"Thinned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his obligation as a redeemed soul to Him. There crept an unfamiliar note of yearning sincerity into the prayers wherewith he took his heretofore formal part in the church prayer meeting, and it almost perceptibly thinned the frozen crust of the "icily regular" service. The men in his business noticed a new softness in his manner, and sometimes it emboldened them to speak to him of their own cares and sorrows, ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... soon thinned away into widening rings of ripples and the cornstalks quit circling and became still again, and only the multiplying night noises sounded about the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... him! I pity those who fought, and bled, and died, Before the armies of this Ghibelin. I pity those who halted home with wounds Dealt by his hand. I pity widowed eyes That he set running; maiden hearts that turn, Sick with despair, from ranks thinned down by him; Mothers that shriek, as the last stragglers fling Their feverish bodies by the fountain-side, Dumb with mere thirst, and faintly point to him, Answering the dame's quick questions. I have seen Unburied ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... now well along toward spring. The winter had been like summer, and with the exception of a few rains of a week or so, we had enjoyed beautiful skies. The seals had thinned out considerably, but were now returning in vast numbers ready ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and shell, that by the time he reached the line of the enemy's infantry, his ranks were too much broken to offer a very formidable front. From the enemy's fortified position their deadly fire caused our already thinned ranks to melt like snow before the sun's warm rays. The result was a complete repulse along the whole line. But McClellan was only too glad to be allowed a breathing spell from his seven days of continual defeat, and availed himself of the opportunity of this respite to pull off ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of the boats up on the shore side of a big shoal, and all hands, with sacks, spread out and began picking. Every now and again the clouds thinned before the face of the moon, and we could see the big oysters quite distinctly. In almost no time sacks were filled and carried back to the boats, where fresh ones were obtained. Nicholas and I returned often and anxiously to the boats with ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... to see male and female dancers. The amphitheatres were still more largely attended by the better populace. They expired in wretched apartments without attracting the attention of government. Pestilence and famine and squalid misery thinned their ranks, and they would have been annihilated but for constant succession to their ranks from the provinces. In the busy streets of Rome might be seen adventurers from all parts of the world, disgraced ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... are of many different sorts and well-tasted, but not, generally speaking, very plentiful. It is probable that their numbers are considerably thinned by the otters, which are much larger than those of Europe. In going through the overflowed savannas, which have all a communication with the river, you may often see a dozen or two of them sporting amongst the sedges ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... the air as they struck the Russian line with an impetus which carried them through the close-drawn ranks. For a moment there was a glittering flash of sword-blades and a sharp clash of steel, and then, in thinned numbers, the charging dragoons appeared in the rear of the line, heading with unchecked speed towards the second ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... upon it. He observed, too, how round her shoulders had grown, and noted many other signs of old age which the glow from the stove made so cruelly apparent. It had taken sixty years of life just to streak her hair with grey; but the past seven years had remorselessly thinned and whitened it, and now not even one black hair was to be seen. All these things and many more he thought of as he gazed upon ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... be no thing surmised, As that which may or may not beam on us, Like noontide sunshine on a dubious morn; It must be sure!—The honour and the fame Of France's gay and gallant infantry— So dear, so cherished all the Empire through— Binds us to compass it! Maintain the ranks; Let none be thinned by impulse or excuse Of bearing back the wounded: and, in fine, Be every one in this conviction firm:— That 'tis our sacred bond to overthrow These hirelings of a country not their own: Yea, England's hirelings, they!—a realm stiff-steeled In deathless hatred ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Notice how beautifully, and with what subtle gradations, the light reflected from her white collar strikes on her slightly faded cheek; how tenderly it seems to play among the soft tangles of the hair that time has thinned.'—Athenaeum. ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... when different clans were driven farther into the hills, they each clinched as much land as they could. In course of time, by petty quarrels, civil wars, and common feuds, the Nou-su were gradually thinned out. The Miao-tsi—the men of the hills and the serfs of the landlords, who four thousand years ago were a powerful race in their own kingdom—became the tenants of the Nou-su, whose rule is still marked by the grossest ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... in which he sat there must have been an hour of terrible suffering. After that great debate, the business of the rest of the evening fell rather flat, and was conducted in a House which rapidly thinned down to little short of emptiness. When it was at its emptiest, Rupert Langley rose, lifted his hat to the Speaker, and left ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... of this district. ("Voyage" Part Geolog. pages 57-65.) The cliffs to the south of the river are about two hundred feet in height, and are composed of sandstone of various tints and degrees of hardness. One layer, which thinned out at both ends, consisted of earthy matter, of a pale reddish colour, with some gypsum, and very like (I speak after comparison of the specimens brought home) Pampean mud: above this was a layer of compact marly rock with dendritic ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... the very base of the dais. The sparkling mists thinned; the great heads bent slightly over us; through the veils I caught a glimpse of huge columnar necks, enormous shoulders covered with draperies ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... she lay to windward, she might postpone the inevitable and fatal collision with a foe as strong as that she had only escaped by a rare piece of luck; but this would give the crippled pirate time to refit and unite to destroy her. Add to this the failing ammunition, and the thinned crew! ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... edifices—for the monuments reared by the hands of Fragoso were of every order of architecture—buckles, rings, clubs, tresses, crimpings, rolls, corkscrews, curls, everything found there a place. Nothing false; no towers, no chignons, no shams! These head were not enfeebled by cuttings nor thinned by fallings-off, but were forests in all their native virginity! Fragoso, however, was not above adding a few natural flowers, two or three long fish-bones, and some fine bone or copper ornaments, which were brought him by the dandies of the district. Assuredly, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... promises on which to rely, THAT WE ARE IN THE RIGHT, we shall not falter nor be dismayed, "though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea,"—though our ranks be thinned to the number of "three hundred men." Freemen! are you ready for the conflict? Come what may, will you sever the chain that binds you to a slaveholding government, and declare your independence? Up, then, with the banner of revolution! Not to shed blood—not ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... are a clean-limbed, well-conditioned race, generally speaking. They seemingly occupy permanent huts, but their tribe did not bear any proportion to the size or number of their habitations. It was evident their population had been thinned. The customs of these distant tribes, as far as we could judge, were similar to those of the mountain blacks, and they are essentially the same people, although their language differs. They lacerate their bodies, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... the early summer, are sown as soon as possible after they are gathered. Practical tests have shown that thick sowings of tree seeds give the best results. There is little danger of weeds smothering out the seedlings under such conditions. After the seed has germinated the beds may be thinned so that the seedlings will have more room ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... thinned a little and they walked through it easily, three abreast. But Uncle William had moved to the other side of the girl, as far away from the Frenchman as he could get. Now and then he cast a glance of disapproval at the tall, dipping figure as it bent to the girl or lifted itself ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... first that had happened since the 23d of September, and was much wanted. Fifteen acres of wheat were now in ear, and had a good appearance; and the Indian corn, of which we had seven acres, was in a thriving state, although much thinned by the grub-worm: one acre of barley was also in ear, and the garden vegetables were in great forwardness. The grub-worm had totally disappeared, but still our calamities were not at an end; for the parroquets (of which we had myriads) ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... They are cowardly and treacherous in the extreme. The "Gudang" tribe, claiming the land from Cape York to Fly Point, at the entrance of Albany Pass, is small in numbers, having, I fancy, been seriously thinned by their neighbours, the "Kororegas," from the Prince of Wales' Island, in Torres' Straits, who frequently come down upon them. Paida, Mr. M'Gillivray's 'kotaiga' (friend), was not long since killed by them. The "Goomkoding" tribe, who live ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... plunging into a black nowhere. The trees thinned. I seemed to be running across the open, the rain driving me forward like a wet sail, a roar of wind in my ears and the words of M. Radisson ringing their battle-cry—"Storm and cold—man and beast—powers of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Colonel's bounty secured for his old nurse, the kind old creature insisted on having Clive by her side. Again and again she would think he was actually her own boy, forgetting, in that sweet and pious hallucination, that the bronzed face, and thinned hair, and melancholy eyes of the veteran before her, were those of her nursling of old days. So for near half the space of man's allotted life he had been absent from her, and day and night wherever ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it seemed long in coming. Such a delay always aggravated the slow fire within him. He had nothing of Ladd's patience. He wanted action. The gray shadow below thinned out, and the patch of mesquite made a blot upon the pale ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Mr. Davies, who was commanding the fighting line, but probably wasn't done saying his prayers. There was a lively, rattling skirmish next morning between the rear-guard and the Indians, and at one time things looked as though the thinned battalion of their comrades of the —th might be cut off, and some of Devers's regiment thought the rearmost troops ought to be deployed in support of the fellows who were fighting off the warriors, who came charging after them over wave after wave ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... officers of the San Geronimo garrison began to request transfers, and the social set that had been formed in and near the castle was broken up. Gradually the troops thinned away, and although the works were kept in moderate repair and occasionally enlarged, the regular force was finally withdrawn, and even the solitary keepers who were left in charge died unaccountably. This was because the ghost of the tortured one pervaded its damp rooms and breathed ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... disaster and danger, had neither bent nor despaired beneath the merciless blows which "the dire African" dealt her in rapid succession at Trebia, at Thrasymene, and at Cannae. Her population was thinned by repeated slaughter in the field; poverty and actual scarcity wore down the survivors, through the fearful ravages which Hannibal's cavalry spread through their corn-fields, their pasture-lands, and ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... the arms of the wind, The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky, And see, where the budding hazels are thinned, The wild anemones lie In undulating shivers beneath ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... brilliant, and, from the company of the officers, very pleasant. Captain Wilson looked on at the commencement, and then returned on board. Jack behaved with his usual politeness, danced till two o'clock, and then, as the ball thinned, Asper proposed that they should retires. Having once more applied to the