"Well-nigh" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... John Carmichael 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 that all ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... July, August and September, the heat at times is well-nigh intolerable both by day and night. You arise in the morning played out after a comfortless night under a punkah, which, hung over your bed in the limited space of a mosquito house, is pulled with a rope passing through the wall by a coolie stationed on the verandah outside. With the thermometer ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... merely human birth, E'en here, where shapes immortal throng'd, intrude? Yet ah! thou poorest of the sons of earth, For once, I e'en to thee feel gratitude. Despair the power of sense did well-nigh blast, And thou didst save me ere I sank dismay'd, So giant-like the vision seem'd, so vast, I felt myself shrink ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... a choir of colored singers, young men and women, went forth from Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., and introduced a peculiar variety of songs and music, which they and their successors have carried with eclat well-nigh round the world. They not only awoke the enthusiasm of vast audiences in the large cities of America and Europe, but they were invited to sing before the mightiest monarchs and the most distinguished people on the other side of the water. These singers were endowed richly with the sweet and ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... could have been caught on a moving-picture film, Charlie Chaplin would have had an arthropod rival. It hooked on stems and pulled its bearer off his feet, it careened and ensnared the leaves of other ants, at one place mixing up with half a dozen. A big thistledown became tangled in it, and well-nigh blew away with leaf and all; hardly a foot of his path was smooth-going. But he persisted, and I watched him reach the nest, after two hours of tugging and falling and interference ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... a band of six—two ministers, their wives, and two helpers. They rented the empty store building owned by Mayor Hempstead and began. The scenes enacted at the meeting were well-nigh indescribable. Robert Davis attended one night, two weeks after the meeting had begun, and he said to Mary when ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... sound normal and model schools. What has given to the teaching of geometry its comparatively high educating value through centuries, and in the hands of teachers of every bent, caliber, and culture? What but the well-nigh inevitable, because highly perfected and crystalline method of one book—Euclid's Elements? Doubtless we want 'live' men and women, and those trained to their work, to teach: quite as imperatively we then want the right kind of text-books, in the pupils' hands, with which ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... loyal an adherence to the authorised version of the plays as is practicable on the part of theatrical managers; and the evil traditions of the stage which sanctioned the perversions of the eighteenth century are happily well-nigh extinct. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... overstrained nerves the ceaseless clicking of the instrument seemed to say, "Watch the box—watch the box—watch the box." As a particular strain of melody will at times repeat itself in the mind, and obstinately keep time to every movement, till one is well-nigh distracted, so this refrain began to enchain every sense: "Watch the box—watch the box—watch the box." Till now my depressed spirits were due only to the solitude and the storm. No suspicion of evil or ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... o'clock two great touring cars, long, lean racers, ran up to the curb in front of the telegraph office and stopped. The street was now well-nigh deserted, but what few people were still astir gathered ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the Pueblos seem to represent ancient settlers who went there from the south. There was the border line between the Mexican race and the wild Indians, and the distinction between the Pueblos and the savage tribes is every way so uniform and so great that it is well-nigh impossible to believe they all belong to the same race. In fact, no people really like our wild Indians of North America have ever been found in Mexico, ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... did intend that such animals should walk upon two legs if they saw fit to do so. Michael stood up to his middle in a snow-drift; Ruth sat as calmly upon a snow bank as though she preferred it to any other seat she had ever selected, albeit she was well-nigh smothered by the back and cushions of her novel resting-place; Toinette was dumped heels-over-head into the body of the sleigh, where she landed fairly and squarely in Miss Howard's lap; Edith hung on to the seat railing ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Varney, and with hasty and perturbed steps followed Foster, who conducted him through private passages, many of which were well-nigh ruinous, to the opposite side of the quadrangle, where, in a subterranean apartment, now occupied by the chemist Alasco, one of the Abbots of Abingdon, who had a turn for the occult sciences, had, much to the scandal of his convent, established a laboratory, in which, like other fools of the period, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... average, on the four dairies, of 630 gallons per annum for each cow. A dairy of "pure Kerrys" gave an average of 488 gallons per cow, and another of the larger Irish breed gave an average of 583 gallons per head per annum. In the great London dairies, now well-nigh extinguished by the ravages of the cattle disease, these returns are greatly exceeded. The cows kept are large framed Short-horns and Yorkshire crosses, which, by good feeding, bring the returns to nearly 1,000 gallons per annum for ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... it is said, can read the works of John Ruskin without learning that his sources of pleasure are well-nigh infinite. There is not a flower, nor a cloud, nor a tree, nor a mountain, nor a star; not a bird that fans the air, nor a creature that walks the earth; not a glimpse of sea or sky or meadow-greenery; not a work of worthy art in the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... speculation per se with the danger of inadequate verification; and therefore the old ideal of natural history as concerned merely with collecting species, classifying affinities, and, in general, tabulating facts, has been well-nigh universally superseded. But this great gain has been attended by some measure of loss. For while not a few naturalists have since erred on the side of insufficiently distinguishing between fully verified principles of evolution ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... would, be ready and willing to go forth and fight men with men's weapons for the freedom to live and die unmolested in their own native land; but against the blandly-smiling, white-helmeted, sun-spectacled, perspiring horde of Cook's "cheap trippers," what can they do save remain inert and well-nigh speechless? For nothing like the cheap tripper was ever seen in the world till our present enlightened and glorious day of progress; he is a new-grafted type of nomad, like and yet unlike a man. The ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... wages. So when my household duties were 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 who had ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... well-nigh unnecessary to state that the first four suggestions emanated from my pen: the remaining five being fruitage of the inventive fancies ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... 