"Lightening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mortar with pestles in their hands, a gallon or so of the unhusked rice—called Mopunga here and paddy in India—is poured in, and the three heavy pestles worked in exact time; each jerks up her body as she lifts the pestle and strikes it into the mortar with all her might, lightening the labour with some wild ditty the while, though one hears by the strained voice that she is nearly out of breath. When the husks are pretty well loosened, the grain is put into a large plate-shaped basket and tossed so as to bring the chaff to one side, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... unspeakably, sickeningly weary! There was no home, no help for the erring; even those who pitied were constrained to hardness. But ought she to complain? Ought she to shrink in this way from the long penance of life, which was all the possibility she had of lightening the load to some other sufferers, and so changing that passionate error into a new force of unselfish human love? All the next day she sat in her lonely room, with a window darkened by the cloud and the driving rain, thinking of that future, and wrestling for patience; for what repose ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... of what has since been called Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform. He was the first great English finance minister; perhaps we may say he was the first English minister who ever sincerely regarded the development of national prosperity, the just and equal distribution of taxation, and the lightening of the load of financial burdens, as the most important business of a statesman. The whole political and social conditions of the country were changing under his wise and beneficent system of administration. Population was steadily increasing; some ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... hardly put to it, was obliged to crowd all the sail the sloop would bear to get off. The galley, sailing pretty well, kept company for a long while, keeping a constant fire, which galled the pirate; however, at length, by throwing over their guns and other heavy goods, and thereby lightening the vessel, they, with much ado, got clear; but Roberts could never endure a Barbadoes man afterwards, and when any ships belonging to that island fell in his way, he was more particularly severe to them ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... the next day, after a restless night, the ship had settled so much, despite the lightening process, that she rode soggily along at not more than fifty feet above the level of the sea. The situation ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... scorches from heaven's midmost height. "Fear not the forests to explore alone, "But in their deepest shades adventurous go; "A god shall guard thee:—no plebeian god, "But he whose mighty hand the sceptre grasps "Of rule celestial, and the lightening flings. "O fly me not"—for Ioe fled, amaz'd. Now Lerna's pastures, and Lyrcaea's lands With trees thick-planted, far behind were left; When with a sudden mist the god conceal'd The wide-spread earth, and stopp'd her eager flight; And in his arms the struggling ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... works with so much more strain than is necessary that if a woman gets overtired and tries to lighten her work by lightening the pressure with which she does it, she will find that really she has only thrown off the unnecessary strain, and is not only getting over her fatigue by working restfully, but is doing her ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... induced to take in a prim little spinster, the daughter of a small grocer just deceased; and the father of the deficient girl, for whom Miss Dempsey had made herself responsible, received Winnington with a lightening of his tired eyes, and taking him out of earshot of Delia, told him how Bessie "had got through her trouble," and was now earning money at some simple hand-work ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lumpers in Scariff; he had heard that whiskey was not dearer, and looked forward to the other delights of the capital with a longing heart. Meanwhile, resolved that no portion of his career should be lost, he was lightening the road by anecdote and song, and held an audience of four people, a very crusty-looking old guard included, in roars of laughter. Mike had contrived, with his usual savoir faire, to make himself very agreeable to an extremely pretty-looking country girl, around whose waist he had ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... would wish to live over again; but who is there that does not long for, does not pine after the day-dream which gilded the future, which looked ever forward to the time to come as to a realization of all that was dear to us, lightening our present cares, soothing our passing sorrows ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... room grew dimmer, paling before the coming day. A bird in the garden whistled a long note, and after a silence it was answered from another part of the garden, and then quickly from another. A star gleamed low in the ever-lightening purple of the east, the herald of the dawn, and from her window Frina watched it, wondering. There was mystery in the breaking of a new day; would her eyes behold its setting? What thoughts would be in her brain as the golden light faded ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... strange sentence that his wandering eye was caught beyond the window by the flash of a falling star of unusual brilliance. It was so bright, indeed, that he crossed the room to look out at the sky, stepping very softly, for he had grown accustomed to lightening his footfall, and now unconsciously the murmuring voices of the talkers made him move stealthily—not to steal upon them, but to keep from breaking in on their talk. But when he came to the door opening on the veranda the words he heard banished all thought of falling stars. ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... of the nation, that Parliament found it necessary to enter upon that great work of a recoinage[5] and in order to prevent all future inconveniences of a like nature, they at the same time enacted that not only counterfeiting, chipping, scaling, lightening, or otherwise debasing the current specie of this realm, should be deemed and punished as high treason, but they included also under the same charge and punishment the having any press, engine, tool, or implement proper for ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... impairing, scaling, lightening, (the words in the statutes) are included in 'diminishing;' gilding, in the word 'casing;' coloring in the word 'washing;' and falsifying or marking, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... only reasonable to surmise that Beverly and the boys had made the very utmost of the fifteen minutes spent in Athol's room the previous Wednesday, and some lightening-like communications had been interchanged. On the way back to Leslie Manor, Beverly, Sally and Aileen had kept somewhat in the rear, Petty and Hope (by the latter's finesse) contriving to keep Jefferson between them. This had not ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... a new treatise on orthopaedics that had just come; but no one would have thought that he took delight in anything except Society meetings. He went from group to group, as if he were the son of the house, cheering the forlorn, lightening the heavy, smoothing down the prickly,—a medical Father O'Flynn. But it was the elderly and the middle-aged that he sought out; the matrons whose children he had tended, the spinsters whose neuralgia he had relieved. The few younger members of the Society bridled ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... the poor. His alms-houses were so pleasantly situated and so tastefully designed that many Polterham people wished they were for lease on ordinary terms. The Infirmary was indebted to his annual beneficence, and the Union had to thank him—especially through this past winter—for a lightening of its burden. Aware of these things, Lilian never felt able to speak harshly against the old Tory. In theory she acknowledged that the relief of a few families could not weigh against principles which ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... without the feare of God, reuerence of her husband, and respect of her owne honesty, she had filthely giuen herselfe ouer to him which was called her Dareling. The good gentleman hearing this straung case, was astonned like one that had been stroken with a flashe of lightening, then drawing nere to the accuser, he aunswered. "Is it possible that suche wickednes can lye hidden in the breast of our Madame? I sweare vnto thee by God, that if any other had told it me besides you, I would not haue beleued it, and truly yet I am in doubt ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... factory conditions, the home is deserving of its share of the same intensive consideration. There are twenty millions of house-keepers in America. For them, the home is their industrial center as well as their place of abode, and it is felt that altogether too little attention has been paid to lightening the labors and bettering the ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... unseen vessel, now standing out to sea, he whispered again, "So, this is what thou didst hear, even then." And so during the night he marked, more or less audibly to the half-conscious woman at his side, the low whisper of the waves, the murmur of the far-off breakers, the lightening and thickening of the fog, the phantoms of moving shapes, and the slow coming of the dawn. And when the morning sun had rent the veil over land and sea, Antonio and Jose found him, haggard but erect, beside the trembling old woman, with a blessing on his lips, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... are several ways of lightening bread with carbon dioxid gas. The oldest and commonest is by mixing in with the flour and water a small amount of the frothy mass made by a germ, or microbe, known as yeast or the yeast plant. Then the dough is set away in a warm place ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... but all the clouds became one that overspread the entire heavens. Despite the lateness of the season, the thunder, inexpressibly solemn and majestic, rumbled among the gorges, and there was a quiver of lightening. It was as dark ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... back, relief showing in the uplift of his lips and the lightening of his eyes. "She's cache grob, Ramon," he said. "She's go som' place and we go also. She's wait for us. Dam-long ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... and towers and spires, and here and there the distinct shape of an edifice; but the general picture was of a contiguity of red earthen roofs, filling a not very broad or extensive valley, among dry and ridgy hills, with a river-gleam lightening up the landscape a little. U—— took out her pencil and tablets, and began to sketch the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; in doing which, she immediately became an object of curiosity to some little boys and larger people, who failed not, under such pretences as taking a grasshopper off ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... so," he replied, "only that as I go on I keep lightening it"; and as he passed each of the widows, he threw gold to her, and stooping down, hid pieces of it in the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... awful Book! shining to-night, as I speak, the light of that widow's home,—the glory of the mechanic's shop,—shining where the world comes not, to look on the last night of the convict in his cell, lightening the way to God, even over that ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... were pursued by bailiffs. The porters and chairmen trot with their burthens. People, who keep their own equipages, drive through the streets at full speed. Even citizens, physicians, and apothecaries, glide in their chariots like lightening. The hackney-coachmen make their horses smoke, and the pavement shakes under them; and I have actually seen a waggon pass through Piccadilly at the hand-gallop. In a word, the whole nation seems to be ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... indeed true, that poor Kate must never see you more? Mutteringly she put that question to herself. But strange are the caprices of ebb and flow in the deep fountains of human sensibilities. At this very moment, when the utter incapacitation of despair was gathering fast at Kate's heart, a sudden lightening shot far into her spirit, a reflux almost supernatural, from the earliest effects of her prayer. A thought had struck her all at once, and this thought prompted her immediately to turn round. Perhaps it was in some blind yearning ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... half-past seven o'clock of a June morning. The sun was lightening the landscape, yet it was by no means clear. The day had, in fact, come in foggy, and the mist was slow in burning off from the hills. Often, at intervals, it hung over the water like a thin curtain. But the mystery of an unknown stream, hidden by the banks along which ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... tempests under its feet."[2339] The tempest is at hand and bursts over its head. War, like a black cloud, rises above the horizon, overspreads the sky, thunders and wraps France filled with explosive materials in a circle of lightening, and it is the Assembly which, through the greatest of its mistakes, draws down the bolt on ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the hands, the feet, the face, Which made my thoughts and words so warm and wild, That I was almost from myself exiled, And render'd strange to all the human race; The lucid locks that curl'd in golden grace, The lightening beam that, when my angel smiled, Diffused o'er earth an Eden heavenly mild; What are they now? Dust, lifeless dust, alas! And I live on, a melancholy slave, Toss'd by the tempest in a shatter'd bark, Reft of the lovely light that cheer'd the wave. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... set before us, and the waiter, being an accomplished linguist, like most of his singularly gifted and enterprising kind, had heard and understood the last sentence. Bursting with gruesome information, he could not resist lightening himself of the burden, for our benefit and his own. "You can see the dead man lying on the snow, far up on the mountain," said he eagerly, "if you go into the town and look through one of the telescopes. I have seen him already; he is like a small, dark packet on ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... almost alone, deserted by his brother the Duke of Berry, and his nobles banded together in apparent unity, hedged in by their pompous and self-righteous assertions that all their thoughts were for the poor oppressed people whose burdens needed lightening. Of all the great vassals, Gaston de Foix was the single one loyal to ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... far as ever our boats would swim, and we went two days the farther—having been about twelve days in this last part of the river—by lightening the boats and taking our luggage out, which we made the negroes carry, being willing to ease ourselves as long as we could; but at the end of these two days, in short, there was not water enough to ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... large and very conveniently situated close to the edge of the mine. He very kindly gave me a portion of it to use, thus lightening my labors considerably. But a catastrophe happened. One Sunday morning a shock was felt; this was followed by a rumbling roar. There was talk of earthquakes. Soon, however, we found out what had happened, the whole of the ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... had been as furtive as possible about their proposed journey. They had not met since the night Varney had dangled the hope of jail and disgrace into Peter's lightening face, and so, or otherwise, cajoled him into going along. Both of them had kept carefully away from the Cypriani. Now they proceeded to her by different routes, and reached her at different times, Peter first. Their luggage had gone aboard before them, and there was ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... pounced upon the two salmon as prizes as soon as he saw that there was no danger, and set to work cleaning and splitting the fish, lightening them by getting rid of head and tail, and then cutting some splints of wood to keep one well open for drying in the ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... acquiesce, but to avow their opinion that Dunkirk offered no advantages equivalent to its cost, which was reckoned at not less than a hundred and twenty thousand a year. Southampton told the Chancellor of his difficulties, and propounded to him the scheme for lightening them; but found Clarendon so averse to a proposal for parting with any naval stronghold, that even the entire confidence bred of their old friendship did not tempt the Treasurer to reopen a subject so distasteful until some definite proposal ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... eucalyptus logs burning, and pine trees and invisible orange groves. On the platform, osier baskets packed full of flowers sent out wafts of perfume; and as Mary stood gazing over the heads of the crowd at the lightening sky, she thought the dawn rushed up the east like a torchbearer, bringing good news. Just for a moment she forgot everybody, and could have sung for joy of life—a feeling new to her, though something deep down in herself ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... scamps who plunge their ingenious fists into the pockets of their foolish neighbours. Dear pickpockets, have a little modesty. Fight those next to you if you like; do not plunder them. You will vex them less by blackening an eye, than by lightening their purses of a penny. Break their noses if you like. The shopkeeper thinks more of his money than of his beauty. Barring this, accept my sympathies, for I am not pedantic enough to blame thieves. Evil exists. Every one endures it, every one inflicts it. No one is exempt from the vermin ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... stood impatiently kicking the dew off the tall grass in Ring's back yard, only pausing from their scanning of the beclouded, dawn-hinting sky to peer through the lightening dusk toward the clump of cedars that hid ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... that the lightening of this cloud, the taming of this blind dragon, must rank among the very greatest services that Hellenism wrought ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... roaring river and labouring sea When the wild god shrank in his horn and fled And foamed and lessened through his wrathful fords, Leaving clear lands that steamed with sudden sun, These virgins with the lightening of the day Bring thee fresh wreaths and their own sweeter hair, Luxurious locks and flower-like mixed with flowers, Clean offering, and chaste hymns; but me the time Divides from these things; whom do thou not less Help ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... on from week to week and year to year, bearing with uncomplaining fortitude her own burdens, and lightening, when she could, those of her husband; setting an example of patience, industry, and piety before her family, thus by example, as well as precept, training them up in the fear of ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... the 'Livadia,' to capture which I would have given all I possessed. As day broke we saw the crew of the 'Livadia' busily employed throwing overboard coal and water. Sebastopol was in sight, and she was running for dear life to that haven of safety. Lightening her had certainly a good effect, for it was sadly evident to me that on doing so she drew ahead a little, but very little. Now I hoped she would burst her boiler or break down ever so little; but so it was not fated, ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... nod and slight lightening of the eyes, which, however, hardly disturbed the habitual sombreness of the face. He was a dark, finely featured man, with grizzled hair, carrying himself with an air of sleepy melancholy. He was much older than his wife, ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one point in which they had the advantage over us, and that was in lightening their labors in the boats by their songs. The Americans are a time and money saving people, but have not yet, as a nation, learned that music may be "turned to account.'' We pulled the long distances to and from the shore, with our loaded boats, without a word spoken, and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the 74 still astern and to leeward, but having gained so much as to be within gunshot, and shortly afterward she opened fire, her shot passing over the Hornet. The latter had recourse anew to the lightening process. She had already hove overboard the sheet-anchor, several heavy spare spars, and a large quantity of shot and ballast; the remaining anchors and cables, more shot, six guns, and the launch now followed suit, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... unbroken progress of America, and the almost unbroken progress of England will demonstrate that in one, or at most two, generations the power of work and the output of mechanism would have risen to such a pitch that we could have done anything we liked in the direction of lightening human labour and reconciling ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... representations in all literature of that life which he has devoted all his studies to illustrating. It does not fall in the way of this book to attempt many such illustrations; but it is full of hints which all readers will value as lightening up and making fresh their notion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... chatting a while, and rejoiced as I pictured to myself on the way home the lightening of so many burdens which had pressed heavily on the shoulders of ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... moderate weather. Many a time have I seen her send the water aft, into the quarter-deck scuppers, and, as for diving, no loon was quicker than she. Now, that she was deep and was rolling her deck-load to the water, it was time to think of lightening her. The cotton was thrown overboard as fast as we could, and what the men could not start the seas did. After a while we eased the ship sensibly, and it was well we did; the wheat choking the pumps so often, that we ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... when we awoke Monday morning, but we were now restless to get under way. We could not afford to spend another day waiting in the rain. It was gloomy business in camp, and at the first sign of lightening sky we packed up and started promptly ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the reply of an ex-governor of one of our blackest states to those who contend that the negro is a problem, a "burden carried by the white people of the South," because of his ignorance and consequent inefficiency; and that the lightening of the burden depends upon more money spent, more earnest efforts made, for the schooling of the black people. According to this ex-governor, and there are thousands who agree with him in and out of Mississippi, the race problem is heightened, rather than mitigated, by all attempts ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... over," said Helen, in her gentle voice, "and I do really feel that it is a pity to lose this chance of helping father and lightening his cares. You see, Polly, it depends on us. Father would do it if he could trust us, you and ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... net sieve; the spoiled bacon has been dried, and the worst of it boiled; the few pounds of dried apples have been spread in the sun, and reshrunken to their normal bulk; the sugar has all melted, and gone on its way down the river; but we have a large sack of coffee. The lightening of the boats has this advantage: they will ride the waves better, and we shall have but little to carry when we ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... sensations, battling with the blood. But these are better than the gloomy errors, The weeds of nations in their last decay, When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors, And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay; And Hope is nothing but a false delay, The sick man's lightening half an hour ere death, When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain, And apathy of limb, the dull beginning Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away; Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... forward several miles the day after the battle, and found that the enemy had dropped much, if not all, of their provisions, some ammunition and the extra wheels of their caissons, lightening their loads to enable them to get off their guns. About five miles out we found their field hospital abandoned. An immediate pursuit must have resulted in the capture of a considerable number of prisoners ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... eagerness into the improvement and beautifying of this homestead,—planning the barn, building the then new zigzag, ha-ha fence, watching the growth of shrubs and trees that he had transplanted, and with cheering talk lightening the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... unwontedly conspicuous, they gleamed as if they were lighted by internal flames,—in some indescribable fashion they reminded me of my vanished visitor. The colouring was superb, and the creature appeared to have the chameleon-like faculty of lightening and darkening the shades at will. Its not least curious feature was its restlessness. It was in a state of continual agitation; and, as if it resented my inspection, the more I looked at it the more its agitation grew. As ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... with all these details?" he went on. "It is the only way I can see, Mr. Blake, of properly introducing to you what I have to say next. Now you know exactly what my position was, at the time of Mr. Candy's illness, you will the more readily understand the sore need I had of lightening the burden on my mind by giving it, at intervals, some sort of relief. I have had the presumption to occupy my leisure, for some years past, in writing a book, addressed to the members of my profession—a book on the intricate ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... visited. Between 400 and 500 workmen are employed upon the premises; labourers' wages rating 10s. and 12s. weekly; and those of skilled artisans ranging from 16s. to 23s. A small steam-engine, kept in constant motion, contributes to the lightening of toil, and the division of labour is practised wherever it can be done with advantage. With these facilities at command, no time is lost in the execution of orders, nor would present circumstances permit such extravagance, as a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... a fact; I could do no good at all, so I hurried forward again. But even here I could do nothing; the men had their task to do of lightening the first boat, and they were working as hard as if they had been lying down in the shade all day, and just as coolly, though every now and then the rough slugs the pirates fired from their clumsy matchlocks went spattering through the trees overhead and sent ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... himself at home and became expert in the use of tools. At the age of fourteen he applied his ingenuity to a heavy fishing boat and equipped it with paddle-wheels, which were turned by a crank, thus greatly lightening the ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... of gratitude and respect with which Ned was regarded by the workpeople of his district, owing to his action regarding the hand frames, did something toward lightening the load caused by the suspicion which still rested upon him. Although he still avoided all intercourse with those of his own station, he no longer felt the pressure so acutely. The hard, set expression of his face softened somewhat, ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... I should therefore be glad to know, Mr. Yorke, do you see, whether this be the case." Playfully denying that he possessed any celebrity as a writer on legal matters, Yorke, with an assumption of candor, admitted that he had some thoughts of lightening the labors of law-students by turning Coke upon Littleton into verse. Indeed, he confessed that he had already begun the work of versification. Not seeing the nature of the reply, Sir Lyttleton Powys treated the droll fancy as a serious project, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... paling, and a grayish veil rises slowly from the horizon. One by one the night-lamps in the heavens lose their sparkle and radiance, as the filament of the dawn shrouds and stifles them. Far down the valley tumbling outlines of ridge and height are carved out in sharper relief against the lightening sky. There is a stir in the leaves o'erhead and the soft rustle of the morning breeze. Presently the pallid veil at the east takes on a purplish blush, that is changing every instant to a ruddier hue. Faces ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... he knew me, yes, A flush as of pain, or pride, Pass'd swiftly o'er the pale stern face, And the high white forehead dyed, I heard the roll of carriage wheels, Unthinkingly raised my eyes, One glance flashed out beneatt thosee Brows, Like lightening ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but, as she whispered, she was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before the final darkness. After having for some time lain still, her eyes shut, she said, "James!" He came close to her, and, lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked for Rab but could ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... was to the effects of his enthusiasm, I took no trivial interest in the individual. Still, to set him at liberty was palpably impossible; and my only resource was, to give him such aid in this extremity of his career as could be given by lightening the severities of his prison, and providing him with the means of securing able counsel. I had now an opportunity of seeing, for the first time, the genius of this singular people displayed under a new and brilliant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... joys of the workman. And you could not have art without artists. In this again he was only talking the commonplaces of his day. But to her they were not commonplaces at all. She looked at him from time to time, her great eyes lightening and deepening as it seemed with every fresh thrust ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to bring them out into the world in which their families live, is a difficult task. It must be undertaken and accomplished, first, for the purely humane reason of lightening their lot and making them individually more happy in the New World; second, for the sake of preventing the disruption of families, the corner stone of the present social order; third, for the sake of creating and sustaining good citizenship. Whether immigrant ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... him a moment, her face suddenly lightening at the tenor of his words—so bravely spoken, with so little conviction behind them. But they had helped her, and for that he ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... daily job. Invention is doing this in some degree now. We have succeeded to a very great extent in relieving men of the heavier and more onerous jobs that used to sap their strength, but even when lightening the heavier labour we have not yet succeeded in removing monotony. That is another field that beckons us—the abolition of monotony, and in trying to accomplish that we shall doubtless discover other changes that will have to be ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... it happened, our elaborate precautions proved unnecessary, for not a single sail passed us during the night; and at four o'clock next morning, when the watch was relieved, I went below and turned in, as the sky appeared to be lightening up a trifle, and I knew that it would be ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... ne'er shall part souls joined by holy love, Who through life's trials, joys and cares Have to each other clung, faithful till death, Tender and true in sickness and in health, Bearing each other's burdens, sharing griefs, Lightening each care and heightening every joy. Such life is but a transient honeymoon, A feeble foretaste of eternal joys. But princes when they love, though all approve, Must wait on councils, embassies and forms. But how the coach of ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... came down in torrents, rebounding from the shining pavement and the no less shining umbrellas of passing pedestrians, with vicious little pops and hisses that sounded more like a storm of tiny daggers than of raindrops. As time went on, instead of lightening, the sky had grown murkier and murkier and darker and darker, until, in many parts of the hotel, people had been forced to turn on the lights. Over and about everything hung that moist, indefinably depressing atmosphere ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... will be remembered, Earth, unable to bear her load of population, prayed to the Grandsire for lightening that load. The Grandsire urged Vishnu to do the needful. Hence Vishnu incarnated himself as Krishna and brought about ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... difference in state—there is no interest of occupation for any of the inhabitants but the routine of counter or desk within doors, and the effort to pass each other without collision outside; so that from morning to evening the only possible variation of the monotony of the hours, and lightening of the penalty of existence, must be some kind of mischief, limited, unless by more than ordinary godsend of fatality, to the fall of a horse, or the slitting of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... news of our great bereavement spread, the neighbors crowded in, offering their sympathy and aid. It was very kind of them, but, alas! could do nothing towards lightening its weight. The story of how my dear father came to his untimely end was at length related to us. He had gone out upon the river in a boat from which a seine was being cast, and by accident, no one could tell exactly how, had fallen overboard. Being no swimmer, and the water of icy coldness, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... to say that he shrank from the future. Rather he accepted everything that lay before him wholeheartedly, and, with the laying aside of his scruples, there was an instant lightening of the heart, a fierce keenness of mind, a contempt for society, a disregard for life beginning with his own. One could have noted it in the recklessness with which he sent Sally up the slope away from the ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... my Bab in the same breath again, and I'll throttle you, you vile woman!" cried Mrs. Wylder, and hung there like a thunder-cloud, lightening continuously. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... interest and inflation rates. The current government has enacted numerous short-term reforms aimed at improving competitiveness and long-term growth. Italy has moved slowly, however, on implementing needed structural reforms, such as lightening the high tax burden and overhauling Italy's rigid labor market and over-generous pension system, because of the current economic slowdown ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... better. Money is good alms when money is really needed, but in comparison with the divine gifts of hope, friendship, courage, sympathy, and love, it is paltry and poor. Usually the help people need is not so much the lightening of their burden, as fresh strength to enable them to bear their burden, and stand up under it. The best thing we can do for another, some one has said, is not to make some things easy for him, but ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... his, facing the world, with all its contingencies, bravely and with constant buoyant cheerfulness. He walked through life with eyes and heart wide open to the joy of the world, brightening and lightening it for others as he went. He was always ready to stretch out a helping hand to the weak and falling ones who came across his path. Never merely an optimist, he yet lived and died in ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... you speak of them so!" cried Marcia lightening upon him. "Such good friends of yours—such good people—" Her voice shook with indignation and ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... barkey is lightening famously: who shall be next to go? The Sportsman of intolerable yarns: who slays twice over — first, his game, and then the miserable being he button-holes for the tedious recital. Shall we suffer him longer? Who else? Who is that cowering under the bulwarks yonder? The man who thinks he ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... schemes that were planned and carried out for lightening the long hours of confinement to their wooden home in the Arctic regions, was the newspaper started by Fred Ellice, and named, as we have already mentioned, The ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... tone had made Mavis accept the thing not only easily but without a doubt or question, and he thought remorsefully that, except for his sneaking, cowardly delay, all this might have occurred a month ago. He felt a distinct lightening of the trouble as he went back into his own room, and then the weight of it fell upon him again. He had succeeded so far as Mavis was concerned; but how ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... might we all our lineage prove, Give and forgive, do good and love; By soft endearments, in kind strife, Lightening ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... statues gleaming along the heights in their everlasting death in life, their motionless brows looking down forever on the loveliness in which their beings once dwelt, marble forms of more than mortal grace lightening along the green arcades, amidst dark cool grottoes, full of the voice of dashing waters, and of the breath of myrtle blossoms, with the blue of the deep lake and the distant precipice mingling at every opening with the eternal snows glowing in their noontide silence, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... scattered with flame. Then the sound of voices begins to insinuate itself—one never knows exactly when it begins—until the air is lively with the cries of the cheerful Kaffir. Darkness still on the ground and cold starlight in the upper air; but eastwards a very sharp eye might notice a kind of lightening of the gloom. And cold, bitterly cold, one gratefully withdraws beneath blankets the hand that was experimentally stretched out. In one's own little camp the stir is also beginning; fires being kindled, shadowy figures moving through the gloom, the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... treason; (4) parricide, fratricide, etc.; (5) offences against humanity; (6) lese majeste; (7) unfilial conduct, and (8) crimes against society. But there were also six mitigations (roku-gi), all enacted with the object of lightening punishments according to the rank, official position, or public services of an offender. As for slaves, being merely a part of their proprietor's property like any other goods and chattels, the law ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Africans who were conveyed to places other than the States, it will be seen that circumstances amongst them and in their favour came into play, modifying and lightening their unhappy condition. First, attention must be paid to the patriotic solidarity existing [241] amongst the bondsmen, a solidarity which, in the case of those who had been deported in the same ship, had all the sanctity of blood-relationship. Those who had ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... fair heaven of spring with heavenlier light, Made of all ages orbed in one sole sphere Whose light was as a Titan's smile or tear; Then rose a ray more flowerlike, starry white, Like a child's eye grown lovelier with delight, Sweet as a child's heart-lightening laugh to hear; And last a fire from heaven, a fiery rain As of God's wrath on the unclean cities, fell And lit the shuddering shades of half-seen hell That shrank before it and were cloven in twain; A beacon fired by lightning, whence all time Sees red the bare ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... we thus wiled away the journey in such profitable conversation, the tide of the night had turned, the glory of the summer stars had paled and faded and departed from the lightening skies. Behind the hills dawn, in its cloak of unearthly colors, was beginning to fill the cup of heaven, and the multitude of small birds, waking from their slumbers, unwinged their heads and started to utter their matins like honest choristers. ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... is as dew upon the drooping lotus," said Kwo Kam, with a lightening countenance. "To maintain the people in an unshaken prosperity, to frown heavily upon extortion and to establish justice throughout the land—these have been the achievements of the years of peace. Yet often, O my father, this one's mind has turned yearningly to the happier absence of strife ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... her cheek flushing, and her eye lightening, 'how you judge, Bessy. I shall go home to my mother, who is so ill—so ill, Bessy, that there's no outlet but death for her out of the prison of her great suffering; and yet I must speak cheerfully to my ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... reduction of taxes and an alleviation of the burdens of the poor? The chief danger of the years 1791, 1792 came not from the French Jacobins, but from their British sympathizers; and experience warranted the belief that, with a lightening of the financial load, the nation would manifest its former loyalty. On 23rd August 1791 Grenville wrote: "Our only danger is at home, and for averting that danger, peace and economy are our best resources."[412] These considerations are political rather ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... muskrats had become our fast friends. They insisted upon lightening our loads over the brambly league. This was kindly. Cancut's elongated head-piece, the birch, was his share of the burden; and a bag of bread, a firkin of various grub, damp blankets for three, and multitudinous traps, seemed more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... with the cumbrous hempen cables of the day, and the imperfect means of heaving up the anchor, he was desirous of saving his men unnecessary labour. Cook was puzzled that the next tide did not, after lightening the ship, take him off; but it is now known that on this coast it is only every alternate tide that rises to a full height, and as he got ashore nearly at the top of the higher of the two waters he had to wait twenty-four hours until he got a similar rise. ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... too late to be polite. I'm putting my watch back into my pocket, and I'll go with you, Father Rielle. My refuge—a temporary one—is no longer needed, it's lightening very considerably, and I suppose you'll be ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... appear dark by day as well as by night is because we see it through the sun-illumined atmosphere. The opposite role is played by the atmosphere when we look through it to the sun. In the first instance it acts as a lightening, in the second as a darkening, medium. Accordingly, when the optical density of the air changes as a result of its varying content of moisture, the colour-phenomenon undergoes an opposite change in each of the two cases. Whilst with increasing density of the air the blue of the sky brightens ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... glorious morning, and as they climbed, the lightening air made their spirits rise with their steps. Great masses of cloud hung beyond the edge of the world, and here and there towered foundationless in the sky—huge tumulous heaps of white vapour with gray shadows. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... energy, increasing blood circulation, dynamogenic phenomena, etc., is another matter, which has later to be discussed. But the essential is that this additional stimulus is rhythmical, and therefore a reinforcement of the nervous activity, and therefore a lightening and favorable condition of work itself. So it is, too, that we can understand the tremendous influence of rhythm just among primitive peoples, and those of a low degree of culture. Work is hard for savages, not because bodily effort is ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... considerable pains have, of late, been taken in order to improve the psalmody, but no corresponding effect has been produced. In the agricultural districts of the south of England, no songs are heard lightening the daily toil of the labourer, and the very plough-boys can hardly raise a whistle. It is impossible to account for this; but the fact will be acknowledged by all who have had the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of penance, we are accused of clinging to the rags of dead works, instead of "holding on to Jesus" by faith. If, on the other hand, we enrich our souls with the treasures of Indulgences we are charged with relying on the vicarious merits of others and of lightening too much the salutary burden of the cross. But how can Protestants consistently find fault with the Church for mitigating the austerities of penance, since their own fundamental principle rests on ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... a piece of wild-fowl on its passage to his mouth, and, after a moment's consideration, replied that in his opinion lightening the load of the canoe was the best thing ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne |
