"Slowness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nerved by Brant's apparent slowness to respond, and loosened the rein from the scrub oak. "Then I will myself go to him, even if they ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... on to meet Olmar, who because of the slowness of his multitude preferred awaiting the enemy to attacking it; for the vessels of the Ruthenians seemed disorganized, and, owing to their size, not so well able to row. But not even did the force of his multitudes avail him. For the extraordinary masses of the Ruthenians were stronger ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... distributors of consolation and of despair! In the agony of waiting, minutes lose their mathematical value, and the hands of the clock become motionless on the dial like impaled serpents. The operations of the office proceed with a slowness that seems like a miniature eternity. This anxious crowd stand in single file, forming a living chain of eager notes of interrogation, and, as fate always reserves the last link for me, I have to witness the filing-off of these troubled souls. This office brings men close together, and ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... a few minutes, from the long involved sentences!—only involved because the impressions of a man of genius are so many, and the resources of speech so limited. This involution, this deliberation in attack, this slowness of approach toward a point which in the end was generally triumphantly rushed, always seemed to me more effective as Mr. James used it in speech than as he employed it—some of us would say, to excess—in a few of his latest books. For, in talk, his own ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... line. The pitch of the second stanza should be higher, and it will be easily attained because of the predominance of the thin vowels. The third stanza calls for a pitch lower than the first and a slowness and solemnity of movement quite in contrast to the moderate rate of the first and the liveliness and gaiety of the second. It will be seen in these readings that there is an overlying melody in the stanzas, quite distinct from the rhythm that depends upon the meter, and that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Carthaginian camp, where he remained quiet as long as the enemy did, but when they moved he used to accompany them, showing himself at intervals upon the heights at such a distance as not to be forced to fight against his will, and yet, from the very slowness of his movements, making the enemy fear that at every moment he was about to attack. By these dilatory manoeuvres he incurred general contempt, and was looked upon with disgust by his own soldiers, while the enemy, with the exception ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... upon the first publication is almost proverbial. The character of the author, obnoxious for his share in the usurped government; the turn of the language, so different from that of the age; the seriousness of a subject so discordant with its lively frivolities—gave to the author's renown the slowness of growth with the permanency of the oak. Milton's merit, however, had not escaped the eye of Dryden.[29] He was acquainted with the author, perhaps even before the Restoration; and who can doubt Dryden's power of feeling the sublimity of the "Paradise Lost," even had he himself not assured ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... congress; boars may be seriously affected in a similar way; mares have been known even to fall dead.[125] In the human species, and especially in men—probably, as Bryan Robinson remarks, because women are protected by the greater slowness with which detumescence occurs in them—not only death itself, but innumerable disorders and accidents have been known to follow immediately after coitus, these results being mainly due to the vascular and muscular excitement involved by the processes of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... rising to his feet with provoking slowness, and then propounding his questions with a rapidity which leaves the witness no time for thought. "Mr. Lamotte, what can you tell us ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... dark-faced man stepped from the line and with an exaggerated slowness dawdled toward the gate. His pose lasted only a moment. One of the Duncannon guards stepped forward and smacked his rifle barrel across Musto's kidneys. The bank robber and murderer pitched headlong to his knees, got up slowly with a snarl. But when the guard gestured again ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire
... lapse of time covered in these titanic operations of Nature and their excessive slowness of progress rob them of much of their dramatic quality. Perhaps an inch of distance was an extraordinary advance for the Lewis Overthrust to make in any ordinary year, and doubtless there were lapses of centuries ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... task is and how long he continues working at it (slowness in completing it and repetition of ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... the notes and left them with Mr. Hardie; the bills he took to his desk to note them on the back of the receipt. Whilst he was writing this with his usual slowness and precision, poor Dodd's heart overflowed. "It is my children's fortune, ye see: I don't look on a sixpence of it as mine: that it is what made me so particular. It belongs to my little Julia, bless her:—she is a rosebud if ever there was one; and oh! such a heart; and so fond of her ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Stowmarket Vicarage. It is to be feared that few such precious epistles find their way there now. Milton writes to the Doctor: 'On looking at your letter, most excellent preceptor, this alone struck me as superfluous, that you excused your slowness in writing; for though nothing could come to me more desirable than your letters, how could I or ought I to hope that you should have so much leisure from serious and more sacred affairs, especially as that is a matter ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... popularity is justified by scientific and tasteful canons; and his portrait busts and statues are, in many instances, unrivalled for character as well as execution. A letter to one of his friends lies before us, in which he responds to an amicable remonstrance at his apparent slowness of achievement. The reasoning is so cogent, the principle asserted of such wide application, and the artistic conscience so nobly evident, that we venture to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... back our view extends; in fact, concentrating our attention solely on essential features, we may say that the path of the moon is a sort of spiral which winds round and round the earth, gradually getting larger, though with extreme slowness. Looking back we see this spiral gradually coiling in and in, until in a retrospect of millions of years, instead of its distance from the earth being 240,000 miles, it must have been much less. There was a time when the moon was only 200,000 miles away; there was a time many millions ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... Countess, and] Charlotte above. The addition of the bracketed words is necessary, as the Q gives no indication of the entrance of these two characters. They appear with Charlotte "above," i. e. in a gallery at the back of the stage. When Charlotte, enraged at Clermont's slowness in dispatching Montsurry, "gets downe" (l. 87), they remain in the ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... the Eastern army of the Union, under McClellan, gave them time to strengthen their defences, and reinforce their army, which had dwindled to a very low ebb during the winter. But while the commander of the East was planning strategy that, by the slowness of its development, if by nothing worse, was destined to dim the lustre of the Union triumphs, and lose the results of a year of war, the West was in motion. Down the Mississippi swept our invincible fleet, with an army on shore to second its operations. ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... after some skirmishes, to Bolbeck, where he established his camp, and was joined by Abaz Pasha, his nephew, at the head of 800 men. But his presence was required in other quarters. Divisions had broken out at several points, and the slowness with which the operations of the siege of Saint Jean d'Acre was carried on had damped ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... the velocity of lightning- but, had it been with the most prosing slowness, I had surely never interrupted him, so vexed I was, so surprised, so completely disconcerted. Finding me silent, he began again, and as rapidly as ever; "I know exactly," he cried, "what it all ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... stopped and wriggled to an upright position against the rail, which had wide openings between the balusters. His back was toward me, but he slowly turned and faced me and the hall. At that great distance I could not distinguish his features, but the slowness with which he had worked, even before he had fully accomplished the ascent of the stairs, was evidence all too eloquent of his extreme exhaustion. Nothing but a most desperate resolution could have sustained ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... Then said Patrocleas, "The slowness and delay of the deity in punishing the wicked used to seem[807] to me a very dreadful thing, but now in consequence of his speech I come as it were new and fresh to the notion. Yet long ago I was vexed when I heard that line ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... doors by a curious wave of his hand. He did not look toward them nor did any of the party. Both men and women were completely absorbed in his story, they seemed to be mesmerized by the earnestness of his manner. Only the girl was restless, she gave an impression of impatience with the slowness with which he came to his point. One would have said that she was apart from her fellows, an alien ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... elegant carriage, drawn by a pair of large shining bay horses was rolling along with aristocratic slowness. The silver-plated harness glittered so in the sun, it at first dazzled my eyes, so that I could discern nothing distinctly. Then I saw the figures of two ladies seated on the back seat in light, airy dresses, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... with agonizing slowness. Tom felt as if his last ounce of breath were being squeezed ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... activity is more sluggish, impressions are received with more difficulty, their accuracy may be impaired by accompanying changes in the sense organs, and the concepts formed from the impressions may differ from the usual. The slowness of mental action and the diminution in the range of mental activity excited by impressions, and the slowness of expression, may give a false idea of the value of the judgment expressed. The expression changes, the face becomes more impassive because the facial ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... pace of a nervous nation's progress. It is a city whose growth has proved a fatal example to many an overweaning town. Materialistic, it holds no theory that points not to great results; adventurous, it has small patience with methods that slowness alone has stamped as legitimate. Worshiping a deification of real estate, and with a rude aristocracy building upon the blood of the sow and the tallow of the bull, its atmosphere discourages one artist while inviting another to rake up the showered ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... out of the little window but great massing clouds had hidden the crimson of sunset. A strong wind was arising and caused the great firs and spruces to groan dismally. The minutes were again becoming cruel things that tortured one with their maddening slowness. The girl became conscious of the beats of her heart, unaccountably slow, ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... of Christian morals is grounded on their deep and ample basis. Sometimes these truths are represented in Scripture, generally, as furnishing Christians with a vigorous and ever present principle of universal obedience. And our slowness in learning the lessons of heavenly wisdom is still further stimulated, by almost every particular Christian duty being occasionally traced to them as to its proper source. They are every where represented as warming the hearts of the people of God on earth with continual admiration, and ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... for the letter, unfolded it deliberately, and read it once, twice, three times, with a judicial slowness, which the other, who was now curiously moved, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Suddenly the comparative slowness of the rifle fire was broken by the staccato explosions of a machine-gun. It opened on the left of the position taken up by Jimmy and his chums, and in an instant had mowed ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... a state of increasing restlessness. The month of waiting which Dr. Hilton had laid down for him seemed to wear away with extraordinary slowness; this was increased by the lack of companionship, and further by the cutting off of even the little episodes usual to daily life. His patience, great as it was naturally and trained as it had been by ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... such languid steps that crime often escapes from its slowness. Its tardy and doubtful course causes too ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... stock our engine with fuel. There, stacked high and wide and broad, was the wood cut into pieces about two feet long, intended to feed our locomotive, and a couple of men were always in readiness to throw it into the tender as quickly as possible, compatible with the slowness of the Finn. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... difference, however, in the actual impression, between passing through the details of existence in daily and hourly engagements, which, from their variety, produce an illusion of slowness and a vague idea of almost interminable continuance, and looking at expended years after their termination, or at successive lives in the perspective of history. In the latter case, events appear crowded together, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... destiny or circumstance, and a dramatic scene is a crisis within a crisis, clearly furthering the ultimate event. The drama may be called the art of crises, as fiction is the art of gradual developments. It is the slowness of its processes which differentiates the typical novel from the typical play. If the novelist does not take advantage of the facilities offered by his form for portraying gradual change, whether in the way of growth or of decay, he renounces his own birthright, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... came; and although mingled with nearly every European race, they remain to this day a distinct people. A partition-wall rarely broken down has always inclosed them, and to this, perhaps, is due that slowness of progress which marks them. The restless ambition of Le Grand Monarque and the cruelties of Turenne converted the beautiful valley of the Rhine into a smoking desert, and the wretched peasantry of the Palatinate fled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... capital. Indeed the aimless prolongation of his stay at Oxford, which brought him neither friends, money, nor professional experience of any kind, threw him considerably behindhand all his life; and this delay, much more than Tory persecution or Whig indifference, was the cause of the comparative slowness with which he made his way. His time at Edinburgh was, however, usefully spent even before that invention of the Review, over which there is an amicable and unimportant dispute between himself and Jeffrey. His tutorship was so successful that Mr. Hicks-Beach rewarded it with a cheque for a ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... throughout the district for the enormous eels and crayfish caught in them. Below the fall the basin was as clear as a mirror, and when the wheel did not cover it with foam schools of huge fish could be seen swimming with the slowness of a squadron. Broken steps led down to the river near a stake to which a boat was moored. A wooden gallery passed above the wheel. Windows opened, pierced irregularly. It was a pell-mell of corners, of little walls, of constructions added too late, of beams and of roofs, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... be repeated; but more mercury must be sprinkled on as the gold collects and forms a solid amalgam. The plate is usually three feet wide and six feet long, and is set nearly level. In very large sluices the stream should be divided so as to run over different plates. The slowness of the current and the shallowness of the water are important, for with a swift current or deep water many of the particles of float-gold may escape without touching the quicksilver. Wherever a speck of gold has fixed itself on the plate, there ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... we have been speaking only of the most simple bodies, which are only distinguished one from the other by motion and rest, quickness and slowness. We now pass ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... becomes more intelligent and more sensitive; and thus there has arisen a number of sorrows which poor humanity has tried to relieve by all the means in its power. Humanity in its misery has put question after question to science, and has lost patience at the slowness of the advance of knowledge. It has declared that the answers already found by science are futile and of little interest. But science, confident of its methods, has quietly continued to work. Little by little the answers ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... showed far in front—a black, circular mass, against the molten splendor of the great, Green Orb. Near one edge, I observed that a lurid glow had appeared, marking the place where the earth had fallen. By this, I knew that the long-dead sun was still revolving, though with great slowness. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... he [Warren] had not been there; and that, when he did move, it was not with sufficient confidence or ability on his part to manoeuvre his troops." It is very doubtful whether Warren ever put his opinion in so strong a way as thus quoted by Hooker from memory. His report does speak of Gibbon's slowness in coming up, and of his thus losing the chance of crossing the canals and taking the breastworks before the Confederates filed into them. But beyond a word to the effect that giving the advance to Brooks's division, after the capture of the heights, "necessarily ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... plans with a single penny in the hope of withdrawing one inhabitant of Glaston from the preaching of Mr. Wingfold, a man who speaks the truth and fears nobody, as I, alas! have feared you, because of your dullness of heart and slowness of understanding, I should be doing the body of Christ a grievous wrong. I have been as one beating the air in talking to you against episcopacy when I ought to have been preaching against dishonesty; eulogizing ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... place tenable, when the watchman, who was placed in a high turret, called the Warder's Tower, gave the signal that a horseman was approaching. As he came nearer, his dress indicated an officer of the Life-Guards; and the slowness of his horse's pace, as well as the manner in which the rider stooped on the saddle-bow, plainly showed that he was sick or wounded. The wicket was instantly opened to receive him, and Lord Evandale rode into the court-yard, so reduced by loss of blood, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the horse Virgil appeared, in shining armour, completely fitted to his body; he was mounted on a dapple-grey steed, the slowness of whose pace was an effect of the highest mettle and vigour. He cast his eye on the adverse wing, with a desire to find an object worthy of his valour, when behold upon a sorrel gelding of a monstrous size appeared a foe, issuing from among the thickest ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... all the adventure. Hang the cup, anyway. It will remain a trophy for the club, no matter who wins. For all of me the blooming old Comfort may come in ahead yet, because, you know, we agreed on her having a big handicap on account of her well known slowness. I'm going to hang by you much of the rest of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... a pupil of Ruy Gomez. He is very discreet and amiable, and possesses much authority and learning. By his agreeable manners, he goes on tampering and disguising much of the disgust which people would feel at the king's slowness and sordid parsimony. Through his hands have passed all the affairs of Italy, and also those of Flanders, ever since this country has been governed by Don Juan, who promotes his interests greatly, as do, still more, the Archbishop of Toledo and the Marquis ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... minutes had hitherto appeared endless, they now crept on with quite intolerable slowness. He scarcely heard or saw anything that was taking place about him. The rajah who had the next place to him tried in vain to open a conversation in his broken English, and at last, shaking his head, abandoned the silent stranger to his musings, which in the middle of this riotous festivity ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... of sulphuric acid on metallic zinc affords an instance of what was once called disposing affinity. Zinc decomposes pure water at common temperatures with extreme slowness; but as soon as sulphuric acid is added, decomposition of the water takes place rapidly, though the acid merely unites with oxide of zinc. The former explanation was, that the affinity of the acid for oxide of zinc ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... relentlessly. The rock in general, more especially the primary igneous rock, is not stable in presence of the atmosphere and of water. Some of the minerals, such as certain silicates and carbonates, dissolve relatively fast, others with extreme slowness. In the process of solution chemical actions are involved; oxidation in presence of the free oxygen of the atmosphere; attack by the feeble acid arising from the solution of carbon dioxide in water; or, ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... he said presently, with a curious slowness and suavity, 'I should greatly like to know why you ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Randolph, from his distant end of the table, watched her a little; he saw that she behaved just as usual; she did not shun anybody, though her mother shunned her. A glove covered her right hand, yet Daisy persisted in using that hand rather than attract notice, though from the slowness of her movements it was plain it cost her some trouble. Gary McFarlane asked why she had a glove on, and Mr. Randolph heard Daisy's perfectly quiet and true answer, that "her hand was wounded, and had to wear a glove," given without any confusion or evasion. He called his little daughter to ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... an old-established and exceedingly respectable firm. Its respectability is emphasized by the massiveness of its furniture and the age of its office boy. He is fifty, if he is a day. An exceeding slowness of brain prevented him from rising to a more exalted position, a position to which his quite extraordinary conscientiousness and honesty would have entitled him. That same conscientiousness and honesty prevented him from being superseded by a more ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... to her direction, and Marjory enjoyed her office of instructress for a time, until my extreme slowness wore out her patience, and she began to make little murmurs of disgust, for which she invariably apologised. 'That's enough for to-day!' she said at last, 'I'll take you again to-morrow. But you really must ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... view themselves in the paper before their eyes. The merchant's clerk will not write like the lawyer or the poet. Even nations are distinguished by their writing; the vivacity and variableness of the Frenchman, and the delicacy and suppleness of the Italian, are perceptibly distinct from the slowness and strength of pen discoverable in the phlegmatic German, Dane, and Swede. When we are in grief, we do not write as we should in joy. The elegant and correct mind, which has acquired the fortunate habit of a fixity of attention, will write with scarcely ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... friends' to hush it up. At the end of three weeks you will have a clear gain of at least 70,000 gulden. Believe me, if I were to take such an affair to your principal, he would seize it with both hands. I wonder at your slowness." ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... whitened stone endowed with life, creep strangely out from the blizzard of alkali. A blinded horse, with head bent low, bearing on its back a motionless man, and led by a stumbling, blinded girl, against whose shoulder the helpless rider leaned, came with ghostlike slowness and silence toward them. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... I contrived to learn, from words that fell from Mr. Drury, that he condemned me because I, having come from a public school, might be supposed to be the leader of wickedness! On the first day of the next term he whispered to me half a word that perhaps he had been wrong. With all a stupid boy's slowness, I said nothing; and he had not the courage to carry reparation further. All that was fifty years ago, and it burns me now as though it were yesterday. What lily-livered curs those boys must have been not to have told the ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... he had devoted years to the subject: I had devoted only a week. He had come to his conclusions step by step; he had reached the great ultimatum with slowness, with care, and, he confessed, with anguish and with reluctance. What a match was I, who brought a hasty temper, and a limited reflection on that subject to a reasoner like this? His candour staggered and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was not quite comfortable as I walked down stairs. In the first place I was nearly half an hour late, and I knew from the vigour of the peals that had sounded that my slowness had already been made the subject of strong remarks. And then my left shoe went flop, flop, on every alternate step of the stairs. By no exertion of my foot in the drawing up of my toe could I induce it to remain permanently fixed upon my foot. But over and above and worse than ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... be no more frequented as before, and perhaps I may never come thither again about any business. There is a good man gone: and I pray God that the Treasury may not be worse managed by the hand or hands it shall now be put into; though, for certain, the slowness, though he was of great integrity, of this man, and remissness, have gone as far to undo the nation, as anything else that hath happened; and yet, if I knew all the difficulties that he hath lain under, and his instrument Sir Philip Warwicke, I might be brought ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... a city defended by a superior force would be simple madness, and even an attack by regular approaches, with the means and labor at their disposal, would have had no chance of success. But while all on shore and in the fleet were chafing at the slowness and hopelessness of the siege, Jack Stilwell was alone aware that the commander in chief did not share in the general despair of any ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... of the Master with the slowness of the scholars is beautifully exemplified here, as is also the method, which He lovingly and patiently adopts, of sending men back to consult their own consciousness as illuminated by His teaching, and to see whether there is not lying somewhere, unrecked of and unemployed in some dusty corner ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... in Mozart's symphonies. Of late years the conductors, of the Wagnerian school more particularly, have acted on the belief that the symphonic minuets of Mozart and Haydn must be played with the stately slowness of the old dance. Mozart himself was plainly of another ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... The slowness of these proceedings drove the English wild with impatience. Winchester had hoped to bring the trial to an end before the campaign; to have forced a confession from the prisoner, and have dishonored ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... a wail, then Mrs. Zapp's elephantine slowness on the stairs from the basement. She appeared, buttoning her collar, smiling almost pleasantly, for she disliked Mr. Wrenn less than she did ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... distress, and I sweeps before gentle-folkses doors, and hopes they will give me something." I bid her sweep the whole street clean, and I would give her a shilling; this was at nine o'clock; at 12 she came for the shilling. From the slowness I saw at first in her working, I could scarce believe that the work was done so soon, and sent my servant to examine it, who reported that the whole street was swept perfectly clean, and all the dust plac'd ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... here?" She asked it with a curious soft slowness, a speculative detachment, as if she only half ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... a very shy vessel to have taken alarm at so great a distance; but from the slowness with which she came into view that seemed to be the case. And Clif paced ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... exception of a day at the end of the month, when the more stuporous state was again in evidence, she returned to her former condition without catalepsy or resistiveness and without staring, but essentially with inactivity or slowness. She now even dressed herself, answered slowly though not consistently, but she again denied feeling troubled or ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... withstand this influence of assemblies. He was M. Pitt. M. Pitt was a clever man, although he was very tall. He had an air of awkwardness and spoke hesitatingly. His lower jaw weighed a hundredweight. Hence a certain slowness which forcibly brought prudence into his speeches. Besides, what a statesman this Pitt was! They will render justice to him one of these days, even in France. Pitt and Coburg are still being harped upon. But it is a childish foolishness ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... turn had become more slow about returning runaway slaves. From some of the clauses in the treaty of Fort Moultrie, as some of the chiefs were quick to point out, the understanding was that the same was to be in force for twenty years; and they felt that any slowness on their part about the return of Negroes was fully nullified by the efforts of the professional Negro stealers with whom they had ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... half past eleven Kappelman, deceived by a new softness and slowness of riposte and parry in Mary Adrian, tried to kiss her. Instantly she slapped his face with such strength and cold fury that he shrank down, sobered, with the flaming red print of a hand across his leering features. And all sounds ceased, as when the shadows of great wings come upon a ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Slowness in passing judgment may usually be urged with propriety. Even the mere attempts to reply to a query should occasionally be checked in class when it is evident that they are hasty. Some answers should be ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the hesitation of his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the mutineers. We jog on very slowly; the Oude and Rohilcund Railway is to India in point of slowness what the Great Eastern used to be to us at home; but every yard of the ground is interesting. Along that high road passed in long, strangely diversified procession the people whom Clyde brought ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Governor-General of the province, not frankly conceding our demands, but making tolerably plausible proposals for the sake of occasioning delay. I have refused to stay the march of the military on such overtures; but the great slowness of our operations is likely to lead me into diplomatic difficulties. The Chinese authorities, if they become frightened, are clever enough to advance propositions which it may be impossible to accede to without ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Palais-Royal, and followed the crowd round the galleries, unamazed at the slowness to which the throng of loungers reduced his pace; he seemed accustomed to the stately step which is ironically nicknamed the ambassador's strut; still, his dignity had a touch of the theatrical. Though ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... still be traced here and there by the swaying of the bushes, but at length this also ceased, and then a dreadful silence and feeling of lonesomeness seemed to enwrap the fair girl as in the folds of a sable mantle. Minute followed minute with painful slowness as it seemed to Sibylla, and every instant she expected to see Ned's outstretched arm appear from the midst of the shrubs clinging aloft there to grasp the body of the bird. But nothing of the sort occurred, and at length, after a long and tedious period of painful ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... answer,' which the Twelve She-deputies returned in to seek. Slim sylph, she has set forth, through the black muddy country: she has much to tell, her poor nerves so flurried; and travels, as indeed to-day on this road all persons do, with extreme slowness. President Mounier has not come, nor the Acceptance pure and simple; though six hours with their events have come; though courier on courier reports that Lafayette is coming. Coming, with war or with peace? It is time that the Chateau also ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Ned, who, though not so quick as Tom Swift, frequently produced good results by his very slowness. "Are you going off and leave the airship here for some one to ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... of floods, and the violence of torrents (none of which have been witnessed), are mentioned by every explorer as traceable over every part of the continent; but no instance of any general inundation is on record: on the contrary the seasons appear to be getting drier and drier every year, and the slowness with which any body exposed to the air decomposes, would argue the extreme absence of moisture in the atmosphere. It will be remembered that one of my bullocks died in the Pine Forest when I was passing through it in December, 1844. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... the same to the occupant of the little room. They passed with equal slowness and impartial darkness. Five days that he could account for crawled by before anything unusual happened to break the strain of his solitary, inexplicable confinement. He could tell when it was morning by the visit of a bewhiskered chambermaid with a deep bass voice, who carried ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American people in his time. Step by step he walked before them; slow with their slowness, quickening his march by theirs, the true representative of this continent; an entirely public man; father of his country; the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... sit here too long, there'll be so much to do," said Lady Agnes anxiously, perceiving a certain slowness in the ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... reason for the slowness of practical progress was probably this. When the psychologists began to work with the new experimental methods, their most immediate concern was to get rid of mere speculation and to take hold of actual facts. Hence they regarded the natural ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... on short legs; he liked its cobbled roadway, along which passed at intervals tramcars that lumbered along more slowly than any other trams in the world, with an air of dignity which intimated that their slowness was due to no mechanical defect, but to a sagacity which was aware that in this simple town nobody was doing anything more urgent than ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... ale as we returned from fishing, I told him my suspicions in quick, breathless gasps, and bade him send to Mr. Allardyce for assistance, and to follow me, if he could, along the byroad to Deuxhill. The man was not too quick-witted, and I could have beaten him for his slowness to comprehend the urgency of the affair. But some glimmering of it dawning upon him, he promised to borrow a horse from Farmer Grubb close by, he having none of his own, and to send a messenger back to the Hall. Without further parley ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... with tantalising slowness. How the strangers on the island of Japat employed those dull, simmering, idle weeks it would not be difficult to relate. There was little or no incident to break the monotony of their enforced residence among the surly Japatites; the same routine obtained from day to day. Sultry, changeless, ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... which there are three brands, F, 5 B and F E, are excellent dyes, producing very fine blacks, and owing to the slowness of dyeing and great penetrative properties are very suitable for dyeing hat felts and other closely woven fabrics. The 5 B dyes more bluish shades than the F, while the F E brand gives full black. By combining these with Anthracene Yellow B N, Anthracene Acid Brown G, or other ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... taking aim above his mark, he had attained to such skill as a long-range marksman that his friends almost believed it impossible for game to get beyond the range of his deadly weapon, and foes never felt easy till they were entirely out of his sight. The comparative slowness, too, of the flint-lock in discharging a rifle, had necessitated in him a degree of steadiness, not only while taking aim, but even after pulling the trigger, which rendered him what we might term statuesque in his action ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... deep breathing will often put persons to sleep when all other devices fail. The lungs should be filled to their utmost capacity, and then emptied with equal slowness, repeating the respiration about ten times a minute, instead of eighteen or twenty, the natural rate. Those who fall asleep upon first going to bed, and after a few hours awake, and are unable to sleep again, may find relief by ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... as Zaidos handed him the packet he disappeared, the night swallowing him in its blackness. Zaidos crawled to the door and, flat on the floor, put his head out the opening into the street. All was quiet. The sentry marched up and down the long block with the dragging slowness of a weary ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... and hoping that this evidence of their displeasure will finally induce the world to believe that they are determined to get reasonable treatment. The Chinese as a people may be very irritating in the slowness with which they do certain things—though they are as quick in business as the quickest Anglo-Saxon—but that is no excuse why men who call themselves superior should treat them with contempt. The Chinese are the first to acknowledge that it will take them ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... the tree-tops tried to flee before it. A mile and a half lay between her and the big cottage on the hillside—the most arduous part of the journey by far. She walked and ran as though pursued, scudding over the road with a swiftness that would have amazed another, but which seemed the essence of slowness to her. Thoughts of robbers, tramps, wild beasts, assailed her with intermittent terrors, but all served to diminish the feeling of shyness that had been interfering ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... put on hateful evening dress. Avoided hansoms, they being too much connected with one "ugly hurry-skurry," and drove to my aunt's in a damp, dirty four-wheeler. Even the new moralist herself would have been satisfied with the slowness of that. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... baron, a slowness of apprehension, which is far from being natural to you, and perhaps imagine, that by not seeming to understand me, I should believe there were no grounds for me to forbid you my house; but, young man, I am not so easily deceived; and since you oblige me to speak plain, must tell you, I ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... only at long intervals, her hushed voice in the hallway outside his door. At first, he used to lie and hold his breath, while he waited for her to open the door of his room. By degrees, however, he ceased to expect her. And, as the expectation died away, he chafed increasingly at the slowness of his recovery. Anything to get out of that house! She treated him as he would have scorned to treat an invalid dog who had taken refuge in ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... been a perfect and at the same time an economical mixer. Concrete can be mixed by hand and the materials well incorporated, but this is an expensive and man-killing method, as the handling of the wet mass by the shovel is extremely hard work, besides which the slowness of the method allows part of a large batch to set before the other is mixed, so that small batches, with attendant extra handling, are necessary to make a good job. Mixers with a multiplicity of knives to toss the material have been used, but with little economical success. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... it could be seen that the three vessels ahead were commencing to come back, but with terrible slowness. Code, lashed in the weather-rigging, studied them for more than an hour through his glasses. Then he leaped ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... the other, but by its more lively interest it had the effect of augmenting my disinclination to the other. Soon after her removal, I resumed the task, and an ashamed to acknowledge such a miserable and matchless slowness of mental operation, that the task has held me confined ever since, till actually within these few days. I believe that nothing but a strong sense of the duty of fulfilling my engagement, and of not continuing ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... becomes dry and glazed, resembling parchment. Appearances are occasionally met with corresponding to those of a superficial burn produced by heat. The chief difference from ordinary burns is the extreme slowness with which healing takes place. Localised paralysis of groups of muscles, or even of a whole limb, may follow any degree of lightning-stroke. Treatment is mainly directed towards combating the shock, the surface-lesions being treated on the same lines ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... slowness, as though suddenly grown old, the reprieved assassin rode away up the mountain, his head low, ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... desperate effort to free herself, which was futile, and with the dark face drawing with mocking slowness toward her own, she realized her utter helplessness ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... multiple letters are usually dropped. Hence, 'for' becomes '4'; 'two', 'too', and 'to' become '2'; 'ck' becomes 'k'. "Before I see you tomorrow" becomes "b4 i c u 2moro". First appeared in London about 1986, and was probably caused by the slowness of available talker systems, which operated on archaic machines with outdated operating systems and no standard methods of communication. Has become rarer since. See ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... with measured and emphatic slowness—"give her up, when I have sought her beneath every clime on which the sun shines—not for months, but for years? Give her up, when her presence gives me all I have ever known of happiness? Give her up!" and he leaned his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... and lines, would ultimately have covered the country to a great thickness, with lines of drift probably deposited in various directions at the bottom by the larger streams. As the climate became warmer, the lower beds of frozen snow would have melted with extreme slowness, and the many irregular beds of interstratified drift would have sunk down with equal slowness; and during this movement