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 occasional moans, ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... satisfaction did he eye his bed, which reached almost to the ceiling. Clearly Fetinia was a past mistress in the art of beating up such a couch, and, as the result, he had no sooner mounted it with the aid of a chair than it sank well-nigh to the floor, and the feathers, squeezed out of their proper confines, flew hither and thither into every corner of the apartment. Nevertheless he extinguished the candle, covered himself over with the chintz quilt, snuggled down beneath it, and instantly fell asleep. Next day it was late ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... that it must be so; for while, on the one hand, his army was well-nigh exhausted, and was reduced to a state of such privation and distress as to make it nearly helpless, Saladin was established in Jerusalem almost impregnably. While the divisions of Richard's army had been ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... And then, with well-nigh miraculous suddenness, the struggle was over and the insect had darted free. He saw her flash away, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... had even allowed him to kiss her. It was unspeakable bliss, almost distressing in its transcendent quality. He "had such joy of kissing her," he "had small care to sleep or feed. For the joy to kiss between her brows time upon time" he "was well-nigh dead." How could he be deceived by such unequivocal demonstrations of real passion? In any case it was too wonderful to be wrong, and if wrong—what then? The Devil was worth a ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Thackerayan extraction, Miss ALEXES LEIGHTON is very good, for the character, as drawn by the author, is obtrusive, and is so meant to be. The Mrs. Egerton Bompas of Miss FANNY BROUGH is the woman to the life, and, in my humble judgment, Miss BROUGH's impersonation is well-nigh faultless. Whether, if the part of Egerton Bompas were played as high comedy, this would still improve Miss BROUGH's impersonation of Mrs. Bompas or not, it is difficult to decide; but I am inclined to think this would be the result. What ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... that interested us most were the solitaires, and especially the dippers or water-ousels. We were fortunate enough to hear the solitaires sing not only when perched on trees, but on the wing, soaring over a great canon. The dippers are to my mind well-nigh the most attractive of all our birds. They stay through the winter in the Yellowstone because the waters are in many places open. We heard them singing cheerfully, their ringing melody having a certain suggestion of the winter wren's. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... purpling gear thy couch in company strewing. Yet for what cause should I 'plain in vain to the winds that unknow me, (I so beside me with grief!) which ne'er of senses endued 165 Hear not the words sent forth nor aught avail they to answer? Now be his course well-nigh engaged in midway of ocean, Nor any mortal shape appears in barrens of seawrack. Thus at the latest hour with insults over-sufficient E'en to my plaints fere Fate begrudges ears that would hear me. 170 Jupiter! Lord of All-might, Oh would in days that are bygone Ne'er had Cecropian poops toucht ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... be planning to engraft the Tuskegee Idea in that section—and this, too, in spite of Hampton. In my effort to carry out the plans sanctioned by Dr. Washington, I soon realized I was facing opposition well-nigh insurmountable. This was due to their misunderstanding of Dr. Washington, and of what Tuskegee really stands for. As far as possible, I gathered around me men and women who, like myself, were thoroughly imbued with ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... Forest of Adversity," said the man. "I would advise you to get through them as soon as possible, for the first you will find very wearisome, and the second exceedingly unpleasant, although people do say that there is a great deal of very good fruit in the forest; only one gets well-nigh torn to pieces with the thorns before ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... two races, and partly because their blood is different and partly because the one race has lived in the open and fertile Lowlands, and the other in the wild and shadowy Highlands, the Celt of the North and the Scot of the south are well-nigh as distant from each other as the east from the west. But among the Celts there were two kinds in that time, and even unto this day the distinction can be found by those who look for it. There was the eager and fiery Celt who was guided ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... bit of a freak, you fool, which had well-nigh cost me two legs and a neck. As I was frolicking along the steep sandbanks of the river, plump, in a moment, the whole concern slid from under me, and I after it, some ten fathoms deep;—there I lay, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... demands for money increased and in 1819 followed him thither. Almost all the guests of the house and especially Mme. Vauquer herself—whose ambitious designs upon him had come to naught—united in persecuting Goriot, now well-nigh poverty-stricken. He found an agreeable respite when he acted as a go-between for the illicit love affair of Mme. de Nucingen and Rastignac, his fellow-lodger. The financial distress of Mme. de Restaud, Trailles' victim, gave Goriot the finishing ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... deserters. Later accounts of our American soldiers who were ambushed and captured, together with statements that appeared in Bolshevik newspapers placed the losses very high. The old Russian general massed up in all over seven thousand men in this spectacular and well-nigh successful thrust. And his losses from killed in action, wounded, missing and frost-bitten were admitted by the Bolshevik reports ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... remedy. As to the dictum that "the two races are not equal and will not blend," it is open to the fatal objection that, having himself proved, with sympathizing pathos, how the West Indies are now well-nigh denuded of their Anglo-Saxon inhabitants, Mr. Froude would have us also understand that the miserable remnant who still complainingly inhabit those islands must, by doing violence to the understanding, be taken as the whole of the world-pervading Anglo-Saxon family. The ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... Second (and well-nigh first): Courage—the godlike quality that dreads not; the unanalyzable thing in man that makes him execute his conception—no matter how insane or absurd it may appear to others—if it appears rational to him, and then stride ahead ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... fail to assert my innocence was to incriminate both myself and others. But I looked with longing glances upon all printed matter and, as my curiosity was continually piqued, this enforced abstinence grew to be well-nigh intolerable. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... should a woman compass, she one alone and no more, When all we shielded Volsungs did nought in Siggeir's land? O yea, I am living indeed, and this labour of mine hand Is to bury the bones of the Volsungs; and lo, it is well-nigh done. So draw near, Volsung's daughter, and pile we many a stone Where lie the grey wolf's gleanings of what ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... fully the changing way of his life. Perhaps it was the curiously strong line she had from the first taken with regard to his actions that made him careful with her. Perhaps it was the incident of the vision of the flame—but no; remembrance of that had been well-nigh lulled to sleep by the lullabies of Valentine, by his disregard of it, his certainty that it was an hallucination, a mirage. Whatever the cause might be, Julian felt somewhat like a naughty boy in the angry presence of Cuckoo. As he looked at her the greenish twilight painted ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... well-nigh reached her meridian and sent forth her pale, cool light, bathing the city in its glory, making the great hills look so strange and lonely, as star after star struggled to show their quivering rays; but the light of the Queen of Heaven, the ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... son,' returned Sir Patrick, 'who gat the bride with a kingdom for her tocher that these folks have well-nigh lost among them.' ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... saw Magdalen and Fay driving together to Lostford, to consult the Bishop as to what steps it would be advisable to take in the matter of Michael's release. Magdalen felt it would be well-nigh impossible to go direct to Wentworth, even if he had been at Barford. But he had been summoned to London the day before on urgent business. And with Fay even a day's delay might mean a change of mind. It was ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... drenched, well-nigh frozen, even these hardy men were on the point of giving way before the fury of the hurricane, when suddenly from out the sheets of driving rain loomed a vessel, a foreigner. If she had been a phantom ship, as at first they thought she must be, she ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... armistice was signed one of the most eminent of living British statesmen gave it as his opinion that the war had lasted two years too long, and that the task of salvaging an enduring peace from the wreck had become well-nigh insuperable. It will always be one of the fascinating riddles of history to guess what the result would have been if Mr. Wilson's final proposals for mediation had been accepted. The United States would ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... of cases where bombs have been dropped on or near hospitals, ambulances and so on, and possibly you think that this was intentional on the part of the boche. If so you flatter him. This bomb dropping is, at best, very uncertain business and it would be well-nigh impossible for the most expert flyer to aim at and hit any single building. The fact is that, in nearly every town and city behind the lines, hospitals, ammunition stores and billets are located in close proximity to one another, with probably a railway ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... husband's part, Ototachibana could not find it in her heart to leave him. But perhaps it would have been better for her if she had done so, for on the way to Idzu, when they came to Owari, her heart was well-nigh broken. ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... years ago, my little kid got out of the yard and unbeknown to his mother wandered down by the river. We hunted high and low for him and were well-nigh crazy, for he's all the child we have, you know. It seems Mr. Laurie was riding along the shore in his automobile and he spied the baby creeping out on the thin ice. He stopped his car and called to ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... kingdoms or the ownership of crowns definitely settled. Private war was both incessant and universal; the Truce of God had not yet been proclaimed.[309] As for the common people, their hardships were well-nigh incredible. Amid all this anarchy and misery, at the close of the thousandth year from the birth of Christ, the belief was quite common throughout Europe that the Day of Judgment was at hand for a world grown old in wickedness and ripe ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Madagascar, in the centre of the island, on a well-nigh inaccessible rocky height ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... or anger were strongest within me I know not, but both strove mightily. For first of all it is a strange experience for any man to see his own tombstone, and in spite of myself I could not help shivering. But strong as was this feeling, anger well-nigh overcame it. It seemed to me that both my mother and brother were so eager for me to be dead, that they were glad of any excuse for making me appear so, and I determined that I would understand ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... know it is because you love me, and I wish to die as easily as may be and to join my husband. Only if the child could have lived, as I think, all three of us would have dwelt together eternally. Nay, not all three, all four, for you are well-nigh as dear to me, Nou, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... know they that nothing is more in the people's favour, or better liketh the common sort, than these names. But how if the things, which these men are so desirous to have seem new, be found of greatest antiquity? Contrariwise, how if all the things well-nigh which they so greatly set out with the name of antiquity, having been well and thoroughly examined, be at length found to be but new, and devised of very late? Soothly to say, no man that hath a true and right consideration ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... certain passages in his Memoir he seems to have adopted. We have little doubt that his pupils could tell us that Liebig did not even employ that instrument without which any exact study of fermentation is not merely difficult but well-nigh impossible. We ourselves, for the reasons, mentioned, did not obtain a simple alcoholic fermentation any more than Liebig did. In that particular experiment, the details of which we gave in our Memoir of 1860, we obtained lactic and alcoholic fermentation together; an appreciable quantity ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... as it applied to the actual enrolment and mobilisation of the commandos, the military system of the Boer Republics appeared well-nigh perfect. Yet it had radical and grievous defects, and these, being in its most vital parts, robbed it of half its efficiency. The election of military officers by the votes of the men they were destined to command would be a hazardous expedient in the most Utopian of communities; it was ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... delegated power and resuming its exercise." Before we hasten to criticize sweepingly under the term "mob law" such work as this of the Vigilantes, it will be well for us to weigh that utterance, and to apply it to conditions of our own times; to-day is well-nigh as dangerous to American liberties as were the wilder days ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... was (or had schooled himself to be) a temperate man, the citizens had not quite forgotten their love of good cheer; and the Protector himself was not averse from the keeping up some state and splendour, Whitehall being now well-nigh as splendid as in the late King's time, and his Highness sitting with his Make-Believe Lords around him (Lisle, Whitelocke, and the rest), and eating his meat to tuckets upon Trumpets, and being otherwise puffed ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... superiority everywhere and in everything to the huge awkward Titan-cub, who, though immeasurably beyond Bracebridge in intellect and heart, was still in a state of convulsive dyspepsia, 'swallowing formulae,' and daily well-nigh choked; diseased throughout with that morbid self- consciousness and lust of praise, for which God prepares, with His elect, a bitter cure. Alas! poor Lancelot! an unlicked bear, 'with all his sorrows ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... little abated by the issue of the affair, or the justice I had done on one of his men. So we looked well to bolts, and bars, and windows, although the castle is well-nigh impregnable, the smooth rock falling twenty feet at least on every side from the base of the walls. The gatehouse, Pavannes had shown us, might be blown up with gunpowder indeed, but we prepared to close the iron grating which barred the way half-way up the ramp. This done, even ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... missionary visits to New York at the invitation of Nicolas Eyres, a business man who had adopted Baptist views, and in 1714 baptized Eyres and several others, and assisted them in organizing a church. The church was well-nigh wrecked (1730) by debt incurred in the erection of a meeting-house. A number of Baptists settled on Block Island about 1663. Some time before 1724 a Baptist church (probably Arminian) was formed at ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... when I would have bartered my eternal heritage for a good-sized mess of earthly pottage, provided only it was well spiced and garnished; but to-day I have no inclination to be swindled like Esau. Idleness has well-nigh ruined me, so I shall take industry by the horns, and laying thereon all my sins of indolence, drive it before me ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... them decreases, and it follows that, having a shorter column of air to support, those portions are less dense than those lower down. So rare does the atmosphere become, when great altitudes are reached, that at a height of seven miles breathing is well-nigh impossible, and at far lower altitudes than this airmen have to be supported by ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... over 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 ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... Margaret Fuller's transcendental club, and was an active member of the Radical or Chestnut Street Club, thirty years later; but her chief distinction was the introduction of Froebel's Kindergarten teaching, by which she well-nigh revolutionized primary instruction in America. She was a most self-forgetful person, and her scholars became devotedly attached ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... romance and glamour. Whenever we call it up before our mind's eye it is surrounded for us with all those qualities which go toward making a great picture. There is the awful feud 'twixt England, the modern spirit making toward progress and civilization, and Spain, the well-nigh worn-out retrogressive force that would dam the river of human thought. There is the spectacle of the Armada, baffled and beaten, and of the English war-ships under men like Drake and Frobisher, dropping like avenging angels upon some Spanish port and working havoc ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... progress toward settlement; and even the murderers came to our fathers for protection, so that through our agency, peace might be restored and established. This affair was one of the greatest importance, for the island [of Leyte] was well-nigh in a state of insurrection, and overrun by bandits. Our Lord was pleased that by means of the gentleness and love with which we approached them, this condition of affairs should pass away like smoke, and the bandits be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... variation, for the use of musicians, of Shakespeare's "write sonnets on his mistress's eyebrow"—and, indeed, he knew she could be no fit mistress for him—this starveling drudge, with passive passions, meek, accepting, with well-nigh every spark of spontaneity choked out of her. The women of his dreams were quite other—beautiful, voluptuous, full of the joy of life, tremulous with poetry and lofty thought, with dark, amorous orbs that flashed responsive to his magic melodies. They hovered about him as he wrote and ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... coupons," and get yourself personally conducted by Mr. JOHN FULLEYLOVE to Nice, Monte Carlo, Genoa, and all sorts of delightful places? Take Mr. Punch's advice, and go there at once! And, when you have exhausted the Riviera, you have another treat in a series of well-nigh seventy drawings of Cambridge. These are skilfully limned, with scrupulous architectural accuracy and charming pictorial effect, and will give great delight to Cantabrians, old and young. They are worthy to take their place beside the excellent series of pictures of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... peasant was still defending his post. A moment later the tall frame of the farmer suddenly filled the open doorway. The peasant well-nigh fell into his master's arms. The farmer's face was still terrible to look upon, but the purple stain of passion was now turned to red. There was a mocking insolence in his tone as he addressed us, that matched ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... what had occurred, seized me in his arms and gave me a hug which well-nigh squeezed the ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Life. He lies down and sleeps, from pure exhaustion, in the stern of the little fishing-boat, but He wakes to command the storm, and it is still. He weeps beside the grave, but He flings His voice into its inmost recesses, and the sheeted dead comes forth. He well-nigh faints under the agony in the garden, but an angel from Heaven strengthens Him. He stands a prisoner at a human bar, but He judges and condemns His judges. He dies, and that hour of defeat is His hour of triumph, and the union of shame and glory is most conspicuous in that hour when on the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... a more dignified hero, one would think; but, although he could furnish wives enough to properly fill the stage, his domestic life was not nearly as varied, as thrilling, and as upset as Bluebeard's, whose story makes a well-nigh invincible appeal to manager, artists, and subscribers alike; and, for that matter, is as likely to be popular with ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... double calamity can reduce a man. To be cut off from the sights and sounds of the world, with these two avenues of perception closed, so as to be able to take cognisance of external things only through scent and touch! It would seem to be well-nigh unendurable! He had learnt to read raised type with his fingers, and had been presented by some friends with two or three books of this kind. His speech was, as is always the case, affected, but still intelligible. Only ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... human cattle together preparatory to taking them to their quarters on the slopes of the Aventine where they would remain until the morrow; whilst the scribes and auctioneers made haste to scramble down from the heights of the rostrum, the heat of the day having rendered that elevated position well-nigh unbearable. Only Dea Flavia's retinue lingered in the Forum. Standing at a respectful distance they surrounded the gorgeously draped litter, waiting, silently and timorous, the further pleasure of their mistress; ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the whispered cadences of this faint sweet music; while those reiterated syllables about "the great water-lilies among the rushes" fall upon us like a dirge, like a requiem, like the wistful voice of what we have loved—once—long ago—touching us suddenly with a pang that is well-nigh more than we ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the Volsungs in exceeding glorious state, And merry lived King Volsung, abiding the day of his fate; But when the months aforesaid were well-nigh worn away To his sons and his folk of counsel he fell these words to say: "Ye mind you of Signy's wedding and of my plighted troth To go in two months' wearing to the house of Siggeir the Goth: Nor will I hide how Signy then spake a warning ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... know well-nigh all, Richard. I did indeed see my dear old comrade laid in Evesham Church, so as it broke my heart to see him, bleeding from many wounds, and even his hand lopped by the savage Mortimers. Then, as I bent down, and gave his brow a last kiss, it struck me, for a moment, that the touch ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though in almost all of those I have described a religious thought and theory enter in, it may nevertheless be justly said that all arose out of a deep-seated dissatisfaction with society as it is constituted—a feeling which is well-nigh universal, and affects men and women more the more thoughtful they are; that they continue only because this want of something better is gratified; but that a commune could not long continue whose members ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... "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 go ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... but when they gat to t' dub t' wind had skifted 'em, an' t' mooin were shinin' ower Pendle Hill way an' leetin' up t' trees and makkin' t' watter glisten like silver. Lile Doed were that fain he started clappin' his hands an' well-nigh forgat all about Melsh Dick an' t' squirrel. Then all on a sudden he gat agate o' laughin', for when he saw t' mooin' i' t' watter he bethowt him o' a tale his mother had telled him o' soom daft fowks that had seen t' mooin i' t' watter ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... enchanted with her. As for me, feeling that I had nothing pleasant to say, I pretended to have the toothache as an excuse for not talking. Sick at heart, absent-minded, and feeling the effects of a sleepless night, I was well-nigh mad with love, jealousy, and despair. Mdlle. de la Meure did not speak to me once, did not so much as look at me. She was quite right, but I did not think so then. I thought the dinner would never come to an end, and I do not think I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... she'd but lived a day— Just one day longer, she'd have let me go. No living woman could have held me here: But she was dead; and so, I had to stay— A fly, caught in the web of a dead spider. It must be her he favours: and he's got A dogged patience well-nigh crazes me: A husband, born, as I was never born For wife. But, happen, you ken him, well as I, Leastways, his company-side, since he does business At Bellingham? A happy ending, eh! For our mischances, they should make a match: Though ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... that I would try to bring about a marriage, she asked me: 'How can it be?' 'Never mind,' I said, 'I would pass you off as a Brahmin maiden.' After a good deal of argument, she begged me to find out whether you would approve of it. 'What nonsense,' replied I, 'the boy is well-nigh mad as it were, what's the use of disclosing all these complications to him? Let the ceremony be over smoothly and then—all's well that ends well. Especially, as there is not the slightest risk of its ever leaking out, why go out of the way to make ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... proffered, disinterested help, of all the above and many other friends contrived to make our scientific equipment well-nigh ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... darling child would, he knew, bear up with the spirit of the Sherwoods." Poor Emily had, it is to be feared, little of the spirit of the Sherwoods, but she tried to bear up from perhaps as good a motive. But it was a difficult task, for she was well-nigh broken-hearted. She now never mentioned Philip Hayforth, and to all appearance her connection with him was as if it had never been; but, waking or sleeping, he was ever present to her thoughts. Oh! was it indeed possible that she should never, never see him again? No, it ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... theory of polarity; Hegel developed it in his dialectic triad— Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis; and the electrical theories of matter and force now in vogue fall easily into line with it—not to speak of the dominant theory of evolution as involving a struggle for existence, and as applied in well-nigh all departments of enquiry and research. But it is enough to have grasped the central principle of Fire-motion to prove that the phenomena of fire have had an influence in the development of man's intellectual and ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... been the instances in which war has been waged by a civilized power against semicivilized or barbarous forces where there has been so little wrongdoing by the victors as in the Philippine Islands. On the other hand, the amount of difficult, important, and beneficent work which has been done is well-nigh incalculable. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the well-nigh miraculous skill of the steersman, came almost within sight of Ostend, when, not fifty paces from the shore, she was suddenly struck by a heavy sea and capsized. The stranger with the light about his head spoke to this ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... They slipped in through the half-opened doors of the Executive Mansion; they dogged his steps if he walked; they edged their way through the crowds and thrust their papers in his hands when he rode; and, taking it all in all, they well-nigh ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... His work was well-nigh done, and old Lingo had honestly earned his rest. With the end of this winter he would enter upon the easy old age that I had designed for both of them. Lingo had never failed me; never let his traces slack if he could keep them taut, never ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... is one of the chief torments of my life, I am always leaving it out of my calculations, and paying the same bill for my folly over and over again. But then I know also that in provincial France, unless you live in an abandoned ruin upon a rock, it is well-nigh impossible to obtain the quietude which the literary man, when he has it not, imagines to be closely allied to the peace that passeth all understanding. The square served many purposes, except mine. The women used it ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... attraction in our country is so slight that even to a Woman my tale necessarily appeared extraordinary and well-nigh incredible; but my Wife, whose good sense far exceeds that of the average of her Sex, and who perceived that I was unusually excited, did not argue with me on the subject, but insisted that I was ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... 24th, Travis, in a letter asking for reinforcements, announced the siege and added that he would never surrender or retreat. Early in March, thirty-two men from Gonzales, knowing they were going to well-nigh certain death, made their way into the fort, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... hand to help and defend by expenditure of money and of energy, (5) by appeals to reason or resort to force. His the privilege alike to gladden the prosperous in the hour of success and to sustain their footing who have well-nigh slipped. All that the hands of a man may minister, all that the eyes of each are swift to see, the ears to hear, and the feet to compass, he with his helpful arts will not fall short of. Nay, not seldom that which a man has failed to accomplish for ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... the river one night, only that I thought it might flatter her vanity. I came back here and ignored her. She broke with Samuel and tried to regain my affections. I scorned her. I trod on her heart! I stamped her pride into the dust! I was cruel. I was contemptuous. I was well-nigh insane. Then she went back to Samuel, and made him marry her. Then she forced my imbecile old father, on his death-bed, to will all the property to Samuel, except this piece of rough hill-land and one thousand dollars. But here I built this castle. My thousand dollars I put in books. I ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... Herald of Heaven's King 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 a joy the world can give like that it takes away There was a time when meadow, grove, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... population must have increased not a little since those days, nearly a century ago, when the unhappy Shelley could find peace and solitude in his darkest hours of unrest upon these shores, where it would be well-nigh impossible for a twentieth-century poet to espy a retreat for soothing his soul in verse. Yet somehow, during the drowsy noontide rest when the active life of the South ceases, if only for an hour ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Documents such as these are, of course, of material aid in regard to obscure texts, but in the case of the Egyptian writing the only surviving native word-list is the Sign Papyrus of Tanis,* which is, unfortunately, of the Roman Period, when the original meanings of the signs had been well-nigh forgotten. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... strong face alight with the spirit that was in her. Not the least of the compelling forces in this world is righteous anger, and when it is exercised by a man or a woman whose life has been a continual warfare against the pests of wrong, it is well-nigh irresistible. While you could count five seconds the audience sat silent, and then began such tumult and applause as had never been seen in Brampton—all started, so it is said, by an old soldier in the front row with his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were back into Bricklesey," Joe Chambers said. "I have been well-nigh fifteen years going backwards and forwards here, and I do not know that ever I saw an awkwarder look about the sky. It reminds me of what I have heard men who have sailed to the Indies say they have seen there before a hurricane breaks. If it was not ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... his jaw savagely as he recalled his late conversation with Deacon Whittle. "The cheating old skinflint," as he mentally termed that worthy pillar of the church, had, he was sure, bamboozled the girl into buying a well-nigh worthless property, at a scandalous price. It was a shame! He, Jim Dodge, even now burned with the shame of it. He pondered briefly the possibilities of taking from his mother the check, which represented ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... were starting from his head with pain and terror. The other, regardless of the danger, opened a clasp knife that he had in his pocket, and seizing the snake near the head, cut it apart, and so saved his friend's life, who was well-nigh strangled by the tight folds of the reptile, which was one of a very venomous species, the bite of which generally ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... through its nostril and lip. The two trailers carried each a long, clumsy spear. We had a rather poor pack. Besides our own two dogs, neither of which was used to jaguar-hunting, there were the ranch dogs, which were well-nigh worthless, and then two jaguar hounds borrowed for the occasion from a ranch six or eight leagues distant. These were the only hounds on which we could place any trust, and they were led in leashes by the two trailers. One was a white bitch, the other, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... 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 in ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... had come to pass, he well-nigh choked, and fell from his horse in fury. Still, he could find no stomach for fighting, but, mustering his company, rode straightway from the Thing home again to Swinefell. But he caused those two whom he had put up to do battle ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... Derg loved them well-nigh as did Lir himself. Ofttimes would he come to see them, and ofttimes were they brought to his palace ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... and maintained its rights; that, with the single exception of the English, no nation in Europe had equalled the Magyars in the stubborn and unwearied defence of Constitutional law; that, in an age when national spirit was far less hotly inflamed, the Emperor Joseph had well-nigh lost his throne and wrecked his Empire in the attempt to subject this resolute race to a centralised administration, was nothing to Schwarzenberg and the soldiers who were now trampling upon revolution. Hungary was declared to have forfeited by ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... with such inspiration, a new type of friendship appeared among the followers of Jesus. We are so familiar with the life which Christianity has produced, where the fruits of the Spirit have reached their finest and best development, that it is well-nigh impossible for us to conceive of the condition of human society as it was before Christ came. Of course there was love in the world before that day. Parents loved their children. There was natural affection, which sometimes even in heathen countries ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... haste could satisfy me now. I doubt if any honest artist lad returning to the place of his birth after three years' absence ever met a grayer welcome. I had left my grandfather unimpaired, and it was well-nigh impossible to figure that harsh and domineering spirit in decay. Abram Pendarves belonged to the ancient hearty, savage race of British sea-captains, now fast waning to extinction. After a youth of wild and black adventure under the rule ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... before him a profession of their faith, were summarily hanged from the castle windows. One intrepid reformer had been so fortunate as to be admitted to the queen mother's presence, and there, by his ready and cogent reasoning, had well-nigh brought the Cardinal of Lorraine to admit that his view of the Lord's Supper was correct. Catharine's attention having been for a moment withdrawn, when she returned to the discussion the man had disappeared. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... very hot—March being here equivalent to an English September, but much warmer and drier. We are dripping with sweat, our shirts torn and muddied, blood all over us—both pigs' and our own—and we feel well-nigh exhausted for the time being by the tremendous and violent exertions we ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... beckoning hand. She could not cry out. Wyn was well-nigh breathless, and Bessie's only hope was in her. The captain of the canoe club had to ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Democratic party upon the principles by which he won his election. Where so many distinguished names were presented for his consideration, and where disappointment was the inevitable fate of large numbers, a degree of complaint was unavoidable. But no sooner was the fund of Executive patronage well-nigh exhausted than might be heard, "curses, not loud but deep." Presently, as the number of disappointed place-hunters increased, the tide of indignation began to swell, and the chorus of discontent grew louder and louder, until the whole land ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... day in the open air would diminish the sick line, produce better work, and help to put a soul in any prison. Desultory exercise—say two or three hours of baseball on Saturdays—does not meet the need—it emphasizes it rather. But at present the well-nigh universal aim seems to be to render the gray monotony of prison slavery as monotonous and as gray as possible. Any relief from it is opposed or made difficult. It is true that at Atlanta and elsewhere we have music (that is what it is called, and I have no wish to criticize the hardworking ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... he accidentally met Enos M. Barton, the head of the factory. Barton noted that the boy was a genius and offered him a job, which he accepted and has held ever since. Such is the story of the entrance of Charles E. Scribner into the telephone business, where he has been well-nigh indispensable. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... engine-room and murdered every white man on board. Practically everything of value was then transferred to the junks, now conveniently alongside, and the spoil was landed at such points in the estuary that made official detection well-nigh impossible. This is but a sample of the stories you may hear while yellow-faced Chinamen are serving your food, and it must be confessed that it affords a sense of confidence to know that the grates of the stairways are actually locked, and that the rifles ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... November! Thy skies of cloud and rain, Around our blazing camp-fires We close our ranks again. Then sound again the bugles, Call the muster-roll anew; If months have well-nigh won the field, What ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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 then seized the Squire, hooted at him, pelted him, ducked ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mere disgust and shame. Discontent had spread throughout the nation, and was kept up by stimulants such as had rarely been applied to the public mind. Junius had taken the field, had trampled Sir William Draper in the dust, had well-nigh broken the heart of Blackstone, and had so mangled the reputation of the Duke of Grafton that his Grace had become sick of office, and was beginning to look wistfully towards the shades of Euston. Every principle of foreign, domestic, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to, wisely and deliberately, and led an host of the best of the carles with them, and bade the women keep their land surely, so that their host was not a great many. But so wisely they led them that they came before the Burg well-nigh unawares; and though it seemed little likely that they should take so strong a place, yet nought less befell. For the Burg-dwellers beset with cruelty and bitter anger cried out that now at last they would make an end of this cursed people, and the whoreson strong-thieves their ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... washing his hands of English performances, lends ear to foreign airs, patronises foreign actors, browses on reports from camps of foreign armies. He drops his head like a smitten ox to all great foreign names, moaning 'Shakespeare!' internally for a sustaining apostrophe. He well-nigh loves his poets, can almost understand what poetry means. If it does not pay, it brings him fame, respectfulness in times of reverse. Brains, he is reduced to apprehend, brains are the generators of the conquering energies. He is now for brains at all costs, he has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to his family; and they acknowledged that he did best in refusing it. Yet if we may judge by the event, Cato was much to blame in rejecting that alliance, which thereby fell to Caesar. And then that match was made, which, uniting his and Pompey's power, had well-nigh ruined the Roman empire, and did destroy the commonwealth. Nothing of which perhaps had come to pass, but that Cato was too apprehensive of Pompey's least faults, and did not consider how he forced him into conferring on another man the opportunity ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... had been dearly bought and he lay there dead in the green grass. And Sir 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 him ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... lacking, perhaps, in resolution and strength of character, he was the more dependent on the regard and help of others, and his fortitude was often unequal to the sacrifices which his dignity and his pride demanded. Yet the very pride which led him into positions that he could not endure made it well-nigh impossible for him to retreat. This disposition, an honourable but not altogether a happy one, serves to explain both the uncompromising attitude which he had assumed in his dispute with his wife, ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... hostile bacteria, the most virulent of poisons and the deadliest of gases, it is one of the real Wonders of the World. More beautiful than velvet, softer and more pliable than silk, more impervious than rubber, and more durable under exposure than steel, well-nigh as resistant to electric currents as glass, it is one of the toughest and most dangerproof substances in the three kingdoms of nature" (although, as this author adds, we "hardly dare permit it to see the sunlight or breathe the open air"). But it is more than ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... denying that Lady Lucy paused at the library door—no denying that her heart beat quickly, and her breath seemed well-nigh spent; but she was right to act on the good impulse, and not wait until the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... period I have carefully examined the original authorities, often coming to conclusions widely differing from those of Mr. Long. And I venture to hope that from the advantage I have had in being able to compare the works of two writers, one of whom has well-nigh exhausted the theories as the other has the facts of the subject, I have succeeded in giving a more consistent and faithful account of the leaders and legislation of the revolutionary era than has hitherto been written. Certainly there could be no more instructive ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... matter was difficult. It was well-nigh impossible to determine the conditions under which Snarley would be at his best, and, whatever arrangements were made, his animal shyness might spoil them all. To take him by surprise was known to be dangerous; and we had already ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... beet had been a beet, and a cabbage a cabbage; but here were accounts of beets which, as Merton said, "beat all creation," and pictures of prodigious cabbage heads which well-nigh turned our own. With a blending of hope and distrust I carried two of the catalogues to a shrewd old fellow in Washington Market. He was a dealer in country produce who had done business so long at the same stand that among his fellows he was looked ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... trade war on Germany in Australia. Under his leadership every German had been banished from commonwealth business; by a special act of Parliament the complete and well-nigh war-proof Teutonic control of the famous Broken Hill metal fields had been annulled. He stood, therefore, as a living defiance to the renewal of all commercial relations with the Central Powers. But he went further than this: ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... heard the 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
... day and evening of the session. At midnight the session would close. Assured by his friends that there was no possibility of the bill being reached, he left the Capitol and retired to his room at the hotel, dispirited, and well-nigh broken-hearted. As he came down to breakfast the next morning, a young lady entered, and, coming toward him with a ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... subject, has not the judgment of the gentleman from Georgia been warped by the ghost of the dead doctrines of States-rights? Has he been altogether free from prejudices engendered by long training in that school of politics that well-nigh destroyed this Government? ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... would be as good a man as any earl. But let all that be as it might, the girl was to keep her secret till the thing should be settled. Now, in these latter days, it had come to be believed by him, as by nearly everybody else, that the thing was well-nigh settled. The Solicitor-General had thrown up the sponge. So said the bystanders. And now there was beginning to be a rumour that everything was to be set right by a family marriage. The Solicitor-General would not have thrown up ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... he grew thin and worn with his grieving; and because he learned how salt is the taste of tears he began to pity everything that suffered. He was well-nigh worn out with his memories, for now he never thought of his noble deeds, but of the times when he had given pain to others. Often he remembered the poor goose-girl and her birds. At first he would say, "I gave her gold"; then a voice in ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to rise from reading Epictetus[185]or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet have borne it! Yet, even for the sage, this sense of labor and sorrow in his march towards the goal constitutes a relative inferiority; the noblest ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... handles, the bowls being symmetrical and well finished. Then there were rice-bowls, double and single, some of them stained black and varnished. Excellent baskets were seen, so solidly and strongly made of bejuco as to be well-nigh indestructible under ordinary conditions. Mr. Maimban got me a pair of defensive spears (so-called because never thrown, but used at close quarters) with hollow-ground blades of tempered steel, the head of the shaft being wrapped with bejuco, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... not make any immediate reply. Hopeful as the Count was, the difficulties of tracking little Lois down in such a city at such a time seemed to him well-nigh insuperable. He had seen hundreds of faces like hers as they drove through Warsaw that very afternoon. The monstrous crowd showed him types both of Anna and of Lois, and he wondered no longer at the resemblance he had detected ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... delighted to see you, lad, for we had well-nigh given you up as lost. How have you managed to make your way here? Tell us all about it. From hearing the firing we guessed that the pirates must have ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... But it was not so. The moment the door had closed behind me the agony of the thought that I had seen her perhaps for the last time, and the poignancy of my regret that I had not been able to put to her one question which rang in my brain, became well-nigh unendurable. ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... march eastward at their head through Norfolk to meet him. Osbiorn himself could not refuse so rational a proposal. All the earls and bishops approved loudly; and away Hereward went to the Wash, his heart well-nigh broken, foreseeing nothing ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... her knees, and, with her thin face between her hands, peered scrutinisingly into her visitor's face. There was a great contrast between them, the rich girl and the poor, each the representative of a class so widely separated that the gulf seems well-nigh impassable. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Britain's ancient Genius mov'd (If our afflicted land Have expiated at length the guilty sloth Of her degen'rate sons) Shall terminate our impious feuds, And discipline, with hallow'd voice, recall? 30 Recall the Muses too Driv'n from their antient seats In Albion, and well-nigh from Albion's shore, And with keen Phoebean shafts Piercing th'unseemly birds, Whose talons menace us Shall drive the harpy ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... One leans to wisdom, the other to fun. I am a house divided against itself. The younger longs to dance, to go to the theater and to play cards, all of which the older disapproves. The younger mocks the older, calls her a hypocrite and the like until the older well-nigh believes it herself and almost yields to her pleadings. The older listens sedately to the sermon, while the younger plans her Easter suit or makes fun of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... eyes to the pillar of blue flame and was seized with a well-nigh uncontrollable impulse to flee with the red men. For a monstrous image of Detis swayed there in the hot vapors, a massive arm raised menacingly and an equally Brobdingnagian voice issuing from his lips in fierce syllables ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... and Herschel was awarded the honor due to the author of a discovery of such importance. His diligence and pertinacity alone had enabled him to search out from among the multitude of stars thickly strewn over the firmament this unknown and well-nigh invisible planet which, during all the preceding years of the world's history, had eluded human perception. Men had been all unconscious of its existence as it had been slowly completing its circuits around the sun, obedient to the same laws as the other planets of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... have felt more a stranger had I been suddenly dropped into Constantinople. I knew not where to turn or how to strike out. I was so oppressed by a feeling of loneliness that the temptation to visit my old home in Connecticut was well-nigh irresistible. I reasoned, however, that unless I found my old music teacher, I should be, after so many years of absence, as much of a stranger there as in New York; and, furthermore, that in view of the step which I had decided to take, ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... the united and well-nigh unconquerable Swiss as was Duke Charles, the irremediable defeat which he suffered in this celebrated battle might have been averted. But like a predestined victim of the gods, driven mad by pride, and surrounded by rumors of the desertion of his supporters, he had most ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... to her fulsome and offensive enthusiasm. It had never occurred to her that 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 at the sound of her own ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the beginning of a track of desolation. From Hanging Rock to Romney the Confederate column traversed a country where Kelly's troops had been before it. To well-nigh all of the grey rank and file the vision came with strangeness. They were to grow used to such sights, used, used! but now they flamed white with wrath, they exclaimed, they stammered. "What! what! Just look at that thar tannery! ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... maiden who had been brought to me by fate. And a star fell [from heaven], and these (i.e. his children, and his brethren, and the maiden) came into the fire which fell with it. I myself was not with those who were burnt in the fire, and I was not in their midst, but I [well-nigh] died [of grief] for them. And I found a place wherein I buried them all together. Now, if thou art strong, and thy heart flourisheth, thou shalt fill both thy arms (i.e. embrace) with thy children, and thou shalt kiss thy wife, and thou shalt see thine own house, which is the most ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... within as without. Like all the churches in Calabria, it is white-washed from door to altar, pillars no less than walls—a cold and depressing interior. I could see no picture of the least merit; one, a figure of Christ with hideous wounds, was well-nigh as repulsive as painting could be. This vile realism seems to indicate Spanish influence. There is a miniature copy in bronze of the statue of the chief Apostle in St. Peter's at Rome, and beneath it an inscription making known to the faithful that, by order of Leo XIII. ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... voice was tearful—"I offer my hand in penitent gratitude." John took it. "Yes, my dear boy, my feet had well-nigh slipped." ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... answered, with a sigh, "I trust they're none the less safe for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me, well-nigh threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being drownded. Why, they might ha' been cast on a desert island, and wasted to skin an' bone, and got home again wi' the loss of half the wits they set out with. Wouldn't ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... about these peregrinations, and the cause, it seems to us, is not far to seek. These months are months of waiting and wearying; he is unsettled, oftentimes moody and despondent; his bursts of gaiety appear forced, and his muse is well-nigh barren. In the circumstances, no doubt it was the best thing he could do, to gratify his long-cherished desire of seeing these places in his native country, whose names were enshrined in song or story. But how much more pleasant—and more profitable both ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... of subtle immorality," I sighed, "is well-nigh over. Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al |
