"Dwindling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seeks the return of parts of southwestern Slovenia Climate: predominantly Mediterranean; Alpine in far north; hot, dry in south Terrain: mostly rugged and mountainous; some plains, coastal lowlands Natural resources: mercury, potash, marble, sulfur, dwindling natural gas and crude oil reserves, fish, coal Land use: arable land: 32% permanent crops: 10% meadows and pastures: 17% forest and woodland: 22% other: 19% Irrigated land: 31,000 km2 (1989 est.) Environment: ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... well be as comfortable as we can." She reached for the canteen lying in a fast dwindling strip of rock shade. We drank sparingly. She let me dribble a few drops upon her shoulder. Thenceforth by silent agreement we moistened our tongues, scrupulously turn about, wringing the most from each brief sip as if testing ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... course of that first decade. Then we had the whole of the superseded steam-railway system to scrap and get rid of, stations, signals, fences, rolling stock; a plant of ill-planned, smoke-distributing nuisance apparatus, that would, under former conditions, have maintained an offensive dwindling obstructive life for perhaps half a century. Then also there was a great harvest of fences, notice boards, hoardings, ugly sheds, all the corrugated iron in the world, and everything that was smeared with tar, all our gas works and petroleum stores, all ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... evening an official notice was posted on the walls prohibiting the export of grain and flour. People stared at it and said, "That means war!" Another sign of coming events, more impressive to the imagination of the Parisian, was the sudden dwindling in size of the evening newspapers. They were reduced to two sheets, and in some cases to a single broadside, owing to the possibility of a famine in paper if war broke out and cut off the supplies of Paris while the railways were being used for the ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... animated picture of the little settlement wherein we figured but a moment before gradually faded into distance. The wild-looking assembly was blotted from the shore. But still above the rapidly dwindling buildings waved the flag of the oldest chartered trading association in the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still standing in the mud. The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy. They had the weary humility of the figures in Millet's "Angelus," without their inspiration, and in their ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... rallying rapidly. To their surprise, the forces of the Solarians were dwindling, and no matter how desperately this remnant fought, they could not hold back the entire force of the Nigran fliers. At last it appeared certain that the small ships could completely engage ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... as they were not performing their functions as peace officers they were dealing faro; and when the imminence of a less interesting era was made apparent in the dwindling of the trail herds and the increase of dry farmers, they left the good old cow-town along with ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... that the roads should be open, but she could not love the snow; it spoke to her of dreariness, savagery, and captivity, and she watched the dwindling stripes with satisfaction, and hailed the fall of the petty avalanches from one Eagle's Step to another as her forefathers might have rejoiced in the defeat of ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... distinct lull. Even the thunder had rolled away, dwindling to a deep mutter. Castro fell on his knees ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... strong as our forefathers, and a great deal wiser! "Such a craze, however, is too widely diffused, and falls in with too obstinate a preconception [17] in the human race, which has in every age hypochondriacally regarded itself as under some fatal necessity of dwindling, much to have challenged public attention. As real paradoxes (spite of the idle meaning attached usually to the word paradox) have often no falsehood in them, so here, on the contrary, was a falsehood which had in it nothing paradoxical. It contradicted all the indications of history and ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... such changes and developments in the young nation as few then foresaw or even dreamed of. At this era, when the Adams Administration was about to close, Jefferson, in spite of his known liberal, democratic views, was one of the most popular of political leaders, save with the Federalists, now dwindling in numbers and influence. He it was who was put forward on the Republican side for the Presidency, while Adams, still favored by the Federalists and himself desiring a second term of office, became the Federalist candidate. Associated ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... everywhere in England; and great masses of the population were getting no instruction at all. Only a few schools flourished upon the patronage of exceptional parents; all over the country the old endowed grammar schools were to be found sinking and dwindling; many of them had closed altogether. In the new great centres of population multitudes of children were sweated in the factories, darkly ignorant and wretched and the under-equipped and under-staffed National and British schools, supported by voluntary contributions ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... timber, and exhibits the marks of the plough. The late Benjamin Palmer, Esq; a few years ago, planted it with trees, which are in that dwindling state, that they are not likely to grow so tall as ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... of this monstrous demand, civil war was to be inaugurated! A power which had been relatively dwindling and diminishing from the beginning—which, in the very nature of things, could not maintain its equality in numbers and in constitutional weight—this minority demanded the control of the Government, in its growth, and in all its policy, and, in the event of refusal, threatened to ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... stand out sharp and black against the red glow beyond. It was a barn behind a huge frame house that was afire, the dry hay burning like powder, and by the time they reached it the flames were already dwindling. The hose was lying like a python all about the streets, while upon the neighbouring roofs were groups of firemen with helmets and axes; some were shouting into the street below, and others were holding the spouting nozzles of the hose. "Ah," exclaimed an old man, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... thronged with customers. But he sold his groceries chiefly to loose girls who paid him in their coin, which, although it answered his purpose, would neither buy him goods or pay his rent, and he found his stock rapidly dwindling away without his receiving any cash to replenish it. By dissipation and inattention his new business proved unsuccessful to him. He resolved to abandon it and again try the sea for a subsistence. With a hundred dollars in his pocket, the remnant ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... your modern disciples are no more like their Master than one of the pale, slim, white-kidded gentlemen who will be here to-night is like Richard Coeur de Lion as he led a charge against the Moslems. Your cross is dwindling to a mere pretty ornament—an emblem of a past that is fast fading from men's memories. It will never have the power to inspire the heart again, as when ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... representing the world's gold production in past years show periods of increasing annual production as new fields are discovered, followed by periods of decreasing production when no new ore bodies are coming in to replace dwindling reserves. It is entirely possible that in recent years the gold-mining industry has been merely in one of these temporary stagnant periods. There are many regions, both in the vicinity of worked-out lodes and in unsettled and poorly explored countries, where gold may still be ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... There was comparatively little of the first, much of the second. Kygpton itself was a world as large as your entire solar system, with a diameter roughly of four billion miles. Our ancestors knew that Kygpton was dying, that the store of our most precious element Sthalreh was dwindling. But already our ancestors had mastered the forces of our universe, had made inventions that are beyond your understanding, had explored the limits of our universe in space-cars that were propelled by the free energies in space and by the ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... marched up the river, crossing at Kingston. The loyalists however had plucked up heart. The insurgents' column, in the advance to London, was cut in two. Wyatt at the head of the leading section made a desperate effort to reach Ludgate with ever dwindling numbers; but when he arrived at the City gates, though he did indeed in his own words "keep touch," his small and exhausted following was in no condition for prolonged fighting. He was taken prisoner without difficulty. Many of his followers were captured. The whole affair was ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... ago coal and oil and oxygen had been the main power sources, but with the dwindling of the supply of coal and oil, man had sought another way. He had turned back to the old dream of snatching power direct from the Sun. In the year 2048 Patterson had perfected the photo-cell. Then the Alexanderson ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... It is the penalty one pays for reading the books too much, or for being oneself a fool. In my case it does not matter which was my trouble. The trouble itself was the fact. The condition of the fact was mine. For me the life, and light, and sparkle of human intercourse were dwindling. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... of the glory of Bar-Wul-Yann was gone, yet still the pink cliffs glowed, the fairest marvel that the eye beheld—and this in a land of wonders. And soon the twilight gave place to the coming out of stars, and the colours of Bar-Wul-Yann went dwindling away. And the sight of those cliffs was to me as some chord of music that a master's hand had launched from the violin, and which carries to Heaven or Faery the tremulous ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... in his familiar reminiscences my dwindling interest vanished, and I noticed again, through the window, the house fronts of the place I knew once, when Poplar was salt. The lost sailor himself was insignificant. What was he? A deck hand; one who tarred iron, and ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... I exclaimed, in horrified amazement: its size was that of a rickety baby under three, while its wizened face was that of a spell-struck creature of no assignable age, or the wax image of some dwindling life wasting away before the witch-kindled fire of a diabolical hatred. The tiny hands and arms were pitiably thin, and showed under the yellow skin sharp little bones no larger than a chicken's; and at her wrists and temples the blue tracery of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... she could see all the changes, and she noticed the new town-hall, with which she could find no fault; the Baptist and Methodist churches were the same as of old; the Unitarian church seemed to have shrunk as if the architecture had sympathised with its dwindling body of worshippers; just beyond it was the village green, with the soldiers' monument, and the tall white-painted flag-pole, and the four small brass cannon threatening the points of ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... had the dangerous post at the head of the line. It steamed eastwards for nearly an hour, followed by Togo on a parallel course, the Japanese fire only slackening when fog and smoke obscured its targets, and the fire of the Russians dwindling minute by minute, as gun position after position became untenable or guns ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... Negroes supplied these planters with respectable southern blacks who met this unusual demand for labor in Connecticut. Later, moreover, it appeared that on the threshold of an unusually promising year the Poles, Lithuanians and Czechs, formerly employed in the fields, were dwindling in number and there was not at hand the usual supply from which their workers were recruited. A large number of these foreigners had been called back to their fatherland to engage in the ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... depart. The night is fresh, silent, exquisite, the eternal song of the cicalas fills the air. We can still see the red lanterns of my new family, dwindling away in the distance, as they descend and gradually become lost in that yawning abyss, at the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... not an excessive modesty, without warrant in philosophy or nature, dwindling us in this country, drying us up in the viscera? Is there not a decay—a deliberate, strange abnegation and dread—of sane sexuality, of maternity and paternity, among us, and in our literary ideals and social types of men and women? For myself, I welcome any evidence to the contrary, or any ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... foreign climes he had at length wandered into the midst of a strange and peculiar civilization—a boundless desert of wild-looking streets, a waste of colossal palaces, of gilded churches and glistening waters, all perpetually dwindling away before him in the infinity of space. He sees a people strange and unfamiliar in costume and expression; fierce, stern-looking officers, rigid in features, closely shaved, and dressed in glittering uniforms; ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... husband came; I speak not now of Argos, where his brother, Not now of Sparta, where his nephews reign'd.— What we found here were tribes of fame obscure, Much turbulence, and little constancy, Precariously ruled by foreign lords From the AEolian stock of Neleus sprung, A house once great, now dwindling in its sons. Such were the conquer'd, such the conquerors; who Had most thy husband's confidence? Consult His acts! the wife he chose was—full of virtues— But an Arcadian princess, more akin To his new subjects than to us; his friends Were the Messenian chiefs; the laws he framed Were aim'd at ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 'Twas in the water-dwindling tide When July days were done, Sir Rafe of Greenhowes 'gan to ride In the earliest of ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... the fate that would surely overcome any nation which developed its average and typical woman along such lines. Unfortunately it would be untrue to say that this type exists only in American novels. That it also exists in American life is made unpleasantly evident by the statistics as to the dwindling families in some localities. It is made evident in equally sinister fashion by the census statistics as to divorce, which are fairly appalling; for easy divorce is now as it ever has been, a bane to any nation, a curse to society, a menace to the home, an incitement to married ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Gavin Brice's receding form. He could not believe this dear new friend meant to desert him. As Brice did not stop, nor even look back, the collie waxed doubtful. And he tugged to be free. Claire spoke gently to him, a slight quiver in her own voice, her dark eyes, like his, fixed upon the dwindling dark speck ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... lie undiminished and when summer really came, they gave birth to scores of trickling rills. Vegetation sprang up in that moist, needle-mulched soil as luxuriant as any in the tropics. From the time the furry anemone lifted its lavender-blue petals above the dwindling snow patch, until the apples formed on the wild rose bushes and the kinnikinic berries turned red, it was a continuous nosegay. Indian paintbrush, marigolds, blue and white columbines as big as my hand and nearly as high as my head, fragile orchids, hiding their heads in the dusky dells, thousands ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... Hilton Head, Albert and his companions might watch the receding ships, growing less and less on the vast expanse of blue, dwindling to faint specks, then vanishing on the pale verge of the waters. They were alone in those fearful solitudes. From the north pole to Mexico there was no ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the tableautin. The same tendency to contraction is apparent in every country. Paintings are growing smaller, as if to keep in proportion with the small modern salons. That this is due to the great influence of M. Meissonier there is no doubt, but no diminution of his own fame accompanies the dwindling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... shuddering discord, of "Adieu." Adieu to the body of child; adieu more complete, more eternal, to the soul of husband. Which good bye was the stranger? She stood as at cross-roads, and watched, with hand-shaded eyes, the tiny, wayward babe dwindling on its journey to heaven; the man she had married dwindling on his journey—whither? And the one she had a full hope of meeting again, but ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... a better idea of the land about the river. It was sere, the vegetation dwindling except for some rough spikes of things pushing through the parched ground like flayed fingers, their puffed redness in contrast to the usual amethystine coloring of Warlock's growing things. Under the climbing sun that whole stretch of country was revealed ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... probability of such a circumstance from the characters of the parties concerned, or other such evidence; but it would be impossible to estimate that probability with any thing like numerical precision. The counter-probability, however, that of the accidental origin of the coincidence, dwindling so rapidly as it does at each new trial, the stage is soon reached at which the chance of unfairness in the die, however small in itself, must be greater than that of a casual coincidence; and on this ground, a practical decision can generally be come to without much hesitation, if ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... introduction of Perpendicular work, chiefly noticeable in the chapter house, the west screen, and the great east window. The day of the great builders was waning fast. The old faith that inspired them was dwindling, the attraction of national concerns was too great for local effort. Moreover, the desire to make intricately beautiful, right enough in itself, had vitiated, as it was bound to do, the taste of architect and builder. The old Norman cathedrals, however rugged, were imposing in their stern ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... of bitterest disappointment passed over Wilbur as he saw his $30,000 dwindling to nothing. Then the instincts of habit reasserted themselves. The taxpayer in him was stronger than the freebooter, after all. He felt that it was his duty to see to it that the girl had her rights. Kitchell must be made aware of ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... praise me, Gaultier, at the ball, Ripe lips, trim boddice, and a waist so small, With clipsome lightness, dwindling ever less, Beneath the robe of pea-y greeniness! Dost thou remember, when with stately prance, Our heads went crosswise in the country dance; How soft, warm fingers, tipp'd like buds of balm, Trembled within the squeezing ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... next corner they lay motionless in a blockade, while the motor shuddered; then they dodged through an opening where the mud-guards missed by an inch and were whirling west toward Broadway. At 109th Street a bicycle officer stared in amazement at the dwindling number beneath the rear axle, then ducked his head and began to pedal. He overhauled the speeding machine as it throbbed before the doors of Mercy Hospital, to be greeted by a grinning chauffeur who waved him toward the building and told of ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... difference this morning when I got up and looked out. The sandy paths were dry, showing that there had been no fresh rain in the night. Moreover, the hillsides were open to view, the silver rills that veined the rugged steeps were dwindling, there was a blue sky, and great ranges of wooded or desolate mountains were in clearly cut outline—the first time since the wet period set in. Over the shoulder of the huge pyramid to the east there was actual sunshine, and the fleecy clouds were high. So at last there was ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... moved off. It was interrupted by the crowing of a cock. The white one with the rose comb had come and settled on the palings in front of the house, within a few yards of them, and his notes thrilled their ears through, dwindling away like echoes down a valley ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... are past hope; the whites have just refused their taxes - I mean the council has refused to call for them, and if the council consented, nobody would pay; 'tis a farce, and the curtain is going to fall briefly. Consequently in my History, I say as little as may be of the two dwindling stars. Poor devils! I liked the one, and the other has a little wife, now lying in! There was no man born with so little animosity as I. When I heard the C. J. was in low spirits and never left his house, I could scarce refrain ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poor, lame weaver, How he will laugh outright When he sees his dwindling flax-field All full of ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... but the spirit of joy or the spirit of sorrow has the power to multiply its potentialities amazingly. Both these spirits walked by Evander's side during his second day at Harby. The one that went in sable reminded him that his horizon was dwindling almost to his feet; the other, in rose and gold, hinted that it is better to be emperor for a day than beggar for a century. And truly through all that day Evander esteemed himself happier than an emperor. For he had discovered that ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... watched them go: the doctor walking across the cliffs with resolute stride, the detective making for the path over the moors with bent head and slower step, as though his feet were clogged by the weight of his thoughts. Thalassa watched their dwindling forms until they disappeared, and then stood still, in a listening attitude. The sound of the lawyer stirring in the study overhead seemed to rouse him from his immobility. He closed the door, and stood looking ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... at this, and the men stood fast as ever—a dwindling party, hard beset, of the defenders of the mess-room veranda, their breast-work for the most part consisting of ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... globules, glossy spheres of scarlet that ranged in size from pinheads to the bulk of large pumpkins. The branches of the vegetation were formed from strings of the globules set edge to edge and tapering in size like graduated beads strung upon wire, dwindling in bulk until the tips of the branches were as fragile as the fronds of maidenhair fern. The bulk of the shrubbery was head-high, and so dense that Powell could see for only a couple of yards into the ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... was vaulted, and the corner of a second, triangular grass patch crossed at a hot sprint. We were twenty yards from the road when the sound of a starting motor broke the silence. We gained the graveled footpath only to see the taillight of the car dwindling to ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... "You're dwindling to a most interesting skeleton, Vic," he used to say. "Catch me bothering myself about anything I wrote ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... Abdullah. Abdullah was an ignorant and wholly abominable person, and by his unspeakable cruelty and rapacity soon alienated vast numbers of the followers of his predecessor, and by 1889 Mahdism could no longer be looked upon as an aggressive but as a decaying force; yet, though dwindling, it still existed as a strong military power, with its headquarters ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Nutter's Lane had now become rare birds. The dwindling of his visitors had at first scarcely attracted his notice; it had been so gradual, like the rest. But at last Dutton found himself alone. The old solitude of his youth had re-knitted its shell around him. Now that he was unsustained by the likelihood of some one looking in on ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... moment serving as colonel in the army in India, a man more fitted for a gay London life than a residence in the colonies. The diggings were too dirty and uncivilized for his taste, his capital was quickly dwindling away beneath the expenses of the comfortable life he led at one of the best hotels in town, so he turned to what as a boy he had learnt for amusement, and obtained an addition to his income of more than four hundred pounds a year as house carpenter. In the morning you might see ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... strangeness of the cleavage from their fellows had dismayed them. In and around the spaceport center, a multitude of the fellows they were never to see again had paused long enough in their own affairs to mesh thoughts in a final projection of encouragement that reached after the dwindling ship like a gesture ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... Murchison kept the house at that time, and she had three medical students and one engineer as lodgers. I occupied the top room, which was the cheapest, but cheap as it was it was more than I could afford. My small resources were dwindling away, and every week it became more necessary that I should find something to do. Yet I was very unwilling to go into general practice, for my tastes were all in the direction of science, and especially of zoology, towards which I had always a strong leaning. I had almost ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dwindling interest, saw Ashton-Kirk's hand clench, and saw a gleam shoot into his eyes. Then he saw him bend toward Tobin, his elbows on his knees, his ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... with it, except in the case of a nation which has aggressive tendencies, and keeps up a navy merely as a branch of the military establishment. As the United States has at present no aggressive purposes, and as its merchant service has disappeared, the dwindling of the armed fleet and general lack of interest in it are strictly logical consequences. When for any reason sea trade is again found to pay, a large enough shipping interest will reappear to compel the revival of the war fleet. It is possible that when ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... and so without any of the simple arts a barbaric peasantry would possess. In many ways they were curiously degenerate and incompetent. They had lost any idea of making textiles, they could hardly make up clothes when they had material, and they were forced to plunder the continually dwindling supplies of the ruins about ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... rivulets escaped from it, not merely such canals and ditches as we meet with in the Nile Valley, but actual running brooks, coursing and babbling between the trees, spreading out here and there into pools of water, and in places forming little cascades like those of our own streams, but dwindling in volume as they proceeded, owing to constant drains made on them, until they were for the most part absorbed by the soil before ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... I did not know what to say—what alternative to choose. It was a horrible prospect either way, and I contemplated it with rage and despair, with such a whirl in my brain that I thought I should go mad. The musketry fire was dwindling a little, but the whooping and yelling of the exultant savages suddenly rose to a higher pitch, making such a din that the voices of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... but Douglas the Legislature and the Senatorship. In the country at large, the Republicans made such gains, in this election of 1858, that they won the control of the National House. The Whigs were defunct, the Americans were a dwindling fraction; the "Constitutional Union" party held a number who sought peace above all things; but the great mass divided between the Republicans and the Democrats. Douglas, the most dextrous of rope-dancers, had regained his place ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the inhabitants of Patagonia been also dwindling, though, there, if anywhere, still lies the Cape of Bad Hope for the apostles of human degeneracy. Pigafetta originally estimated them at twelve feet. In the time of Commodore Byron, they had already grown downward; yet he said of them that they were "enormous goblins," seven feet high, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... or stupid to take care of itself, she gives it its due deserts by letting it die and disappear. So, you plant or you animal, are you among the strong, the successful, the multiplying, the colonising? Or are you among the weak, the failing, the dwindling, the doomed? ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... o'er the world to rise, Spouse of the sun, eternal as the skies. Where shall we find them now? the very shore Where Ninus rear'd his empire is no more: The dikes decay'd, a putrid marsh regains The sunken walls, the tomb-encumber'd plains, Pursues the dwindling nations where they shrink, And skirts with slime its deleterious brink. The fox himself has fled his gilded den, Nor holds the heritage he won from men; Lapwing and reptile shun the curst abode, And the foul dragon, now ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... Off to the northwestward were the rugged blue crags of the Catskills, covered with patches of milk-white snow, and just in front, winding like a huge serpent among the picturesque foothills, was the sparkling Hudson, dwindling away to a mere silver thread in the north, tapering away in the same manner toward the south, where it lapped the piers of the city of New York and immediately afterward lost itself in the waters of the Upper Bay. Although the great skyscrapers of the big city itself could be ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... your hay, not while the sun shines, but while the moon wanes; also stuff your feather-bed then, and so kill the newly plucked feathers completely, and bring them to rest. Wash your linen, too, by the waning moon, that the dirt may disappear with the dwindling light. [394] According to one old notion it was deemed unlucky to assume a new dress when the moon was in her decline. So says the Earl of Northampton: "They forbidde us when the moone is in a fixed signe, to put on a newe garment. Why so? Because it is lyke that ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... A very small and dwindling group, composed almost entirely of the personal following of Plekhanov, one of the pioneers of the Russian Social Democratic movement in the 80's, and its greatest theoretician. Now an old man, Plekhanov was extremely ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... Alone at Neuilly, where she had to seek shelter both for economy and safety, with no means of returning to England, and unable to go to Switzerland through her inability to procure a passport, her money dwindling, still she managed to continue her literary work; and as well as some letters on the subject of the Revolution, she wrote at Neuilly all that was ever finished of her Historical and Moral View of the French ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... satisfied with one blast of whatever it was; they were dwindling away with no further ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... out into the dull winter light over the town bridge, and turned the corner towards the Close. The day was foggy, and standing under the walls of the most graceful architectural pile in England he paused and looked up. The lofty building was visible as far as the roofridge; above, the dwindling spire rose more and more remotely, till its apex was quite lost in the mist ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... His resources were dwindling. He needed funds for the many secret agents in his employ—needed yet more funds for the purchase and support of his lands in the South. And the minister of Great Britain had given plain warning that unless this expedition up the Missouri could be stopped, no further aid ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... to enjoy. They are coming away from London parties at this time: the dear little eyes are closed in sleep under mother's wing. How far off city cares and pleasures appear to be! how small and mean they seem, dwindling out of sight before this magnificent brightness of Nature! But the best thoughts only grow and strengthen under it. Heaven shines above, and the humble spirit looks up reverently towards that boundless aspect of wisdom and beauty. ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the silver purchase law produced widespread fear that the United States would not be able to continue the redemption of paper currency; and the change of political control had produced the usual feeling of uncertainty. The dwindling of the gold reserve, which has already been mentioned, assisted in causing a critical situation. Foreign investors, fearful of financial conditions here, sold their American railroad and other securities and received payment ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... is your department," said Holmes, with a smile, when the dwindling frou-frou of skirts had ended in the slam of the front door. "What was the fair lady's game? ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... infrequent occurrence, it is, nevertheless, an example of what may happen in advanced life, even where the prepuce has never before been a source of the least disturbance or annoyance. Persons who, with the increase of years, are also liable to an increase of adipose tissue, are more subject to this dwindling down of the penis and consequent elongation of the prepuce, with all the attendant annoyances, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... fleeing ships was a broken, tired old man, and his staff. Gresth Gkae looked back at the blank, distorted space behind them, at the swiftly dwindling sun, and spoke. "I was at fault, my friends. Jarth has spoken. They are the stronger and the wiser race. Farth Skalt has shown you—they use space fields of intensity 100. That means the energy of the ultimate destruction. ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... have long been mismanaged, and an annual deficit of two millions sterling is now a usual feature of the national budget; the foreign debt is upwards of 160 millions. From the 17th century onwards the once wide empire of the Turks has been gradually dwindling away. The Turks are essentially a warlike race, and commerce and art have not flourished with them. Their literature is generally lacking in virility, and is mostly imitative and devoid ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... presented in the comparison of these two aspects of the theological change that has come to pass,—the growing importance of the ethical, and the dwindling importance of the miraculous in the religious thought of to-day. This may reassure those who fear whereto such change may grow. The inner significance of such a change is most auspicious. It portends the displacement of a false by ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... intervals, and that the least departure from this order would destroy the effect. But Nature produces her effects at random, and seems only to increase the beautiful illusion by that infinite variety of decoration in which she revels, binding tree to tree in a tangle of anaconda-like lianas, and dwindling down from these huge cables to airy webs and hair-like fibres that vibrate to the wind of the passing ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... is a writer who should just now be re-emerging into his own high place in letters, for unquestionably the recent, though now dwindling, schools of severely technical and aesthetic criticism have been unfavourable to him. He was a chaotic and unequal writer, and if there is one thing in which artists have improved since his time, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... her," he emphatically declared, as he stirred up the dwindling fire, and added a couple of sticks. "I expected to be with her before this, but here I am, lodged like a bear in this ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... scanty resources dwindling fast. One by one his old commissions were paid and disappeared down the hopper of household expenses. He took to thinking of what would happen when the commissions were all paid, and to haunting Fisher's office. Fisher was his contractor client and owed him ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... doing all that could be expected of them. There was only a tiny fragment of the meteorite left, and it was dwindling swiftly. But our time was passing ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... behalf—the minutes were filled with sufficient interest to make them pass unreckoned. But to sit here and wait, to sit here and watch the seconds wasted, to sit here and be conscious of each one of them as it bit, like a thieving wharf rat, into his dwindling Present and carried the morsel of time back to the greedy Past, was a different matter. When finally Saul appeared with a fat cigar in one corner of his chubby mouth, Donaldson was halfway across the sidewalk ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the marshes with brown dots that were his cattle straying over them, and beyond these the home landing and the masts of the Golden Rose. The sun was near its setting; the men had left the fields; over all things were the stillness and peace, the encroaching shadows, the dwindling light, so golden in its quality, of late afternoon. When he crossed the bridge over the creek, the hollow sound that the boards gave forth beneath his horse's hoofs had the depth and resonance of drumbeats, and the cry of a solitary heron in the marsh seemed louder than its wont. He passed ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... cortege fared down and down the steep road, dwindling in the sheeny distance, the covert and half-suppressed laughter of the sepulchral escort was of so keen a relish that it was well that the scraping of the locked wheel aided the distance ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... facts in both cases, and so did Ernest Seton, who had visited us in the country as well as in our city home. Fuller not only knew the ins and outs of my houses; he was also aware that my royalties were dwindling and that my wife was forced to get along with one servant and that we used the street ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... period Longfellow invited an old friend, who had fallen into extreme helplessness from ill health, to come and make him a visit. It was a great comfort to his friend, a scholar like himself, "to nurse the dwindling faculty of joy" in such companionship, and he lingered many weeks in the sunshine of the old house. Longfellow's patience and devoted care for this friend of his youth was a signal example of what a true and constant heart may do unconsciously, in giving ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... have already overtaken Bosnia and Herzegovina; when gallant little Montenegro was already shut out from the sea by the octopus-like grip of Dalmatia crouching along her western shore; when Turkey was dwindling down to almost ineptitude; when Greece was almost a byword, and when Albania as a nation—though still nominally subject—was of such unimpaired virility that there were great possibilities of her future, it was imperative that something must happen if the Balkan ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... glance to right and left with the old vigilance. He felt the testing of controls, the unconscious tensing of nerves for the start. They raced down the calf pasture, nosed upward and went whirring away from a dwindling earth, straight toward the heart of ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... few weeks after Minneha had received the rescued infant, and promised to be a mother to it, that she discovered that she had undertaken more than she was able to fulfil. It required no very searching eye to perceive that the little one was not thriving; in truth, she was dwindling away day by day, and those who were in the habit of visiting the Camp gazed sadly at the little pinched face and shrivelled limbs, and foreboded that it would not be long before Michel's child rejoined ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... spoke of the modern and real immensity of the unfathomed Skies. But suddenly the vast meaning of my words rushed into my mind; I felt myself dwindling, falling through the blue. And yet, in these silent seconds, there thrilled through me in the cool sweet air and night no chill of death or nothingness; but the taste and joy of this Earth, this orchard-plot of earth, ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... of all the suffering youth that was being there annealed and forged into soldiery none can have suffered like the lawyers. On the right the high trees that stand outside the ramparts of the town went dwindling in perspective like a palisade, and above them, here and there, was a roof showing the top of the towers of the Cathedral or of St Gengoult. All this I saw looking backwards, and, when I had noticed it and drawn it, I turned round again and ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Darwin and settle there until the return of summer. And at other times I heard them counting the distance to the Pole—a hundred geographical miles, making twenty days' march at this season, with the heavy weights we had to carry, and the dwindling of our dogs and ponies, for we had killed a lot of them ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... rolled over us; and cleared in a moment to show us the apparition several feet below the floor level. It seemed to strike its solidity of ground. I saw it fall the last little distance with a rush; land, and pick itself up. And with a last sardonic grin upward at us, the dim white figure ran. Dwindling smaller, dimmer, until in a moment it ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... time of fear, followed by the leopard's terrible scream. Some animal darted by the opening, so close that they could see the gleam of its eyes as it glanced in upon them, and after it with a bound went a larger form. They listened to the dwindling noise of the chase, and ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... the point where it could be termed an unusually large accumulation of wealth. For larger accumulations existed upon the earth. A descendant of a man once known as John D. Rockefeller possessed an accumulation of great size, but which, as a matter of fact, was rapidly dwindling as it passed from generation to generation. So, let us travel ahead another one hundred years. During this time, as we learn from our historical and political archives, the socialists began to die out, since they ...
— John Jones's Dollar • Harry Stephen Keeler
... States had twenty times as much land, fit for whites, on which to grow bigger and bigger populations of their own blood under their own flags. This meant that the new, strong, and most ambitious German Empire was doomed to an ever-dwindling future as a world-power in comparison with the British Empire. The Germans could not see why they should not have as good a "place in the sun" of the white man's countries as the British, whom they now looked on very much as our ancestors looked upon the oversea Spaniards ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with a long slit of daylight like a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... money in the pit-props as I had hoped," Mr. Coburn explained. "When we started here the Baltic trade, which was, of course, the big trade before the war, had not revived. Now we find the Baltic competition growing keener, and our margin of profit is dwindling. We are handicapped also by having only a one-way traffic. Most of the Baltic firms exporting pit-props have an import trade in coal as well. This gives them double freights and pulls down their overhead costs. But it wouldn't ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... old, my children eye askance My slowly dwindling store, And crave my mite; till, worn with tarriance, I care for ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... took place between the Indians and strong Illinois militia forces supported by detachments of United States troops under General Brady. It was not until the beginning of August that Black Hawk was finally defeated, his dwindling horde almost annihilated, and the old chieftain, betrayed into the hands of the whites by the Winnebagos, was made a prisoner of war. And so, summarily, the present chronicler disposes of the "great Black Hawk war," and returns to his narrative and ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... was dwindling down to Farce, Then—Zounds, what Stuff's here? 'tis all o'er my— Well, Gentlemen, since none of these has sped, Gad, we have bought a Share i'th' speaking Head. So there you'll save a Sice, | You love good Husbandry in all ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... delicacy. There was so little that was preposterous in Miss Livingstone's conduct as a rule that it is not quite fair to explain her attitude either by this exaggeration or by an equally hectic scruple about her right to take care of her guest, such a right dwindling curiously when it has been given in the highest to somebody else. These pangs and penalties may have visited her in their proportion, but they did not take the importance of motives. She rather stood aside with folded hands, and in an infinite terror of prejudicing fate, devoured her ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... whatever bewilderments the missionaries had brought had faded when dwindling population left the isle to its own people. In the minds of my happy companions at the vai puna, modesty had no more to do with clothing than, among us, it had to do with food. The standards of the individual ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... much raised in Berkshire) are good for hardly anything to eat,—a fair-sized quarter dwindling down to almost nothing in the process ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who, but for the timely occupation provided for them, would have spent the cold months in that state of half-starved torpor peculiar to the indigent agricultural labourer when he has nothing to do—at that bitter season when father and mother and shivering little ones watch wistfully the ever-dwindling sack of maize, as day by day two or three handfuls are ground between the stones of the hand-mill and kneaded into a thick unwholesome dough, the only food of the poorer peasants in the winter. But now every man who could handle pickaxe and bore, and sledge-hammer and spade, was out upon the ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... have often seen it darker in a winter mid-day. Heavy dew fell and drenched the moor like rain; and this refreshed me for a while. When we stopped to breathe, and I had time to see all about me, the clearness and sweetness of the night, the shapes of the hills like things asleep, and the fire dwindling away behind us, like a bright spot in the midst of the moor, anger would come upon me in a clap that I must still drag myself in agony and eat the dust ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... top of one of the highest hills in London, and entrenches itself as a fortress against the poverty and squalor that are creeping up the hill towards it. Around the square there are still gardens and crescents and roads of consideration, but ever dwindling in social status as one goes down the hill, till the consideration vanishes in the degradation of cheap boarding-houses and the homes of Jews of ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... the money of the realm was thrown on the owner. If he failed in making out a satisfactory history of every ingot he was liable to severe penalties. This Act was, as might have been expected, altogether ineffective. During the following summer and autumn, the coins went on dwindling, and the cry of distress from every county in the realm became louder and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... natural liking for the woman struggling against their sense of the superfluity of everybody on earth except each other. When she left them they ate and drank almost without speech, soberly delighted by the mellowing of the world that followed the dwindling of the sunset fires. All things seemed to become more modest and reconciled; and farmers hawked out their last jests at one another, mounted their gigs and drove home; and the flocks of sheep and droves of cattle pattered by, bleating and lowing not ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... timidity, directed on him the slowly dwindling fire of her gaze, Dundas was afraid to put his arm round her waist; this rosy-cheeked giant, who was a champion boxer and had been wounded five times, was as bashful and shy as ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... with which I once held him fast as ever hound held hare, never again should HE at least come on errand disgraceful to the honour of Christian king or noble and virtuous maiden. But I—my hours are fast dwindling into minutes—yet, while I have life and breath, something must be ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... richer in each generation by a new and improved father. He is born and cherished, however, by the same kind of mother, bringing to her tremendous task no new tool worthy of the time, but merely the same old dwindling, overworked "maternal instinct." ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... wing in obedience to the directions, found Molly walking up and down in a small grassy path, which was sprinkled with snowdrops. The "side-garden" was a ruined, over-grown square, planted in miniature box, which the elder Gay had laid out after one of his visits to Italy. Now, with its dwindling maze and its unpruned rose-bushes, it resembled a picture which has been blotted out until the original intention of the artist is no longer discernible. Yet the place was exquisite still. Spring had passed over it ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... cheap fashion, a town of glass and stucco. The pungent odour of the eucalyptus trees, the light breeze stirred not the foliage, sheared into mathematical lines. It was like yards of baize dwindling in perspective; and between the tall trunks great plate-glass windows gleamed, filled with ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... still stronger light, one-sixtieth) of a second. With the stronger light there is a more rapid and a greater loss of the initial intensity of the impression or effect of stimulus, and though each successive effect remains as long, or longer, in dwindling intensity, you get ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... after Trinity we marched out from another small village in the hot afternoon. This one was a model village, snug in the fields, and dwindling daily. The German shells are dropping there every day. In the course of another six months if the fronts of the contending armies do not change, that village will be a litter of red bricks and unpeopled ruins. As it is the women, children and old men ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... presented itself, one fully as serious. The provisions were dwindling, the seed-sacks shrinking fast, and, estranged from Lounsbury, they had nowhere to ask credit but ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... with that. One perhaps was ursine chiefly, another feline chiefly, another bovine chiefly; but each was tainted with other creatures,—a kind of generalised animalism appearing through the specific dispositions. And the dwindling shreds of the humanity still startled me every now and then,—a momentary recrudescence of speech perhaps, an unexpected dexterity of the fore-feet, a pitiful attempt to ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... left the last of the dwindling pines behind, and pushed on along a slope that was strewn with shattered rock and debris which made walking arduous. Then they reached a scarp of rock ground smooth by the slipping down of melting snow, and when they had crossed ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... review, to overturn ancient idols, to inaugurate movements, to plan out policies? All this GRUBLET was confident of being able to do, and he determined, on the strength of a few successful College Essays, and a reputation for smartness, acquired at the expense of his dwindling circle of intimates, to do it. He took his degree, and plunged into London. There, for a time, he was lost to public sight. But I know that he went through the usual contest. Rejected manuscripts poured back into his room. Polite, but unaccommodating Editors, found that they ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... one leading up to the first capital we were to visit. Then I found myself between miles and miles of stately white pillars, rising and sinking as the road found its natural levels, and growing in the perspective before us and dwindling behind us. I could not keep out of my mind a colonnade of palm-trees, only the fronds were lacking, and there were never palms so beautiful. Each pillar was inscribed with the name of some Altrurian who had done something for his country, written some beautiful poem or story, or ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... by accident rather than design, potent save for the will and aim, the last avatar of Hamlet in the world. Below was the enormous multitude of workers employed by the gigantic companies that monopolised control; and between these two the dwindling middle class, officials of innumerable sorts, foremen, managers, the medical, legal, artistic, and scholastic classes, and the minor rich, a middle class whose members led a life of insecure luxury and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... to say, panted for draught. Moreover, if I had not watered them myself, I suspect that no one else would; for water last year was nearly as precious hereabout as wine. Our land-springs were dried up; our wells were exhausted; our deep ponds were dwindling into mud; and geese, and ducks, and pigs, and laundresses, used to look with a jealous and suspicious eye on the few and scanty half-buckets of that impure element, which my trusty lacquey was fain to filch for my poor geraniums ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... English and were repulsed. Three hours later 19,000 fresh troops came on, passed through a gap in our lines, which Cathcart's disobedience, atoned for presently by his death, had left unoccupied, and seized the heights behind us; they too were dispossessed, but our numbers were dwindling and our strength diminishing. The Home Ridge, key of our position, was next invaded by 6,000 Russians; the 7th St. Leger, linked with a few Zouaves and with 200 men of our 77th Regiment, French ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... rushed suddenly over her. He was a man, obviously, who moved in the world, her world, since he apparently travelled extensively and his father was wealthy enough to run a racing stable as a hobby and was a member of the dwindling class of ancienne noblesse. It was characteristic of her that she put first what she did. How could she bear to meet one of her own order in the position in which she was? She who had been proud Diana Mayo and now—the mistress of an Arab Sheik? She laid her face on her knees ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... was in the ground floor; as one window was brightly illuminated and two others more faintly, it might be supposed that there was a single lamp in one corner of a large apartment; and a certain tremulousness and temporary dwindling showed that a live fire contributed to the effect. The sound of a voice now became audible; and the trespassers paused to listen. It was pitched in a high, angry key, but had still a good, full, and masculine note in it. The utterance ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as he thought of Douwie. Scarcely as tall as himself; the big, rounded, mouselike ears, and the flat, cloven pads that could carry her so swiftly over the sandy Martian flatlands. One of the last dwindling herds of native Martian douwies, burden-carriers of a vanished race, she had been Tommy's particular pride and joy for ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... colours can we trace, Lost in the mazy distance of the race Till at Salara's far-off bridge descried, Like coursing butterflies, they seem to glide; Then, dwindling farther, in the lengthening course, Mere floating specks supplant both man and horse; Till, having crossed the Columbarium gray, They swerve, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the theory of special design, furnishes the best possible evidence in favour of hereditary descent; seeing that this irregularity then becomes what may be termed the anticipated expression of progressive dwindling due to inutility. Thus, for example, to return to the case of wings, we have already seen that in an extinct genus of bird, dinornis, these organs were reduced to such an extent as to leave it still doubtful whether ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... most of which, from port to port, was done by her seamen, but that of England as well. Even of the English coasting trade much was done by Dutch ships. Under this competition, the English merchant marine was dwindling, and had become so inadequate that, when the exclusion of foreigners was enforced by the Act, the cry at once arose in the land that the English shipping was not sufficient for the work thus thrust upon it. "Although our own people have ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... The garret had a paved floor, and first of all the young detective removed one of the stones with a pickax he had brought for the purpose. Beneath this stone he found a timber beam, through which he next proceeded to bore a hole of funnel shape, large at the top and gradually dwindling until on piercing the ceiling of the cell it was no more than two-thirds of an inch in diameter. Prior to commencing his operations, Lecoq had visited the prisoner's quarters and had skilfully chosen the place of the projected aperture, so that the stains and graining of the beam would ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... fact," assented Racey Dawson, his eyes following the dwindling figures of the rider and his horse. "I ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... by a still more fully developed decision to brave it out, and out, and out, rather than return to ask the help of those whose hand-clasp had weakened in ratio to the dwindling of the gold in ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... line must lie either through a dependent Armenia thrust down to the coast of the Levant or, least probable and least desirable of all, through the Persian Gulf. The Constantinople route is the most natural and least controversial of these. With the dwindling of the Turkish power, the Turks at Constantinople become more and more like robber knights levying toll at the pass. I can imagine Russia making enormous concessions in Poland, for example, accepting retrocessions, and conceding autonomy, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... a sharp voice: "William, William——!" And he saw that there was no beach now in Teviot Bay except the dwindling crescent at its farthest indentation on which ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Europe, from any one. How things change, become effaced and forgotten! Here am I, accommodating myself to this finical Japan and dwindling down to its affected mannerism; I feel that my thoughts run in smaller grooves, my tastes incline to smaller things-things which suggest nothing greater than a smile. I am becoming used to tiny and ingenious furniture, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... tender dam 90 Has formed them with her tongue, with pleasure view The marks of their renowned progenitors, Sure pledge of triumphs yet to come. All these Select with joy; but to the merciless flood Expose the dwindling refuse, nor o'erload The indulgent mother. If thy heart relent, Unwilling to destroy, a nurse provide, And to the foster-parent give the care Of thy superfluous brood; she'll cherish kind The alien offspring; pleased thou shalt behold 100 Her tenderness, and hospitable ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... danger assails the Fatherland by reason of its dwindling birth rate. The cradles of Germany are empty to-day; it is your duty to see that they are filled. You bachelors, when your leave comes, marry at once the girl of your choice. Make her your wife without delay. The Fatherland ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... in which he lived. I asked him how I should cross the great dyke. He shook his head, and said he did not know. I asked him if he had heard of the Griffin, but he said no. I broke away from him and went for miles along the bank eastward, seeing the rare trees of the marshes dwindling in the distance, and up against the horizon a distant spire, which I thought might be the Spire of March. For March and the Griffin were not twenty miles away. And still the great ditch stood between me ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... assured—and yet they are still urgently bad. The greater evil of the past is no reason for contentment with the present. But it is an earnest for hoping that our efforts, and that Good Will of which they are a part and outcome, may still go on bearing fruit in perpetually dwindling misery. ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... a net which we found in the stowage had been cast, and we caught a few fish that materially added to our dwindling ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... it. His younger acquaintances in the Nonjuring body, however sincere and generous in temperament, were men of a different order. It was but natural that, as the schism became more pronounced and Jacobite hopes more desperate, the Church views of a dwindling minority should become continually narrower, and lose more and more of those larger sympathies which can scarcely be altogether absent in any section of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... "I don't know, Stephen. We're short of money, you know, and the fund is dwindling every day. Don't you think it's a little extravagant to have a turkey for two people? And somehow I don't feel a bit Christmassy. I think I'd rather spend it just like any other day and try to forget that it is Christmas. Everything ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