the elongated pebbles would have arranged themselves more or less vertically. The drift would also have ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... he could act as an observer, Damis devoutly hoped that no wandering celestial body would approach within the danger zone while he was alone on duty. Nothing of the sort happened. The days passed with monotonous slowness, yet daily and, indeed, hourly, the planet Mars faded to a red star and the green point of light which marked their destination grew larger. Damis cast many a longing glance at Venus, but he remained steadfast to the faith which Turgan ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... on, he began to descend the staircase again, with the slowness which he had observed in the spectre, believing himself to be a spectre too, haggard, with hair on end, his extinguished lamp still in his hand; and as he descended the spiral steps, he distinctly heard in his ear ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... to suck it. She got dreadfully lewd, and seizing upon my now-again-standing prick, drew me upon her, and introduced once more my master weapon. With greater slowness until the final crisis drew near, we had another delicious fuck. She was a woman of very warm passions, and the long pent-up seclusion she had kept herself in with regard to our sex being once broken, now that ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... and from nothing," replied Olympe. "The poor little thing moves with the slowness of a tortoise when she is obliged to obey me, but she runs like a lizard when Justin asks for anything, she trembles like a leaf at the sound of his voice; and her face is that of a saint ascending to heaven when she looks at him. But she knows nothing about love; she ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Parker, at Yarmouth Relations between him and Parker Nelson's disapproval of the plans for the expedition Evident change in his general disposition Anecdote of Nelson and the turbot The fleet collected off the Skaw Parker's slowness and Nelson's impatience Alarming reports of the Danes' preparations Nelson's attitude and counsels Accuracy of his judgment of the conditions Tact and discretion in his dealings with Parker His letter to Parker upon the general situation Parker's indecision Nelson's plans adopted The ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... suddenly started up in the discovery of having forgotten to get some cigars. They rushed out of the train together, and after a wild descent upon the cigar-counter of the restaurant, Harte rushed back to his car. But by this time the train was already moving with that deceitful slowness of the departing train, and Harte had to clamber up the steps of the rearmost platform. His host clambered after, to make sure that he was aboard, which done, he dropped to the ground, while Harte drew out of the station, blandly smiling, and waving his hand with a cigar in it, in picturesque ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Barbara, with intent, as I too well know, of unseemly pinchings. If father unbutton his eyes, or move his head one barley-corn, we are all dead men. I hold my breath in a nervous agony. Thank Heaven! the harsh recitation still flows on with equable loud slowness. In happy ignorance of his offspring's antics, father is still asking, or rather ordering, the Almighty (for there is more of command than entreaty in his tone) to prosper the High Court of Parliament. Also the Brat is now returning to his place, travelling with surprising ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Mrs., sister-in-law of W.J. Stillman, Paul, brother of W.J. Stillman, Russie, son of W.J. his illness his death Stillman, Thomas B., brother of W.J. Stillman, William James early life and training religious experience intellectual slowness love of nature and struggles of conscience runs away from home returns attends school in New York city, living with his eldest brother goes to a school at De Ruyter, N.Y. mental slowness disappears college education decided ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... touch without its meaning or its significance throughout the courses. There is no disgrace, but on the contrary, honour, be the touches never so few, if studied. By determined refusal to touch vaguely, and with persistence in the slowness of thoughtful work, a noble style may be at length obtained: ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... and slowness of the Dutch character, was to give to their art yet another distinctive feature,—finish, which was carried to the very extreme of possibility. It is truly said that the leading quality of the people may be ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... over the shoulder of an artist-boy, who, seated at his easel, was copying one of the Gorgon-heads that stood out on the faded tapestry. She had dismissed us wholly from her thoughts, and, giving play to her native fun and coquetry, was taunting the youth with the slowness of his labors and the little progress he had made since she last inspected his work. No wonder that she laughed at the taste of the boy or his employer. Graver heads than hers might question the motive which had set the painter such a model. Imagination ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... of the Commissioners of Woods, dated 1823, intimates disappointment at the little growth made by the new plantations, now eight or nine years old; but, on the other hand, it was observed that "they were doing well, and that slowness of growth was inseparable from their nature, particularly at that age." We learn from Mr. Machen's Notes that at this time, and again in the two succeeding years, very severe frosts, in one instance as late as the 23rd of June, greatly injured the young trees, more especially such as ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... as neither this commander nor any of his party spoke English. The Captain rode, and his military attendants walked; but such was their activity, and so numerous the impediments which the nature of the road presented to the equestrian mode of travelling, that far from being retarded by the slowness of their pace, his difficulty was rather in keeping up with his guides. He observed that they occasionally watched him with a sharp eye, as if they were jealous of some effort to escape; and once, as he lingered ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... the two comrades proceeded with great care and slowness. Dressing a diver in the most favourable circumstances involves a considerable amount of physical exertion and violence of action. It may therefore be well believed that in the case of which we write, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... lines through them. The odd part of all of which was that whereas my cultivation of the picture was maintained my practice of the play, my addiction to scenes, presently quite dropped. I was capable of learning, though with inordinate slowness, to express ideas in scenes, and was not capable, with whatever patience, of making proper pictures; yet I aspired to this form of design to the prejudice of any other, and long after those primitive hours was still wasting time in attempts at it. I cared ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... with intolerable slowness. March began, and dragged its weary length along, and still the darkness increased in the Guardian's skies. From Boston the Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy losses were beginning to come with the frequency and regularity of the shots from a rapid-fire ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... The slowness of this climb was, in a sense, his undoing. As his car neared the top of the hill, two Montreal flappers, whose extreme youth was only exceeded by their extreme daring, sprang on to the footboard and held him up with autograph books. He immediately ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... cabin. As if he had the nose of a hound and sight to follow scent, his eyes bent to the dust of the ground before the door. He quivered, grew rigid as stone, and then moved his head with exceeding slowness as if searching through a microscope in the dust—farther to the left—to the foot of the ladder—and up one step—another—a third—all the way up to the loft. Then he whipped out his gun and wheeled ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... still used in relation to people of dull wits, 'In sei piu tondo che l'O di Giotto,' (round as Giotto's O,) the significance of which consists in the double meaning of the word tondo, which is used in the Tuscan for slowness of intellect, and slowness of comprehension, as well as for an exact circle. The proverb besides has an interest from the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... expected that a book which was anonymous, and of which only a very few persons knew the real authorship, while even those who guessed it at all early were not so very many, should attain immediate popularity. Lockhart says that the slowness of the success was exaggerated, but his own figures prove that it was somewhat leisurely. Five editions, one (the second) of two thousand, the others of one thousand each, supplied the demand of the first six months, and a thousand copies more that of the next ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... with the actors themselves as bubbles made by falling rain upon the lake. The delays incident to a wagon-train are legion. Occurring among the foremost wagons, they increase so rapidly that notwithstanding proper precaution and slowness in front, a rear-guard will often be kept running. The profanity produced by a single chuck hole in a narrow road appears to increase in arithmetical proportion as the wagons successively approach, and teamsters in the rear find ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... passed down, one after another, into the stern-sheets. A white shirt at the end of an oar served as a flag of truce; and the men, by direction, and to give it the better chance to be observed, pulled with extreme slowness. The isle shook before them like a place incandescent; on the face of the lagoon blinding copper suns, no bigger than sixpences, danced and stabbed them in the eyeballs; there went up from sand and sea, and even from the boat, a glare of scathing brightness; ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... The slowness of its growth requires patience. But when once established, the tea-nuts will supply the means of extending cultivation, and the duration of the plant for twenty years diminishes the expense of labor. To illustrate the hardihood of the plant, I ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... so great that it was found necessary to begin a second storehouse. While most of the natives were engaged on this, Cheenbuk and the Indian continued their researches in the ship, for a vast part of its deep hold still remained unexplored, owing partly to the slowness of the investigation in consequence of the frequent bursts of amazement and admiration, as well as the numerous discussions that ensued—all ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... use and disposal of whatever intellectual powers she may possess. Besides this, you must remember that a want of quickness and facility in recollection, of ease and distinctness in expression, is quite as likely to arise from desultory and wandering habits of thought as from the slowness referable to deep reflection. Most people find difficulty in forcing their thoughts to concentrate themselves on any given subject, or in afterwards compelling them to take a comprehensive glance of every feature of that ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... a relief that the nurse came back and said quietly, "You've talked enough." As she walked to the door, Eleanor found that her will was focused on the operation of her feet, commanding them to move with decent slowness. Had she obeyed her impulse, she should have run. She forced herself to turn at the door and smile back, forced herself to bridle her emotions and go quietly to breakfast and to her ordeal with the lightning thrusts ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... the other. Every line resembles Ajax. The character of a stubborn and undaunted warrior is perfectly maintained. He compares him first to the lion for his undaunted spirit in fighting, and then to the ass for his stubborn slowness in retreating. In the latter comparison there are many points of resemblance that enliven the image. The havoc he makes in the field is represented by the tearing and trampling down the harvests; and we see the bulk, strength, and obstinancy of the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... intelligence. But don't you begin to be impatient for the events of all our West Indian expeditions? The Duke,(596) who is now the soul of the Regency, and who on all hands is allowed to make a great figure there, is much dissatisfied at the slowness of General Braddock, who does not march as if he was at all impatient to be scalped. It is said for him, that he has had bad guides, that the roads are exceedingly difficult, and that it was necessary to drag as much artillery as he does. This is not the first time, as witness in Hawley,(597) ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... he said nothing. He only went on blinking at me with a solemn and comical slowness. "Unless it be to carry there the family's blessing," I went on, indulging my chaffing humour steadily, in a rather sneaking fashion, for I dared not look at Mrs Fyne, to my right. No sound or movement ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... subjected to a government which they did not elect or approve; and the management of their affairs consequently reverted inevitably and rightly to the body of the people themselves. They had no officers and no organization, but they knew what they wanted; and having in view the slowness of inter-communication, and the differences in the ideas and customs of the several colonies, the unanimity of their action in the present juncture is surprising. When their congress met in New York on the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... had well got through the first five words of his story, had my uncle Toby twice touch'd his Montero-cap with the end of his cane, interrogatively—as much as to say, Why don't you put it on, Trim? Trim took it up with the most respectful slowness, and casting a glance of humiliation as he did it, upon the embroidery of the fore-part, which being dismally tarnish'd and fray'd moreover in some of the principal leaves and boldest parts of the pattern, he lay'd it down again between ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... contributed to the slowness of its action upon the notions of Cosmographers, of which the unreal character attributed to the Book, as a collection of romantic marvels rather than of geographical and historical facts, may have been one, as Santarem ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa |
