"Lessening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lasted long. Day by day Nicholas Rubinstein watched for some sign of abatement: some lessening of the hours of labor: some little indulgence in the way of ordinary recreation. In vain. Ivan took barely time enough to satisfy his hunger: slept six or seven hours a night; and was at the piano alike when his companions appeared in the morning, and when they bade ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... brought in, I showed him my rich goods and precious stones. I saw that my jewels pleased him, and I said, "Sire, I am at your Majesty's service, and all that I have is yours." He answered, with a smile, "Sindbad, I will take nothing from you; far from lessening your wealth, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... was impossible to mistake that change, the last quick quiver of the blood, followed by an ashen pallor, and the sob of the breath slowly lessening into silence. So the day had died last night, with a little purpling of the sky—a little sobbing of the wind—then ashen nothingness and silence. But the silence was broken, the night had grown alive indeed—and with a fearful life. Hark! how the storm yelled! those blasts told ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... parts of the Sound engrossed us entirely to themselves; or if, at any time, they did not hinder strangers from trading with us, they contrived to manage the trade for them in such a manner, that the price of their commodities was always kept up; while the value of ours was lessening every day. We also found, that many of the principal natives, who lived near us, carried on a trade with more distant tribes, in the articles they had procured from us. For we observed that they would ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... go, till they would all meet together at the close of day. And if they wanted the spit to be high, it could be raised to a man's height, and at another time it would not be more than the height of a fist over the fire, without breaking and without lessening. ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... fault of the old method of giving the child a whipping, if it disobeys, is by no means confined to a lessening of a child's love for the mother, who whips it. This is one consideration which is given great weight by many women, at present. It would in itself be a real hurt to the mother and a real hurt to the child. But there are other considerations. Sometimes the whipping ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... outburst of opening joy and the fierce onslaught of strength; crowned, sceptred, glorious in garland and singing-robes, throned in the high realms of its inheritance, a kingdom of boundless scope and ever new delights: then sweeping down through the lower world with diminishing rapture, rapture lessening into astonishment, astonishment dying into despair, it gathers up the passion and the pain, the blight and woe and agony; all garnered joys are scattered. Evil supplants the good. Hope dies, love pales, and faith is faint and wan. But every death has its moaning ghost, pale spectre ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... pressure of the hand, one kiss— A kiss not given yet not resisted—tells A tale of love that words are poor to tell. And when she goes how lonely seems her way Through groves, through fields, through busy haunts of men; And as he climbs the hill and often stops To watch her lessening train until at length Her elephant seems but a moving speck, Proud Kantaka, pawing and neighing, asks As plain as men could ever ask in, words: "What makes my master choose ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... than this, by the courage of his attitude he had always succeeded in placing her hopelessly in the wrong. "Even after his meeting with Madame Alta it was he who forgave me," she thought with the strange mental clearness, which destroyed her happiness without lessening her emotion, "and through his whole life, however deeply he may wrong me, I know that I shall always be the one to justify myself and seek forgiveness. Is it, after all, only necessary to have the courage of one's acts that one may do anything ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... chief, now harangued the three Indians, and they stepped forth warily. They had determined on strategic wrestling, and not on the instant activity of fists. But their wiliness was useless, for Macavoy's double-and-twist came near to lessening the Indian population of Fort O'Angel. It only broke a leg and an arm, however. The Irishman came out of the tangle of battle with a wild kind of light in his eye, his beard all torn, and face battered. A shout of laughter, admiration and wonder went up from the crowd. There was a moment's pause, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... nature he is performing the especial duties of philosophy, and is provided with a triple medicine against adversity: in the first place, because he has long reflected that such things might befal him, and this reflection by itself contributes much towards lessening and weakening all misfortunes; and, secondly, because he is persuaded that we should bear all the accidents which can happen to a man, with the feelings and spirit of a man; and lastly, because he considers that what is blameable ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... antiquary can still make out in the centre of the principal mass the Hand bearing the sword. The granite steps are now disjointed, grasses have forced their way with little flowers and mosses through the fissures between the stones which centuries have displaced without however lessening their solidity. The door of the house must have had a charming character. As far as the relics of the old designs allow us to judge, it was done by an artist of the great Venetian school of the thirteenth century. Here is a mixture, still visible, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... hollow out the stone: but the multiplication of food results at last in an increase of the body. So, too, repeated acts cause a habit to grow. If, however, the act falls short of the intensity of the habit, such an act does not dispose to an increase of that habit, but rather to a lessening thereof. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... similar views, and dispensing similar, though perhaps less explicit, information. I know from long observation that the teaching is wholesome and necessary, and that the results are universally uplifting. Such teachings improve health, prolong life, and promote virtue, adding to the happiness and lessening the burdens of men, on the one hand; on the other, reducing their crimes and vices. A book like this would have proved invaluable to me on my entrance to the married state; but had I had it, I might not have been forced to acquire ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... "Bartholomew Fayre," with puppets which I had seen once before, and Ate play without puppets often, but though I love the play as much as ever I did, yet I do not like the puppets at all, but think it to be a lessening to it. Thence to the Greyhound in Fleet Street, and there drank some raspberry sack and eat some sasages, and so home very merry. This day Holmes come to town; and we do expect hourly to hear what usage he hath from the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... because it had "been found very easy to the subjects of this colony, and no ways burthensome to the traders in slaves." The additional reason for continuing the law was, "that a competent revenue" might be raised "for preventing or lessening a poll-tax."[167] And in 1738, this law being "found, by experience, to be an easy expedient for raising a revenue towards the lessening a pooll-tax, always grievous to the people of this colony, and is in no way burthensom to the traders in slaves," it was ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... economy recovered from the 1998 Russian financial crisis, largely due to the government's budget stringency and a gradual reorientation of exports toward EU countries, lessening Latvia's trade dependency on Russia. The majority of companies, banks, and real estate have been privatized, although the state still holds sizable stakes in a few large enterprises. Latvia officially joined the World ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... internal state of the government by great reforms? No such thing. Or by a wise and incorrupt administration of justice? No. Has he enlarged the boundary of our government? No: there are but too strong proofs of his lessening it. But his pretensions to merit are, that he squeezed more money out of the inhabitants of the country than other persons could have done,—money got by oppression, violence, extortion from the poor, or the heavy hand of power upon ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the statement, "our assassins, proceeded, beforehand and almost under our eyes, to take their share, disputing with each other on the choice and suitableness of each object, comparing the cost of adjudication with the means of lessening it, discussing the certain profits of selling again and of the transfer, and consuming in advance the pickings arising from sales and leases."—In Provence, where things are more advanced and corruption ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... through everything has behaved like an angel; he has a daughter, who was about to marry the man she loved, but whose family now will not allow him to wed the daughter of a ruined man; he has, besides, a son, a lieutenant in the army; and, as you may suppose, all this, instead of lessening, only augments his sorrows. If he were alone in the world he would blow out his brains, and there would ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... floor with a violence which threatened the stout frame beneath her. I leaned, panting and exhausted, against the side of the car. Gulnare did not stir. She lay motionless, her breath coming and going in lessening respirations. I tottered toward her, and as I stood above her, my ear detected a low gurgling sound. I cannot describe the feeling that followed. Joy and grief contended within me. I knew the meaning of that sound. Gulnare, in her frenzied violence, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... winds to leave the land; While still for flight the ready wing is spread: So waited I the favouring hour, and fled; Fled from those shores where guilt and famine reign, And cried, 'Ah! hapless they who still remain— Who still remain to hear the ocean roar; Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore; Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway, Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away; When the sad tenant weeps from door to door, And begs a poor ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... guiltless who hold him as such? I may be sick of life, and I tell the assassin so that stabs me; is he any the less a murderer? Does my consent to his crime, atone for it? my partnership in his guilt, blot out his part of it? The slave's willingness to be a slave, so far from lessening the guilt of the "owner," aggravates it. If slavery has so palsied his mind that he looks upon himself as a chattel, and consents to be one, actually to hold him as such, falls in with his delusion, and confirms the impious falsehood. These very feelings and convictions of the slave, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... screened or otherwise covered so that flies can gain no access to them. This applies not only to homes but also to stores, restaurants, milk shops, and the like. Screening, of course, will have no effect in decreasing the number of flies, but at least it has the virtue of lessening the danger ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp
... upon his pastoral home, could he have foreseen that, before many years, he should return to it covered with renown; that his name should become the boast and glory of his native place; that his ashes should be religiously guarded as its most precious treasure; and that its lessening spire, on which his eyes were fixed in tearful contemplation, should one day become the beacon, towering amidst the gentle landscape, to guide the literary pilgrim of every nation to ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... beginning that the principal cause of women's inferior position and helplessness lay in their disfranchisement and until they could be made to see it they were a dead weight on the movement. Men fully understood the power that the vote would place in the hands of women, with a lessening of their own, and in the mass they did not ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... natural adaptability, constantly devised new methods of meeting new situations. A war of strangely combined mountain and sea fighting, involving cavalry and infantry and artillery, spread over the islands in widening circles and met with lessening resistance. An indication of the new character of the war was given by the change of the military organization, in April, 1900, from one of divisions and brigades, to a geographical basis. Each commander was now given charge ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... during the next six months a special Jubilee Year Fund of $100,000 in shares of $50 each, with the hope and expectation that these shares will be taken by the friends of missions without lessening those regular contributions which must be depended upon to sustain ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... still standing gazing at lessening Tokimata, I heard a cry from behind me, and, turning, ducked just in time to escape being unceremoniously somersaulted into the water by a hawser stretched from bank to bank at a level singularly suited to such a trick. The rope was the stationary ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... it in her hand. Her brain reeled; she tried to fight the madness off; but before Lapham came back the second morning, it had become, with lessening intervals of sanity and release, a demoniacal possession. She passed the night without sleep, without rest, in the frenzy of the cruellest of the passions, which covers with shame the unhappy soul it possesses, and murderously lusts for the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... high temperature and not afterward tempered will, if complex in shape, contain many internal stresses which may later cause it to break. They may be eased off by slight heating without materially lessening the hardness of the piece. One way to do this is to hold the piece over a fire and test it with a moistened finger. Another way is to dip the piece in boiling water after it has first been quenched in a cold bath. Such steps are not necessary with articles which will afterward be tempered ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... kept her promise to him in the most fascinating manner: she embraced him before the whole court; the king appeared no less delighted; but the Cardinal, whether with the view of lessening the merit of an action which deserved a handsome reward, or whether it was from a return of that insolence which always accompanied him in prosperity, appeared at first not to pay any attention to what he said, and being afterwards ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... weary with the long night's anxious vigil, goes to the east window to see if day is coming. There comes a bare lighting-up in the east, just a slight lessening of the darkness that is everywhere. But even this much brings a sigh of relief. The sun itself may not be seen for two hours or more. But you know without looking at the clock that the sun is coming and is near. Its presence near sends the light ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... serve as a refuge and afford new means of resuming the offensive." As to the precautions to be observed in these operations, the reader is referred to Articles XXI. and XXII., on the safety of deep lines of operations and the establishment of eventual bases, as giving all the military means of lessening the danger; to these should be added a just appreciation of distances, obstacles, seasons, and countries,—in short, accuracy in calculation and moderation in success, in order that the enterprise ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... breakers, until, being top-heavy, it will speedily capsize. Then the war between the ice and the elements will begin afresh, until the once stately ice-mountain will become the 'bergy bit,' as whalers call the slowly-lessening mass of crumbling, spongy ice, until it finally disappears in the waters; but only to rise again in the form of vapour, which the cold of the north will convert into snow, the parent of that inland ice about the polar regions which forms the source of subsequent ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... authority. Secondly, the work of the central government is 'deconcentrated,' that is, the country is divided into districts (which may or may not be coincident with the areas of local self-government), in each of which there is a delegation of the central authority, doing its work, and thereby lessening the pressure upon the departmental offices in Berlin. Something like this deconcentration is found in the educational organization of France, and also in the office of the Prefect, but it is far more elaborate, and the machinery much more complex, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony, Oped mouth gushing, fallen head, Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony! O sudden spasm, release ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... exclamation of satisfaction he picked up the track where it turned up the canyon trail. But why was the man going to the Johnson ranch? Mystified by this baffling procedure on Sorenson's part, he nevertheless headed up the stream with no lessening of his purpose to ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... Carbon Dioxide. When carbon dioxide occurs in large quantities, it is dangerous to health, because it interferes with normal breathing, lessening the escape of waste matter through the breath and preventing the access to the lungs of the oxygen necessary for life. Carbon dioxide is not poisonous, but it cuts off the supply of oxygen, just as water cuts it off ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... here that in cases where deflection is to be obtained, as in Figs. 10 and 11, B had best be made of a pile of thin washers or a closed coil of insulated wire instead of a solid ring. This avoids the lessening of effect which would come from the induction of currents in the ring, B, in other directions ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... he crept back into his recess to await the possibility of some cessation of the storm. Busied with anxious thoughts, he failed to notice the gradual lessening of the snow-flakes and the lull in the wind beyond the rocks. It was only when the moon shone out clearly once more that he perceived ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... determined. That, however, to which all the more helpless turn at once, as the one thing about the doing of which there can be no doubt or difficulty, is the one most over-crowded, most underpaid, and with its scale of payments lessening year by year. The girl too ignorant to reckon figures, too dull-witted to learn by observation, takes refuge in sewing in one of its many forms as the one thing possible to all grades of intelligence; often the need of work for older women arises ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... swept the Eagle with her strange purpose. At length Jimmie's hand was outstretched to grasp the loop of line Dave had so cunningly fashioned. He started on a run in the same direction the airship was going, for the purpose of lessening the shock of being picked up from a standstill by the airship that was still moving at a good speed. He felt the rope within his hand, and then he heard ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... last-mentioned principle plainly indicates the propriety and necessity of lessening the quantity of food as the warm season approaches. Were this practised, the tone of the stomach and the vigor of the system would continue unimpaired, the "season complaints" would be avoided, and the "strengthening bitters" would not be ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... associations in centres lower than those situated in the cortex. Whenever any act is repeated a great number of times, therefore, these lower associations are established with a resulting diminution of the impression upward through the cortex of the brain. This results also in a lessening of the amount of attention given the movement, until finally the act can be performed in a perfectly regular way with practically no conscious, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... but a grave!' said the sexton. 'What else! And which of our old folks, knowing all this, thought, as the spring subsided, of their own failing strength, and lessening life? Not one!' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... lessening, but none of Lola's wishes had as yet been baffled. The girl had a sort of barbaric love of brightness and softness; and one day, as she looked over some fabrics for which Jane, spurred by the approach of the vacation and the fact that Lola was to ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... by reason of the narrowness of his fortune, which was not sufficient to support his dignity; and he was sensible besides, that his brothers would not approve of his marrying, the marriages of younger brothers being looked upon as what tends to the lessening great families; the Cardinal of Loraine soon convinced him, that he was not mistaken; he condemned his attachment to Mademoiselle de Chartres with warmth, but did not inform him of his true reasons for so doing; the Cardinal, it seems, had a hatred to the Viscount, which was not known at ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... one would expect to make on any other article, such as clothes or pictures bought from foreign producers. The League appealed for the widening of the circulation of the best new literature, home and international, on the ground of the lessening of the price which would ensue, in the case of original American books, from distributing the first cost among the greater number of copies for which sale would be secured among American readers, if the market were not flooded by pirated reprints of poor English novels; and in the ...
— The Copyright Question - A Letter to the Toronto Board of Trade • George N. Morang
... are connected, and by which they are introduced into the mind. And FIRST, it is certain by experience that when we look at a near OBJECT with both eyes, according as it approaches or recedes from us, we alter the disposition of our eyes, by lessening or widening the interval between the PUPILS. This disposition or turn of the eyes is attended with a sensation, which seems to me to be that which in this case brings the IDEA of greater or ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... their return with a small deer, shared the flesh with their prisoners. After this they travelled on as before, and continued moving to the northward for two more days. Every mile they went they felt that their chance of escape was lessening, still, like brave lads, they did not give way to despair. They tried to learn from the Indians what had become of their party; they understood that they were on a war-path, but ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... occurred to our economical reformer to imagine whence his "capital at the beginning," the "leather, thread, &c." came. I venture to suppose that leather to have been originally cattle-skin; and since calves and oxen are not flayed alive, the existence of the leather implies the lessening of that form of capital by a very considerable iota. It is, therefore, as sure as anything can be that, in the long run, the shoes are drawn from that which is capital par excellence; to wit, cattle. It is further ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and some other friends, before whom this may come, may think strange that we speak as highly of this place as we do, and as we know to be true, and yet complain of want and poverty, seek relief, assistance, redress, lessening of charges, population and the like, and show that the country is in a poor and ruinous condition; yea, so much so, as that without special aid and assistance it will utterly fall off and pass under foreign rule. It will therefore be necessary to point out the true reasons and causes why New ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... take charge of his nephew before her death was her chief earthly wish, and when she found herself rapidly sinking, and the hope of its fulfilment lessening, she obtained a promise from Father Cyril that he would conduct the boy to the Abbey of Glastonbury, and there obtain from the Abbot protection for him until his uncle should return, or the machinations of Fulk be defeated by ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... attached exclusively to the acquisition of wealth, above all, too much confined in our political feelings to local and state objects. The war has renewed and reinstated the national feelings and character which the Revolution had given, and which were daily lessening. The people have now more general objects of attachment, with which their pride and political opinions are connected. They are more Americans; they feel and act more as a nation; and I hope that the permanency of the Union is ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... and leaving his shoes on the landing by the window, again climbed into the darkness. Another landing—and before his eyes, now sensitive to the slightest lessening of the gloom, a thin thread of light crossed the narrow passage, terminating at his right in an illuminated spot upon the wall. It did not emanate as he had at first supposed, from a keyhole, but from a crevice between two stones, where the joints had ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... 250,000 tourists visit each year. Political uncertainty and drought, however, contribute to substantial fluctuations in earnings from tourism and sugar and to the emigration of skilled workers. In 1992, growth was approximately 3%, based on growth in tourism and a lessening of labor-management disputes in the sugar and gold-mining sectors. In 1993, the government's budgeted growth rate of 3% was not achieved because of a decline in non-sugar agricultural output and damage from Cyclone Kina. Growth in 1994 of 5% was largely attributable to increased tourism and expansion ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... twenty-five cent labor will supply the market. There is no possible way of putting ourselves on an equality with other countries in the markets of the world, except by putting American labor on an equality with the other labor of the world. Consequently, we cannot obtain a foreign market without lessening our wages. No proposition can be ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... him, breathing hard, trying to get his breath back. The hail was still pelting down, showing no signs of lessening. About five feet away, one of the dark gaps in the cliff showed wide and menacing, but at least, Bart thought, the hail couldn't come in there. He stooped and got hold of Ringg again. A pain like fire went through the wrist ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... no wish to speak. The storm in me was not lessening. I kept the woman's hand and was swept on ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... those whom he had loved continued to count the lessening days to his return and to plan with tender solicitude every means for cherishing and restoring the enfeebled frame which they fondly believed needed but care and happiness to endow it with renewed health. Little as they recked of the burden which the waves were, in truth, bringing ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... Berlin, as well as my fatigues will allow me. I cannot say enough to you of Mr. Fisher's behaviour in these trials of danger; his resources, his attachment, and his kind attentions in assisting our poor Henry, and lessening, where he could, the inconvenience of my situation, have entitled him and ensured to him the sincerest and warmest regard. Henry, likewise, has been a stout mariner, and has shown a fortitude much ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... are derived from other adjectives, or from nouns by adding ish to them; which termination when added to adjectives, imports diminution, or lessening the quality; as, "White, whitish;" i.e. somewhat white. When added to nouns, it signifies similitude or tendency to a character; ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... Slave law. Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive Slave law, further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it, without lessening its efficiency. And inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to an alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... capital. The employer, perhaps, decides to shut up the shops; he ceases to make profits for a short time. There is no change in his habits, food, clothing, pleasures—no agonizing fear of want. Contrast this with his workman whose lessening means of subsistence torment him. He has few comforts, scarcely the necessities for his wife and children in health, and for the sick little ones no proper treatment. It is not capital we need to guard, but helpless labor. If I returned to business to-morrow, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... pain and anger distorted his face. He gave a cry, caught up suddenly the thick hake brush, and hurled it across the room toward the upright frame of silk. It struck the surface midway, a little to the left; pressed and worked against it as though held by a ghost, and then, falling, dragged lessening echoes of stain. ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... screw and hand wheel, a heavy or light pressure can be applied according to the work done or size of molding. The cutter-heads are square and slotted so that any style of molding can be stuck by putting cutters on all sides of the head, thus equalizing the cost and lessening the power. The pressure shoe is arranged to hold the "stuff" at the very point of contact with the cutters, and, as we have shown, is readily adjusted to a long or short cutter, so that a small molding can be made as smooth as a large one, and so as not to require ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... the speaker in amazement that any one should dare in such fashion to suggest the possibility of his turning traitor. Seguis, however, endured his angry scrutiny without any lessening of the tranquillity that had characterized him throughout the interview. So, since silent rebuke failed completely, the Hudson Bay official was driven to verbal ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... first century, and with us now is the twentieth; and it is said that the burdens of men become more numerous and more heavy as the years pass on. Older grows the world, but there is no lessening of its care, no relief from its perplexity, its pain, its sorrow. As civilisation becomes more complex the "drive" of life waxes ever more and more fierce. Along with this complaint, it is said by some, that in the Church there is less joy than in ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... may have put in, and give them so much the better chance. There is no revised Bible; there is only a revised version. Readers sometimes feel disturbed at what they consider the changes made in the Bible. The fact is, the revision which deserves the name is lessening the changes in the Bible; it is giving us the Bible as it actually was and taking from us elements which were not part of it. One can sympathize with the eloquent Dr. Storrs, who declared, in an address in 1879, that he was against any new version because ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... that science and experience have revealed, he has, and can have, but one object, viz., to diminish the proportion of the effort to the result. We have indeed no other means of judging of the success of an agriculturist or of the merits of his system, but by observing how far he has succeeded in lessening the one, while he increases the other; and as all the farmers in the world act upon this principle, we may say that all mankind are seeking, no doubt for their own advantage, to obtain at the lowest price, bread, or whatever other article of produce they ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... guide him to his prey. Alas, my friendly light-house, that you should serve so terrible a purpose! Steadily the oars click in the rowlocks; stroke after stroke of the broad blades draws him away from the lessening line of land, over the wavering floor of the ocean, nearer the lonely rocks. Slowly the coast-lights fade, and now the rote of the sea among the lonely ledges of the Shoals salutes his attentive ear. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... near by, The prattling cricket's intermittent cry, The locust's rattle from the sultry lanes; Or in the shadow of some oaken spray, To watch, as through a mist of light and dreams, The far-off hay-fields, where the dusty teams Drive round and round the lessening squares of hay, And hear upon the wind, now loud, now low, With drowsy cadence half a summer's day, The clatter of the reapers ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... shall know our skies, Soon as the wisdom of the wise Conspires with nature to disclose The blessing prisoned and unseen, Till round our lessening wastes there glows A perfect zone of broadening green, — Till all our land, Australia Felix called, Become one ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... subject of the following ballad. It is in all likelihood one of those wild and monkish legends that may be fitted or applied to any situation, according to the whim of the narrator. Many such legends, though the number is lessening daily, are still preserved, and an amusing volume might be made of these unappropriated wanderers that possess neither a local ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... and the rising prices of agricultural products killed the Populist party in the South, but the influence of the movement remains to this day. It has had some effect in lessening political intolerance, for those of the Populists who returned to the Democratic party came back without apology, while others have since classed themselves as Republicans. The Populist attitude toward public education was on the whole friendly, and more ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... future. Nor need I tell you how every plantation will increase in value, by the safety of the Province being increased; since the lands to the southward already sell for above double what they did before the new Colony arrived. Nor need I mention the great lessening of the burden of the people by increasing the income of the tax from the many thousand acres of land either taken or taking up on the prospect ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... The mere lessening of strain and friction in regard to the countless details of an Indian household was, in itself, an unspeakable relief. During the first few months of his marriage he had persevered steadily in the thankless task of instructing his cheerfully incompetent ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... through mists and, shadows awfully palpable. I did not ask about Rosalie. I was afraid; but with my rural gleanings in my lap, opened the door of her chamber. The physician had preceded me but a moment, and, standing by the bedside, was turning toward the lessening light the little wasted hand, the one on which I had noticed in the morning a small purple spot. "Mortification!" he said, abruptly, and moved away, as though his work ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... an architecture with which he was unacquainted, offered to his entranced vision its gorgeous ruins and deserted splendour; long streets of palaces, with their rich line of lessening pillars, here and there broken by some fallen shaft, vast courts surrounded by ornate and solemn temples, and luxurious baths adorned with rare mosaics, and yet bright with antique gilding; now an arch of triumph, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... anticipation of the hour that was drawing near. He knew that Adare House would reveal to him things which Josephine had not told him. She had said that it would, and that he would hate her then. That they were burying themselves deeper into the forest he guessed by the lessening of the wind. ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... basins and down steep descents. The successive profiles to which it reduces its bed are illustrated in Figure 51. As the gradient, or rate of descent of its bed, is lowered, the velocity of the river is decreased until its lessening energy is wholly consumed in carrying its load and it can no longer erode its bed. The river is now AT GRADE, and its capacity is just equal to its load. If now its load is increased the stream deposits, and thus builds up, or AGGRADES, its bed. On the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... happening in the Tuileries, the two women at the Hotel Plougastel still waited for the return of Rougane, though now with ever-lessening hope. And Rougane did not return. The affair did not appear so simple to the father as to the son. Rougane the elder was rightly afraid to lend himself to such a piece ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... diminishing spate of cars. The driver of the stopped car drove furiously onto the highway. He shifted gears and accelerated at the top of his car's power. Another car behind him braked and barely avoided a crash while blowing its horn furiously. Then the traffic went on. But it was lessening now. It was mostly private cars, ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... white hair. Venerable suggests the reverence to be paid to the dignity, goodness, or wisdom of old age. Decrepit conveys a sense of the physical infirmities and weakness which attend old age; senile of the lessening powers of both body and mind that result from old age. Superannuated is applied to a person who on account of old age has been declared incapable of ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... pleasant occupation for my mind. I know no reading so interesting and so instructive as the reading of one's Banker's Book. To watch the outgoings on one side," said Sir Joseph, with a gentle and pathetic solemnity, "and the incomings on the other—the sad lessening of the balance at one time, and the cheering and delightful growth of it at another—what absorbing reading! The best novel that ever was written isn't to be mentioned in a breath with it. I can not, Richard, I really can not, see my nice round balance shrink up to half ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... thereupon fell silent, for she was a sensible woman and could see the point as to lessening the other's enjoyment. Little by little she cooled off, until at last she was able to join in the fun; although always in the background of her mind persisted the necessity of knowing a reason ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... following me no less clearly and insistently. For it was not merely remembered, as we remember most things, but vividly and often reproduced, together with the various melodies of the birds I had listened to; a greater and principal voice in that choir, yet in no wise lessening their first value, nor ever out of ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... DEFINITIONS.-l. A-bat'ing, lessening. List'less-ly, not paying attention, heedlessly. 3. Fal'low, a new clearing usually covered with brush heaps. 8. Con-cen-tra'tion, bringing into a small space, the essence. 9. Can'o-py, a covering ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... mechanics, no doubt; but it should be made to take the smallest possible place in our calculations, by a careful avoidance of every condition which may place our crops at the mercy of that most uncertain of all things—the weather; and especially should this be the case, when the very means for lessening the element of chance in our calculations are the best means for increasing our crops, even in ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... elapsed, spent by the hungry squire in all sorts of impatient ways—attacking Thomas, who came in to look after the fire; knocking the logs about, scattering out sparks, but considerably lessening the chances of warmth; touching up the candles, which appeared to him to give a light unusually insufficient for the large cold room. While he was doing this, Osborne came in dressed in full evening dress. He always moved slowly; and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... day, that she loses two hours, or even one, this will form a proportional deduction from her supposed gain. It is she only, who, while she sleeps all which her nature really demands, and takes care not to exceed the demand, succeeds also in lessening the demand itself, that ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... wire was lessening the speed of his machine now and jerking dangerously at intervals. But he thought of what one of those soldiers had said banteringly to another—Stick around at the other end of it and listen to what you hear, ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the conversion of the Roman Empire, during that of the invasion of the barbarians, and amid the immense religious movement which characterized the apogee of the Middle Ages. Father Hecker discovered the cause of this lessening influence in the fact that since the sixteenth century the Church had been compelled to stand upon the defensive. This had greatly paralyzed her power of initiation and her liberty. As a consequence of the Protestant heresy, which threatened the utter destruction of the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... her child's bed and thrown herself on her husband's bosom and been consoled. But after all what did it matter? Could anything have made it more easy to bear? When sorrow and pain occupy the whole being, what room is there for consolation, what importance in the lessening by an infinitesimal ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Josephine possessed from the love of her husband. They tried to excite his jealousy, and took advantage of her stay at Milan after our departure, which had been authorised by Bonaparte himself. My intimacy with both the husband and the wife fortunately afforded me an opportunity of averting or lessening a good deal of mischief. If Josephine still lived she would allow me this merit. I never took part against her but once, and that unwillingly. It was on the subject of the marriage of her daughter Hortense. Josephine had never as yet spoken to me on the subject. Bonaparte ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to relieve Mr. Collins's mind as to his work. Happily he recovered sufficiently to make an end to his own story without any help; but the true friendship and kindness which suggested the offer were none the less appreciated, and may, very likely, by lessening his anxiety, have helped to restore his health. At the end of October in this year, Charles Dickens, accompanied by his daughter and sister-in-law, went to reside for a couple of months in Paris, taking an apartment in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore. From thence he writes ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... light left to finish his own proper work. Bringing his paper to the window so as to catch the last stormy evening light, he resolutely plunged once more into the almost completed record. He had written for about twenty minutes, bending closer and closer to his paper in the lessening light; then suddenly he sat upright. He had heard the strange ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... An unmistakable lessening of the darkness in the east had just announced the proximity of day, when the king heard a clatter of horses' hoofs upon the road before the castle. The sound ceased at the gates and a loud voice broke out upon the stillness of the dying ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... between them; and as the notches in their trunks were freshly cut, Dol followed the track without any difficulty for twenty minutes. He had a suspicion that he was nearing the end of it; though he was still in forest gloom, with light coming in meagre, ever-lessening streaks through the pine-tufts above. Then he started more violently than when the deer ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... Sensitive to feel the lessening cordiality of her hostess's manner, Katharine hid her feeling behind an added flippancy, as she tossed her palms outward, in a manner wholly natural to herself, but which the house-mistress again fancied an affectation, ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... Deltas form at the mouths of rivers by this action; the basin of the ocean is gradually elevated, and, in addition, islands and archipelagos are raised from its bed. The surface of the sea is for the present lessening under the influence of these causes, but the time must come, unless it be prevented by some catastrophe, when the ocean must in its turn encroach upon the land, when the plains and valleys shall become bays and ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... had been made visible in the convulsions of the meteoric cloud was again dark. Pale outlines were fused in vague mist, and the gloom of infinite space closed about the vessel. The wall of night—that circular occlusion, that interior of a cylinder the diameter of which was lessening minute by minute—enveloped the Matutina, and, with the sinister deliberation of an encroaching iceberg, was drawing in dangerously. In the zenith nothing—a lid of fog closing down. It was as if the hooker were at the bottom of the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... passed through the short and winding reaches of the now quickly lessening stream, Ellen said: "How pleasant this little river is to me, who am used to a great wide wash of water; it almost seems as if we shall have to stop at every reach-end. I expect before I get home this evening I shall have realised what a little country England is, since we ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... spirit was stimulated by the introduction of the mariner's compass, which afforded sailors a safer guide than landmarks and stars; by the invention of gunpowder and the use of cannon, which, through lessening the strength of the mediaeval castle, tended to increase the power of the middle classes; and by the invention of printing, which aided greatly in the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... provided with long racks similar to that illustrated in Fig. 108, page 197, and when the load is not sufficient to cover the full length it is always divided equally and placed near each end, thus taking advantage of the elasticity of the body to give the effect of springs, lessening the draft and the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... emulation which will be inspired, where there are several young gentlemen, will be of inconceivable use both to tutor and pupil, in lessening the trouble of the one, and advancing the learning of the other, which cannot be expected where there is but a single youth to be ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... questions to-day concerning the War Department are the advisability of strengthening our coast defences, and the lessening of the desertions in the army, which amount yearly to from ten to fifteen per cent, of the total strength of ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... Mrs. Bal went on, with a slight but lessening constraint, "who—rather likes me, and I rather like him—better than I can remember liking anybody. He's got lots of money. His name is ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... alcohol, and also the one on "The Growth and Power of Appetite." They will see that it is impossible for a man to use alcoholic drinks regularly without laying the foundation for both physical and mental diseases, and, at the same time, lessening his power to make the best of himself in his life-work; while beyond this lies the awful risk of acquiring an appetite which may enslave, degrade and ruin him, body and soul, as it is degrading and ruining its ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... the Cave-men was very crude. Fish were sufficiently abundant, however, to be caught with the hands or by means of stones and clubs. A fish hook made of a bear's tooth, by removing the enamel and crown and lessening the thickness by rubbing, has been found. The barbed harpoons, which were originally made for hunting, were later used in spearing fish. Harpoons with barbs on both sides were well adapted for throwing through the air, while those with barbs on one side were better adapted ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... "This would be lessening the joy of the world and taking from generations yet unborn the capacity for wonder, the power to take a large unselfish interest in the spectacle of things, and putting them forever at the mercy of small ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... Tuscan is next in order,—for many years held by the Medici family. It is now owned by the Austrian Emperor, and is the pride of the Imperial Court. It is cut as a rose, nine-sided, and is of a yellow tint, lessening somewhat its value. Its weight is one hundred and thirty-nine and a half carats; and its value is estimated at one hundred and fifty-five thousand, six hundred and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... sentences, the old native revealed to the white-faced woman before him the whole abominable plot. She listened to him in a growing agony of doubt. Could it be? Was it by any means possible that Fletcher, desiring to win her, but despairing of lessening the distance she maintained between them by any ordinary method, had devised this foul scheme of compromising her in the eyes of society in order to force her to ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell |
