in the catastrophe, but she will not unsex her creation. Another of her characters, Rosamond, she pursues with a minute, withering, one would say vindictive, contempt. It is the beautiful, distinguished young creature who marries Lydgate on account of his high connections, and who trains him to do up her plaits of hair for her, and allows him to talk the "little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... her notwithstanding, and she knew it, and sickened under it as under an evil influence. He was very angry with her—she was fully conscious of that—unjustifiably, unreasonably angry. More than once, when Mr. Granger was especially attentive, she had encountered a withering glance from those dark gray eyes, and she had been weak enough, wicked enough perhaps, to try and make him perceive that Mr. Granger's attentions were in no way pleasant to her. She could bear anything ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... of cavalry was sent to teach the gallant 49th a lesson, and came thundering down on them like a wolf on the fold, or an avalanche on a Swiss hamlet, they formed square with mathematical precision, received them with a withering fire that ought to have emptied every saddle, and, with the bayonet's point, turned them trooping off to the right ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... scene of action and are within thirty paces of the cemetery wall, when from behind it rises a battalion of men in the green uniform of the Santee Rangers and pours a withering fire into the ranks. The shock is too great to withstand, and the red-coats stagger away with broken ranks, leaving many dead and wounded on the ground. Lord Percy is the coolest of all. He urges the broken columns forward, and almost alone holds the place until the infantry, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of the Kingdom. There was talent of every sort in the paper that could have been desired or devised for such a purpose. It seemed as if a legion of sarcastic devils had brooded in Synod over the elements of withering derision." Hook, however, was the master spirit, the majority of the lampoons in prose, and all the original poetry in the early volumes from the "Hunting the Hare," were from his own pen, except, perhaps, "Michael's Dinner," which has ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... forward over to-morrow. The divinity that presides over the past is memory; to-day is ruled by reason, to-morrow is under the regency of hope. In every age memory has been an unpopular goddess. The poet Byron pictures this divinity as sitting sorrowing midst mouldering ruins and withering leaves. But the orators unveil the future as a tropic realm, magical, mysterious and surpassingly rich. The temple where hope is worshiped is always crowded; her shrines are never without gifts of flowers and ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... day began to break over the desolate hills, the fun began. From three sides the Indians poured into the camp a withering fire. As a result the entire command became panic stricken. Seven men were knocked down, almost at the first fire, and it has always been a matter of surprise to me that Hasbrook, old campaigner as he was, ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... woman were also beginning to sicken, though both of them tried to continue their work. It was the woman who first noticed that the plants around the farmhouse were withering and ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... they not, in their light, great critics, too? Don't they know when to laugh, when to blubber, and when to applaud, and don't they know when to hiss, though! What a fiat is their withering hiss! What poor actor dare brave it? It has gone deep, deep into many a poor player's heart and crushed ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... with victory, attempted to land, but were met with such a withering fire from the Volunteer Artillery, that they had to abandon the attempt in despair—at least for awhile. They retired for the night, and on the following morning were in front of Westgate-on-Sea. It was then found how wise the Committee ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... the same lofty purpose, pride, and energy animate them. They have contrasted the free and noble with the mean and servile. Its magic has entered their natures and quickened their souls. In all there is a lofty scorn for the little and mean. The same withering contempt for the cringing and cowardly is met in every one of them. Their impulses are generous, and their aspirations noble, with hearts as soft and tender as love, pity, and compassion can form. Yet in them there is, too, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... felt very dry, like sand she thought, and her mind felt dry too, as if insomnia was withering it up. She opened her lips to breathe in the salt ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... Christian gathered up her pack of terriers, hound puppies, and red setters, with the farm collie to complete its absurdity, and walked fast. October was just ending; the willows along the river-bank were yellow, the reeds in the ditches that ran beneath each fence were greying and withering. The successive profiles of wood and hill, down the valley of the river went from orange and brown to a reddish purple, until, in the large serenity of the autumn evening, they softened to the universal blue ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... to the reading of the Law—'Shall stand Simeon, the son of Nehemiah'—and he arose and solemnly mounted the central platform, his familiarity with the due obeisances and osculations and benedictions seemed a withering reply to the libel. When he descended, and the Parnass proffered his presidential hand in pious congratulation upon the holy privilege, all the congregants who found themselves upon his line of return shot forth their arms with remorseful eagerness, and ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... agitation against the Government, and that does as well as anything else. We can't afford to neglect a single chance of kicking them out. I have planned my speech pretty well right through; it will be very effective—withering, I fancy—but it's just these plaguy blue-books that won't quite tally with what I've got to say. I must go through ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... there," writes Sturt, "when the wind, which had been blowing all the morning hot from the north-east, increased to a gale, and I shall never forget its withering effects. I sought shelter behind a large gum tree, but the blasts of heat were so terrific, that I wondered the very grass did not take fire. This really was nothing ideal; everything, both animate and inanimate, gave ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... once taken, can never be recalled; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must follow, will rest on the convention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth; when our green fields of waving harvests ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... months elapsed ere I saw the bodies of this Captain, whose name was Patrick Devann, and all those who were actively concerned in the perpetration of this deed of horror, withering in the wind, where they hung gibbeted, near the scene of their nefarious villany; and while I inwardly thanked Heaven for my own narrow and almost undeserved escape, I thought in my heart how seldom, even in this world, justice ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... paper, of convincing him (the "Gazette") that he (the "Tea-Pot") both can and will be his own master, as regards style; he (the "Tea-Pot") intending to show him (the "Gazette") the supreme, and indeed the withering contempt with which the criticism of him (the "Gazette") inspires the independent bosom of him (the "TeaPot") by composing for the especial gratification (?) of him (the "Gazette") a leading article, of some extent, in which the beautiful vowel—the emblem of Eternity—yet ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... advanced when we were in New Orleans, the roses and magnolia blossoms were falling; but here in St. Paul it was the snow, In New Orleans we had caught an occasional withering breath from over a crater, apparently; here in St. Paul we caught a frequent benumbing one from over a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... produce, even {256} with the pollen of either pure parent, a single fertile seed: but in some of these cases a first trace of fertility may be detected, by the pollen of one of the pure parent-species causing the flower of the hybrid to wither earlier than it otherwise would have done; and the early withering of the flower is well known to be a sign of incipient fertilisation. From this extreme degree of sterility we have self-fertilised hybrids producing a greater and greater number of seeds up ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... however, must ever have adorned and cheered the world; it naturally springs from the depths of a woman's soul. However dark and dismal society may have been under the withering influences of Paganism, it is probable that glorious instances could be chronicled of the devotion of woman to man and of man to woman, which was not intensified by the passion of love. Nevertheless, the condition of women in the Pagan world, even with all the influences of civilization, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... ceased their scurrying about and the house had grown quiet in its besotted sleep. Then I crept back to a dark corner by the great hearth where the stone was warm to the touch and whence I might see if any passed along the hall. I was all alone there with the drained goblets, the withering garlands, and the gutted torches, not a soul abroad, and not a sound save the breathing of the dormant stag-hounds by the hearth, or the faint disputes of the rats over the pasty ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Into the mystic ring one word, "Beware!" Rang out in such a tone of high command That all was still, and every look was turned To where the Raven stood; his stern eye burned, And like a flower beneath that withering glare She faded fast. No need that heavy hand To lead Winona from the joyous band; No need those shameful words that stained the air: "Let not the sacred circle be defiled By one who, all too easily beguiled, Beneath her bosom bears ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... it is—I see how it is," impetuously interrupted Judith. "I am the one he sees fit to scorch with his withering tongue! Hetty, indeed! Poor Hetty!" she continued, her voice sinking into low, husky tones, that seemed nearly to stifle her in the utterance; "she is beyond and above his slanderous malice! Poor Hetty! If God has created ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... a beast, to a fool, to a devil. The excessive drinker first becomes stupid, then idiotic, then a maniac. Men of the finest geniuses, most acute minds, and profound learning, have dwindled under the touch of this withering demon to the merest insignificance, and been hooted by boys for their silly speeches and silly actions, or chained in a madhouse as unsafe in society. Of eighty-seven admitted into the New York hospital in one year, the insanity of twenty-seven was occasioned by ardent ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... lazy days on the Palomar. June had cast its withering smile upon the San Gregorio and the green hills had turned to a parched brown. Grasshoppers whirred everywhere; squirrels whistled; occasional little dust-devils whirled up the now thoroughly dry river-bed and the atmosphere was redolent of the aroma of dust and tarweed. Pablo and his ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... through a withering gale of sleet all the way up from New York, came to a standstill, with many an ear-splitting sigh, alongside the little station, and a reluctant porter opened his vestibule door to descend to the snow-swept platform: a solitary ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... conceived an appreciation of its powers. Instead of flying straight before it, and being inevitably overtaken, she ran at once to the river and galloped madly down the shallow margin. Before the flames were actually upon her, she was beyond the zone of their fury. But she felt the withering blast of them, and their appalling roar was in her ears. With starting eyes and wide, palpitating nostrils, she ran on and on, and stopped only when she sank exhausted in a rude cove. There she lay with panting sides and watched far ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... with furious look, From side to side his burning thunder shook: Now here, now there, the scattering lightnings broke, And the wide vallies flamed, and glowed with sulphurous smoke: Contagious terror roll'd from plain to plain; Cold Anio trembled in his watery reign; And dazzled by the withering flames, o'eraw'd, The chief shrunk back, and ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... your helpless nestlings. Even the hoary hawthorn twig that shot across the way, what heart at such a time but must have been interested in its welfare, and wished it preserved from the rudely-browsing cattle, or the withering eastern blast? Such was the scene, and such the hour, when, in a corner of my prospect, I spied one of the fairest pieces of nature's workmanship that ever crowned a poetic landscape, or met a poet's eye, those visionary bards excepted, who hold ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... presentation of South Pass, and a picture of the alkali desert, so parching, so withering in its choking realism, that it makes the throat ache and the tongue dry to read it. Just a bit of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Potash," Prosnauer went on with a withering glance at Abe, "those samples are outside, and Pasinsky has asked me to ship them ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... enormous gauze cuff, leaning on the partition which divided, or ought to have divided, her from us, considerably passed the line of demarcation. Lady de Brantefield, with all the pride of all the De Brantefields since the Norman Conquest concentrated in her countenance, threw an excommunicating, withering look upon the arm—but the elbow felt it not—it never stirred. The lady seemed not to be made of penetrable stuff. In happy ignorance she sat fanning herself for a few seconds; then suddenly starting and stretching forward to the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... unaccustomed bloodshed of the spectacle and the gallantry of her neighbours, passed an evening of delirious happiness. In those days I had an aesthetic soul above the 'Eventreurs de Paris,' and I made fun of it to Paragot, whose thoughts were far away. When I perceived this, I kept my withering sarcasm to myself, and realised that a flattened man cannot be blown like a bladder into permanent rotundity even by the faith and affection of a little art-student. But I marvelled all the more at his gaiety during the intervals, when we all went outside ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... him jocularly to know why he was so finely dressed. George Washington overwhelmed her with a look of such infinite contempt and such withering scorn that all the other servants forthwith fell upon her for "interferin' in Unc' George Wash'n'ton's business." At last the Major entered the garden and bade George Washington follow him; and George Washington having ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... house as invited guests. Families meet as in England. Two per cent. of the soldiers get a fortnight's leave of absence and a free pass; and there is joy in peasant homes over peasant charcoal pans. The dusky shades of evening are stealing over olive grove and withering vineyard, and every house lights up its tiny oil lamp, and every image of the Virgin is illuminated with a taper. In Eija, near Cordova, an image or portrait of the Virgin and the Babe new-born, hangs ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... winters of suffering. But what are the winters now?—they are far off"—here Mordecai again rested his hand on Deronda's arm, and looked at him with that joy of the hectic patient which pierces us to sadness—"there is nothing to wail in the withering of my body. The work will be the better done. Once I said the work of this beginning was mine, I am born to do it. Well, I shall do it. I shall live in you. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... over to Fort Garry, or perhaps he's crossed to Akimiski Island. The fleet have been mostly round that way this week past. Shall I show you round a bit, sir? I'm the acting manager, formerly sole manager." Oily Dave contrived to throw a withering emphasis on the latter adjective, and roiled up his eyes in a manner meant to imply injured innocence, which, however, only expressed low-down ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... advantage over us, for they were always ready, had cover, and always knew the ground to their immediate front; whereas we, their assailants, had to grope our way over unknown ground, and generally found a cleared field or prepared entanglements that held us for a time under a close and withering fire. Rarely did the opposing lines in compact order come into actual contact, but when, as at Peach-Tree Creek and Atlanta, the lines did become commingled, the men fought individually in every possible style, more frequently with the musket clubbed than with the ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... a weight on her young heart, a grief which was wearing out the elasticity of her spirits, withering her glorious beauty, and making her aged before her time. Perchance she mourned the absence of one she loved, and was wearied with anxiety for his return; perhaps the canker-worm of remorse was at work within her, for a ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... swore to me by heaven!—doudoux, you swore to me by your faith!... And now you cannot come to me? ... Oh! my heart is withering with pain!... I was passing by the cemetery;—I saw my name upon a stone—all by itself. I saw two white roses; and in a moment one faded and fell before me.... So ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... loved him pray for his death, and greet his last breath with an echoing sigh of thankfulness and relief: he might have been cheered in his last hour by the graceful sympathy of troops of friends; but the State-protected vice has such a withering effect that it scorches up friendship as a fiery breath from a furnace might scorch a grass blade. If one of my joyous, delightful lads could just watch the shambling, dirty figure of such a failure as I have described; if he could see the sneers of amused ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... quite sure but it's origin was measles, since the little girl had a decided case. The strictest watch would be kept. The clothes and some rubbish had been burned. The clairvoyant's knowledge of the future was held up to withering ridicule. ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... by the other selectmen, passed through the midst of the people, until he reached the stone step before the tavern door. He stepped up on this, and ere he opened his lips, swept the shame-faced assemblage before him with a withering glance. What with those who had pulled their hats over their eyes, and those who had turned their backs to him in anxiety to avoid identification, there was not an eye that met his. Abner himself, brave as a lion with his own class, was no braver than any one of them when it came to encountering ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... answered with withering scorn. "What sort of a time would you have had if some one had shot you all over the back and you must creep away to die of pain and starvation? How would you have enjoyed it if, from day to day, you had been forced ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... angry over their losses, but their wise leader saw that he must give them a breathing-spell. No troops in the world could stand a fire so withering as that which came from the repeating-rifles of the desperadoes. Quite as many ponies as men had gone down, and their morning's plunder had already cost them more than it was worth. Therefore it must not be permitted to cost them any more, if they ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... years made venerable by generous and useful actions, and covered by the gratitude and applause of admiring friends; let the man-stealer come upon him, and behold the wreck of desolation! Shame, disgrace, infamy, the blighting of all hopes, the withering of all joys; long unnoticed wo, untended poverty, a dishonored name, an unwept death, a forgotten grave; all, and more than all, are in these words, he is a slave! He who can preserve the even current of his thoughts in the midst of such reflections, may have some faint ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... actual feelings of the men engaged that the inexperienced may be pardoned the thought, that, having donned the insignia of a soldier, a man instantly becomes filled with martial ardor, and eager to face the most withering fire of musketry or artillery. But the reality is far different; very few men are so constituted, or are so reckless of their lives, that they can listen to the unearthly screech of the shell or the crash of solid shot, mingled with the sickening thud of grape and ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... our ports blockaded, all our cities in a state of siege; the gaunt spectre of famine brooding like a hungry vulture over our starving land; our commissary stores all exhausted, and our famishing armies withering away in the field, a helpless prey to the insatiate demon of hunger; our navy rotting in the docks for want of provisions for our gallant seamen, and we without any railroad communication whatever with the prolific pine thickets of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... and Oswald, when they had given H. O. a withering glance. And the lady did go on. She told us all about Becket, and then about St Alphege, who had bones thrown at him till he died, because he wouldn't tax his poor people to please ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... planted in the spring, And had the sun before him of respect; We, set in th' autumn, in the withering And sullen season of a cold defect, Must taste those sour distastes the times do bring Upon the fulness of a cloy'd neglect. Although the stronger constitutions shall Wear out th' infection ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in accents wild, Cried,'Sal! turn back and nurse our child!' She bent on him a withering look, Her bony fist at him she shook. And screeched, 'Ye brute! ye think I'm flat To mend your clo'es and nurse your brat? Nurse it yourself; I'll change the plan, When I am made a congressman— Woman's Rights ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... day, does the fever-fire trace Its incessant course down her fast-withering cheek, Till the smile that made light in the glow of her face, But the faint, fading glimpses of vigour bespeak, And her reason will fitfully pass into night— Into night even deeper than that of the blind, As the shade of ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... seeking shelter or food. Close to the ground it is warm and less windy. When the cup first opens, only the stigmas are mature and sticky to receive any pollen the visitors may bring in on their bodies from other asylums where they have been hiding. These stigmas presently withering, up rise the twelve stamens beside them to dust with pollen the flies coming in search of it. Only one flower from a root compels cross-fertilizing between flowers of distinct plants - a means to insure the most vigorous seed, as Darwin proved. Evidently the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... track which contracts into the murk is the road to China, though that is, perhaps, the last place you would guess to be at the end of it. The train runs over a wilderness of tiles, a grey plateau of bare slate and rock, its expanse cracked and scored as though by a withering heat. Nothing grows there; nothing could live there. Smoke still pours from it, as though it were volcanic, from numberless vents. The region is without sap. Above its expanse project superior fumaroles, their drifting vapours dissolving ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... the same door almost as hastily, but she was a stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such a withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of the Seven Arts slunk out and could be heard stumbling down ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... perched upon her shoulder, and almost before she knew he was there he put the berry between her lips, and the taste was so delicious that Rosaleen ate it at once, and that very moment the witch's withering spell passed away from her, and she became as lovely as the flower of beauty. Just then the warriors on the snow-white steeds came up, and the chief with the mantle of yellow silk and the golden helmet leaped from his horse, and bending his knee ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... the crumbling shells of things dead and gone, of persons and manners and customs that have left no very distinct record of themselves, excepting here and there in some sallow manuscript which has luckily escaped the withering breath of fire, for the old town, as I have remarked, has managed, from the earliest moment of its existence, to burn itself up periodically. It is only through the scattered memoranda of ancient town clerks, ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... cause of the withering glance you directed at me about ten minutes ago?' asks Dalrymple, when they are left ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... was over, the public may well be astonished at a military system which allowed one of its ablest soldiers to live in obscurity, and not even be consulted in the affairs of the nation. Sir William Butler with withering scorn says:— ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... chilling haughtiness that I, for one, felt very like shivering. There fell another awful silence, aunt Julia sitting very upright, hands clenched on the arms of her chair, dark brows bent against my uncle Jervas, who met her withering glance with all his wonted impassivity, while my uncle George, square face slightly flushed, glanced half-furtively from one to the other and clicked nervous heels together so ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... animadversion, would elicit truth, and tend to good. If the South felt that the North were truly her friend, they would both be found cooperating for the improvement and elevation of the colored race. Every form of oppression and selfishness would feel the withering rebuke of a just and enlightened universal public sentiment. But now that the quarrel runs high as to the sinfulness and wrongfulness of the relation itself, there is nothing for the South to do but to ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... of mirth redoubled; Cigarette's style of withering eloquence was suited to all her auditors' tastes, and under the chorus of laughs at his cost, her infuriated adversary plucked up courage and roared ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the day following the wiping out of Oracle, the first black globes approached Tucson. They floated down from the north, skirting the granite ridges and foothills of the Catalinas, and were met with a withering hail of lead from anti-aircraft guns, and burst, scattering wide their contents. When some three hours later the first squadron of the air fleet came to earth on the landing field a few miles south of the city, the northern ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... become a term of derision and of scorn. Only then shall we be rid of these pestilential English spies, only then will the entire League of the Scarlet Pimpernel become a thing of the past when its whilom leader, now thought akin to a god, will have found refuge in a suicide's grave, from the withering contempt ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... vigour. But Benches empty; level of oratory third-rate; STANSFELD a hoary Triton among the Minnows; ELLIS ASHMEAD BARTLETT (Knight) gloomily views the scene. "Thought you were going to speak to-night?" I said, "Read the announcement in the papers." Never forget the haughty, withering glance of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... unchanging kindness balance patched elbows? are not cracked boots receipts in full for hours of anxious love and care? does not the kindness of a life fade "like the baseless fabric of a vision" before the withering touch of poverty's stern stamp? Have you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... they have deep convictions and a firm belief that slavery is an existing evil, incompatible with the principles of political liberty, at war with our system of government, and extending a baleful and blasting influence over our country, withering and blighting its fairest prospects and brightest hopes. Who has said that these petitions are unjust in principle, and on that ground ought not to be granted? Who has said that slavery is not an evil? Who has said it does not ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... about them,' returned the old man, shaking his head, 'but I say otherwise. "It's a pretty custom you have in this part of the country," they say to me sometimes, "to plant the graves, but it's melancholy to see these things all withering or dead." I crave their pardon and tell them that, as I take it, 'tis a good sign for the happiness of the living. And ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Indeed, wherever vegetation can be sustained, there they are, affording protection to the roots and seeds of more delicate vegetables, and, by their spongy texture, retaining a moisture which preserves other plants from the withering drought of summer. But even in winter we find them enlivening, by their verdure, the cold bosom of Nature. We see them abounding in our pastures and our woods, attaching themselves to the living, and still more abundantly to ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... drew forth a peal of laughter from the girls, Eleanor included. But Polly failed to join in the laugh. She cast a withering glance at Eleanor, and walked aside to open the envelope. The four interested girls watched her eagerly as she read the ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... mother says again. "I did think, Floyd, you had more sense! A child like that,—a silly little thing who plays with dolls! If you wanted a wife," with withering contempt, "there was one of whom we should all have been proud! And you have behaved shamefully, after ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fancied a few of the younger ones were beginning to feel tired, she suggested to Bell that she might start a dance if she had a mind to, either in the kitchen or parlor, it did not matter where, and "Ephraim would not care an atom," a remark which brought from Mrs. Deacon Bannister a most withering look of reproach, and slightly endangered Aunt Betsy's standing in the church. Perhaps Bell Cameron suspected as much, for she replied that they were having a splendid time as it was, and as Dr. Grant did not dance, they might as well dispense with it altogether. And so it happened that there was ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... on this campaign by a captain of the regiment, he relates how the officers of the regiment tried to stop the flying troops, and taunted their officers with the bad example they were setting their men; how the regiment opened a rapid, withering fire from a little parapet of cartridges which the officers, breaking open boxes of ammunition, had built in front of the men, and how their fire proved so destructive at that close range that it stopped Cheatham's men who then fell back and commenced building breastworks. In calling them Cheatham's ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... them to incline to the right and mingle their masses at the head of the obstacle and thus their movements would be obstructed. It seemed to have the anticipated effect and the assaulting columns apparently jumbled together at this point were met by the withering volleys of McKethan's direct and Gaillard's cross-fire and by the direct discharge of the shell guns, supplemented by the frightful enfilading discharges of the lighter guns upon the right and left. It was terrible, but with ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... mountains, jump jagged chasms. Sleep is a horse that laughs at precipices and abysses. We bid women, moreover, be all heart. They are to cultivate their hearts, pay much heed to their hearts. The vast realm of feeling is open to these appointed keepers of the sanctuary household, who may be withering virgins, may be childless matrons, may be unhusbanded wives. Wandering in the vast realm which they are exhorted to call their own, for the additional attractiveness it gives them, an unsatisfied heart of woman will somewhat audaciously cross the borderland ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... grown in the open in the same manner as Hyacinths. Five or six bulbs in a 5-in. pot make a very pretty bouquet. They are excellent early flowers, and very odoriferous. Plant in autumn, placing sand round the bulbs. Best not disturbed too often. The leaves should not be cut off when withering, but allowed to die down. They bloom in April. Height, ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... divided, her from us, considerably passed the line of demarcation. Lady de Brantefield, with all the pride of all the De Brantefields since the Norman Conquest concentrated in her countenance, threw an excommunicating, withering look upon the arm—but the elbow felt it not—it never stirred. The lady seemed not to be made of penetrable stuff. In happy ignorance she sat fanning herself for a few seconds; then suddenly starting and stretching forward to the front row, where five ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... with black and white, and when the schapskas and schabraques were edged with yellow, he would keep out of the way altogether. It shamed him terribly to think of his momentary panic; he cursed himself for a coward, and dug his clenched fists into both pockets. But even as he stood there, withering himself with self-scorn, he could not help hoping that his aunt and uncle would find it convenient to go to Paris soon. That would leave him free to take his own chances by remaining, to be near Lorraine. For it did not occur to him that he ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... still raging when Jane came to say that tea was ready; but the losses on both sides had been terribly severe. The invading army still pressed forward, though the "57th" were once more decimated by the withering fire; and nothing actually remained of the "Coldstream Guards" but a kettle-drummer of uncertain nationality, and a man carrying a red and green flag, which he might very possibly have captured from some Sunday-school treat. The opposite side were in no better plight: men were lying crushed under ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... and held to parched lips the sparkling draught a glimpse of which electrified her. Would starvation entitle her to drink? Over the head of pleading love stretched the arm of stony-eyed duty, striking into the dust the crystal drops, withering the palms; and following her stern beckon, the thirsty pilgrim re-trod the sands of surrender, more intolerable than before, because the oasis was still in sight. Duty! Rugged incorruptible Spartan dame, whose inflexible mandate is ever: "With ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... there are moral swamps, sending up their foul steam to pollute the common light; there are kennels of uncleanness, running with the waste of human lives, sweeping along with the death-gurgle of human souls; there is a dry-rot of impurity infecting the town-air, withering the dearest sanctities of society and of home—and over this kind of evil we cannot be facetious. Think how much is risked here, and how much is lost! Domestic happiness, reputation, honor, health, order, the prospects of the young, the peace of ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... the refinements and perversities of civilization, on many more complex and civilized men she exerts an attraction of an almost reverse kind. She appeals by her fresh and natural coarseness, her frank familiarity with the crudest facts of life; and so lifts them for a moment out of the withering atmosphere of artificial thought and unreal sentiment in which so many civilized persons are compelled to spend the greater part of their lives. They feel in the words which the royal friend of a woman of this temperament is said to have used in explaining her incomprehensible ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and towered to a height of nearly twelve feet. Captain Dall applied a match to the tarry pieces of the long-boat, which had been placed at the foundation, and the flames at once leaped up and began to lick greedily round the timber, winding through the interstices and withering up the leaves. Soon a thick smoke began to ascend, for much of the timber in the pile was green, and before the sun had set a dense black cloud was rising straight up like a pillar and spreading out into the sky. As the fire gathered strength, a great tongue of flame flashed up ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... a withering reply, And vanity I always do my best to mortify; A charitable action I can skilfully dissect; And interested motives I'm delighted to detect. I know everybody's income and what everybody earns, And I ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... my charming Emily. To die when heaven had put you in my power! Fate could not choose a more malicious hour. What greater curse could envious fortune give, Than just to die when I began to live? Vain men, how vanishing a bliss we crave, Now warm in love, now withering in the grave! Never, O never more to see the sun! Still dark, in a damp vault, and still alone! This fate is common; but I lose my breath Near bliss, and yet not bless'd, before my death. Farewell! but take me ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... that is, ef you call three, four, five millions well off. I don't know how it strikes you" (with a withering sarcasm), "but I call Arthur Farnham pretty ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... Lieutenant Colonel Thackera from the Transvaal, of the Third Battalion, with Scots of other formations, made a desperate and heroic defense. Without food or water the remnant clung to the position, undismayed even when the withering fire of the enemy had thinned their ranks and at last killed or wounded all the officers of one battalion. But even under these depressing conditions the spirit of those who remained had not weakened, and an attack subsequently made by ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... she made many observations, which, alas! strengthened her fears. She saw that the banks were too dry, and that the grass on the shore and the trailing plants on the rocks were withering away. She caused marks to be made along the borders, and examined them day after day, in all directions of the wind, at last the horrible idea became a certain fact,—that the surface of ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... flowerlike that it is always a little fresh surprise to see them blooming in winter. Their tenderness, their down, their colour, their fulness—which is like that of a thick rose or of a tight grape—look out of season. Children in the withering wind are like the soft golden-pink roses that fill the barrows in Oxford Street, breathing a southern calm on the north wind. The child has something better than warmth in the cold, something more subtly out of place and more delicately contrary; and that is coolness. To be ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... with a brittle dryness that testified how perfectly parched-up was everything. A single spark would instantly have wrapped the whole face of the country in one sheet of fire. Slight blasts of heated withering air, as if from an oven, would occasionally strike the face as we walked along; sometimes they were loaded with those peculiar and most agreeable odours that arise from different kinds of gums. Still the white eucalyptus ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... snare we fall together, Three hapless victims of unpitying fate, And share the mournful privilege of tears. But when I think that for the lover more Than for the brother bursts thy sorrow's tide, Then rage and envy mingle with my pain, And hope's last balm forsakes my withering soul? Nor joyful, as beseems, can I requite This inured shade:—yet after him content To mercy's throne my contrite spirit shall fly, Sped by this hand—if dying I may know That in one urn our ashes shall repose, With pious office ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Mrs. Harper cast a withering look of contempt at her husband, folded her arms and leaned back in her chair, more puzzled than ever at ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... everywhere in woods and swamps, we are reminded of the fall, both by the richly spotted Sarsaparilla-leaves and Brakes, and the withering and blackened Skunk-Cabbage and Hellebore, and, by the river-side, the already ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... The withering sunlight of a day late in August fell upon the dusty street, now almost deserted. Faces at the doors and windows of the little houses were looking out at them. Two ragged boys and a ginger colored dog came running toward ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... and honored prime favorite, Jane Austen. He once said to me, I suppose after he had been reading some of my unsparing praises of her—I am always praising her, "You seem to think that woman could write," and he forbore withering me with his scorn, apparently because we had been friends so long, and he more pitied than hated me for my bad taste. He seemed not to have any preferences among novelists; or at least I never heard him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wore away, and September came to produce a new aspect of beauty in the landscape, by tinging the fading flowers and withering leaves with various shades of brown and crimson, purple and orange. One day, early in the month, when Tom came with the carriage, she told him to drive to Magnolia Lawn. She had long been wishing to revisit the scene where she had been so happy ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... which he offered up the continual sacrifice of devout adoration, his works and life bear noble testimony; yet, here and there, his fairest visions seem as if suddenly sicklied over with a pale cast of doubt; a withering shadow seems to flit across his soul, and chill it in his loftiest moods. The dark condition of the man who longs to believe and longs in vain, he can represent with a verisimilitude and touching beauty, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... "Never did that before," gurgled out of his net, just as we were dropping off once more; but a withering request from the Dandy to "gather experience somewhere else," silenced him till dawn, when he had the wisdom to rise without ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... evidence to-night of their apparent vitality. But underneath them is growing up the sturdy plant of science. Already it has dislodged their roots; and though they still seem to bear flower, the flower is withering before our eyes. In its place, before long, will appear the new and splendid blossom whose appearance ends and begins an epoch of evolution. That is a consummation nothing can delay. We need not fret or hurry. We have only to work on silently at the foundations. The city, it is true, ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Circumstances soon after induced him to remove the settlement he had commenced there, across the bay to Port-Royal; the island was neglected by succeeding adventurers, and his labors were suffered to fall into ruin. Time had already laid his withering finger upon the walls, and left his mouldering image amid the fair creations of the youthful world. Fragments, overgrown with moss and lichen, strewed the ground; the creeping ivy wreathed its garlands around the broken walls, and lofty trees had struck their roots deep into the foundations, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... our bluff old colonel said— To extra duty for a month he went Unmurmuring, storm or shine. When the cold rain Poured down most pitiless Paul, drenched and wan, Guarded the baggage and the braying mules. When the hot sun at mid-day blazed and burned, Like the red flame on Mauna Loa's top, Withering the grass and parching earth and air, I often saw him knapsacked and full-dressed, Drilling the raw recruits at double-quick; And yet he wore a patient countenance, And went about his duty earnestly As if it ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... The indignation with which the brutal remark of his father filled him, gave him strength to recover from his dejection. He resolutely set about eating his soup, which he had not touched before, and feeling that Gilbert's eyes were fixed upon him, he raised his head quickly and darted upon him a withering glance. Gilbert thought he divined that he called him to account for his carnation, and could not help blushing,—so true is it that innocence does not suffice to ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... became so oppressive that he concluded to rest awhile. He was in a section of country where, at certain seasons, the heat is like that of the Desert of Sahara. There are portions of Arizona and Lower California where the fervor of the sun's rays at noonday smite the earth with the withering power of the sirocco. ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... helpless nestlings. Even the hoary hawthorn twig that shot across the way, what heart at such a time but must have been interested in its welfare, and wished it preserved from the rudely-browsing cattle, or the withering eastern blast? Such was the scene, and such the hour, when, in a corner of my prospect, I spied one of the fairest pieces of nature's workmanship that ever crowned a poetic landscape, or met a poet's eye, those visionary bards excepted, who hold ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the recalcitrant Scotchman a withering glare. "Very well, Mr. MacLean," he said presently, "I never could sail in the same ship with a quitter; so you might as well go now, when we can part good friends." He turned to Mr. Murphy. "How about you, Mike? Are you going to run ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... even colder than it was, stronger and more withering now that the sun's faint warmth is withdrawn, and that the small and chilly stars possess the sky. Nevertheless, both the school-room windows are open. We are all huddled shivering round the hearth, yet no one talks of closing them. The fact is, that amateur cooking, though a graceful accomplishment, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... black array Veiling her Rizpah-misery, to the gate Comes, and with gold and moving speech sedate Buys down the thing aloft, and bears away Snatch'd from the withering wind and ravens' prey: And as a mother's eyes, joy-soften'd, shed Tears o'er her young child's head, Golden and sweet, from evil saved; so she O'er this, sad-smilingly, Mangled and gray, unwarm'd by human breath, Clasping death's relic with ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... are of little value; but Reisseck, Caspary, and I myself, tried in vain to cross C. laburnum and purpureus; when I fertilised the former with pollen of the latter, I had the nearest approach to success, for pods were formed, but in sixteen days after the withering of the flowers they fell off. Nevertheless, the belief that C. adami is a spontaneously produced hybrid between these two species is strongly supported by the fact that hybrids between these species and two others have spontaneously {390} arisen. In a bed of seedlings from C. elongatus, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... strong hold upon his intelligence. He does not conceal his respect for it as an instrument of freedom, but he puts no high value on its utility. "It may pluck a few leaves," he remarks, "from the Bohon Upas, but can neither extract its roots nor destroy its withering properties. Viewed as an auxiliary, it deserves encouragement; but as a remedy it is altogether inadequate." But this was not all. As a remedy, colonization was not only altogether inadequate, its influence was indirectly pernicious, in that it lulled ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... said the widow, her eyes flashing fire. "Go, heartless man! who dares to trifle thus with the feelings of a respectable and unprotected woman. Go, sir, you're only fit for the love of a—Dolly—Coddlins!" She pronounced the Coddlins with a withering sarcasm that struck the captain aghast; and, sailing out of the room, she left her tea untasted, and did not wish either of the military ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... base motive that had led to its perpetration, he turned abruptly upon Black Thunder, where sullen and lowering, his giantship stood with folded arms apart from the rest, and flung at him a rebuke so withering in its scorn, so burning in its generous indignation, that the big barbarian quailed from before it, daunted and abashed. Then, without further ado, the chief went, and cutting the thongs of buffalo-hide which bound the captive to the tree, set him at liberty, and with ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... kept a furtive watch upon her notwithstanding, and she knew it, and sickened under it as under an evil influence. He was very angry with her—she was fully conscious of that—unjustifiably, unreasonably angry. More than once, when Mr. Granger was especially attentive, she had encountered a withering glance from those dark gray eyes, and she had been weak enough, wicked enough perhaps, to try and make him perceive that Mr. Granger's attentions were in no way pleasant to her. She could bear anything better than that he should think her capable of courting this man's admiration. She told ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... mute agony, as if in the hour of strife it had hardened into marble. But her eyes were dark-purple fire—windows of an extraordinarily intense and vital life. In one night the girl had become a woman. But the blight Shefford had dreaded to see—the withering of the exquisite soul and spirit and purity he had considered inevitable, just as inevitable as the death of something similar in the flower she resembled, when it was broken and defiled—nothing of this was manifest in her. Straight and swiftly she came to him back in ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... dew or grass on Cluan Leathan. The cuckoo is not to be seen on the furze; the leaves are withering and the trees complaining of the cold. There is no sun or moon in the air or in the sky, or no light in the stars coming down, with the stretching of ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... Elliott now placed the remaining sections on right and left of the road, each supported by infantry. Martin boldly attacked till he found himself confronted by Mott's infantry, which opened upon him with a withering fire. The artillery also fired canister upon the advancing enemy, and our horsemen, dismounting, extended the line and did good execution with their carbines. The first assault being repulsed, Martin was unwilling to give it up so, and bringing his artillery into ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... a law dictated to him by his public, kept his characters in communication with earth and heaven, with the dawn he described, the moon he painted, the evening he caused to be seen, the plants he portrayed as withering or reviving, the birds which he showed everywhere in the country or returning ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... suppose I was rather spoiled by every one else being too good to me. But I looked down at my old book, which was open at 'Trefolium: Clover.' And there I read—oh, Hilda, it is really too bad to tell!—I read: 'The teeth bristle-form'—and hers did stick out nearly straight!—'corolla mostly withering or persistent; the claws'—and then I began to laugh, for it was exactly like Aunt Caroline herself; she was so withering, and so persistent! And I sat there and giggled, a great girl of thirteen, till I got perfectly hysterical. The more I laughed, the angrier she grew, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... possibly have happened to any one whom it would distress more than Alf. He stood in speechless dismay watching the dripping procession pass. And when the pretty guest of the Baldwin girls splashed past him with a look which would have been withering had she not been so drenched, his despair was complete. He looked for a few moments as if he were about to throw himself into the lake, then he flung down his pole, and crept away aft to hide his diminished head behind a pile of life-preservers. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... that go to the making of a great artist. Even among the men of the day, corrupted and distracted as they are by foreign innovations, could real strength be found? Alas! Art was surely doomed, and his own life,—the life of the last great Kano, futile and perishable as the withering flowers on their stems. ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... of thought; And round, in colours of the rainbow, threw Forms ever fair, creations ever new! But, as he fondly snatch'd the wreath of Fame, The spectre Poverty unnerv'd his frame. Cold was her grasp, a withering scowl she wore; And Hope's soft energies were felt no more. Yet still how sweet the soothings of his art! [y] From the rude wall what bright ideas start! Ev'n now he claims the amaranthine wreath, With scenes ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... residence rent-free in a tall thin red square house near the churchyard, where a very gay parrot was always to be seen in the windows. They no doubt regarded Miss Delavie and the little Waylands as interlopers at Bowstead, and their withering glances made Church-going a trying affair—indeed the first time that Aurelia took little Amoret, they actually drove the sensitive child into a sobbing fit, so that she had to be carried out, begging to know why those ladies ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Royalist, but that he had taken no active part in affairs for about ten years, he concludes, in a clever vein of compliment, thus: "If you graciously please to extend indulgence to your suppliant in taking me out of this withering durance, you will find mercy will establish you more than power, though all the days of your life were as pregnant with victories as your twice-auspicious Third of September." The appeal to Cromwell's magnanimity ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... inexhaustible fund of sweet, graceful, and pathetic fancies, with delicate, lofty, and noble sentiments, and therefore that he resolved to shut it up in his heart, so as to preserve its freshness amid the withering atmosphere of the world; and in order to draw thence those exquisite images that so often shed ineffable grace and tenderness over his poems. It may, then, be said that, by maintaining alive in his mind ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... silence, Barber fell to examining the scout uniform, article by article—the hat, the coat, the trousers, the leggings, the shoes, his look full of disgust, and fairly withering. When he was done, he sank leisurely into the morris chair, a big hand on each knee, and the flat back of his head rested against the old soiled cushion. And now he concentrated on Johnnie's countenance. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... killed and twenty-six wounded. McDonnell resigned in disgust. Whitmore, who replaced him, demanded better men, and got them, but to meet no better success. At Moturoa his assault on another forest stockade failed under a withering fire; the native contingent held back sulkily; and again our men retreated, with a loss this time of forty-seven, of which twenty-one were killed. This was on November 5th. Before Whitmore could try ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... miraculously in her eyes, her lips shut tightly together, and she flashed a withering glance at Marion. Then she rose and scattering her sympathizers right and left walked directly across the room to Perry, who also rose and stood looking at her in terror. Again silence crept down upon ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... advised me to something better, chiefly wishing that all men were as himself was. But I being weak, chose the more indulgent place; and because of this alone, was tossed up and down in all beside, faint and wasted with withering cares, because in other matters I was constrained against my will to conform myself to a married life, to which I was given up and enthralled. I had heard from the mouth of the Truth, that there were some eunuchs which had made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake: but, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... sharply. "Ain't 'knowin'' my business? Psha!" His contempt was withering. Then his manner changed back to the triumph which the notice had inspired. "Say, it's a great piece of money. It surely is some bunch. Ten thousand dollars! Gee! His game's up. Lightfoot's as good as kickin' his heels agin the breezes. He's played ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... youthful Colossus, described with such sickening force and power by the great Apostle in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, cannot have occurred to Dr. Temple's remembrance, for he says nothing about it. Certain withering denunciations of "a wicked and adulterous generation[24];"—of "adulterers and adulteresses[25];"—"serpents," a "generation of vipers," which should hardly "escape the damnation of Hell[26];"—ought to ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... Mr. Brief, with a scornful wave of his hand, as if he were ridding himself of a troublesome gnat. "Don't bother me with such mind-withering questions." ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... realize such solemn things, and should endeavour to catch all the dew of life that glistens within your reach; for the withering heat of the noon will come soon enough to even the most favoured. An erroneous impression has too long prevailed, that religious fervour, and a cheerful, hopeful, happy spirit are incompatible; that devoutness manifests itself in a lugubrious or at least solemn visage, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the New English Art Club, couples linger. "How charming, how beautifully dressed, how refined she looks!" and the wife who has not married a man a la hauteur de ses sentiments casts on him a withering glance, which says, "Why can't you afford to let me be painted ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... sad! for ever dear! Still breathed in sighs, still usher'd with a tear. I tremble too, where'er my own I find, Some dire misfortune follows close behind. Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow, Led through a sad variety of woe; Now warm in love, now withering in my bloom, Lost in a convent's solitary gloom! There stern religion quench'd the unwilling flame, There died the best of passions, Love ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... matter; we boys would climb the trees and shake the apples down until the girls shrieked for mercy. The days were crisp and mellow, with warm sunshine and a tang of frost in the air, mingled with the woodsy odours of the withering grasses. The hens and turkeys prowled about, pecking at windfalls, and Pat made mad rushes at them amid the fallen leaves. The world beyond the orchard was in a royal magnificence of colouring, under the vivid blue autumn sky. The big willow by the gate was a splendid ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with, play the very devil with, play havoc among, play sad havoc among, play the mischief among, play the deuce among, play the very devil among; decimate. Adj. unimproved &c (improve) &c 658; deteriorated &c v.; altered, altered for the worse; injured &c v.; sprung; withering, spoiling &c v.; on the wane, on the decline; tabid^; degenerate; marescent^; worse; the worse for, all the worse for; out of repair, out of tune; imperfect &c 651; the worse for wear; battered; weathered, weather-beaten; stale, passe, shaken, dilapidated, frayed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the garden, he stood in the bower. There more than anywhere else the desolation was pitiful—the hips glowing crimson on their stems, the eglantine in withering strands, the rustic woodwork green with damp and the base growths of old and mouldering situations, the seat decayed and broken, but propped at its feet as if for recent use. All seemed to express some poignant anguish for lost summers, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... had not passed the actress' lips when a howl of execration rose from the devotees of Racine, outraged by the author's heresy in permitting an adjective to stray into the second line of verse. The Romanticists, led by Theophile Gautier, answered in withering blasphemies; ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... had not spoken a word; now he flashed at Coquenil a look of withering contempt that the detective long remembered, and, leaning close, ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... funeral: he, the injured husband, lies in his coffin with a gentle smile on his lips, and she, pale, tortured by remorse, follows the coffin like a Niobe, not knowing where to hide herself to escape from the withering, contemptuous looks cast upon her ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a name!" M. Danton blew out his cheeks and delivered himself with withering scorn. "It comes to this, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... on the field. Many eyes were in tears, and many hearts were bleeding for lost comrades and dear friends. General Rousseau rides up in the darkness, and, as we gather around him, says, in a voice tremulous with emotion: "Boys of the Third, you stood in that withering fire like men of ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Riding along the front, before they left the wood, the general had enjoined his men to charge without a halt, in double time, and without firing. "Had these orders," says General Law, "not been strictly obeyed the assault would have been a failure. No troops could have stood long under the withering storm of lead and iron that beat in their faces as they became fully exposed to view from the Federal line."* (* Battles and Leaders volume 2 page 363.) The assault was met with a courage that was equally admirable.* (* "The Confederates were within ten paces when the Federals broke cover, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... thrown back, and bearing a huge silver tray. On it were a decanter, two little queer-shaped glasses, and a plate of very thin seed cakes. He deposited this on a spindle-legged table, which he drew up in front of his mistress, and, with another glance, which he intended to be very withering, cast upon Rachel, but which she didn't see at all, ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... very sickening exhibition, Verisschenzko thought. He remained as a statue of ice. Then when she had exhausted herself a little, he spoke with withering calm. ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... be rich and fertile must be reinforced with friendship. It is the sap that preserves from blight and withering; it is the sunshine that beckons on the blossoming and fruitage; it is the starlight dew that perfumes life with sweetness and besprinkles it with splendor; it is the music-tide that sweeps the soul, ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... boots on the Haymarket stage, saw you come into a box upstairs and look down on the humbled Bobadil, since then I have had the kindest of notes from you, since then the finest of venison, and yet I have not seen the Rockingham flowers, and they are withering I daresay. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... can't tell whether it mayn't be so. Anne, dear, you've got such a nice, pretty body, why have you such a withering contempt for it? It behaves so well to you, too. That's more than I can say of mine; and yet, I believe I shall quite miss it when it's gone. At any rate, I shall be glad that I was decent to the poor thing while it was with ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... read "Emile" and "Walden." He had never heard of either of these works, and had no desire whatever for the restoration of society on a primitive basis of animalism, modified by light literature, clothing, and the moral law. For all modern theories he had a withering contempt, his own simple creed being that in the beginning God made man a Tory squire. His quarrel with the social order was a purely private and particular one. In our modern mythology, Custom, Circumstance, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... Mrs. Pryor was withering in her disapproval, and this time Mrs. Corbin touched Miss Matoaca's foot. "I suppose you allude to the streets of Yorkburg, the schools, and library—and some other things. All these Western and ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a vakeel, that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or round the factory to get some little business ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... to the enemy even where he lurketh, saying, 'Lo! my master knoweth of your secret abode—up now, and fly, lest he come on thee like a lion on his prey.'—But shall this go without punishment?" looking at Wildrake with a withering glance. "Now, as my soul liveth, and as He liveth who hath made me a ruler in Israel, such false messengers shall be knitted to gibbets on the wayside, and their right hands shall be nailed above their heads, in an extended position, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... emotions expressed by the other words: Aha! aha! I am undone. Hey! io! I am tired. Ho! be still. Avaunt! this way. Ah! what nonsense. Heigh-ho! I am delighted. Hist! it is contemptible. Oh! for that sympathetic glow! Ah! what withering ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... eight of his umbrellas duly restored. As he entered a street car, with the unwrapped umbrellas tucked under his arm, he was horrified to behold glaring at him the lady of his morning adventure. Her voice came to him charged with a withering scorn: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... David dolefully. "I haven't any green eyes, 'cause I'm trusting Andy, not Phoebe; but neglect is just withering my leaves. I haven't seen her alone for two weeks. She is always over there with Mrs. Matilda and the rest 'soothing the fevered brow.' Say, Major, give Mrs. Matilda the hint. The chump isn't really sick any more. Hint that a ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... mournful story, Thus in the ear of pensive eve to tell, Of morning's firm resolves, the vanish'd glory, Hope's honey left within the withering bell And plants of mercy dead, that might ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... had given him no authority to take so much power into his own hands. He then drove back the Austrians and defeated them in the battle of Lodi, where he carried a standard with his own hands and rallied his troops in the face of a withering fire. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... Reisseck, Caspary, and myself, tried in vain to cross C. laburnum and purpureus; when I fertilised the former with pollen of the latter, I had the nearest approach to success, for pods were formed, but in sixteen days after the withering of the flowers, they fell off. Nevertheless, the belief that C. adami is a spontaneously produced hybrid between these two species is supported by the fact that such hybrids have arisen in this genus. In a bed of seedlings from C. elongatus, which grew near to C. purpureus, and was probably ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... join us; so, when the enemy had joined hands and came on again, we of the wagon-train had two troops for our protection, who, coming on at a walk behind, readily faced round, dismounted, and poured forth a withering fire, which again sent the enemy scuttling away on ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... pride allow me, I could tell the world many a deep tragedy enacted in the heart of a poor, forgotten, uncared-for boy . . . But I thank God, that though I felt and suffered, the scathing blast neither blunted my perceptions of natural and moral beauty, nor, by withering the affections of my heart, made me a selfish man. Often when I look back I wonder how I bore the burden—how I did not end the evil day at once and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... where the shore was steeper, and the water consequently of greater depth, and Moore decided to ram his opponent. He gradually edged closer and closer to the Covadonga—continually firing his heavy guns, to which the Chilian replied with a withering small-arm fire—until he was separated by only about ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... resolve never again to treat her unkindly, but alas! his resolutions were too easily broken. Had he married Nellie, a more faithful, affectionate husband there could not have been. But now it was different. A withering blight had fallen upon his earthly prospects, and forgetting that he alone was to blame, he unjustly laid the fault upon his innocent wife, who, as far as she was able, loved him as deeply as Nellie herself could ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... to their perfection? then, why be not twigs that become trees, children that become men, and mornings that grow to evenings, termed wavering, for that they continue not at one stay? Ay, but Cynthia being in her fulness decayeth, as not delighting in her greatest beauty, or withering when she should be most honoured. When malice cannot object anything, folly will; making that a vice which is the greatest virtue. What thing (my mistress excepted) being in the pride of her beauty, and latter minute of her age, that waxeth young again? ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... of accident, than of design. Willoughby started, as he caught the first glance of his beloved parent's face; and he felt a chill pass over his whole frame. There she sat upright, motionless, tearless, without any of the alleviating weaknesses of a less withering grief, her mild countenance exposed to the light of the lamp, and her eyes riveted on the face of the dead. In this posture had she remained for hours; no tender cares on the part of her daughters; no attentions from her ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... met Miss Fleming on the day succeeding, and if withering glances ever really withered anything, he would have been as a dry leaf. But he did not wither. He went East, and is now connected with the Pennsylvania Broad Gauge. Miss Fleming married Mr. Muggles, and I understand the store is doing only moderately ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... you? Man alive!" cried the old lady, in a tone full of withering contempt, "could ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... Fort Garry, or perhaps he's crossed to Akimiski Island. The fleet have been mostly round that way this week past. Shall I show you round a bit, sir? I'm the acting manager, formerly sole manager." Oily Dave contrived to throw a withering emphasis on the latter adjective, and roiled up his eyes in a manner meant to imply injured innocence, which, however, only expressed low-down meanness ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... about dynamite. Dynamic was the word I used," replied Professor Zepplin, casting a withering glance at the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... discourse, he squatted himself down on the stool of a large hemlock, which, being recently cut down, cumbered the woodside with its giant stem, and secured him, with its evergreen top now lowly laid and withering, from the most narrow scrutiny; while I, giving the gallant horse his head, went at a brisk hand-gallop across the firm short turf of the fair sloping hill-side, taking a moderate fence in my stroke, which Peacock cleared in a style that satisfied me Harry had ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... leaned back in his chair and twisted his blunt features into an expression of withering contempt. Then he took up a glass and drank, and discovered too late that in the excitement of the moment he had made free ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... November until February, the desert journey is not disagreeable; but the vast area of glowing sand exposed to the scorching sun of summer, in addition to the withering breath of the simoom, renders the forced march of 230 miles in seven days, at two and a half miles per hour, the most fatiguing journey ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... opening year, fresh with the dew of heaven and the blush of innocence, coming up in this wild garden of a world, what would the gardener do without you? Where would all beauty and sweetness be found among the thorny bushes and the withering old shrubs and the rotting weeds, were it not for you? Maidens with clean hands and pure hearts, in whose touch there is something that heals the ills and soothes the pains of mortality, roses whose petals ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... of that month, that my old and unfortunate friend presented himself in my office—but alas how changed! He looked exceedingly dejected and poverty-stricken—as though what little of energy he ever might have possessed, had been utterly extinguished by the withering touch of penury. A single glance of course served to show that matters had gone hard with him—and that if "the world owed him a living," as he was formerly wont to boast, it was turning him off with a very scanty one. A storm, which had been fiercely raging for several ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... the Psammead with withering irony, 'not at all! Of course not! Quite the contrary! Exactly so! Only she happened to wish that she might soon find herself in your country. And soon ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... contempt at his comrade was withering in the extreme. So great was his faith in Ned's ability that he would not have hesitated at anything, no ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... his treatise upon it. The same spirit led him, in 1792, to analyse the other mineral waters at the same place of fashionable and general resort, the detail of which he published in the same year. These publications became generally read, and gained him a very extensive reputation. The late Dr. Withering, whose knowledge on these subjects could not be disputed, before he had seen his general analysis of the Harrowgate Waters, said, that "excepting only the few examples given us by Bergman, the analysis of the Crescent Waters was one of the neatest and most satisfactory ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... rival the theory of Locke; and Timour, also established an efficient police in his dominions, and was a patron of literature. Their sun went down full and cloudless, with the merit of having shed some rays of blessing upon the earth, scorching and withering as had been its day. It is remarkable also that all three had something of a misgiving, or softening of mind, miserably unsatisfactory as it was, shortly before their deaths. Attila's quailing before ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... welded into the past, My love of you with the purple Indian dusk, With its clinging scent of sandal incense and musk, And withering jasmin flowers. My eyes grow dim and my senses fail at last, While the lonely hours Follow each other, silently, one by one, Till the night is ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... to the strength of the ridicule. His glass case was simply a review uttered by shapes and wires instead of words and handwriting. And the work of the true critic must sometimes be to condemn, and, as far as his strength can reach, utterly to destroy the false,—scorching and withering its seeming beauty, till it is reduced to its essence and original groundwork of dust and ashes. It is only, however, when it wears the form of beauty which is the garment of truth, and so, like the Erl-maidens, has power to bewitch, that it is worth the notice ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... everything but the urgency of the cause. They are intolerant because they have no knowledge of human nature and no self-criticism wherewith to check the wild ideas that sprout beneath their immense self-confidence. They turn withering scorn on committees and officials who refuse to give effect to their suggestions to burn the House of Commons, or stop the traffic of London, or commit combined suicide in Hyde Park as a protest against ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the middle height. He is a fairly developed man, but looks thin and worn, and his shoulders have the stoop of age, which scholars mostly anticipate. His face is much corrugated, but it bears the traces of vivacious thought and emotion, not the withering print of passion. Of his eyes I have already spoken; they are wise, kind, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... frank but temporary adieu; thus unconsciously suffering the man to escape him whose capture would have purchased the long postponed and still distant advantages for whose possession he secretly pined, with all the withering longings his hope ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... tempted to put the sea between his home and himself, how seductive soever be the experiences of book-makers and poetic pedestrians. One hour's contemplation of poverty in foreign lands will line the boy's face with the wrinkles of years, and burn into his soul that withering dependency which will rankle long after his ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... ridiculously out of harmony with him in every way. That, and the absurdity of Josh Craig, of all men, helping a woman in the delicate task of adjusting a hat and veil, struck her as so ludicrous that she laughed hysterically; her effort to make the laughter appear an outburst of derisive, withering scorn was not ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... sweetness, verdant flower Blooming, withering in an hour, Ere thy gentle breast sustain Latest, fiercest, mortal pain, Hear a suppliant! Let me be Partner in thy destiny: That whene'er the fatal cloud Must thy radiant temples shroud; When deadly damps, impending now, Shall hover round thy destin'd brow, Diffusive may ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... articulating a single syllable. Slowly she moved her face, so that their eyes encountered in one long mournful look. Ten years of continued suffering could not have exacted a heavier tribute from Grace Huntley's beauty. No language can express the withering effects of the few hours' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... present century no writer of the first class will be still alive. They think that the Muse of Literature may transfer herself to other countries less dried up or worn out than our own. They seem to see the withering effect of criticism on original genius. No one can doubt that such a decay or decline of literature and of art seriously affects the manners and character of a nation. It takes away half the joys and refinements of life; it ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... down heavily in the elbow-chair and looked at them with what Bobbie afterwards described as withering ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... lowered and opened suddenly. The withering force of the blast struck him, the snow buffeted him, and for a moment he stood held in his tracks, then the wind momentarily slackened, and dimly through the driving snow he caught sight of something that loomed shadowlike before him. It was ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... to the white spored Agarics, has the power of reviving under moisture after withering, so it may represent a genus that endures longest. None of the fleshy fungi have ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... out if I were you," he said, peering close into the glass at the corner of his eye, where he fancied he had detected the faint criss-cross of coming crows' feet "I'd never stay mugging up in the house, withering. Look at me! I go out in all weathers, and I'll undertake to say I'm a pretty good specimen both of ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... old custom, he might have required that they should pass through his chapel yard on the Raise before leaving the parish, but he had waived his right to this tribute to episcopacy. After offering a suitable blessing, he turned away, not without a withering glance at the weaver, who was muttering rather too audibly an ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
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