refreshment-room, they had procured their hats, and were about to depart, when one of the officers of the garrison asked Jack if he would like ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... bushes, breaking the sand beach to the northward, and forming one of the leading marks in, had been so thinned that it was very indistinct. Mr. LaTrobe, however, was going to remedy this evil by erecting ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... but to take the skin, properly thinned down and prepared, and try it over the model, altering the latter where it is too large or too small. Perhaps it may be necessary to pull it over—commencing at the head—several times before getting ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... burro obediently went into the seemingly impassable thicket, the other horses following. After they had traveled for ten or fifteen yards, the undergrowth thinned until they were going on pine-needle- covered ground as soft as moss. The silent forest with its sentinel pines, spreading a canopy overhead, seemed like another world from the bright glare of the one ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... and intricate civilization—from the canals that laced its surface, to great cities with mighty buildings still standing. But of life there was none. The atmosphere was too rare to support it; and the theory was that it had constantly thinned through thousands of years till the last Martian had gasped and died in air too attenuated to support life even in creatures that must have grown greater and greater chested in ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... at a time to bear on us. She had fired several shots without effect, but at last, to make amends, one came flying diagonally across our deck, taking off the head of one of our men, and knocking over a second, who survived but a few moments. A few more such fatal shots would sadly have thinned our numbers. The enemy had a good number of men on deck, but not so many as we expected. Some were sent aloft to try and repair the damage to the gaff, and this, as we had got within musket range, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... nothing to do with it," said Phillis. "Master wanted some roots to give to Mr. Kent and he asked me for 'em. I dug 'em up and they're all the better for being thinned out." ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... honoured with a friendly recognition in the quadrangle. At it was, he did not condescend to remember that such a man was on the college books. Happy ignorance, if only it could have lasted. But one unlucky morning a late supper party had decidedly thinned the attendance at the hall lecture; and Mr Hodgett, having been disappointed of an invitation to a very select dinner at the principal's, was in no very benignant humour, and "hauled up" the defaulters. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... goin' to take 'er into the woods, an' take care on 'er. We are goin' to keep a hotel—me and the little woman—an' if so be as any of ye is took sick by overloadin' with cookies 'arly in the day, or bein' thinned out with lemonade, ye can come into the woods, an' I'll send ye ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Catherine relapsed into the role which had been her first in life,—the young woman of fashion. As such they attracted no attention save a few admiring glances on the part of passers-by towards Catherine. As the people around them thinned out a little, their ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was sitting at the roots of a tree, the utensils of a simple supper at his side. The gentle horses tethered near were to be heard softly cropping the grass, and the sound of the creek came from a farther distance. Above, the poplar boughs, whose yellow foliage had been thinned by the advancing season, let through the rays of the brilliant stars. These were the sights and sounds which met the young man's senses as he came brushing the fallen ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... force of the fire-fountain, which was playing regularly at a height of 300 feet, with the cross fountains, like wheat-sheaves, at its lower part. These cross- fountains were the colour of a mixture of blood and fire, and the lower part of the perpendicular jets was the same; but as they rose and thinned, this colour passed into a vivid rose-red, and the spray and splashes were as rubies and flame mingled. For ever falling in fiery masses and fiery foam: accompanied by a thunder-music of its own: companioned only by the solemn stars: exhibiting no other ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... thinned in what might have been meant for a smile. "You shall, assuredly. But with whom, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... time the boat struck, we had considered as the most safe, and had endeavoured to attain. Here we resolved to await our uncertain fate. From this place we could see the encroachment of the devouring waves, every one of which reduced our thinned numbers, and swept with it parts of our crumbling boat. For several hours previously, the gale had been sensibly abating; and, for a moment, the pale moon broke through the dispersing clouds, as if to witness this scene of terror and destruction, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the enemy made his assault, the artillery fire was fearful in its effect on the ranks of both contestants, the enemy's heavy masses staggering under the torrent of shell and canister from our batteries, while our lines were thinned by his ricochetting projectiles, that rebounded again and again over the thinly covered limestone formation and sped on to the rear of Negley. But all his efforts to dislodge or destroy us were futile, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... burglar where the stolen property can be recovered. If persons who have been wronged in this way would refuse all proposals for a compromise, and would endeavor to secure the punishment of the offender, the criminal class would be wonderfully thinned out, and the Detectives would not, as now, be obliged to arrest the same person over and over again, only to see him ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... to feign intoxication, as he had so often done before: he called for another pint, for some time talked very loud, and at last laid his head on the table; after a time he lifted it up again, drank more, and then fell back on the bench. By degrees the company thinned, until there was no one left but the schoolmaster, the pedlar, and the stranger. The schoolmaster, as usual, offered to assist the pedlar in helping Rushbrook to his cottage; but Byres replied that he was busy, and that he need not wait for Rushbrook; the friend he had with him would ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... architecture of Italy excluded some of the chief principles of the French builders. It was much more liberal and more fond of light and air. Speaking of the exaggerated type of Gothic architecture, in which everything is heightened and thinned, Renan asks what would have happened to Giotto if he had been told to paint his frescoes in churches from which flat spaces had entirely disappeared. "Once we have exhausted the grand idea of infinity which ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... Every exertion is encouraging, because to present amusement it joins the promise of some future good. The intervals of leisure are filled by the society of real friends, whose affections are not thinned to cobweb, by being spread over a thousand objects. This is the picture, in the light it is presented to my mind; now let me have it in yours. If we do not concur this year, we shall the next; or if not then, in a year or two more. You see I am determined ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Gradually the folk thinned away; and at last only a few who had got in at half-price remained. To them the attendants hinted that they were going to shut shop, and one by one they shuffled out, the readier that Clare was now so tired that Pummy could not get up the merest tail ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the heat in the day-time, and we were compelled frequently to dismount to lead our horses over the rugged places we had to pass. Day after day the poor captives dropped through fatigue, till their numbers were much thinned; but still we pushed on. We passed through a number of Indian villages, the inhabitants of which looked out from their mat doors with sad eyes on their unhappy countrymen; and we now discovered that the object of the Spaniards ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... advanced almost to the hostile intrenchments; and there they stand face to face with their foes; and with ranks less thinned, thank Heaven, than I should think possible after withstanding so long the dreadful fire to which they have been exposed; though I can distinguish the forms of many poor ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... part of the time we could not see the trail at all. Indeed, Cootes's pony stepped in a hole and fell, pitching Cootes clean over his head, and sending his helmet down the mountain-side, where Cootes had to go and get it. Soon after this, though, the forest thinned perceptibly, the trail grew better, and we met Connor, who had turned back to see how we were getting on, and who informed us we had only one-half hour more before us. Going on, we were greeted by a shout of welcome from our first Ilongot, standing in the trail, subligate, or gee-stringed, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... The bushes thinned, and he saw that a vast plain was opening out before him. But he did not leave the cover of the edge of the thicket. Something moving below caught his eye, and he parted the tall shoots of a bush before him, and peeped through the huge trails of pink and ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... before other troops have joined them, I think he will beat them but what then? He has three hundred thousand men to encounter afterward. He must submit; but he may say with truth, 'Si Pergama dextra defendi potuissent'. The late action between the Prussians and Russians has only thinned the human species, without giving either party a victory; which is plain by each party's claiming it. Upon my word, our species will pay very dear for the quarrels and ambition of a few, and those by ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... no longer necessary to bear from the shores of England the excrescences of royalty. Time, the sword, or stratagem had greatly thinned their numbers; yet many recent events proved that loyalists were imported, and assassins hired, and let loose in the country by contraband ships; until, at length, the Protector was roused, and resolved to check the pirates and smugglers of our English strands, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... with pain. He worked away indefatigably but without effect until he lost patience and resorted to less scrupulous tactics—thrusting his fingers into eyes, or attacking noses, windpipes, and any vulnerable part he could get at. That thinned them out, and he was able to rise and fling a last little fellow across ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and thinning is done with a wooden paddle and the dampened hand, and then the jar is allowed to dry slightly. Before the drying has progressed far enough to render the sides rigid, a smooth stone is placed inside, and the sides are tapped gently with a paddle until properly thinned ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... suffering interests, of which the Times writes, do? There may be a great deal of grumbling, and a gradual move towards republicanism, or even communism; but this is an operose and empirical process, the parties engaged in it are full of misgivings, and their ranks at every step in advance are thinned by desertion. Not so with the Canadians. The remedy offered to them, such as it is, is perfectly definite and intelligible. They are invited to form a part of a community, which is neither suffering nor free- trading, which never ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Second corner turned. Cassock has dropped from the front, and Judex, an iron-gray, has the lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down flat,—five,—six,—how many? They lie still enough! they will not get up again in this race, be very sure! And the rest of them, what a "tailing off"! Anybody can see ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... group at X—— needed for its accomplishment a large force of devoted and trustworthy workers; and the arrests that had been made just before my arrival had considerably thinned their ranks. This circumstance, as I have said, changed the nature of my own relations with the revolutionary organisation. Hitherto my visits to the town had been short, only to spend my school holidays in fact. Very young, moreover, I had ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... an Old Soldier to my door, Asked a crust, and asked no more; The wars had thinned him very bare, Fighting and marching everywhere, With a Fol rol dol ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... glass showed her a face thinned in one night; the skin, tightened over each high and delicate ridge of bone, had the glaze and flush of grief; her hooded eyes stared at her, red-rimmed, dilated; eyes where desire dies miserably of its own pain. Her body, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... he blew, and she thinned to a thread. "One puff More's enough To blow her to snuff! One good puff more where the last was bred, And glimmer, glimmer, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... the keg of nails. It might be well to return to the boatshed, even at the risk of falling into the Inlet. But he had not proceeded very far before, suddenly, as he had hoped it would, the mist began to lift. Swiftly, before the puff of a warmer breeze, it eddied and thinned. Its soundless, impalpable pressure lessened. The wharf, the sea, the city began to steal back, sly, expressionless, pretending that they had been there all the time. Even Mr. Johnston could be clearly ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... secrets, which I in my turn am going to divulge. Would that I could address all those who cheered me on this path, including first and foremost the revered Master of the Landes [Leon Dufour]. But the ranks have thinned, many have been promoted to another world and their disciple lagging behind them can but record, in memory of those who are no more, the story of the insect ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... intervening growth of Willows and shrubbery. The sparseness of these woods may be in part attributed to the practice of tapping the trees for their turpentine, which has caused them for a century past to be gradually thinned by consequent decay. Their tall, gaunt forms and almost branchless trunks show that they obtained their principal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Master, alone. He had his fiddle to his chin, and the bow hoverin' above it. He looked at me for a long time along the thing; then, all at once, from one string I heard the child laughin' that pleasant and distant, though the bow seemed not to be touchin'. Soon it thinned till it was the shadow of a laugh, and I didn't know whin it stopped, he smilin' down at the fiddle bewhiles. Then he said without lookin' at me,—'It is the spirit of the White Valley and the Hills of the Mighty Men; of which all men shall know, for the North will come ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... relative to whom I have feebly acknowledged my obligation by dedicating to him this book. I could not at first see it as he saw it: 'Think about it, and you will,' he said. I did think, and by degrees—not very quickly—my prejudgments thinned, faded, and almost vanished. I trust I see it now as a whole, and in its true relations, internal and external—its relations to itself, to the play, and to the ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... that dense dark cloud: Mist-like it thinned and vanished into air: Straightway the plain and all the land were seen. Then far away about the Scaean Gate He saw the Trojans: seeming like his sire, He sped against them; they at his coming quailed. As shipmen tremble when a wild wave bears Down on their bark, wind-heaved ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... fired towards the part whence they were attacked, and instantly fell back in disorder. But it was equally vain to retreat or go forward, for it now appeared that we were completely hemmed in. On every side resounded the fatal peals of scattering fire, that thinned our ranks and extended our bravest comrades on the earth. Figure to yourself a shoal of fishes, enclosed within the net, that circle in vain the fatal labyrinth in which they are involved; or rather, conceive ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... she said. I waited before asking whose, and when I did, she answered, "That of three-quarters of the world. The ghost of a Dream walked to-day—when after the spirit broke, I saw it—and myself and my Earl vanished in shadow. We and our love thinned away before ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... then, was but his mistress. It was an outrage upon decency, and as such was felt and resented. From Maroney's personal popularity and agreeable manners, there were many who believed in his innocence, still more who did not desire his conviction. His marriage thinned the ranks of the latter and entirely wiped out almost every trace of the former. The man who would live with and introduce a prostitute as his wife, was regarded as never too good to be guilty of robbery or ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... headless trunks of the brave defenders of Palmyra. I see that this is so, whenever I pass by a group of soldiers, or through the camp. Their conversation seems to turn upon nothing else than the vengeance due to them upon those who have thinned their ranks of one half their numbers, and who, themselves shielded by their walls, looked on and beheld in security the slaughter which they made. They cry out for the blood of every Palmyrene brought across the desert. My hope for Gracchus is small; ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... five front windows the house gave back darkness to the dark. One, on the ground floor, showed a golden oblong, skirted with watery gray where the lamp-light thinned the solid ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... far away in the breeze, and finds no echo; the giant monarchs of the forest line the road on either side, like a guard of Titans, their nodding heads inquiring, as it were curiously, why their ranks were thinned, and what strange meteor is that which, with clatter and roar, rushes past, disturbing their peaceful solitude. Patience my noble friends; patience, I say. A few short years more, and many of you, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... once more on board our former ships. But our return was far from triumphant. We, who only seven weeks ago had set out in the surest confidence of glory, and I may add of emolument, were brought back dispirited and dejected. Our ranks were wofully thinned, our chiefs slain, our clothing tattered and filthy, and even our discipline in some degree injured. A gloomy silence reigned throughout the armament, except when it was broken by the voice of lamentation over fallen friends; and the interior of each ship presented a scene well calculated ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... sort of trees they were from which he got his inspiration: you must look, not at an average English wood, perpetually thinned out as the trees arrive at middle age. Still less must you look at the pines, oaks, beeches, of an English park, where each tree has had space to develop itself freely into a more or less rounded form. You must not even look at ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... have fallen as leaves by the storms in their season thinned, Since northward the war-ships of Spain came sheer up the way of the south-west wind: Where the citadel cliffs of England are flanked with bastions of serpentine, Far off to the windward loomed their hulls, an hundred and twenty-nine, All filled full of the war, full-fraught ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of any discussion such as this should be to narrow down, by a gradual elimination, the various factors to be considered, in order that the decisive ones, remaining, may become conspicuously visible. The trees being thus thinned out, the features of the strategic landscape can appear. The primary processes in the present case have been carried out before seeking the attention of the reader, to whom the first approximations have been presented under three heads. First, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Scotland Yard, had yet his way to make in the world. He was not exactly young, for time had already thinned the luxuriant growth of his hair, nor was he without encumbrance, for he had fifteen children. Yet he was an active and intelligent officer, and had once detected something—he forgot what. But that ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Karl was Karl. "Time had not thinned his flowing locks;" he was as handsome, as impulsive, and as true as ever; had added two babies to his responsibilities, who, with his beloved Frau Gemahlin, had likewise been bidden to this festivity, but had declined to quit the ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... and the moon began to shine, feebly indeed, for the sky was not clear washed of clouds, which still trailed along in the tracks of the tempest, sucked after it by its mighty draught. Still it was lighter and the rain thinned gradually till at last it stopped. The storm had rolled in majesty down the ways of night, and there was no sound round them save ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Board-room was opened, and the candidates walked in and seated themselves. Fear of Sir Gregory, and other causes, had thinned the number. Poor Jones, who by right of seniority should have had the prize, declined to put himself in competition with his juniors, and in lieu thereof sent up to the Lords of the Treasury an awful memorial spread ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... plumes of night are thinned Surely with winnowing of the glimmering wind Whose feet are fledged with morning; and the breath Begins in heaven that sings the dark to death. And all the night wherein men groaned and sinned Sickens at heart to ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and eddied so splendidly in his brain thinned out, his sense of God's immediacy faded and passed, and he was left aware of the cathedral pulpit in which he stood so strangely posed, and of the astonished congregation below him. His arms sank to his side. His eyes fell upon the book in front of him and he felt ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... the same time the wilful disposition which is noticeable in statesmen and men of ambition made his mouth less sensitive to the conjugal bit. Monsieur de l'Estorade talked so long and so well that after a time the salons thinned, leaving a group of the intimates of the house around his wife and their hostess. At this moment the minister himself slipped an arm through his, and, leading him up to the group surrounding their two wives, Rastignac ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... fighting with Rosas. The general, however, like Lord Chesterfield, thinking that his friends may in a future day become his enemies, always places them in the front ranks, so that their numbers may be thinned. Since leaving South America we have heard that this war of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... frames till well into April. The asters are usually up first, racing the weeds. The little squares make, in a week or so, a green checker-board, each promising its quota of color to the garden, and very soon the early cosmos, thinned to the strongest plants, has shot up like a miniature forest, towering over the lowlier seedlings, sometimes bumping its head against the glass before it can be transplanted to the open ground in May. But most prolific, most promising, and most bothersome, are the squares labeled "antirrhinum," coral ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... The thinned ranks will be proudest When the boys come home, And their cheer will ring the loudest When the boys come home. The full ranks will be shattered, And the bright arms will be battered, And the battle-standards tattered, When ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... cattle raising was bought and thither we moved. With a good beginning in horses and cattle and an experience in farming, better than all else, the future held high hopes and bright promises, but, alas for human expectations, the Civil War come. Already one call had thinned the county of the younger and unmarried men. The second call ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... wave of strangeness and grief had broken over her, and she had come up again into the sparkling air. "Great dangers have threatened me, but I have escaped them all with great luck; it is poor-spirited of me to despair. And it must be that witches had thinned my blood with water that I should have thought of running away. To do that would be to lose my revenge forever. I should become a creature without honor, like the girl with the necklace. To stay is no less than my duty. If I think all the time of Fridtjof, it is certain that ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... to complain. Although Fray Salvi made little use of violence, yet, as an old wiseacre of the town said, what he lacked in quantity he made up in quality. But this should not be counted against him, for the fasts and abstinences thinned his blood and unstrung his nerves and, as the people said, the wind got into his head. Thus it came about that it was not possible to learn from the condition of the sacristans' backs whether the curate was fasting ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... such a race as is thus described, and to them it might not seem a too appalling enterprise, when their planet had become decrepit, with its atmosphere thinned out and its supply of water depleted, to grapple with the destroying hand of nature and to prolong the career of their world by feats of chemistry and engineering as yet beyond the compass of ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... The trees thinned, and the broad lawns of Beechmark came in sight. Ah!—there was Geoffrey, walking up and down with Helena. Suppose that really came off? What a comfortable way out! He and Cynthia must back it ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had thinned a little when Wrayford scrambled down the steep path to the shore. Though the air was heavy the threat of a storm seemed to have vanished, and now and then the moon's edge showed above a ...
— The Choice - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... the war the congregation of the "King's Chapel," the oldest Episcopal church in New England, had been thinned and had lost its rector in the general migration of leading Tory families to Nova Scotia. At the restoration of peace it was served in the capacity of lay reader by Mr. James Freeman, a young graduate of Harvard, who came soon to be esteemed very ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... was ordered our ammunition was nearly exhausted and the ranks fearfully thinned. The Rebels had made a furious attack, in which they were repulsed. General Sweeney insisted that it was their last effort, and if we remained on the ground we would not be molested again. Major Sturgis, upon whom the command devolved after General Lyon's death, reasoned ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... for engrossing, architectural and engineering purposes, and has succeeded in producing an excellent liquid "Indian" ink, which will not lose its consistency if kept from the air. It can also be used as a writing ink, if thinned down with water. He does not make a tanno-gallate of ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... until the first two meals have put the matter beyond a doubt; there is the usual uncertainty about the weather, until the ship is fairly off Fire Island. The tables are crowded at first, and then suddenly thinned. Pale-faced people spring from their seats and precipitate themselves towards the door, and each old sailor breathes more freely as his sea-sick neighbour rushes from his side, leaving him plenty of elbow room and an unlimited command over ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... plain. Varinius had a difficult position. His militia, compelled to bivouac opposite the enemy, were severely weakened by the damp autumn weather and the diseases which it engendered; and, worse than the epidemics, cowardice and insubordination thinned the ranks. At the very outset one of his divisions broke up entirely, so that the fugitives did not fall back on the main corps, but went straight home. Thereupon, when the order was given to advance against the enemy's entrenchments and attack ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of the siege. His men were ill-clothed, depending for rations largely upon the goodwill of the habitants, who anxiously weighed the chances of British prowess. Moreover, desertion and sickness thinned his ranks; and at last, having resolved upon a coup de main, he formed his plans and awaited a ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... As the great fans of the screws churned the harbour water into foam that the waves thinned and flattened out again till the green lane broadened between our track and the pier head where Norah stood, and the little, slender, dark blue figure became a dot on the pier and lost itself in the crowd of dots and disappeared, then, for ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... never again offered for sale. He therefore urged those who were holding back to make their bids now. At this the contest livened until the sum of two million three hundred thousand francs had been offered, and now I knew the necklace would be sold. Nearing the three million mark the competition thinned down to a few dealers from Hamburg and the Marquis of Warlingham, from England, when a voice that had not yet been heard in the auction room was lifted in a tone ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... niece, the child of his elder brother, who had died three years ago. The poorly furnished room and her own attire proved that Mrs. Hilliard had but narrow resources in her widowhood. Nor did she appear a woman of much courage; tears had thinned her cheeks, and her delicate hands had suffered noticeably ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... will go up on the mountain alone; and I will come hither from it again. It is there I saw the camp of the Gael, the poor troop thinned, not ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... haze as she lurched across the surf-swept shoals. She floated high and light, her muddy side rising like a wall as she steadied between the rolls that dipped her channels in the foam. Outside, the swell was regular and the roll long and rhythmical; the haze thinned, the air got sweet and cool, and the hearts of the crew got lighter as she steamed out to open sea. For all that, men lowered their voices and trod quietly when they passed the poop cabin where ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... or any dry color insoluble in water, lithographic ink, much thinned with turpentine oil, be applied on the print in a light coating which permits one to see the design under it, and if, then, the print be soaked in water and afterwards developed as just directed, an image in greasy ink is obtained. And, furthermore, by replacing the printing by ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... ring like bells of glass Thinned by the wind, and lightly blown; Sleep cannot fall on peaceful grass So softly as it ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... two or three of the juicy fruits, slice and mix. Dress with a little sugar, or salt and olive oil, or simply olive oil, or no dressing. Some like a dressing of sour cream or of cottage cheese rather well thinned out. Raisins and other sweet fruits may also be used. Ripe banana may be one ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... interests. A few, who were mischievously inclined, marched off to the College of Surgeons in a pretentious file; but even before they reached their destination the feeble inspiration had died out in many, and their numbers were sadly thinned. Some followed strange gods in the direction of Drummond Street, and others slunk back to meek good-boyism at the feet of the Professors. The same is visible in better things. As you send a man to an English University that ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time, it is said by the old settlers that hog cholera thinned out the nobility a good deal, whether directly or ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... were departing hastily for the range or the remoter forest. Weston, however, could not see them, and it was, indeed, a few seconds before he saw anything except a confused glimmering behind a dusky pall of vapor. Then, as the smoke thinned, a bewildering glare shot up, and ranks of trees were silhouetted against a sea of fire that flung itself upon the rearmost of them and ran aloft from spray to spray, while the snapping of the smaller branches ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... made of the little Fife town their holiday resort. Later an Edinburgh school and long visits to Edinburgh relatives made the Scotch capital as familiar to me as Fife; and then the Stevenson family in their home at Heriot Row were added to the little circle of friends, now, alas! so thinned by grievous blanks. Old and young have passed into 'The Silent Land,' and life is infinitely the poorer for those severed friendships—those ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... point of a knife, and then applying the mouth of a bamboo cup previously heated over the fire. The cup is a piece of bamboo some five or six inches in length and an inch or rather more in diameter. Its edge is thinned and smoothed. Several of these may be simultaneously applied in a case of extensive bruising. Since this operation, like tatuing, involves the shedding of blood, some small offering, such as a few beads, must be made to the patient by ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... us before we could accomplish this, but fortunately they were mistaken, and our persistent fire soon turned them. We did not lose a single inch of ground the whole day, though after these successive charges our numbers were fearfully thinned; and even during the short interval between each charge the enemy's cannon had been doing some mischief among our ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... tribe were greatly thinned by small-pox, and to this loathsome disease their great chieftain fell a victim. His dying request was bold and fanciful. Near the source of the Missouri is a high solitary rock, round which the river winds in a nearly circular direction, and which commands a view of the adjacent country ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... mountain of populace thinned so suddenly that D'Artagnan could not repress a burst of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... way is not half so much a lady as her Irish servant, whose pretty "saving your presence," when she has to say something which offends her natural sense of good manners, has a hint in it of the breeding of courts, and the blood of old Milesian kings, which very likely runs in her veins,—thinned by two hundred years of potato, which, being an underground fruit, tends to drag down the generations that are made of it to the earth from which it came, and, filling their veins with starch, turn them into a kind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... of reduced air-pressure, due to the higher temperatures above the surface of the boiling mud, though doubts are raised by the unusual intensity of the reaction. The feeling that the physical explanation is inadequate is strengthened when the vapours have thinned out and one is surprised to see that every crack and cranny in the Solfatara, right up to the top of the trough, shows signs of increased activity. Certainly, this cannot be accounted for by a cause-and-effect nexus of the kind found in the realm of mechanical ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... to find the country of gold, Coronado's gallant little army, frequently thinned by death and desertion, for three years beat up and down the southwestern wilderness: now thirsting in the deserts, now penned up in gloomy canons, now crawling over pathless mountains, suffering the horrors of starvation and of despair, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... in the mist above; it was a mere suggestion, a gray patch, but yet a towering wall, implacably there, its presence disclosed by a shadow where the mist had thinned. Fog had broken over the cliff and was streaming down with the wind. Obscurity was imminent; but light yet came from the west, escaping low and clean. And there was a weltering expanse of sea beyond the immediate turmoil; ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... labour was required to widen and heighten the path: where bamboos prevail they have starved out the woody trees. The reason why the trees are not large is because all the spaces we passed over were formerly garden ground before the Makonde had been thinned by the slave-trade. As soon as a garden is deserted, a thick crop of trees of the same sorts as those formerly cut down springs up, and here the process of woody trees starving out their fellows, and occupying the land without ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Federals, that although Jackson had pierced their center, their masses drove back his flanks and threatened to surround him. With voice and example he cheered on his men to hold their ground, and the officers closed up their ranks as they were thinned by the enemy's fire, and for an hour the struggle continued without marked advantage on ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... their ways, and spake but little each to each till they came to where the trees of the wood thinned speedily, and gave out at last at the foot of a low stony slope but little grassed; and when they had ridden up to the brow and could see below, Christopher stretched out his hand, and said: "Lo thou the Long Pools, fellow ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... had again brought him face to face with his buried past. He felt his old dream revive, and occasionally turned to look back upon the dark outlines of Black Spur, under whose shadow it had returned so often, and wondered if he had left it there forever, and it were now slowly exhaling with the thinned and dying smoke of ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... one fine day the weather was pretty consistently dull. When the low sky thinned a trifle, the pale white spot of a sun did no more than throw a bluish lustre on the water, giving it the dark brightness of newly cut lead. Through one after another of those gray days Alexander drowsed and ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... valley of Jezreel, where it begins to dip steeply towards the Jordan. Gideon and his men are on the south side of the valley, above the fountain of Harod, or 'Trembling,' apparently so called from the confessed terror which thinned his army. The word 'is afraid,' in verse 3, comes from the same root. On the other side of the glen, not far from the site of the Philistine camp on the day of Saul's last defeat, lay the far- stretching camp ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the open plain, rolling in vast undulations to the naked spurs of the Saliman range, where the sun smote through the canvas as if it had been so much brown paper and the stricken regiment strove, by constantly shifting ground, to shake off the pursuing horror that steadily thinned its ranks. Here Colonel Stanham Buckley waked each morning with the cold clutch of fear at his heart; fortified himself with incessant 'nips' throughout the day; and left the bulk of the work to a cheery little Adjutant, untroubled by the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver |
