"Well-nigh" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pace until, arriving at some cross roads, one of which led by a longer route to the place whence he had lately started, he bore down so suddenly upon a vehicle which was coming towards him, that in the effort to avoid it he well-nigh pulled his horse upon his haunches, and narrowly escaped ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... had that night! He had never had such a waltz before, and he never wished to have such a dance again. Sometimes he was in front of the door, and sometimes the door was in front of him, and it went from one side of the porch to the other, till the attorney was well-nigh beaten to death. At first he began to abuse the Master-maid, and then to beg and pray, but the door did not care for anything but keeping him where he was ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... appear—this more than once—to be on the point of rising to challenge us. But these occasions were as skilfully met as they were easily detected; and as the rogues had invariably some stroke in reserve that in a twinkling flung him back into his old state of dazed bewilderment, while it well-nigh killed us with stifled mirth, they only gave ever new point to ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... awakened in the minds of some of the men came well-nigh proving detrimental to the expedition. Some of them determined to desert, and to make their way back to St. Louis. They accordingly purloined several weapons and a barrel of gunpowder, as ammunition for their enterprise, and buried them in the river bank, intending ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... long experience was best to do. Each covered a front leg, and as the tail snapped aloft, fired. With a hideous roar the mighty flesh-eater lurched forward to the ground with both front legs broken. It was an easy accomplishment in the instant before the beast charged—after, it would have been well-nigh an impossible feat. Brady stepped close in and finished him with a shot in the base of the brain lest his terrific roarings should attract his mate ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a knot of dissolute boys? A watchful beadle has espied the youthful gamesters, and is preparing to administer a sounding thwack with a cane on the shoulders of Thomas Idle. But the race of London beadles is now well-nigh extinct; and the few that remain dare not use their switches on the small vagabonds, for fear of being summoned for assault. It is to be hoped that the police will be instructed to put the Act sharply in force against the pitch-and-toss players; and, in passing, we might express a wish ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... moving, and the longer he stays the more difficulty he will have of getting out. He has a fine army with him, but if he once gives time to the Germans to erect batteries commanding every road out of the place, he will soon find it well-nigh impossible to make a sortie. Except that army France has nothing she can really rely upon. It is all very well to talk of a general rising, but you can't create an army in the twinkling of an eye; and a host ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... and worldly, and the whole, piled up into a heterogeneous mass, were burnt by the infuriated reformers. So strong was the feeling against the pipes and so necessary did a public example seem to be, that a respectable lady, whose delinquency had well-nigh escaped the vigilant eye of the Muhtasib, was seized and placed on an ass, with a green pipe suspended from her neck, and paraded through the public streets—a terrible warning to all of her sex who might be inclined to indulge in forbidden ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... trouble. The severest part of his self-education had been the repression of his dangerous inclination to call a sham a sham on the spot, and to answer fools according to their folly. That youthful rashness, however, was now well-nigh subdued, and Tom could flatter and bully also, when it served his turn—as who cannot? Let him that is without sin among my readers, cast the first stone. Self-conscious he was, therefore, in every word and action; not from morbid vanity, but ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... to offer myself as editor of a new edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. Fortunately for me another writer had been already engaged by the publisher to whom I applied, and my offer was civilly declined. From that time on I never lost sight of my purpose but when in the troubles of life I well-nigh lost sight of every kind of hope. Everything in my reading that bore on my favourite author was carefully noted, till at length I felt that the materials which I had gathered from all sides were sufficient to shield me from ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... enough to pay the rent. Fortunately Louise, who already looked like an old maid at twenty-three, going about the city all day with her roll of music under her black shawl, had many pupils, and more than twenty houses had well-nigh become uninhabitable through her exertions with little girls, whose red hands made an unendurable racket with their chromatic scales. Louise's earnings constituted the surest part of their revenue. What a strange paradox is the social ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the fisherman; "a short time ago it was only a point of land; but now, since the forest-stream and the lake have become well-nigh bewitched, things are quite different ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... where to steer," Russ exclaimed, when they had paused in their yelling, well-nigh exhausted, "it wouldn't be so bad! But I can't see a thing. It's getting darker every minute. I never saw ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... was past long ago. No hope of fighting for the Legionnaires, save over the frontier in Morocco, or far away in the South! The shrine of Sidi-bel-Abbes stood neglected in the Arab graveyard. Even the meaning of the name, once sacred to his followers, was well-nigh forgotten; and all that was Arab in Sidi-bel-Abbes had been relegated to the Village Negre, strictly forbidden as Blue Beard's Room of Secrets, to ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... an overpowering wish to see Farfrae again that night, and by some desperate pleading to attempt the well-nigh impossible task of winning pardon for his late mad attack. But as he walked towards Farfrae's door he recalled the unheeded doings in the yard while he had lain above in a sort of stupor. Farfrae he remembered had gone to the stable and put the horse ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... he. "I weep because of my own crime. Despair had well-nigh made of me a traitor. Why does not this hand wither, which was uplifted to touch the anointed of the Lord! Why does not Heaven smite the wretch whose misery had tempted him to such ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... intimately from stem to stern, her several decks, her cabins, lockers, holds; we had counted all her ribs over and over again, and paced her quarter-deck, and gazed up at her stumpy masts—she had been well-nigh dismantled,—and given sailing orders to our fellows amidships in the very ecstasy of circumnavigation. She has gone, gone to her grave in the sea that lapped her timbers as they lay a-rotting under the rocks; and now pestiferous factories make hideous the landscape ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... over, I still found time to learn the business, and made such rapid progress that I astonished even my employer. I knew that I should soon be able to make five or six francs a day; and this prospect was pleasant enough to make me forget the present, well-nigh intolerable as it sometimes was. During the last winter that I spent with my employers, their orders were so numerous and pressing that they worked on Sundays as well as on week days, and it was with difficulty that I obtained an hour twice a month to pay a visit to the good sisters ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... entered the walled town of Shih T'ou, I passed by the entrance of that old residence. On the east side of the street, stood the Ning Kuo mansion; on the west the Jung Kuo mansion; and these two, adjoining each other as they do, cover in fact well-nigh half of the whole length of the street. Outside the front gate everything was, it is true, lonely and deserted; but at a glance into the interior over the enclosing wall, I perceived that the halls, pavilions, two-storied structures and porches presented still a majestic and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... have recovered his elasticity and strength, both of mind and body. His sermons took on a more optimistic tone, his energy in parish work was well-nigh doubled. The change was remarked by everybody, and it found expression in the phrase: "He's a new man, quite like his old self." Never was man so cheery, ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... not yet morning, and the racket below went on. The very quantity of it was reassuring. There was too much of it for real murder. The Precious Ones presently woke up and cried. None of us got to sleep again until well-nigh morning, even after the commotion below had degenerated into ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... which Steve Allenwood exercised his police control was well-nigh limitless from a "one-man" point of view. From his headquarters, which lay within the confines of the Allowa Indian Reserve on the Caribou River, it reached away to the north as far as the Arctic Circle. To the west, only the barrier ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... to seeking out the neglected, unskilled, and casual laborer. Within a few years he so dominated the movement that, in the public mind, the I.W.W. is associated with the Chicago branch and the Detroit faction is well-nigh forgotten. ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... drowning me, as I clung to the wreck. Then I felt the deck quiver and shake, and the stout beams and timbers were wrenched and torn asunder under my feet, and I was hurled onward among the broken fragments by a roaring sea, which must have well-nigh completed the destruction of the craft. ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... that climb! We tried to start at daylight but it was well toward six o'clock before we got our men together. A Chinaman would drive an impatient man to apoplexy and an early grave for it is well-nigh impossible to get him started within an hour of the appointed time, and with a half dozen the difficulty is multiplied as many times. Just when you think all is ready and that there can be no possible reason for delaying longer, ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... placed in the middle of the bed, with a bureau and a bookcase stuck on top of it, a few chairs and a pet bulldog tied in the middle of the mix-up, and a mirror and a well-filled bowl of water so fixed on the top of the heap that it is well-nigh impossible to move any one of the articles without cracking the looking-glass or dousing yourself with the water. The Lakerimmers tried retaliation for a time; but the pleasure of stacking another man's room was not half so great as the misery of unstacking ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... the body, And kindle anew the senses almost gone. For by what other means could they the more Collect their powers of thought and turn again From very doorways of destruction Back unto life, rather than pass whereto They be already well-nigh sped ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... face beamed with unenvious admiration as he gave Charley a hearty thump on the back that well-nigh drove the breath out of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... episode is told in Savarin's happiest vein, and well-nigh justifies his somewhat complacent conclusion that "any one who, with a revolutionary committee at his heels, could so conduct himself, assuredly has the head and the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... of Quebec was well-nigh celestial. "In the climate of New France," they write, "one learns perfectly to seek only God, to have no desire but God, no purpose but for God." And again: "To live in New France is in truth to live in the bosom of God." "If," adds Le Jeune, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... rarely lent More than his presence in the council tent, And when he rose to speak disdained pretence Of arts rhetoric, but his few words went Straight and incisive to the question's core, And rarely was his counsel overborne. The Raven was the fitting name he bore; And though his winters well-nigh reached three-score, Few of his tribe excelled him in the chase. A warrior of renown, but never wore The dancing eagle plumes, and seemed to scorn The vanities and follies of ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... Quilp delivered himself with the utmost animation and rapidity, and with so many distortions of limb and feature, that even his wife, although tolerably well accustomed to his proficiency in these respects, was well-nigh beside herself with alarm. But the Jamaica rum, and the joy of having occasioned a heavy disappointment, by degrees cooled Mr Quilp's wrath; which from being at savage heat, dropped slowly to the bantering or chuckling point, at which ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... shaft from Tom's legs. Then, gathering the lad up in his left arm, as if he were a baby, Koku staggered out into the fresh air, almost falling with his burden, as he neared Mr. Damon, for the giant was, well-nigh overcome. ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... Well-nigh frothing at the mouth, Pedro Gato leaped to his feet. All was red now before his eyes. He rushed forward bellowing like a bull, intent on crushing the young American who had dared ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... barren desert. On the north is the Mediterranean Sea, and on the south the tropical Soudan. Thus, in the hands of a power that holds the command of the sea, Egypt is well adapted for defence. The tropical Soudan makes a well-nigh impossible line of advance for a large hostile force from the south, and the routes of approach from the east and from the west, across the waterless deserts, present obstacles scarcely less formidable. Since the seventies, however, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... sinned in loving him till now, such sin would henceforth be multiplied incalculably; she durst not, as she valued her soul, so much as let his name enter her thoughts. And to guard against it, was there not a means offered her? The doubt as to what love meant was well-nigh solved; or at all events she held it proved that the 'love' of the marriage service was something she had never yet felt, something which would follow upon marriage itself. Earthly love had surely led Hubert Eldon to ruin; oh, not that could be demanded of ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... consequently among the first to hear such further details as were allowed to circulate among the now well-nigh frenzied guests. No one knew the perpetrator of the deed nor did there appear to be any direct evidence calculated to fix his identity. Indeed, the sudden death of this beautiful woman in the midst of festivity ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... then, as the despairing but courageous seamen were trying to drag it forward again, Deschard and his savages in the leading boat had gained the ship, and the wild figure of the all but naked beachcomber sprang on deck, followed by his own crew and nearly two hundred other fiends well-nigh as bloodthirsty and cruel as himself. Some two or three of them had been killed by the musketry fire from the ship, and their fellows needed no incentive from their white leaders ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... before I could make her understand what I meant. 'Ah! she at last cried, has the little boy been with thee? Well, well, good betide thee, my tall lad. The tiny thing harms nobody, and brings luck to everyone he takes notice of. I have known him now well-nigh these forty years. He goes round to the houses where he likes the folks, and helps them in their housekeeping, now in one thing, now in another. Cleaning everything is his darling employment. He can't bear dust; dirty sooty pots and other kitchenware are his aversion; and he will often scrub ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... son were banished under pain of death. The aged couple were sent to Shelter Island, but their misery was well-nigh done; they perished within a few days of each other, tortured to death by ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... in misfortune to Ypres, but the destruction was even more complete because it was almost in the front line, and shells of all calibres dropped in it well-nigh continuously day and night. Peace-time bridges, of course, had been obliterated, but soldiers had built others to connect up the front line defence, which was east of the river, with the rear. Who will ever forget Putney Bridge? Lancashire men who knew nothing of its parent ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... by lessening the denominator. But even the stoical shrike is not without his epicurean weakness. When he has killed a sparrow, he eats the brains first; after that, if he is still hungry, he devours the coarser and less savory parts. In this, however, he only shares the well-nigh universal inconsistency. There are never many thorough-going stoics in the world. Epictetus declared with an oath that he should be glad to see one.[7] To take everything as equally good, to know no difference between ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... across the street to Mrs. M——, the servant at the R.I.C. barrack, with whom she remained until the morning. She stated that as she lay in bed, half awake and half asleep, she saw a man enter the room, who immediately seized her by the throat and well-nigh choked her. She had only sufficient strength left to gasp 'Lord, save me!' when instantly the man vanished. She also said that she heard noises as if every bottle and glass in the shop was smashed to atoms, yet in the morning everything ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... is one thing yet to be done in order that our country may come fully within the provisions of the well-nigh inspired expression of our forefathers, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The women of America pay taxes for the support of the Government, and their consent should be had in matters affecting their welfare and their lives. We have been making ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... good fortune and Lilas's catastrophe Mrs. Knight was well-nigh delirious. It was not often that she could roll two such delicious morsels under her tongue, and she patently gloried in the opportunity for gossip. She ended a period of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... has received is to be specially regretted, as its misuse has well-nigh robbed it of its true meaning, which is, to intimate delicately, to refer to without mentioning directly. Allude is now very rarely used in any other sense than that of to speak of, to mention, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... more venturesome young braves, who attempted, to retard our advance by opening fire at long range from favorable places where they lay concealed. This fire did us little harm, but it had the effect of making our progress so slow that the patience of every one but General Rains was well-nigh exhausted. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... skill. At Cerro Gordo the Mexicans opposed him with considerable force, but maneuvers, suggested by Lee, enabled him to outflank the enemy and drive them, without much trouble, from his path. Again at Contreras a check occurred, part of the army having advanced over a well-nigh impassable country and lost touch with the Commander-in-Chief. One after another seven officers were dispatched to carry the necessary orders, but all returned without effecting their purpose. But at midnight, in the midst of a torrential storm Lee arrived from the ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... Bob Sawyer was rapidly ripening into the furious, Mr. Ben Allen was fast relapsing into the sentimental, and the punch had well-nigh disappeared altogether, when the boy hastily running in, announced that a young woman had just come over, to say that Sawyer late Nockemorf was wanted directly, a couple of streets off. This broke up the party. Mr. Bob ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Washington, "there are inflammable materials which a single spark may kindle." In 1783, on the morrow of the American war, the inflammable materials everywhere accumulated in France were already providing means for that immense conflagration in the midst of which the country well-nigh perished. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... King speak on this wise, he took all the sheets that covered him, and threw them all abroad about the chamber. Then saw he behind him a cudgel, and caught it into his hand, and turned, and took the King, and beat him till he was well-nigh dead. ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... of self-torture which the human heart possesses is well-nigh infinite. When one considers how futile are self-reproaches, self- examinations, remorses for faults and weaknesses; how vanity puts itself upon the rack and conscience inflicts envenomed wounds; how self tortures self until the whole man writhes ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... Gawain when he was ware of that was fain to forget all his pain. He arose from where he sat, and went towards his steed, and as he looked upon him his heart rose high within him, and he deemed that he was well-nigh healed. And even as he came Gringalet knew his lord, nor would flee from him, but came towards him, and for very friendship seized ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... destroyed, that Elam became an Assyrian province. The conquerors, however, found it a profitless desert, wasted by fire and sword, and in the struggle to possess it their own resources had been drained and well-nigh exhausted. ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... great principle of economy is continually at work shaping organisms, as sculptors shape statues, by removing the superfluous parts; and a mere glance at the forms of animals in general will show that it is well-nigh as dominant and universal a principle as is that of the positive development of useful parts. Other causes, moreover besides actual economy, would favour shorter and more convenient wings on oceanic ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... low in doing it, as it probably will be if I get into the ruckus with Jefferson Whitworth that now threatens. They have insinuated themselves into the confidence of Governor Faulkner until they have made it well-nigh impossible for him to see the matter except as they put it. They will get his signature to the rental grant of the lands, make a get-away with the money and let the State crash down upon his head when it finds out that he has been ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... 1. James Gray, Esq. Wordsworth was justified in naming Gray a 'friend' of Burns. He was originally Master of the High School, Dumfries, and associated with the Poet there. Transferred to the High School of Edinburgh, he taught for well-nigh a quarter of a century with repute. Disappointed of the Rectorship, he retired from Edinburgh to an academy at Belfast. Later, having entered holy orders, he proceeded to India as a chaplain in the East India Company's service. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... few observant persons of rural habits who cannot call to mind one or another still autumn morning, when from a cloudless, though perhaps hazy, sky, they have noted, over a wide area, steady descent of countless spider webs, many of them well-nigh perfect in all details ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... linger over a period still fresh, still hopeful, still generous in impulse— still strong in faith in the world's worth—before we hasten on to portray the man of the world, heartless, not wholly, perhaps, but wont to check all feeling till it was well-nigh quenched; little minded; bitter, if not spiteful; with many acquaintances and scarce one friend—the Horace Walpole of Berkeley Square ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... you a particular account of the names of the soldiers that were slain in the town, for many were maimed, and wounded, and slain; for when they saw that the posts of Ear-gate did shake, and Eye-gate was well-nigh broken quite open, and also that their captains were slain, this took away the hearts of many of the Diabolonians; they fell also by the force of the shot that were sent by the golden slings into the midst of ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... did betray the heart that loved her," sang her poet high priest. When the world has been too much with us, nothing else is so refreshing to tired eyes and mind as woods and water, and an intelligent knowledge of the life within them. For a generation past there has been a well-nigh universal turning of the population toward the cities. In 1840 only nine per cent of our people lived in cities of 8,000 inhabitants or more. Now more than a third of us are found in cities. But the electric-car, the telephone, the bicycle, ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer
... then, suffered the fate of its predecessors in the first week of September, 1666. By the Friday the conflagration had so far exhausted itself that Pepys was able to walk from Paul's Wharf to the churchyard. The City within the Walls was well-nigh burnt out, and of the eighty-three parish churches consumed only forty-eight were rebuilt; and these with the thirteen untouched left accommodation more than sufficient for the surrounding population. Our regret ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... mile before he could get to a place where he was able to climb down, and when he reached the shore he ran with breathless speed to the spot where Tom's head was still above the water. He saw at once that his friend's strength was well-nigh spent, and, leaping in, he swam to him. "Put your arms round my neck," he said. "I will swim down with you to the point where the creek ends." The boy was too far gone to speak, and it needed all Will's strength to help him down the deep pool to the point where it ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... above ruddy lips; he passed through the study with a youthful step, and had the express intention of greeting the master of the house in a cordial and intimate manner. But in the cold eyes of Darvid appeared flashes well-nigh threatening; he barely touched with his finger-tips the hand extended by the guest-a hand really aristocratic, white, slender, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... information on the subject, Captain Bonneville dispatched two hunters to beat up the country in that direction. They searched in vain; not a trace of the men could be found; but they got into a region destitute of game, where they were well-nigh famished. At one time they were three entire days with-out a mouthful of food; at length they beheld a buffalo grazing at the foot of the mountain. After manoeuvring so as to get within shot, they fired, but merely wounded him. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... threats and deadly accusations? Spit forth your malice! Pile up falsehoods to the skies!—WHO WILL BELIEVE THE TALE OF PROBABILITY? Brethren! behold the man whose cause I pleaded with you—for whom my feelings had well-nigh mastered my better judgment. Behold him, and learn how hard it is to pierce the stony heart of him whose youth has passed in dissolute living, and in adultery. Shall I approach thy ear with the voice of her who cries from the grave for justice ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... had stretched no point when he told his niece that the thought of setting foot in a boat made him well-nigh swoon. His only ventures aboard any ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... branches of this noble elm, which has seen so many college generations come and go, I have well-nigh forgotten that life has any limitations of space or time; work, anxiety, weariness fade out of thought under a heaven from which every cloud has vanished, and the eye pierces everywhere the infinite ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... was on its feet now, and well-nigh out of its mind with uneasiness, apprehension, and consuming excitement. On the floor and on the platform a deafening buzz of frantic conversation burst forth, and for some time nobody knew anything or heard anything or was interested in anything but what his neighbour was shouting into his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... writing, working, experimenting all these years on the subject of education, and he had become well-nigh discouraged. He had observed that six was the "school age." That is, no child could go to school until he was six ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... about him, satisfied with the letters of recommendation which he had brought, and which he had not taken the trouble to verify. He now believed that these letters were all no better than forgeries, and that he had well-nigh fallen a victim to one of the worst of villains. In his mind this revelation of the doctor only gave a new claim upon his gratitude toward the woman who ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Dacre, was indeed a gentleman, born to a competent estate, and married into an honest stock and to some fortune, but his fair prospects were all blighted and our mother's money well-nigh wasted before he died. To his great loss, he stood steadily for the king against the Parliament all through the late Rebellion, as he would ever call it; and, our mother's people being very stiff on the other side, and she dying while we were little children, we were sundered ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... that nothing would induce her to set her foot outside the house. She sits with the curtains and shutters fast closed, and a fire of spices on the hearth, till one is fairly stifled, and will touch nothing that is not well-nigh soaked in vinegar. And each time that Frederick comes in with some fresh tale, she is like to swoon with fear, and every time she vows that it is the pestilence attacking her, and is like to die from sheer fright. What is ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... must, for the time is ripe. And though she turned from me, this I should have done, had it not been for yonder prince Aziel, whom she met in a strange fashion, and straightway learned to love. Now the thing is more difficult. Nay, while the prince Aziel can take her to wife it is well-nigh impossible, since no threats of war or ruin can turn a woman's heart from him she seeks—to him she ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... crowded centres of the old world; the glamor of city life, which has allured thousands from the country, fascinating them from afar much as the gaudy colors and tinsel before the footlights dazzle the vision of a child; the rapid growth of the saloon, rendered well-nigh impregnable by the wealth of the liquor power; the wonderful labor-saving inventions, which in the hands of greed and avarice, instead of mitigating the burdens of the people, have greatly augmented them, by glutting the market with labor; the opportunities given by the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... his advertisement those facts and arguments which he felt would be most likely to attract attention, to excite interest, and to convince. If the reader will glance at Rosee's advertisement, which is reproduced on page 55, he will be struck with the well-nigh irresistible charm of his unaffected, straightforward bid for patronage. Having no advertising fetishes to warp his judgment, he told an interesting story in a natural manner, carrying conviction. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... well acquainted with Major Caspar Dabney until you have summered and wintered him. But the Dabneys of Deer Trace—this was the old name of the estate, and it obtains to this day among the Paradise Valley folk—figure so largely in Thomas Jefferson's boyhood and youth as to be well-nigh elemental in ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... favorite passage, nodded again, and again vanished. We looked at each other as if we had seen a ghost. Then my father rose and went out of the room, and remained in Roland's till the night was well-nigh gone! We sat up, my mother and I, till he returned. His benign ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... what it is to be a lady and what not. You know that it is not to go, like the daughters of Zion in Isaiah's time, with mincing gait, and borrowed head-gear, and tasteless finery, the head well-nigh empty, the heart full of little save vanity and vexation of spirit, busy all the week over cheap novels and expensive dresses, and on Sunday over a little dilettante devotion. You know, I take for granted, that ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... on with his adventures. "My horse was so wild, that he well-nigh rushed with me against limbs and trunks of trees. He was dripping with sweat through terror, heat, and the violent straining of his muscles. Still he refused to slacken his career. At last, altogether beyond my control, he took his course directly ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... and respect the Governor for his humanity and nobility of character; but the time was soon to come when the demands of her land and people called her to more dangerous fields of labour, and then it became difficult, well-nigh impossible, to meet the searching eye of ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... asked Cookson insolently; and one after another took up the cry, 'The ship's doomed.' At this the children could not resist raising a cheer. Hook had well-nigh forgotten his prisoners, but as he swung round on them now his face lit ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... the honest skipper. Down the open companion-way leaped the officer, with half a dozen stout, eager sailors at his heels, and dashed right into the lower cabin. There was the brave old skipper, with but one arm free, shielding himself and struggling—faint and well-nigh exhausted—from the knives of the drunken brace of rascals who had been left to guard him. A pistol in the hands of one of this pair was pointed with an unsteady aim at the officer as he entered, but the ball struck the empty rum-bottle on the table and flew wide ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... anguish, the struggle had well-nigh passed; she was at once subdued and resolved, like one into whom some spirit had entered and bound her own spirit, and acted through her. So strange did all appear to her, so strange the impassiveness of her own will, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a severe blow to Seward. For the moment he seemed well-nigh friendless. The letter to his wife after he reached Washington was a threnody. He was firmly convinced that he was a much injured man, and his attitude was that of the martyr supported by the serenity of the saint. But to the world he bore himself with the courage and the dignity ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... companion, and would laugh and talk out all his infantine heart to the old gentleman, to whom the younger had seldom a word to say. George was a demure, studious boy, and his senses seemed to brighten up in the library, where his brother was so gloomy. He knew the books before he could well-nigh carry them, and read in them long before he could understand them. Harry, on the other hand, was all alive in the stables or in the wood, eager for all parties of hunting and fishing, and promised to be a good sportsman from a very early age. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... local criticism was certain to follow the appearance of a local writer; and she shrank from it with morbid and exaggerated disgust. Even if all had been well, if Roland had been beside her, their notices would have been well-nigh intolerable to her. She could not have endured being stared at and pointed out in the streets of her own little town. But now Fame had come to her with broken wings and a cracked trumpet, and she shuddered ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... measure. Not only for such extraordinary matters as wars and treaties, but even for the regular and ordinary business of raising money to carry on the government, not a single step could be taken without the consent of at least nine of the thirteen states; and this provision well-nigh sufficed of itself to block the wheels of federal legislation. The Congress assembled each year on the first Monday of November, and could not adjourn for a longer period than six months. During its recess the continuity of government ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... green gate. A quaint old house it was, with many crooks, corners, and gables, and small lattice diamond-paned windows, through one of which gleamed the ruddy glow of a fire. Ah! the air was crisp, the sun well-nigh gone, the evening creeping on. Inna sighed, and, tripping through the little green gate, mounted the three white steps, and, by dint of straining, reached up, and knocked with the knocker almost as loudly as a timid mouse. But it brought an answer, in the ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... He was well-nigh the last to sail, for he had tarried many days to do pleasure to Agamemnon, lord of all the Greeks. Twelve ships he had with him—twelve he had brought to Troy—and in each there were some fifty men, being scarce half of those ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... anchored among the islands without having half my guns double-shotted, and the other half loaded with grape; and there is always an officer and half a watch on deck, so that, whatever happens to us, it will not be because I have been caught napping. On both those occasions the captains well-nigh lost ship and ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... stretches of purple heather, with the dainty little harebells all a-quiver in the strong breeze sweeping over the grouse-butts, as a brown mass of whirling wings rushes past at the pace of an express train, causing one probably to reflect how well-nigh impossible it is to "allow" too much for driven grouse flying down-wind. I can picture equally vividly the curling-pond in winter-time, tuneful with the merry chirrup of the curling-stones as they skim over the ice, whilst cries ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... and undressed, and finally conducted to the Pope for coronation; to narrate the breaking of the bridge at one point, and the squabbles between the Genoese and Sienese delegates for precedence, would be superfluously tedious. The day was well-nigh over when at length Charles received the Imperial insignia from the Pope's hands. Accipe gladium sanctum, Accipe virgam, Accipe pomum, Accipe signum gloriae! As Clement pronounced these sentences, he gave ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... guest had gone, Gray took occasion deliberately to put himself in Mallow's way and to get into conversation with him. This was not a difficult maneuver, for it was nearly midnight and the lobby was well-nigh deserted; moreover, it almost appeared as if the restless Mr. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... bare grasslessness, with a bridle-path on one side and a tram-line on the other. If it had been late afternoon the Paseo would have been filled with the gay world, but being the late forenoon we had to leave it well-nigh unpeopled and go back to our hotel, where the excellent midday breakfast merited the best appetite one could ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... again, and after that anon *went out and revived* That other fire was queint, and all agone: And as it queint, it made a whisteling, As doth a brande wet in its burning. And at the brandes end outran anon As it were bloody droppes many one: For which so sore aghast was Emily, That she was well-nigh mad, and gan to cry, For she ne wiste what it signified; But onely for feare thus she cried, And wept, that it was pity for to hear. And therewithal Diana gan appear With bow in hand, right as an ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... all that night. It tossed the Hope about like a cork; it well-nigh blew the sails off the masts, and almost blew Mr Dicey's head off his shoulders! then it stopped ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... they are the la-ads," said Sergeant Mackay, yielding to the influence of his environment and casually dropping into the cadence of the Highlanders about him, which, during his ten years in the west, his tongue had well-nigh lost. "It's a very fine thing, your pipers are doing, playing our boys out in this way, and we won't be ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... did they lose or win? To these questions biography gives the direct answer. Such is its importance over other literature. For such reasons, doubtless, Johnson 'loved' it most. For such reasons the book which has been most cherished and revered for well-nigh two thousand ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... to answer well, and its severity was gradually relaxed. William Adolphus, sighing relief I doubt not (for I was well-nigh as tedious to him as he to me), went off to his horses. I was again encouraged to be more with Elsa, under a caution to say nothing that could excite her. She met me with a quiet gay contentment, seemed pleased to be with me, and was profuse and sincere in thanks for my kindness. Sometimes now she ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... who persuaded him to remain and read law in his office until a year should elapse and he could be admitted to the Ohio bar. However, in less than a week he fell ill of a fever which did not leave him until the expense of it had well-nigh emptied his slender purse. His physicians, fearing he was too slight and delicate for Western hardships, urged him to go back to Canandaigua, but when he left Cleveland he again turned westward, resolved in his own mind never to go back without the evidences of success in his life. It is ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... house well-nigh from roof to basement, while St Aubyn recounted all the associations connected with the different rooms. Then they went into the picture-gallery. Austin, breathless with interest, hung upon St Aubyn's lips as he pointed out the peculiarities of each great master represented, and explained ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... moment well-nigh oblivious of his own trouble, turned upon his assistant a look in which elation was oddly blended with solemnity, and ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... Athens could have produced. No sooner had Julius Caesar restored and rebuilt the ruined city, than it sprang at once again into importance, and among the societies addrest in the Epistles of St. Paul, none seems to have lived in greater wealth or luxury. It was, in fact, well-nigh impossible that Corinth should die. Nature had marked out her site as one of the great thoroughfares of the old world; and it was not till after centuries of blighting misrule by the wretched Turks that she sank into the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... railroads to the United States was on December 31, 1890, $112,512,613.06. A large part of this debt is now fast approaching maturity, with no adequate provision for its payment. Some policy for dealing with this debt with a view to its ultimate collection should be at once adopted. It is very difficult, well-nigh impossible, for so large a body as the Congress to conduct the necessary negotiations and investigations. I therefore recommend that provision be made for the appointment of a commission to agree upon and report a plan ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... was the reply, "save in one particular, but there the difference is tremendous. Endowed otherwise like us, you are destitute of the faculty of foresight, without which we should think our other faculties well-nigh valueless." ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... supplied by these forests which originally extended to Novgorod, Moscow, and Jaroslaf. The increase in population together with the growing demand for lumber, have caused extensive clearings; but the area covered by the forests is so large, that the supply is well-nigh inexhaustible. ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... word, one way or the other, would make him as easy to manage as a kitten or as relentless as a panther, stalking his prey. She knew that it was in her power to say the word that would calm him until the return of his mother and his sister. And yet she found it well-nigh impossible ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... North was wont to consign to utter neglect the outcast border of civilisation, where there were no decent parents to pledge themselves; and Partan Jeannie's son had grown up well-nigh in heathen ignorance among fisher lads and merchant sailors, till it had been left for him to learn among the Mohammedans both temperance and devotional habits. His whole faith and understanding would ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... For well-nigh sixty years the influx of German immigrants of various sects was very great, averaging something like fifteen hundred a year into Pennsylvania alone from 1727 to 1775. Indeed, Pennsylvania, one third of whose population at the beginning of the Revolution was ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... to learn what the conditions may be, and to follow them. Though in their eyes a glass of beer is quite right and proper when taken as any self-respecting man should take it; though they know that cleanliness is an expensive virtue which can be required of few; though they realize that saving is well-nigh impossible when but a few cents can be laid by at a time; though their feeling for the church may be something quite elusive of definition and quite apart from daily living: to the visitor they gravely laud temperance and cleanliness and thrift and religious observance. The deception ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... Gothic, "though far from reflecting the beauties of a former age, or anticipating those which were destined to proceed from a re-development of the style, still holds a position in the history of English art which commands our respect, for it served to sustain a cause which had otherwise been well-nigh forsaken." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... away every dogma of religious truth, from the lowest to the highest. In that old pagan world this natural process is to be seen. Everywhere that human genius opened up a way for itself, and had a career, the last remnants of primeval truth were well-nigh banished. Look, too, at the educated intellect of the non-Catholic world to-day. Genius, talent, eloquence, and art, what are they in England, Germany and France, if we may not describe them as simply godless? Why ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... evening, with a small crescent moon shining softly as if its forces were well-nigh spent. The heat of the day was over, and the falling dew evolved a kind of autumnal sweetness, the flavor of ripening fruits rather than flowers. Yerbury was very quiet in the part they were to traverse. They walked under great maples where a shadowy light sifted through, and the houses looked ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... later revamped it in the Senate, produced the Obstinate One as a Governor—was the legitimate heir to the Speakership; and in the House, where tradition is something sacred and custom itself the strongest of arguments, his defeat for the place was thereby rendered well-nigh impossible. Senator Hanway had undertaken no child's task when he went about the gavel elevation of the popular, yet—by House ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... democracy is for the nation a true embodiment of that life, and wears its characteristics upon its sleeve. In it the individual mingles with the mass, and becomes one with mankind, and mankind itself sums the totality of individual good in a well-nigh perfect way. In it there is the slow embodiment of a future nobly conceived and brought into existence on an ideal basis of the best that is, from age to age, in man's power. It includes the universal wisdom, the reach of thought and aspiration, by ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... his father's son,' returned Sir Patrick, 'who gat the bride with a kingdom for her tocher that these folks have well-nigh ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lay grasping the cross, a man in the crowd cried out: 'Girl, the priest cometh! Run thou quickly to him!' And I, being well-nigh dazed with fear, had no better sense than to spring up, crying, 'Where?' And no priest was there at all; but the instant my hands were off the cross that man seized me and ran, and all the crowd ran after to see what might happen next, some saying ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... that instant. To clear up the mystery successfully might be to clear my love of the awful stigma upon her. To watch and to listen was the only way; but the difficulties in the dead silence of the night were well-nigh insurmountable, for I dare not approach sufficiently near to catch a single word. I had crept on after them for about a mile, until we were approaching the tumbling waters of the weir. The dull roar swallowed up the sound of their voices, but it assisted me, for I had no ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... who may paint? His senses at first were well-nigh gone; The beatified saint was ready to faint When he saw in his Abbey such ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... self-control. If honor, self-respect or conscience, rallying to its support in the hour of temptation, be not stronger than appetite, it will be of no avail. And it too often happens that, with the poor inebriate, these have become blunted, or well-nigh extinguished. The consequence has been that where the pledge has been solely relied upon, the percentage of reform has been very small. As a first means of rescue, it is invaluable; because it is, on the part of him who takes it, a complete removal of ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... been pure and his soul true, he would help him in his quest. Then, at a wave from the lily wand the magic music ceased, and the charm was broken. Sherasmin was graciously forgiven by Oberon, who, seeing the old man well-nigh exhausted, offered him a golden beaker of wine, bidding him drink without fear. But Sherasmin was of a suspicious nature, and it was only when he found that the draught had greatly refreshed him that ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... no more doors or windows; but if the disappearance of this symptom was a favorable sign, others came to notice which were especially bad,—for instance, wakefulness. At well-nigh any hour of the night, the city guard, which itself dared not patrol singly, would meet him on ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... with deep feeling, made it necessary for Clara to pause once more. So Thomas Bradly, seeing that her strength was well-nigh exhausted, simply expressed his hearty readiness to comply with her requests, and was rising to take his leave, when she signed ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... troops. Douglas thought the number should have been 200,000. So it should, and so doubtless it would, had it not been for certain iniquities of Buchanan's mal-administration. There were no arms, accouterments, clothing. Floyd had well-nigh stripped the northern arsenals. Lincoln could not begin warlike preparations on any great scale because that was certain to precipitate the war which he so ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... as through the one she had already demolished, the tank careened on her way, to emerge, rather battered and dust-covered, on the other side of what was left of the factory. And there was not much of it left. Tank A had well-nigh completed its demolition. ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... come back for almost an hour. Wid Gardner, coming across lots by the creek path, found Mary Gage alone, and sat with her there in an uneasiness he could not himself conceal, wondering over the girl's absence. Mary was well-nigh beside herself when at length they heard Annie coming rapidly, saw her ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... of his days fighting wild men and hunting wild beasts in Kentucky, until both were well-nigh gone and the tamer life of civilization pressed closer about him. Then he set out for Missouri, where he found himself again in the wilderness, and dwelt there in his beloved solitude till he died. Nothing ever moved him so much as the memoir which a young man wrote down for ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... They are away from Zion with its temple, and are deprived of the view of those mountains which are round about Jerusalem and to this day are clad with vines and olive trees. They are in captivity and are the abject slaves of the enemies of God. Isaiah's heart is well-nigh crushed, but in the midst of the despair he has a vision of the chariots coming and hears a cry which rejoices his soul, "Babylon is fallen." It is because of these tidings that he cries out in ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... did on the question. He was loath to leave Baltimore without giving this testimony against slavery. But unable to procure a room for this purpose was finally compelled to content himself with the witness he had already borne in the Genius and in prison in behalf of the slave. In Philadelphia he well-nigh failed to obtain a hall for his lectures, but did finally succeed in getting the Franklin Institute, where, to small audiences, he lifted up his voice against the iniquity of the times. He repeated his lectures in New York, New Haven, and ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... cowardly boy, or a stupid boy, but he had become all three; and as he sat and brooded over his hard luck, as he called it, that morning, his mind was filled with mingled misery and fear and malice towards every one and everything, and he felt well-nigh desperate. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... plucky lad was well-nigh exhausted. The strain of holding to the slippery rock in the face of the swift current was one that would have taxed the strength of the strongest man, to say nothing of the almost freezing cold water, which chilled the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... people of St Dennis's had been angry before, they were well-nigh mad when they heard of this conversation. The whole parish ran to the manor-house. Sir Lewis's Swiss porter shut the door against them; but they broke in and knocked him on the head for his impudence. They ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gasped Cicely. "Why, he only buried his second wife last month! Father, he is as old as you are, and drunken, and has grandchildren of well-nigh my age. I would obey you in all things, but never will I ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... haste to have done with all this and to start on my long and chartless journey, I had well-nigh forgotten to tell just how I killed Mr. Darrow. No hypodermic syringe had anything to do with it. The while plan came to me while reading that fatal page upon which I left my telltale thumb-signature in my search for some feasible plan of making away with my victim. I need ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... The lovely lass o' Inverness The merchant, to secure his treasure The more we live, more brief appear The poplars are fell'd! farewell to the shade The sun is warm, the sky is clear The sun upon the lake is low The twentieth year is well-nigh past The World is too much with us; late and soon The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man There be none of Beauty's daughters There is a flower, the lesser Celandine There is a garden in her face There's not ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Laing, learning of the disaster that had well-nigh swallowed up Sir Charles's army, retreated to Cape Coast. There were about thirty thousand troops remaining, but they were so terrified at the disaster of the day that they could not be induced to make ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... indifference is a fearful thing. Paul yearned over his countrymen, but in some respects our countrymen are worse than Paul's. "I could wish," said that glorious, patriotic man—that grand old man, that most blessed and chief of all the Apostles, with heaven in his view, his career well-nigh ended, his work done, and Churches rising up around him of which he was the father—not churches built upon other men's foundations—"I could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." Yet "I bear ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... drank ale, and talked with the guards, and waited;—and waited, and talked with the guards, and drank ale, until his patience was well-nigh gone. At last, just when the day was breaking, he went to the door of the ante-room to listen, and hearing nothing, he knocked, and receiving no answer, he unlocked the door and peeped in, not wishing to disturb the maid-of-honour, but merely to satisfy himself ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... serious. Indeed, at that time it was a burning question in the sense that those who touched it were almost certain to burn their fingers severely. It was not so very long since my kind friend, Sir William Lawrence, one of the ablest men whom I have known, had been well-nigh ostracised for his book "On Man," which now might be read in a Sunday school without surprising anybody; it was only a few years since the electors to the chair of Natural History in a famous northern university had refused to invite a very distinguished man to occupy it because ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... McGregor. "I suppose it was a misfortune when you tumbled underneath the watering cart; and a misfortune when you sat down in the wet tar! A misfortune when you sent the snowball through the schoolroom window; to say nothing of the creamcake you treated Jakie Sullivan to that well-nigh killed him." ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... they declared their willingness to sweat and toil even under tropic skies, and develop their country without the aid of the cheap labor of the rice-eating, mat-sleeping, fast-breeding spawn of the man-burdened East. But this policy came well-nigh to being the death-blow to one little industry of the north, so far from the ken of the legislators in Sydney and Melbourne as to have almost escaped ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... well-nigh unnecessary to state that the first four suggestions emanated from my pen: the remaining five being fruitage of the inventive ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the responsibilities, as well as to enjoy the privileges, of emancipation. We will not dwell upon the party dissensions which for a series of years militated against the smooth working of the new Constitution, nor upon the known fact that the Prince well-nigh relinquished the reins of power in consequence of the repeated changes of ministry and the unworthy jealousies of those who, having first selected him as a foreigner, subsequently charged this against him as a disqualification. Nor must we examine too narrowly all the causes of this restlessness ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... achievement into which modern discoveries and inventions, with the resultant enormous increase of commerce and material wealth, plunged the whole civilized world. We are but beginning to realize, what we had well-nigh totally overlooked, that even machine-driven industry with all that it connotes, enormously increased production of manufactured goods, and the spread of physical comfort to a degree unknown before among great numbers, ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... snow had fallen that in spite of the blizzard, driving with an unrelenting fury, the drifts were deepening, packing, and making all effort increasingly difficult. It was well-nigh impossible to head the horses into the storm, and de Spain looked with ever more anxious eyes at Nan. After half an hour's superhuman struggle to regain a trail that should restore their bearings, they halted, and de Spain, riding up to the wagon, spoke to Morgan, who was ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... incandescent light burning over my head, I open the book dealing with the wonders of America which I have taken from the well-stocked library, and read of great Americans, from Washington to the man who has brought this very light to such perfection, turning over page after page of well-nigh incredible description of the country which has raised the system of "booming" to a high art, till my brain reels with an Arabian Nightish flavour of exaggeration, and turning off the electric current, I am gradually lulled to sleep by the rhythmical vibrations of the steamer, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... recent period, woman's subjection to man has been well-nigh complete in all respects, whether such subjection is considered from a social, political, intellectual or even a physical point of view. At first the property of man, she emerged under civilization from the sphere of a drudge ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... orchard with its early pink (Cherry, I'm told) adorns the scene; While the horse-chestnut (as I think) Is well-nigh ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... Wildrake, laying aside his riding cloak and rapier, "you ask so many questions at once. A man has but one tongue to answer with, and mine is well-nigh glued to the roof of ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... that at best I am no genius, but I am not so great a fool as to seek an opportunity to make myself appear more stupid than I am. Of course she can never marry Hamilton, but a hopeless love clings to a woman as burning oil to the skin and is well-nigh as impossible to extinguish. Therefore I beg you tell me. Shall I beat a retreat and take care of my wounded, or shall ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... monthly obligations, support of family, office expenses, payments to Mrs. Slater and Mr. Pell, and the more or less constant inquiry from some of my moral (as I call them) creditors as to how soon I could commence making them monthly payments, my brain was well-nigh turned. ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... the capital of Madagascar, in the centre of the island, on a well-nigh inaccessible rocky height 5000 ft. above ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... mellowing fast, and with it the year itself; full of tender hints, in woodland and hedgerow, of a course well-nigh completed. From all sides that still afternoon you caught the quick breathing and sob of the runner nearing the goal. Preoccupied and possessed, Selina had strayed down the garden and out into the pasture beyond, where, on a bit of rising ground that dominated the garden on one side ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame |
