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More "Withering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... far forgot herself as to address her as Viney Raymond, the new free woman's head went up and she said with withering emphasis: ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... misquote thee, and distort thy meanings with such excellent bitter jesting, that thou thyself shall scarcely recognize thine own production! By Nagaya's Shrine! what a feast 'twill be for my delectation!"—and he rubbed his hands gleefully—"With what a weight of withering analysis I can pulverize this idol of 'Nourhalma' into the dust and ashes of a common ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... all my sweet charity-blossoms, that unfolded such a little time ago, when Sophie was reading to me? Surely the time of withering had not come so soon? An untimely frost must have withered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the right and mingle their masses at the head of the obstacle and thus their movements would be obstructed. It seemed to have the anticipated effect and the assaulting columns apparently jumbled together at this point were met by the withering volleys of McKethan's direct and Gaillard's cross-fire and by the direct discharge of the shell guns, supplemented by the frightful enfilading discharges of the lighter guns upon the right and left. It was terrible, but with an unsurpassed gallantry the Federal ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... family—that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time, and in any place—that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension, nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependants to protect, nothing but this could have thrown a ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... restrained with that restraint which is put over the feelings by a strong nature, and yet can not hide that consuming passion which underlies all the words, and makes them burn with intensest heat. Here the hot fire of his indignation seemed to be expressed in a blighting and withering power; and Hilda shrank within herself involuntarily in fear, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third—for I recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking up behind the signs, and over the lamp-posts,—that my respected acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt clothes—which he preferred ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... stream lowered and opened suddenly. The withering force of the blast struck him, the snow buffeted him, and for a moment he stood held in his tracks, then the wind momentarily slackened, and dimly through the driving snow he caught sight of something ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... come again— Frown on him! He comes with a withering breath, With a gloomy scowl, With a shriek and a howl, Freezing Nature to death! He stamps on the hills, He fetters the rills, And every hollow with snow he fills! Frown on the monster grim and old, With snowy robes and with fingers ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... withering rebuke to a conceited though clever young statesman, Lord Nugent, who, in a previous part of the debate, insisted that the honour and dignity of the kingdom obligated them to compel the execution of the Stamp Act, "unless the right was acknowledged and the repeal solicited as a favour," concluding ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... unchanging kindness balance patched elbows? are not cracked boots receipts in full for hours of anxious love and care? does not the kindness of a life fade "like the baseless fabric of a vision" before the withering touch of poverty's stern stamp? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... gasped. "Miss Blake," she cried at length, horrified at the bold assertion, and endeavouring to quail her audacious pupil with one stern, withering glance, "this is dreadful!" But the angry child only pouted, and repeated ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... stamp of a foot (he shrank with involuntary memory), then retreating steps. In a conquering career Miss Cecily Wayne had never before been snubbed by any male creature. If her wishes could have been transformed into fact, the yearned-for wave might have been spared any trouble; a swifter and more withering death would have ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... termination. Doubtless the All-wise did not afflict him without a cause. Who knows but within that unhappy frame lurked vicious seeds which the sunbeams of joy and prosperity might have called into life and vigour? Perhaps the withering blasts of misery nipped that which otherwise might have terminated in fruit noxious and lamentable. But peace to the unhappy one, he is gone to his rest; the deathlike face is no longer occasionally seen timidly and mournfully looking for ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... - That by custom of this clime, Even from immemorial time, We, or our forefathers old (As in Withering's list enrolled) Have in occupation been Of all nooks and corners green Where the swelling meadows sweet With the waving woodlands meet. There we peep and disappear, There, in games to fairies dear All the spring-tide hours we spend, Hiding, seeking without end. And sometimes a ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... their losses, but their wise leader saw that he must give them a breathing-spell. No troops in the world could stand a fire so withering as that which came from the repeating-rifles of the desperadoes. Quite as many ponies as men had gone down, and their morning's plunder had already cost them more than it was worth. Therefore it must not be permitted ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... to sing itself to me at large from an outer world which at this moment is all gray and roaring. To-day the year is bowing itself out tempestuously, as if angry at having to go. Dear golden year! I am sorry to see its face so changed and withering: it has held so much for us both. Yet I am feeling vigorous and quite like spring. All the seasons have their marches, with buffetings and border-forays: this is an autumn march-wind; before long I shall be out into it, and up the hill to look over at your territory and ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... Kate, Pete, and the constable, "there'll be no more of your practices. I'll do without the music of three saints like you. In future I'll have three sinners to raise my singing. These polices, too!" he said with a withering smile. (Niplightly was worming his way out at the back ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... been shown that in folk-tales the life of a person is sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the person. Among the M'Bengas in Western Africa, about the Gaboon, when two children are born on the same day, the people plant two trees of the same kind ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... shrouded and dimmed in an orange tawny haze of infinite distance. In the immediate foreground of this majestic display, like a handful of rose-leaves fallen out of heaven, small clouds floated directly downward, withering to blackness as they neared the earth and lost the dying fires. Beneath the splendor of the sky the land likewise flamed, the winding roadways glimmered, and many pools and ditches reflected back the circumambient ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... as the warm weather closed in, in the summer of 1604, the malaria in the Tower began to affect Raleigh's health. As he tells Cecil, now Lord Cranborne, in a most dolorous letter, he was withering in body and mind. The plague had come close to him, his son having lain a fortnight with only a paper wall between him and a woman whose child was dying of that terrible complaint. Lady Raleigh, at last, had been able to bear the terror of infection no longer, and had departed with little ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... thirty yards away, and coming fast, but the withering hail of lead that greeted them crumpled their front line as though it were made of paper. The others, unable to see their assailants, wavered a minute, and then broke, with the exception ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... tumble over the chairs, or knock things off the table, or fall on the bed, or something horrid, and papa'd have me put out. Then I'm sure matters would be worse than they are now. 'Tisn't that I'm afraid,"—with a withering glance at me,—"and I do feel awfully sorry about papa; but all the same, I don't want to be the one to speak to him about the Fetich,—I don't think it's my place: how much attention do you suppose ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... the whole of our force springing into view, opened so withering a fire, that the front ranks of the foe fell into confusion. The next column coming on was treated in the same manner as the first. The big guns meanwhile battered at our earthworks, knocking down walls, and sent their ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... that whenever the occasion demands it his style rises to supreme force and beauty. The metamorphosis of the serpent, the entry of Lamia and Lycius into Corinth, the building by Lamia of the Fairy Hall, and her final withering under the eye of Apollonius—these are the most important points in the story, and the passages in which they are described are also the ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... corroding anguish in his bosom that neither could be soothed "by silence nor by speaking." A devouring melancholy preyed upon his heart, and seemed to be drying up the very blood in his veins. It was not a soft melancholy—the disease of the affections; but a parching, withering agony. I could see at times that his mouth was dry and feverish; he almost panted rather than breathed; his eyes were bloodshot; his cheeks pale and livid; with now and then faint streaks athwart them—baleful gleams of the fire that was consuming his heart. As my arm ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... person's shallow cleverness and conventional good-temper is more withering to the soul of the artist than the blindest bigotry which has the recklessness of genuine passion ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... and oilily.) My dear Mrs. Chalmers. I assure you the whole circumstance is unfortunate. But you are so palpably in the wrong that I cannot interfere—(Margaret turns from him in withering scorn.)—That ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... prolonged and withering glare, plucked a hairpin from her head and ostentatiously proceeded to skewer together the starchy white curtains that framed the window. Privacy secured and the sanctity of the English home thus pointedly vindicated, she and her husband disappeared into the murky background, ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... She looked to him for protection. She leaned upon his strength. She needed him. He could not—it almost seemed as if in common chivalry he could not—reveal to her the contemptible weakness which lay like a withering blight upon his whole nature. To own himself the slave of a married woman, and that woman her closest friend, would be to throw her utterly upon her own resources at a time when she most needed the support and guidance of a helping hand. Moreover, the episode ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... "Oh, Chesnel, no one but you would think of such a thing!" she added, with a withering look; before such a look from a woman's eyes no mortal can stand. "There is but one crime that a noble can commit—the crime of high treason; and when he is beheaded, the block is covered with a black cloth, as it ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... for he rever'd His mother's word; and so, thus standing there, He shouted; and Minerva, to his shout, Added a dreadful cry; and there arose Among the Trojans an unspeakable tumult. And as the clear voice of a trumpet, blown Against a town by spirit-withering foes, So sprang the clear voice of Aeacides. And when they heard the brazen cry, their hearts All leap'd within them; and the proud-maned horses Ran with the chariots round, for they foresaw Calamity; and the charioteers ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... wind Corn-fields bow the head, Sheltered in round valley depths, On low hills outspread. Early leaves drop loitering down Weightless on the breeze, First fruits of the year's decay From the withering trees. ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... by Sir Duncan," continued MacEagh, "and my brother was slain—his head was withering on the battlements which we scaled—I vowed revenge, and it is a vow I have ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... man I was continually measuring my strength; and as I conceived that I found, myself woefully wanting, he proved an excellent moral sedative to my else too rampant vanity. Few, indeed, were the persons who could feel themselves at ease under the withering sarcasms of his intolerable insolence. Much more to their astonishment than to their instruction, he would very coolly, and the more especially when ladies were present, correct the divinity of the parson, the pharmacy of the doctor, and the law of the attorney; and with that ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... method of fighting on foot more effective—we could maneuver with more certainty, and sustain less and inflict more loss. "The long flexible line curving forward at each extremity," as an excellent writer described it, was very hard to break; if forced back at one point, a withering fire from every other would be poured in on the assailant. It admitted, too, of such facility of maneuvering, it could be thrown about like a rope, and by simply facing to the right or left, and double-quicking in the same direction, every man ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... day by day, does the fever-fire trace Its incessant course down her fast-withering cheek, Till the smile that made light in the glow of her face, But the faint, fading glimpses of vigour bespeak, And her reason will fitfully pass into night— Into night even deeper than that of the blind, As the shade of the gibbet-tree ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... the dead child's young companions, a fifth walking behind with the ribboned coffin-lid. I have often seen these touching little parties moving through the bustling streets, the peaceful small face asleep under the open sky, decked with the fading roses and withering lilies. In all well-to-do families the house of death is deserted immediately after the funeral. The stricken ones retire to some other habitation, and there pass eight days in strict and inviolable seclusion. On the ninth day the great masses for the repose of the soul ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Miss Daisy. She flounced her full skirts, cast a withering glance at young Bell, and once more looked out ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... alas! goes by; And what ensues? The languid eye, The failing frame, the soul o'ercast; 'Tis WINTER'S sickening, withering blast, Life's blessed season—for ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... In yonder rippling bay, their naval host Did many a Roman chief and Asian King[15.B.] To doubtful conflict, certain slaughter bring: Look where the second Caesar's trophies rose![147][16.B.] Now, like the hands that reared them, withering: Imperial Anarchs, doubling human woes![ez] GOD! was thy globe ordained for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... to try again, this time successfully. He began to fasten the girth, and then paused in wonder and thought deeply, for the pin in the buckle would slide to no hole but the first. "Huh! Getting fat, ain't you, piebald?" he demanded with withering sarcasm. "You blow yoreself up any more'n I'll bust you wide open!" heaving up with all his might on the free end of the strap, one knee pushing against the animal's side. The "fat" disappeared and Hopalong laughed. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... without disappointment. But a young man had now spoken to her, to Linda,—had spoken to her words that she did not dare to repeat to any one,—had spoken to her twice, thrice, and she had not rebuked him. She had not, at least, rebuked him with that withering scorn which the circumstances had surely required, and which would have made him know that she regarded him as one sent purposely from the Evil One to tempt her. Now again had come upon her some terrible half-formed idea that it would be ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... sharply. "Ain't 'knowin'' my business? Psha!" His contempt was withering. Then his manner changed back to the triumph which the notice had inspired. "Say, it's a great piece of money. It surely is some bunch. Ten thousand dollars! Gee! His game's up. Lightfoot's as good as kickin' his heels agin the breezes. He's played ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... vomit death into the fated ten thousand. They halted, they stood their ground a moment against that withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about and swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment; the three-fourths reached it and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... saw that in a sudden vision of ruin! She would be noble to the uttermost limit of nobleness. She would threaten to destroy herself—and so he would save her! She would bid him cast her away—and so he would stand by her to the end! And the end would be simply the withering and shrivelling of those radiant qualities which he called his genius—qualities which were so precious to him, but about ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... I've a withering reply, And vanity I always do my best to mortify; A charitable action I can skilfully dissect; And interested motives I'm delighted to detect. I know everybody's income and what everybody earns, And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns; But to benefit humanity, however ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the dead literalism of their teachings, and the absence of the spirit of righteousness and virile morality therefrom; and in such denunciations the Pharisees are often coupled with the scribes. The judgment of the Christ upon them is sufficiently expressed by His withering imprecation: "Woe unto ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... which the scene takes place, the actual hour, the poet, no doubt in obedience to a law dictated to him by his public, kept his characters in communication with earth and heaven, with the dawn he described, the moon he painted, the evening he caused to be seen, the plants he portrayed as withering or reviving, the birds which he showed everywhere in the country or returning ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... mutual kindness, and he now stood forth to avenge them with a good will. The friends of Verres tried to procure a Praevaricatio, or sham accusation, conducted by a friend of the defendant, but Cicero stopped this by his brilliant and withering invective on Caecilius, the unlucky candidate for this dishonourable office. The judges, who were all senators, could not but award the prosecution to Cicero, who, determined to obtain a conviction, conducted it with the utmost despatch. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... left flank of the defenders. They saw the tall figure of Timmendiquas, a very god of war, leading on the Indians, with his fearless Wyandots in a close cluster around him. Colonel John Durkee, gathering up a force of fifty or sixty, charged straight at the warriors, but he was killed by a withering volley, which drove ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fell. The colonel fell beside me. I felt myself dying. I thought of those I loved, and fainted whilst searching with a withering hand ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... rode over, and made excuses for Matilda, who thought it wrong to go into society so soon after her husband's death. Finally, the constable appeared in full regimentals, with the stalwart Mrs. Rigby on his arm. That lady bestowed on the faithless Ben a glance of withering contempt, but the constable shook hands with him, as if he had been his ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of the poplar, and striking the hard surface of the road at a distance of fifty yards scattered itself like a huge ingot dropped from a blast furnace. Great clouds of dust descended and choked him. A withering ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... the human eye, that Mr. Hargrove threw instantly upon Frank; while his fine form sprung up erect. He did not speak, but merely transfixed him with a look. Frank curled his lip impotently, as he tried to return the old man's withering glances. ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... grows, unpruned, untamed, Terror to foemen's spear, A tree in Asian soil unnamed, By Pelops' Dorian isle unclaimed, Self-nurtured year by year; 'Tis the grey-leaved olive that feeds our boys; Nor youth nor withering age destroys The plant that the Olive Planter tends And the Grey-eyed ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... have found the garden—except, perhaps, for the big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their withering vines—and I felt very little interest in it when I got there. I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... feeling my eyes upon her, she looked up and met what she must have thought the impudent stare of an appraiser. Her face, which had been without color, pale and clear like the sky about the evening star, went crimson in a moment. She bit her lip and shot at me one withering glance, then dropped her eyelids and hid the lightning. When I looked at her again, covertly, and from under my hand raised as though to push back my hair, she was pale once more, and her dark eyes were fixed upon the water and the green ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... of short range weapons had instant effect. The enemy fell back under the withering hail. Headed by Seth a dozen men mounted the ramparts, and the next instant the vast corral formed a circle of leaping flame in the faces of the besiegers. The coal-oil had done its work, and the resinous pine logs yielded to the demands of those ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... sunset flushed the camp As on the hill their eyes they fed; The pickets dumb looks at the wagon dart; A handkerchief waves from the bannered tent— As white, alas! the face of the dead: Who shall the withering news impart? The bullet of Mosby ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... know it, The dream that all is a dream; The joy with the doubt below it That the bright things only seem. One moment of sad commotion, And one of doubt's withering rule— And the great wave-pulsing ocean ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... we put the bottom paddock under potatoes. Dad was standing contemplating the tops, which were withering for want of rain. He shifted his gaze to the ten acres sown with corn. A dozen stalks or so were looking well; a few more, ten or twelve inches high, were coming in cob; the rest had n't made ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... hope so!" exclaimed Elise, with a withering glance. "The idea of anybody being in such company as you ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... is even colder than it was, stronger and more withering now that the sun's faint warmth is withdrawn, and that the small and chilly stars possess the sky. Nevertheless, both the school-room windows are open. We are all huddled shivering round the hearth, yet no one talks of closing them. The fact is, that amateur cooking, though a graceful ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... long applause, perhaps, that the Professor was relieved from the explanation of this rather astounding phenomenon of the idealistic workings of a purely practical brain—or, as my impious friend scoffed the incongruity later, in a particularly withering allusion, as the "blank- blanked fallacy, don't you know, of staying the hunger of a howling mob by feeding 'em on ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... nature!—which characterize Mrs. Stowe's immortal book. Yet I feel assured that the effect produced by Uncle Tom's Cabin is not mainly or chiefly to be traced to the interest of the narrative, however captivating, nor to the exposures of the slave system, however withering: these would, indeed, be sufficient to produce a good effect; but this book contains more and better than even these; it contains what will never be lost sight of—the genuine application to the several branches of the subject ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... is this smile of the world, to win which we are bidden to sacrifice our moral manhood; this frown of the world, whose terrors are more awful than the withering up of truth and the slow going out of light within the souls of us? Consider the triviality of life and conversation and purpose, in the bulk of those whose approval is held out for our prize and the mark of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... them.—"Ask, and ye shall receive, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you," &c. It is believed, and no doubt it may be argued with success, that the moral and religious state of man really required a divine revelation. Never did the parched ground, the withering plant, the thirsty herds need the showers from heaven, more than man, that WORD of life which descended as the rain and distilled as the dew, when the gospel was published by a cloud of faithful witnesses, called of ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... Their spirits are humiliated and debased by a sense of inferiority, and their native courage cowed and daunted by the superior knowledge and power of their enlightened neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one of those withering airs that will sometimes breed desolation over a whole region of fertility. It has enervated their strength, multiplied their diseases, and superinduced upon their original barbarity the low vices of artificial life. It has ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... evil which came in consequence of the discharge of the volunteers, and prove its willingness to do right. Triumphantly did the Administration vindicate itself in the eyes of good people, and again did it place its withering disapproval upon the conduct of those who were ready to shout their applause over the worthy black officer's accidental humiliation. The Negro officer disappeared from the United States' Regiments as a Lieutenant ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... did not stop here. Death rarely lays his withering hand upon one household flower without touching another, and causing it to droop, wither, and fall to the ground. So it was in this case. William, the manly, intelligent, promising boy, upon whom the father had ever looked with love and pride so evenly balanced, that the preponderance ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... monotonous path lengthening out before them, with neither great joy to lighten it, or great sorrow to darken it, the same commonplace cares and duties until the end. 'This is doing us no good,' they think; 'life is slowly withering, zeal is gone. A flower cannot bloom in the desert! Let me go to a ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... the unity of purpose connecting this myriad of wills, and in the blind but unerring aim at a mark so remote, there is something which recalls to the mind those Almighty instincts that propel the migrations of the swallow, or the life- withering marches of the locust. Then again, in the gloomy vengeance of Russia and her vast artillery, which hung upon the rear and the skirts of the fugitive vassals, we are reminded of Miltonic images—such, for instance, as that of the solitary hand pursuing ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... saw the rugged mountain start to life with armed men! Like a tempest down the ridges swept the hurricane of steel, Rose the slogan of Macdonald—flash'd the broadsword of Lochiel! Vainly sped the withering volley 'mongst the foremost of our band, On we pour'd until we met them, foot to foot, and hand to hand. Horse and man went down like drift-wood, when the floods are black at Yule, And their carcasses are whirling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... of the Transvaal—and that without seeing a solitary Boer or having to fire a single bullet. The French historian of the Peninsular War declares that "the English were the best marksmen in Europe—indeed the only troops who were perfectly practised in the use of small arms." But then their withering volleys were sometimes fired at a distance of only a few yards from the wavering masses of their foes, and under such conditions good marksmanship is easy to attain. A blind man might bet he would not miss. On the other hand, he must be a good shot indeed ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... but remains a dreary waste, fenced about with broken gravestones, the one fresh green spot is the corner occupied by the monument{1} erected to the memory of Mary Wollstonecraft, and separated from the open space by an iron railing. There is no sign of withering willows in this enclosure. Its trees are of goodly growth and fair promise. And, like them, her character now flourishes, for justice is at ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... insight into the things of earth. They remembered better that Christ blasted a fig-tree for doing what the Father bade the poor plant do, than his tender dwelling upon grasses and lilies, sparrow and sheep. The withering of the tree made an allegory: while the love of flowers and streams was to those simple hearts perhaps an unaccountable, almost an eccentric thing. But had Christ drawn human breath in our bleaker Northern air, he would have perhaps, if those that surrounded him had ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the horses and let them refresh themselves by rolling on the sandy soil, and graze after a fashion upon the coarse tufts of withering herbage which grew around. There was no water here; but this did not so much matter, for both they and we had drunk at a little muddy pool we found not more than an hour before. We were finishing our meal of the food that we had brought with ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... pity we didn't leave long ago," suggested Jack Rynson, between whom and Amy there existed a sort of armed truce, "so that you could discover what a country morning was like." But before Amy could form a sufficiently withering reply, a tiny bird, perched on the topmost bough of a neighboring tree, had burst into such music that the little party stood silenced, and even playful ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... 'A withering fire from hundreds of rifles mowed down the troops like grass. Their gallant commander, Yeodskeemoff, fell dead, pierced by a dozen bullets. The captain of the grenadier company strode over his ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Prince. They have forced the only vigorous branch from the dying trunk—they have lopped the withering stem of its most promising shoot—they have exposed the sole companion of my labors and pleasures, the child to whom I have looked to close my eyes, when it shall please God to call me away, untaught, and young in lessons of honesty and virtue, ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the consequence? The consequence was, that Simmins and Timmins cut when they met at Westminster; that Mrs. Simmins sent back all the books which she had borrowed from Rosa, with a withering note of thanks; that Rosa goes about saying that Mrs. Simmins squints; that Mrs. S., on her side, declares that Rosa is crooked, and behaved shamefully to Captain Hicks in marrying Fitzroy over him, though she was forced to do it by her mother, and prefers ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lazy days on the Palomar. June had cast its withering smile upon the San Gregorio and the green hills had turned to a parched brown. Grasshoppers whirred everywhere; squirrels whistled; occasional little dust-devils whirled up the now thoroughly dry river-bed ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... of August, everywhere in woods and swamps, we are reminded of the fall, both by the richly spotted Sarsaparilla-leaves and Brakes, and the withering and blackened Skunk-Cabbage and Hellebore, and, by the river-side, the already ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... full of vital joy Uttered in rhythmic movements manifold, And sunbeams flashing on the face of things Like sudden smilings of divine delight,— A world of many sorrows too, revealed In fading flowers and withering leaves and dark Tear-laden clouds, and tearless, clinging mists That hung above the earth too sad to weep,— A world of fluent change, and changeless flow, And infinite suggestion of new thought, Reflected in the crystal of the heart,— A world of many meanings but no ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... redskins. Our little column stopped short, confused and panic-stricken, and for a brief instant we stood huddled in the narrow valley like sheep. Our muskets were lifted, but no foes were insight; we expected a withering fusillade to ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... quaint but half-destroyed little place consisting of one long street of ruined whitewashed houses—and looks towards the hills eastward, low concrete walls can be seen, half hidden, but speaking mutely of the withering storm of shell that had, in 1914, burst from them and swept ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... remember, as if it were but yesterday, the silent response which my heart made, when my uncle pronounced that withering sentence on me. "No!" was my indignant exclamation; "I may deserve a hundred public deaths; but if I know myself, I would never undergo one!—NOR WILL I." When that which I have written shall be read—other hopes and fears—other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... manifested in the flesh, in the basest, naughtiest, and most corruptible of all the creatures, even the very dregs of the creation, that have sunk down to the bottom! "All flesh is grass;" and what more withering and fading, even the flower and perfection of it! Is. xl. 6. Dust it is, and what baser? Gen. xviii. 27. And corruption it is, and what viler? 1 Cor. xv. 44. And yet God sent his Son in the flesh. Is this a manifestation? ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... do you mean? It is the only way to save her. Once we are married, she will forget. No doubt she will shed a few tears; but to save the body we must often lose a limb. It is even so. Things cannot go on as they are. We cannot watch her withering away under our very eyes; and that is what is actually happening. I have thought it all over, considered it from every point of view, and have come to the conclusion that—that, well, that we had better marry. You must have seen that I always liked you. ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... experiences of the past year had left traces which no after experience would be able to obliterate. She looked ten years older. Her wonderful dark eyes, glowing with a soft tender fire alone remained untouched by the withering hand of anxious love. They were as vital as ever they had been, and when Cornelia said so, she answered, "That is because my soul dwells in them, and my soul is always young. I have had a year, Cornelia, to crumble the body to ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... heat of the underlying stone would accelerate growth. Such premature and feeble shoots perish as quickly as they spring up; the fierce Eastern sun makes a speedy end of them, and a few days sees their springing and withering. It is a case of 'lightly come, lightly go.' Quick-sprouting herbs are soon-dying herbs. A shallow pond is up in waves under a breeze which raises no sea on the Atlantic, and it is calm again in a few minutes. Readily stirred emotion is transient. Brushwood catches fire ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a tender sigh Is flung upon your wing; Lose not the treasure as ye fly, Bear it where love and beauty lie, Silent and withering. ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... away, and September came to produce a new aspect of beauty in the landscape, by tinging the fading flowers and withering leaves with various shades of brown and crimson, purple and orange. One day, early in the month, when Tom came with the carriage, she told him to drive to Magnolia Lawn. She had long been wishing to revisit the ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... a withering look of intense hatred on the form of the nearly-unconscious prisoner, and then ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... theme she chose, A soft responsive voice was heard at every close: And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair;— And longer had she sung:—but with a frown Revenge impatient rose: He threw his blood-stain'd sword in thunder down; And with a withering look The war-denouncing trumpet took And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe! And ever and anon he beat The doubling drum with furious heat; And, though sometimes, each each dreary pause between, Dejected Pity at his side Her soul-subduing voice ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... put on a fondness which suddenly became a withering droop of the eyes: "Don't mince your smile so, grannie dear, I can hear the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... white flag to coax our men to stop firing. Then, in awe-inspiring tones, he sobs forth a tale of dark and dismal war, how our soldiers respected the white flag and rested on their arms, only to be mowed down by a withering rifle fire from the canaille who represent the enemy in the field. Having got so far, he does not feel justified in stopping until he has thrown in some flowery language concerning a Boer cannonade ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... was a free man then; at least I believed myself so. While I proclaimed the love of God to sinners, I also preached vehemently against sin. I never felt myself more at home than when I was painting the miserable bondage of those whom Satan held in his chains. I could speak with withering scorn of such as made a profession while they were living in any known wickedness. I was specially severe upon the drunkard's sin. But preaching such as mine, and in a large church, was very exhausting. I found that I wanted support; so I began with an egg beaten up with brandy, and took it ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... before me, but his body Torn by those hungry wolves! O grant my prayer, That I may see, before I die, the seed Of Irij hurl just vengeance on the heads Of his assassins; hear, O hear my prayer." —Thus he in sorrow for his favourite son Obscured the light which might have sparkled still, Withering the jasmine flower of happy days; So that his pale ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... dried miraculously in her eyes, her lips shut tightly together, and she flashed a withering glance at Marion. Then she rose and scattering her sympathizers right and left walked directly across the room to Perry, who also rose and stood looking at her in terror. Again silence crept ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... humiliating! It was more than Nan could bear. She sprang to her feet and without a word—with nothing but a glance of withering scorn at Delia—swept out of the room and ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... rain-maker wraps some leaves of a red and green striped creeper in a banana-leaf, moistens the bundle with water, and buries it in the ground; then he imitates with his mouth the plashing of rain. Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America, when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the sacred Buffalo Society fill a large vessel with water and dance four times round it. One of them drinks some of the water and spirts it into the air, making a fine spray in imitation of a mist or drizzling ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a vakeel, that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or round the factory to get some little business ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... that anything of this kind should have happened," said Mr. Farrington to our hero, "but I admire the spirit and bravery you have shown in defending this poor boy;" and turning to Hanks he gave him a withering rebuke, and discharged him on the spot. "Come to my desk," continued the indignant overseer, "and get a bill of your time, and never show your head in my ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... the majestic empire of the Romans. There can be no question that civilization achieved most splendid triumphs, even under the influence of pagan institutions. But it was not paganism which achieved these victories; it was the will and the reason of a noble race, in spite of its withering effects. It was the proud reason of man which soared to such lofty heights, and attempted to secure happiness and prosperity. These great ends were measurably attained, and a self-sufficient philosopher might have pointed to these victories as both glorious and permanent. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Dante is not quite so clear as that translator's work usually is. "One of them all I knew not" is an awkward periphrasis for "I knew none of them." Dante's indignant expression of the effect of avarice in withering away distinctions of character, and the prophecy of Scrovegno, that his neighbor Vitaliano, then living, should soon be with him, to sit on his left hand, is rendered a little obscure by the transposition of the word "here." Cary has also ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... devoured, Channing's works. I found a splendid copy of Voltaire in the Holkham library, and hunted through the endless volumes, till I came to the 'Dialogues Philosophiques.' The world is too busy, fortunately, to disturb its peace with such profane satire, such withering sarcasm as flashes through an 'entretien' like that between 'Frere Rigolet' and 'L'Empereur de la Chine.' Every French man of letters knows it by heart; but it would wound our English susceptibilities were ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... showed an almost imperceptible withering of the texture of the delicate skin. She raised her sleeves and showed Camille the same slight withering of the wrists, where the transparent tissue suffered the blue network of swollen veins to be visible, and three deep lines made ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... property both of the rebels who had suffered death, and of those more unfortunate men who were withering under the tropical sun, was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of greedy informers. By law a subject attainted of treason forfeits all his substance; and this law was enforced after the Bloody Assizes with a rigour at once cruel and ludicrous. The brokenhearted widows ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... chambers in Gray's Inn would have testified. Archbishop Parker, than whom 'a more determined book-fancier never existed in Great Britain,' and Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser, and the object of Tom Nash's withering scorn, were among the most inveterate book-collectors of Elizabethan London. Had Harvey—whose books usually contain his autograph on the title-page, and not a few of which were given him by Spenser—studied his books less, and the proper study of mankind a little more, he might have shown ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... said John, in a low voice, "of one Katherine Folliott, an humble violet plucked from her mossy bed, and after, flung withering away to reach ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... Theresa, to comradeship with the glossy occupant of the hearth-rug. George Eliot, as a true artist, sees what is faulty in the catastrophe, but she will not unsex her creation. Another of her characters, Rosamond, she pursues with a minute, withering, one would say vindictive, contempt. It is the beautiful, distinguished young creature who marries Lydgate on account of his high connections, and who trains him to do up her plaits of hair for her, and allows him to talk the "little language" of affection, which Rosamond, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... wheels; and, bled of strength, I waited the inevitable last. Then there came past A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring, And through the city-streets blown withering. She passed,—O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing! - And of her own scant pittance did she give, That I might eat and live: Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive. Therefore I kissed in thee The heart of Childhood, so divine for me; ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... dazzling glory there! They seem to whisper to the loved Who smoothed their path below, "Weep not for us, our tears have all Forever ceased to flow." Take from the grave, take from the grave, Those bright, but withering; flowers, The spirit that had loved them once Is now in fadeless bowers; Undying is the fragrance there, Eternal is the bloom; But the next breeze may waft away This perishing perfume. One fearful stamp, "Doomed to ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... them back to Merrytown the day after commencement. At last he stood in the doorway of the Nu Delta house and welcomed his father, but he had forgotten all about that youthful dream. He was merely aware that he was enormously glad to see the "folks" and that his father seemed to be withering into an old man. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... down into this state of drowsy self-contentment, this conformity-life with the world, forfeiting all the happiness of true religion, and risking and endangering the better life to come? Arise! call upon thy God! "Wilt thou not revive us, O Lord?" He might have returned nothing but the withering repulse, "How often would I have gathered thee; but thou wouldst not!" "Ephraim is joined to his idols; let him alone!" But "in wrath He remembers mercy." "They shall revive as the corn." "The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." How and where is reviving ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... thee by my throbbing heart: Thy withering power inspired each mournful line: Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part, Yet all the thunders of the scene are ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... again, are sometimes red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, fairy food, too beautiful to eat,—apple of the Hesperides, apple of the evening sky! But like shells and pebbles on the sea-shore, they must be seen as they sparkle amid the withering leaves in some dell in the woods, in the autumnal air, or as they lie in the wet grass, and not when they have wilted and faded in ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... nearly the same. Local circumstances may give some parts of the continent a preference over others, but, as points of emigration there is little choice. The southern portions are not subject to the withering droughts to which parts of the eastern coast are liable, and may be preferred on that account, but still there are districts in New South Wales as unexceptionable as any in Port Phillip or ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... least possible manipulative skill, it will yet find interpreters. It is the soul that looks out with burning eyes through the most gross fleshly filament. Whosoever should portray truly the life and death of a little flower—its birth, sucking in of nourishment, reproduction of its kind, withering and vanishing—would have shaped a symbol of all existence. All true facts of nature or the mind are related. Your little carving represents some mental facts as they really are, therefore fifty different true stories might be read from it. What your work wants is not truth, but ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... Reversed, each head at either's flank, they stood. Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse, Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked. Neighing within, at either's flank they licked; Played on a moment's force At courtship, withering to the crazy nod. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... kindly: was so innocent of any feeling save a wish to be good and motherly to these motherless children. Besides, she had such an intense craving for their affection, and even their companionship, for there were times when her life felt withering up within her—chilled to death by the gloom of the dull home, with its daily round of solemn formalities. If she had spoken, she would have burst into tears. To save herself from this, she rose and left ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... belong to well-bred people on a journey, and told out their private affairs. The man of business knit his brows and said that he "must reach C—— by a certain time or the consequences would be most disastrous." The fashionable lady wrapped herself in her furs and bestowed withering looks on the crying baby. The grumbler grumbled, and was sure somebody was to blame somewhere. The funny man bubbled and sparkled as usual, and sent rays akin to sunshine over lugubrious faces. The profane man opened his mouth and out came toads and scorpions, ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... supreme devotion—to put at his hand the lulling, inspiring draught. Did this fellah servant know what it meant—the sin of it, the temptation, the terrible joy, the blessed quiet; and then, the agonising remorse, the withering self-hatred and torturing penitence? No, Mahommed only knew that when the Saadat was gone beyond his strength, when the sleepless nights and feverish days came in the past, in their great troubles, when men were dying and only the Saadat could save, that this cordial lifted him out of misery ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not prove unacceptable if offered by the hand of true regard such visions have for ever fled and all is cancelled but being aware that tender relations are in contemplation beg to state that I heartily wish well to both and find no fault with either not the least, it may be withering to know that ere the hand of Time had made me much less slim than formerly and dreadfully red on the slightest exertion particularly after eating I well know when it takes the form of a rash, it might have been and was ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... all generous thoughts, From whose unsealed fulness, ever welling, Come to mankind their purest pleasure draughts; O gentle heart! Grief's only sanctuary, Safe refuge from the rude assaults of woe, Throbbing with mild compassion constantly, That never change nor withering can know; From the pure spring of virgin slumbers Peace falls upon the soul when thou art by, Lulling it sweeter than Philomel's numbers, Lapping it deep within felicity. O brightest! dearest! still there floats to thee The incense of pure ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the one catholic opinion that certain doctrines were not to be tolerated:" the only points of difference between them were "what those doctrines were," and how far intolerance might be carried. The withering lines are familiar to us, in which Milton denounces the "New Forcers of Conscience," who by their intolerance and "super-metropolitan and hyperarchiepiscopal tyranny," proved that in his proverbial words, "New Presbyter is but old ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... strangely and suddenly succeeded. Losses, misfortunes, poverty, want itself had overwhelmed them; his father's temper had become so soured, that the oldest friends of Francois Sarzeau declared he was changed beyond recognition. And now, all this past misfortune—the steady, withering, household blight of many years—had ended in the last, worst misery of all—in death. The fate of his father and his brother admitted no longer of a doubt; he knew it, as he listened to the storm, as he reflected ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... heaped up round masses of flowers and silver for our consideration and entertainment. At the supper given by David Helmsley for Lucy Sorrel's twenty-first birthday, there was, however, no note of dissatisfaction—the blase breath of the callow critic emitted no withering blight, and even latter-day satirists in their teens, frosted like tender pease-blossom before their prime, condescended to approve the lavish generosity, combined with the perfect taste, which made the festive scene a glowing picture of luxury and elegance. But Helmsley himself, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... swore horribly when the news was brought us from Piacenza, whilst I felt my heart sink and the last hope of Bianca—the hope secretly entertained almost against hope itself—withering ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... conviction,—sifting and weighing carefully every fact and detail, and trying the conclusions that had been drawn therefrom by the most rigorous and searching logic,—and then, assailing the credibility of the testimony brought forward to prove the habitual cruelty of his client, he gave utterance to a withering torrent of invective and sarcasm, in which the character of the main hostile witness shrivelled and blackened like paper in a flame. Then—having been eight hours on his feet—he began to avail himself of that last dangerous resource which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... sentiment no less arbitrary presumes to mark out for her the precise boundaries of womanly propriety; and she who ventures to step beyond them, must do it at the peril of encountering low sneers, coarse allusions, and the withering imputation of want ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... every family,—that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place,—that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension, —nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependents to protect,—nothing but this could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or could have made any portion of this powerful Commonwealth, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... The lawyer closed the door gently behind him, leaned back against it and folded his arms, cocking his head a little to one side. When he assumed this attitude in the courtroom, ears were always pricked up, as it usually foretold a flood of withering sarcasm. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... out there to see how passionately the poor little child-bride kissed the pale roses on which that shadow had fallen, and how she broke it from the stem and placed it close to her beating heart—that lonely, starved little heart, chilled under the withering frost of neglect, when life, love and happiness should have been just bursting into ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... acanthus up With tufts of yellow wool above the door When a man died in Greece and in Greek Islands, Grey stone by the blue sea, Or sage-green trees down to the water's edge. How many clanging years ago I, also withering into death, sat with him, Old man of so white hair who only, Only looked past me into the red fire. At last his words were all a jumble of plum-trees And white boys smelling of the sea's green wine And practice of his lyre. Suddenly The bleak resurgent mind Called ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... whereas he came planted in the spring, And had the sun before him of respect; We, set in th' autumn, in the withering And sullen season of a cold defect, Must taste those sour distastes the times do bring Upon the fulness of a cloy'd neglect. Although the stronger constitutions shall Wear out th' ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... advantage over us, for they were always ready, had cover, and always knew the ground to their immediate front; whereas we, their assailants, had to grope our way over unknown ground, and generally found a cleared field or prepared entanglements that held us for a time under a close and withering fire. Rarely did the opposing lines in compact order come into actual contact, but when, as at Peach-Tree Creek and Atlanta, the lines did become commingled, the men fought individually in every possible style, more frequently with the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... countries are very hot in the plains, they possess mountains where the air is mild. The coffee is generally grown half way up on their slopes. When cultivated on the lower grounds it is always surrounded by large trees, which shelter it from the torrid sun, and prevent its fruit from withering before their maturity. The harvest is gathered at three periods; the most considerable occurs in May, when the reapers begin by spreading cloths under the trees, then shaking the branches strongly, so as to make the fruit ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... they shrivel and wither like the dying leaves. The impulses and the shrinkings of the flesh perish in His Presence alike. The new life wrecks the old. "If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live"—that is what the withering leaves say. We are ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... comported with his pursuits and habits. On the other hand, the quiet temperament of my mother required some more exciting cause than the affections of her husband, to quicken those germs of deep, placid, womanly love, that certainly lay dormant in her heart, like seed withering with the ungenial cold of winter. The last meeting of such a pair was not likely to be attended with any violent ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... bosom, of my mother. Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother's tenderness while living! how heedless are we in youth of all her anxieties and kindness! But when she is dead and gone; when the cares and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts; when we find how hard it is to find true sympathy;—how few love us for ourselves; how few will befriend us in our misfortunes—then it is that we think of the mother we have lost. It is true I had always ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... profound stillness reigned throughout the hall,—you might have heard a leaf of paper fall in any part of it,—and every eye was riveted on the venerable Nestor of Massachusetts—the purest of statesmen, and the noblest of men! He paused for a moment, and, having given Mr. Garland a withering look, he proceeded to address ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... worse. He's too awful in every way. But he ought to have my aunt's money, because he's lived all his life with her, and is her nephew as much as I am. You see, my father went wrong." He stopped, amazed at himself. How easy it had been to say! He was withering up: the power to care about this ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... globe; knows seventeen languages; had a harem in Turkey and a Fayaway in the Marquesas; can be as polished as Bayard in the drawing-room, but is as gloomy as Conrad in the library; has a terrible eye and a withering glance, but can be instantly subdued by a woman's hand, if it is not his wife's; and through all his morose and vicious career has carried a heart as pure as ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... said the other, in tones of withering and unfathomable contempt, "my milk! Do you think I'd look at the beastly stuff when I'm out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We're all Christians in this room, though perhaps," he added, glancing around ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... old servant, though bare and withering like the scathed oak, was inexpressibly welcome to one who so deeply suffered from the crimes of duplicity. Williams soon recovered his strength under the care of his dear old master; and though the mountain cottage ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the white spored Agarics, has the power of reviving under moisture after withering, so it may represent a genus that endures longest. None of the fleshy ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... peered out like gleaming lights from beneath their overhanging brows. "No; you ought not to have attempted it," he answered, withering her with a glance. "You might have let the thing fall on the patient and killed him. As it is, can't you see you have agitated him with the flurry? Don't stand there holding your breath, woman: repair your mischief. Get a cloth and wipe it up, and give ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... unscalable But by a patient wing, a constant spell, Or by ethereal things that, unconfin'd, Can make a ladder of the eternal wind, And poise about in cloudy thunder-tents To watch the abysm-birth of elements. Aye, 'bove the withering of old-lipp'd Fate A thousand Powers keep religious state, 30 In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne; And, silent as a consecrated urn, Hold sphery sessions for a season due. Yet few of these far majesties, ah, few! Have bared their operations to this globe— Few, who with ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... regarded her as one who for some reason was entitled to their pity. And in this she was correct. They did pity her, for they remembered another gentle woman, whose brown hair had turned gray, and whose blue eyes had waxed dim beneath the withering influence of him she called her husband. She was dead, and when they saw the young, light-hearted Matty, they did not understand how she could ever have been induced to take that woman's place and wed a man of thirty-eight, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... cent. of the soldiers get a fortnight's leave of absence and a free pass; and there is joy in peasant homes over peasant charcoal pans. The dusky shades of evening are stealing over olive grove and withering vineyard, and every house lights up its tiny oil lamp, and every image of the Virgin is illuminated with a taper. In Eija, near Cordova, an image or portrait of the Virgin and the Babe new-born, hangs in well-nigh every room in every house. And why? Because the beautiful belief is rooted ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... self-confident and free from anger, which was quite appalling. How should they hesitate? Had they not truth, right, virtue, on their side? Did they not receive revelation direct from their hallowed reason? Reason is a hard sun: it gives light, but it blinds. In that withering light, without shade or mist, human beings grow pallid, the blood is sucked ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... engagement, and allowed her to throw herself away on a poor man, it was surely no one else's business to say a dissenting word. Percival might go home and lecture his own wife if he liked. 'It is a pity you and Gage are so worldly,' she said, in what was meant to be a withering tone. Audrey had never been so near quarrelling ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... O angel, are there, The myrrhic rapture of young hair, The lips of lust; And all the stenches of dust, Even the palm and the fingers of a hand burnt bare With a curling sweet-smelling crust, And the bitter staleness of old hair, Powder on a withering bust . ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... M. Panpan, time rolled on, and little Louis was born. This might have been a blessing, but while family cares and expenses were growing upon them, Panpan's strength and energies were withering away. He suffered little pain, but what there was seemed to spring from the old wound; and there were whole days when he lay a mere wreck, without the power or will to move; and when his feeble breath seemed passing away for ever. Happily, these relapses occurred only at intervals, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... startle her into making a confession; but no, her self-possession, even at that trying moment, was perfect. For perhaps a minute she stood speechless, regarding me with a rapidly changing expression of countenance, in which incredulity, surprise, horror, grief, indignation, and finally withering scorn and contempt, were portrayed with an amount of power and skill which I have never seen equalled; then she retired to her own apartments, locked herself in, and refused to see me for more than a week. And when at length we met, and I endeavoured in a somewhat calmer tone to reopen the subject, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... with a patient withering smile; she implied that her husband would be calling religion and ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... royalty, without regard to abilities or fitness. There was not indeed the tyranny of Spain or Naples or Austria; but everything indicated a movement toward it. Those six years which comprised the reign of Charles X. were a period of reaction,—a return to the Middle Ages in both State and Church, a withering blast on all noble aspirations. Even the prime minister Villele, a legitimatist and an ultra-royalist, was too liberal for the king; and he was dismissed to make room for Martignac, and he again for Polignac, who had neither ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... never heard of either of these works, and had no desire whatever for the restoration of society on a primitive basis of animalism, modified by light literature, clothing, and the moral law. For all modern theories he had a withering contempt, his own simple creed being that in the beginning God made man a Tory squire. His quarrel with the social order was a purely private and particular one. In our modern mythology, Custom, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... will take an opportunity in tomorrow morning's paper, of convincing him (the "Gazette") that he (the "Tea-Pot") both can and will be his own master, as regards style; he (the "Tea-Pot") intending to show him (the "Gazette") the supreme, and indeed the withering contempt with which the criticism of him (the "Gazette") inspires the independent bosom of him (the "TeaPot") by composing for the especial gratification (?) of him (the "Gazette") a leading article, of some extent, in which the beautiful vowel—the emblem of Eternity—yet so offensive to the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hope of Heaven. They sing of crystal fountains, of streets paved with gold, of meadows dressed with living green where they shall dwell as children who now as exiles mourn. There everlasting spring abides and never-withering flowers; there ten thousand times ten thousand clad in sparkling raiment throng up the steeps of light. Here in the church the most unimaginative people cry aloud ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... of the Reformation were felt just enough to produce a bold and free exercise of thought, without kindling the passions to fierce excitement. The storm which burst with all its fury on the Continent, wrapping nations in the flames of civil war, prostrating, withering, and overwhelming civil institutions, and marking its path with desolation did but exert a salutary influence in England. The lightning was seen flashing in the distant horizon, the rolling thunder could be heard afar off, but the fury of the storm fell at a distance; the atmosphere ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of life, we have the choice, according to our working, of turning all the voices of nature into one song of rejoicing, and all her lifeless creatures into a glad company, whereof the meanest shall be beautiful in our eyes, by its kind message, or of withering and quenching her sympathy into a fearful, withdrawn, silence of condemnation, or into a crying out of her stones, and a shaking of her dust against us. Nor is it any marvel that the theoretic faculty should be overpowered by this momentous operation, and the indifferent appeals and inherent ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... corrupting influence of Pharisaism is noticeable in every strata of society, as vicious and odious to-day as when the great Galilean, with the supreme contempt of a pure and genuine soul, denounced in such withering terms those who pretended to be what they were not. Evil and repulsive as hypocrisy must ever appear, it assumes colossal proportions as a moral crime, when it masquerades in the robes of official authority, for nothing so surely ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... hopelessly roused. "Never did that before," gurgled out of his net, just as we were dropping off once more; but a withering request from the Dandy to "gather experience somewhere else," silenced him till dawn, when he had the wisdom ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... elsewhere such as startled even itself. Of all branches of education, the science of gauging people and events by their relative importance defies study most insolently. For three or four generations, society has united in withering with contempt and opprobrium the shameless futility of Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. du Barry; yet, if one bid at an auction for some object that had been approved by the taste of either lady, one quickly ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... with a strong body of men. Guarionex did not await his coming. He saw that every attempt was fruitless to shake off these strangers, who had settled like a curse upon his territories. He had found their very friendship withering and destructive, and he now dreaded their vengeance. Abandoning, therefore, his rightful domain, the once happy Vega, he fled with his family and a small band of faithful followers to the mountains of Ciguay. This is a lofty chain, extending along the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... audacious child,' proceeded Mrs Wilfer, with a withering look at her youngest, on whom it had not the slightest effect, 'to please to be just to her sister Bella; to remember that her sister Bella is much sought after; and that when her sister Bella accepts an attention, she considers herself to be conferring qui-i-ite as much honour,'—this ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... for an instant, and he opened those wild, fearful eyes. Oh! what a world of wretchedness and despair was in that glance! He knew her; and conquering, with a convulsive effort, the agony which was withering up the last drops of life, caught her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... flower from my hair when I went back to my room last night. Did you take it, dear? If so, do not cherish it. I hate to think of anything withering on your breast. My love is deathless, James, and owns no such symbol as that. But perhaps you are not thinking of my love, but of my faults. If so, let the flower remain where you have put it; and when you gaze on it say, "Thus is it ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... they commanded the French positions in several directions. The two first attacking parties marched out in columns at 9.15 a. m., preceded by field-artillery fire. In fifteen minutes they had reached the summit. Then their difficulties began. In the face of a withering rifle and machine-gun fire they could proceed but slowly along the summits by the communication alleys, blasting their way through with hand grenades, and supported by the artillery, which was constantly kept informed of their movements by means of flag signals. The Germans ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... to Mr Macdougall in withering accents, the scorn of which was more than I could express in words. "I can't call you a man, and you aren't a sailor, by Jove, for sailors don't behave like that to poor friendless orphan boys! You have told me a heap of falsehoods ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... somewhere, over to Fort Garry, or perhaps he's crossed to Akimiski Island. The fleet have been mostly round that way this week past. Shall I show you round a bit, sir? I'm the acting manager, formerly sole manager." Oily Dave contrived to throw a withering emphasis on the latter adjective, and roiled up his eyes in a manner meant to imply injured innocence, which, however, only expressed low-down ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... matter for that. He has fixed everything so that it can never be got straight—never in the world. It will just have to remain a hideous mass of—of—I don't know what; and I have simply got to on withering with despair at the point where I left off. But I don't care! That's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... terrific as the dock drifted southward; hunger, that gnawed like rats at the empty stomachs of the crew; withering heat, aching hunger, growing despair—that was life on ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... which speaks of the "withering" of the grass, becomes even more striking if we remember that grass in Eastern lands often grows so tall as to reach to the saddle, as a horseman rides through it. But this tall grass withers away as soon as it is smitten by the burning heat of the sun. The apostle ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... because they have both filled out and grown more florid and healthy; but papa is withering away, Evelyn; shrinking day by day—his very step has changed recently. Oh, I hope, I hope I may be deceived!" And I covered my face with my hands, praying aloud, as I did sometimes irresistibly when greatly ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... parent warns his child of the ill effects that may be expected from the line of behaviour he is taking, and when those effects are realised, he says, "Well, what did I tell you?" and adds a grunt of withering contempt. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... between these two states of equally natural growth, the point of difference that forced itself on me (and practically enough, in the work I had in my own wood), was not so much the withering and waste of the one, and the life of the other, as the thorniness and cruelty of the one, and the softness of the other. In Malham Cove, the stones of the brook were softer with moss than any silken ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the year we put the bottom paddock under potatoes. Dad was standing contemplating the tops, which were withering for want of rain. He shifted his gaze to the ten acres sown with corn. A dozen stalks or so were looking well; a few more, ten or twelve inches high, were coming in cob; the rest had n't ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... believed myself so. While I proclaimed the love of God to sinners, I also preached vehemently against sin. I never felt myself more at home than when I was painting the miserable bondage of those whom Satan held in his chains. I could speak with withering scorn of such as made a profession while they were living in any known wickedness. I was specially severe upon the drunkard's sin. But preaching such as mine, and in a large church, was very exhausting. I found that I wanted support; so I began with an egg beaten up with brandy, and took it just ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... he gave him a withering look, 'I'll fine you two dollars and a half and costs. Officer, take charge of the prisoner until it's paid!' It took about ten dollars to cover everything, which I paid, McKay returning it when he reached his camp. Whoever named that alcalde ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... plunged into the extremely difficult experiment of democratic, of popular, self-government, after enduring the atrophy of every quality of self-control, self-reliance, and initiative throughout three withering centuries of existence under the worst and most foolish form of colonial government, both from the civil and the religious standpoint, that has ever existed. The marvel is not that some of them failed, but that some of ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... notwithstanding, and she knew it, and sickened under it as under an evil influence. He was very angry with her—she was fully conscious of that—unjustifiably, unreasonably angry. More than once, when Mr. Granger was especially attentive, she had encountered a withering glance from those dark gray eyes, and she had been weak enough, wicked enough perhaps, to try and make him perceive that Mr. Granger's attentions were in no way pleasant to her. She could bear anything better than that he should think her ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... his sullen, morose, and bloated features. The cardinal took no notice of the clamour around him, but now and then, when an expression of dislike was uttered against him, for he had already begun to be unpopular with the people, he would raise his eyes and direct a withering glance at the hardy speaker. But these expressions were few, for, though tottering, Wolsey was yet too formidable to be insulted with impunity. On either side of him were two mounted attend ants, each caring a gilt poleaxe, who, if he had given ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ideas. We will persuade America by the eloquence of American principles. In one of the fierce Western battles among the mountains, General Thomas was watching a body of his troops painfully pushing their way up a steep hill against a withering fire. Victory seemed impossible, and the General—even he a rock of valor and patriotism—exclaimed, "They can't do it; they'll never reach the top!" His chief-of-staff, watching the struggle with equal earnestness, placed his hand on his commander's ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Africanus says: "Although to the wise the consciousness of noble deeds is a most ample reward of virtue, yet this divine virtue craves, not indeed statues that need lead to hold them to their pedestals, nor yet triumphs graced by withering laurels, but rewards of firmer structure and more enduring green." "What are these?" says Laelius. Scipio replies by telling his dream. The time of the vision was near the beginning of the Third Punic War, when Scipio, no longer in his ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... the gallantry of her neighbours, passed an evening of delirious happiness. In those days I had an aesthetic soul above the 'Eventreurs de Paris,' and I made fun of it to Paragot, whose thoughts were far away. When I perceived this, I kept my withering sarcasm to myself, and realised that a flattened man cannot be blown like a bladder into permanent rotundity even by the faith and affection of a little art-student. But I marvelled all the more at his ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... applied a match to the tarry pieces of the long-boat, which had been placed at the foundation, and the flames at once leaped up and began to lick greedily round the timber, winding through the interstices and withering up the leaves. Soon a thick smoke began to ascend, for much of the timber in the pile was green, and before the sun had set a dense black cloud was rising straight up like a pillar and spreading out into the sky. As the fire gathered strength, a great tongue ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... and love That those night-loving wings had poised above,— Where was it gone? Lost, lost forevermore! Only a cottage, dull and gray, In the cold light of dawn, With iron bars across the door: Only a garden where the withering heads Of flowers, presaging decay, Hung over barren beds: Only a desolate field that lay Untilled beneath the desolate day,— Where Eden seemed to bloom I found but these! So, wondering, I passed along my ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... remains a dreary waste, fenced about with broken gravestones, the one fresh green spot is the corner occupied by the monument{1} erected to the memory of Mary Wollstonecraft, and separated from the open space by an iron railing. There is no sign of withering willows in this enclosure. Its trees are of goodly growth and fair promise. And, like them, her character now flourishes, for justice is at last ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... a missile to hurl at him, but there being nothing handy, she tried the effect of a withering glance, to which he responded by making a face at her. A storm was evidently brewing, but fortunately just at that moment the tea arrived, and caused a diversion which prevented further demonstrations. Happily for those ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... parent-forms. Negative results are not of much value; but Reisseck, Caspary, and myself, tried in vain to cross C. laburnum and purpureus; when I fertilised the former with pollen of the latter, I had the nearest approach to success, for pods were formed, but in sixteen days after the withering of the flowers, they fell off. Nevertheless, the belief that C. adami is a spontaneously produced hybrid between these two species is supported by the fact that such hybrids have arisen in this genus. In a bed of seedlings ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... goes on, my aunt will have an administration as important as that of a European state. Oh! you are happy here, you people; you are busy. I amuse myself! And if you knew how it wearies me! I am withering, consuming myself, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... responded Uncle Remus, sententiously. "Fun deze days would n't er counted fer fun in dem days; en many's de time w'at I see folks laughin'," continued the old man, with such withering sarcasm that the little boy immediately became serious,—"many's de time w'at I sees um laughin' en laughin', w'en I lay dey aint kin tell w'at deyer laughin' at deyse'f. En 'taint der laughin' w'at pesters me, nudder,"—relenting a little,—"hit 's dish yer ev'lastin' ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony's oration over the body of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and taking the War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It was not with me then, as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions, and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... weather and foul calls for courage and grit, and the lads felt justly proud of the responsibility that had been laid upon them. There would be many a shift to make on the ice, they knew. There would be blinding blizzards and withering arctic winds to face, and no end of hard work. But these lads of The Labrador loved to stand upon their feet like men and face and conquer the elements like hardy men of courage. This is the way of boys the world over—eager for the time when they may assume the ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... one important miracle, that of cursing and withering the fig tree. Some consider that a miraculous power was also used in the cleansing of the temple. The teachings may be grouped as follows: (a) The question about Christ's authority and his reply by question and the three parables ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... do with this!" said Sylvia in tones of withering scorn. "Whatever else he lacks, he has a sense of honour. But you—you are a wicked woman, unprincipled, cruel, venomous. It may be my father's duty to live with you, but—thank heaven—it is not mine. You have come into my home and cursed it. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... from Zoevo. I'm Nikta's mother from Zoevo, my dearie. Good afternoon to you. He's withering, withering away, poor dear—your brother, I mean. He came out himself. "Send for my sister," he said, "because," said he ... Dear me, why, I do believe, ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... a well-furnished room. A lady with taste must at one time at least have presided in it—but then withering does so much for beauty—and that not of stuffs and THINGS only! The furniture of it was very modern compared with the house, but not much of it was younger than the last James, or Queen Anne, and it had all a stately old-maidish look. Such venerable rooms have been described, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... garments of success. The formula is repeated in a low chant or intonation, the voice rising at intervals, after the manner of a revival speaker. Then turning to the black bead in his left hand he addresses it in similar manner, calling down the most withering curses upon the head of the victim. Finally looking up he addresses the stream, under the name of Y[^u]['][n]w[)i] G[^u]nahi[']ta, the "Long Person," imploring it to protect his client and raise him to the seventh heaven, where he will be secure ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... miserable hues; Leaves fell to ashes in the air's hot breath, And all awaited universal Death. The sleepy birds, scared from their mossy nest, Beat through the evil air in vain for rest; And many a one, the withering shades among, Wakened to perish o'er its brooded young. The cattle, startled with the sudden fright, Sicken'd from food, and madden'd into flight; And steed and beast in plunging speed pursued The desperate struggle of ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... said Corrie, in a tone of withering sarcasm,—"suppose all this happened to Alice, ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... forces gives the historian an opportunity of dropping a withering sneer at an unfortunate man, so provincial in his notions as to suppose that a hundred pounds or two would be of any avail ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... break over the desolate hills, the fun began. From three sides the Indians poured into the camp a withering fire. As a result the entire command became panic stricken. Seven men were knocked down, almost at the first fire, and it has always been a matter of surprise to me that Hasbrook, old campaigner as he was, should be caught off his guard. It began to ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... be, and ten paces off there were twenty children kicking and clattering at their ease. I point them out to the Swiss. "They come to pray," says he. "YOU don't come to pray, you—" "When I come to pay," says I, "I am welcome," and with this withering sarcasm, I walk out of church in a huff. I don't envy the feelings of that beadle after receiving point blank such ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the house had grown quiet in its besotted sleep. Then I crept back to a dark corner by the great hearth where the stone was warm to the touch and whence I might see if any passed along the hall. I was all alone there with the drained goblets, the withering garlands, and the gutted torches, not a soul abroad, and not a sound save the breathing of the dormant stag-hounds by the hearth, or the faint disputes of the rats over the pasty fragments ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... yourselves, it appears," she said, in the old withering tone that they were learning to forget. "Of course, here nothing matters; one may as well be a savage as an elegante in the wilderness; but I should be sorry to meet you in ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... fellow enlisted in Clare or Kerry, sent over fifteen thousand miles of sea, quartered in a depressing and pestilential climate. He fights for the Government; he conquers for it; he is wounded; he is laid on his pallet, withering away with fever, under that terrible sun, without a friend near him. He pines for the consolations of that religion which, neglected perhaps in the season of health and vigour, now comes back to his mind, associated ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Hare answered with withering scorn. "What sort of a time would you have had if some one had shot you all over the back and you must creep away to die of pain and starvation? How would you have enjoyed it if, from day to day, you had been forced to live in terror of cunning monsters, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... latch. The grass was crushed enough to form a path to the front door, which stood open. She led the way into a large, low room off the little hall. The floor was bare. There was a large table in the centre, heaped with books, and some withering flowers stood in a glass. A couple of common chairs, a mattress, on which was thrown an antique curtain of faded blue as a drapery; on the white-washed wall, a tiny and coquetish slipper of yellowish silk, nailed through the sole. ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... a look of withering scorn, seemed to afford the stranger vast entertainment. He made the wrathful lady a low, ironical bow, and clapped his hands ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... when a further advance without opening fire is impossible; and even in defence, when access to the ammunition reserve is likely to be far easier than in an attack, withholding fire until close range is reached is generally more effective than opening at a longer range. The tactical value of a withering fire at close range from a hitherto passive defender has again and again been proved in battle. On the Heights of Abraham (September 13, 1759) General Wolfe had assembled his troops and he awaited Montcalm's attack. Not a shot was fired by the defenders until the ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... philosophy ever stem the course of God's will, it would be one which, well followed, might secure to man some greater portion of mortal peace than he possesses. But to aspire was the ordinance of God; and, viewed rightly, the withering of the flowers upon each footstep we have taken upwards, is no discouragement; for if we shape our path aright, there is a wreath of bright blossoms crowning each craggy peak before us, as we ascend to snatch the garland ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... domesticated civilization in the most thickly- populated workshop in Europe, counting every blade of grass and every kernel of wheat and making its pleasures go a long way at small cost; a hothouse of a land, with the door about to be opened to the withering ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... which have not yet painted the clouds in their setting—above all, along the passed path of his life are neglected flowers of love lying which he has walked on with scarce a smile of thanks for the throwers, whose hands, perchance now withering, he longs ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... heath, with withering brake grown o'er, Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor; From thence a length of burning sand appears, Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears; Rank weeds, that every art and ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the gaping wound from a cannon shot. The door and window shutters were of heavy oak, swinging inward and fastening with bars; yet now they were open, and through them could be seen a dreary stretch of river bottom, withering beneath the rays of a ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... sneer, but only replied to it by one of those withering looks with which he was accustomed to intimate his mortal resentment. He spoke, however, with ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... he squatted himself down on the stool of a large hemlock, which, being recently cut down, cumbered the woodside with its giant stem, and secured him, with its evergreen top now lowly laid and withering, from the most narrow scrutiny; while I, giving the gallant horse his head, went at a brisk hand-gallop across the firm short turf of the fair sloping hill-side, taking a moderate fence in my stroke, which Peacock cleared in a style that satisfied me Harry had by no means exaggerated his capacity ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... that in folk-tales the life of a person is sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the person. Among the M'Bengas in Western Africa, about the Gaboon, when two children are born on the same day, the people plant two trees of the same kind and dance round them. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the first reason. "What do you mean, young lady, about slammin'; that's what I want to know." His tone was belligerent. Mrs. Reynolds threw him a withering look. "Here, Suzanna," she said; "give me the bag, and you sit down. Take your hat off, my brave little lass. 'Twas but you and you alone could think of this ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... barr'd the sinking warrior's way: At length the chief divides his martial force, And bids Alphonso, by a sep'rate course, Lead o'er the hideous desart half his train— 135 "And search, he cried, this drear, uncultur'd plain: "Perchance some fruitage withering in the breeze, "The pains of lessen'd numbers may appease; "Or Heav'n in pity, from some genial shower, "On the parch'd lip one precious ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... remarkable hills farther within the country; their sides all spotted with woods and savannahs. But these on the mountains' sides appeared of a rusty colour, not so pleasant and flourishing as those that we saw on the south side of the island; for the trees seemed to be small and withering; and the grass in the savannahs also looked dry, as if it wanted moisture. But in the valleys, and by the sea side, the trees looked here also more green. Yet we saw no good anchoring-place, or opening, that gave us any encouragement to ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... looking at you amid the lovely, quivering foliage. Risler arranged his bouquets artistically, drawing his inspiration from the very nature of the plants, trying to understand thoroughly their manner of life, which can not be divined after the withering ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... their teachings, and the absence of the spirit of righteousness and virile morality therefrom; and in such denunciations the Pharisees are often coupled with the scribes. The judgment of the Christ upon them is sufficiently expressed by His withering imprecation: "Woe unto you, scribes ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... I remember, as if it were but yesterday, the silent response which my heart made, when my uncle pronounced that withering sentence on me. "No!" was my indignant exclamation; "I may deserve a hundred public deaths; but if I know myself, I would never undergo one!—NOR WILL I." When that which I have written shall be read—other hopes and fears—other punishments, perchance, than man can awaken ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... field. Gathering her skirts about her with a last gesture of contempt, she sailed towards the door, resolved not to demean herself by a single word. But halfway across the room her resolution, which had nearly cost her a fit, gave way. She turned, and withering the three travellers with a glance, 'You—you abandoned creature!' she cried. 'I'll see you in the stocks yet!' And she swept ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... cross-questioning at McGivney's hands. Peter, needless to say, agreed with her; his heart threatened to collapse at the thought of such an ordeal. What Peter really wanted to do was to quit the whole thing right there and then; but he dared not say so, he dared not face the withering scorn of his confederate. Peter clenched his hands and set his teeth, and when he passed a street light he turned his face away, so that Nell might not read the humiliating terror written there. But Nell read it all the same; Nell ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... arrive at another most memorable period in newspaper history—the appearance of the Letters of Junius. The interest in the discovery of the source of these withering diatribes has been almost as great as in that of the Nile, but, unlike that 'frightened and fugitive' river, their origin will probably never be discovered with any certainty. A neat little library might be formed of the books and pamphlets that have been written upon this 'vexed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had not yet suffered the last withering change. Her young countenance was hushed and serene, and but for the fixedness of the smile, you might have thought the lips moved. So delicate, fair, and gentle were the features that it was scarcely possible to believe ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... upon that of very fine ladies in the seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to 1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most of her thoughts. In ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... delicate nerves lose tone and tension, their brains become feeble and flabby, their minds flutter out weakly in muslin and ribbons, their vanity kindled by injudicious admiration, the sweet child—unconsciousness withering away in the glare of indiscriminate gazing, the innocence and simplicity and naturalness and child-likeness swallowed up in a seething whirlpool of artificialness, all the fine, golden butterfly-dust of modesty and delicacy and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... yells the Sammies swept over the first line of German trenches. The Boches had deserted them in the face of a withering rifle and machine-gun fire. ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... hero of the 26th February may become the hero of the 9th January. Unite yourself with a people which loves you, which offers you fortune, life, everything. Prince! how sweet is it to behold the cordial expansion of the feeling of free men! but how distressing to witness the withering in the bud of hopes so justly founded! Banish, Sire, for ever from Brazil, multiform flattery, hypocrisy of double face, discord with her viperous tongue. Listen to truth, submit to reason, attend to justice. Be your attributes frankness and loyalty. Let the constitution be the pole-star to ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... might canonize them, and the priesthood bow submissively to their spiritual guidance, still they remained for all that but mortals of dust and clay, and their bulky tomes yet retain the swarthiness of the tomb about them, the withering impress of humanity. Such being the case we, who do not regard them quite so infallible, feel no surprise at a circumstance which sorely perplexed the monks of old, they unchained and unclasped their cumbrous "Works of the Fathers," and pored over those massy expositions with ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... dealer was a thin, ascetic person, with cold gray eyes and two distinct sets of manners; one for his customers and another for his employees; and the look he gave me was meant to be withering. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... line. Moments are ages now. Seconds are years. How fast men live when everything is at stake! Ah! but how fast they die down in that ravine! Up, down, across, through, over it, drive the withering blasts, cutting, tearing, sweeping through the column, which shakes, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the prisoner turned to me with a bow. "Yes, sir," he said with dignity, "I am M. de Pavannes. I have not the honour of knowing you, but you seem to be a gentleman." He cast a withering glance at the captain as he said this. "Perhaps you will explain to me why this violence has been done to me. If you can, I shall consider it a favour; if ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... of these hopeless solitudes only the more apparent, abandoned, as they then were, alike by man, beast, and bird. No living thing remained in these valleys, for water, that element so essential to life, was a want too obvious in the dismal silence, (for not an insect hummed,) and the yellow hues of withering vegetation." On the next page of the journal, under the events of the following day, what a contrast appears:—"The evening was beautiful; the new grass springing in places where it had been burnt, presented a shining verdure ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... favourite quotation of Ramsay's, who was amused with the remark of Withering's or Woodward's botany, repeated in his letters for long after:—"The organ at St. John's gives universal satisfaction—a great ornament to our ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... planted in the spring, And had the sun before him of respect; We, set in th' autumn, in the withering And sullen season of a cold defect, Must taste those sour distastes the times do bring Upon the fulness of a cloy'd neglect. Although the stronger constitutions shall Wear out th' infection of distemper'd ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that kills a' ither things, His withering touch 'twill brave, 'Twill live in joy, 'twill live in grief, 'Twill live beyond the grave! 'Twill live, 'twill live, though buried deep, In true heart's memorie— Oh! we forgot that ane sae fair, Sae bricht, sae young, could dee, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... is the captain now," whispered Condy so soon as the other had removed from him a glance of withering scorn. ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... many observations, which, alas! strengthened her fears. She saw that the banks were too dry, and that the grass on the shore and the trailing plants on the rocks were withering away. She caused marks to be made along the borders, and examined them day after day, in all directions of the wind, at last the horrible idea became a certain fact,—that the surface of the ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... never been fully portrayed. No pencil is black enough to paint the picture and do it full justice. No tongue is eloquent enough to tell the sad, sad story in all its details. It has so spread itself as to compel us to style it a wide and verily a withering curse. It is the parent of many physical disorders, that begin with bleared eyes, a blistered tongue, general derangement of the stomach, paralysis of the nerves, and hardening of the liver; and to so great an extent it poisons ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... the Transvaal—and that without seeing a solitary Boer or having to fire a single bullet. The French historian of the Peninsular War declares that "the English were the best marksmen in Europe—indeed the only troops who were perfectly practised in the use of small arms." But then their withering volleys were sometimes fired at a distance of only a few yards from the wavering masses of their foes, and under such conditions good marksmanship is easy to attain. A blind man might bet he would not miss. On the other hand, he must be a good shot indeed who can ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... and so the battle commenced. It was still raging when Jane came to say that tea was ready; but the losses on both sides had been terribly severe. The invading army still pressed forward, though the "57th" were once more decimated by the withering fire; and nothing actually remained of the "Coldstream Guards" but a kettle-drummer of uncertain nationality, and a man carrying a red and green flag, which he might very possibly have captured from some Sunday-school treat. The opposite side were in no better plight: men were lying crushed ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... the withering influence of reactionary Judaeophobia compromised and crippled the second attempt at inner reforms in Judaism. Both movements soon passed out of existence, and their founders subsequently left Russia. Gordin went to America, and, renouncing his ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... arrived. It was no longer an individual struggle, but a party contest between the ins and outs. The question was, whether the withering influence of the overseers, the domination of the churchwardens, and the blighting despotism of the vestry-clerk, should be allowed to render the election of beadle a form—a nullity: whether they should ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... appear in most cases to have been brought into action by the impulse of private malice. They occasioned mortality of greater or less extent in man and beast. They blighted the opening prospect of a plentiful harvest. They covered the heavens with clouds, and sent abroad withering and malignant blasts. They undermined the health of those who were so unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were notorious two or three ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... obstinacy which showed that the finest material for soldiery this planet holds was that in which undaunted hearts beat beneath blue blouses. Springing over the front of their breastworks, they drove back with a withering fire the force assailing them in the rear. This beaten off, they jumped back to their proper places, and repulsed the assault in front. This was the way the battle was waged until night compelled a cessation of operations. Our boys were ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... occurrence here, and at times they do much mischief. If the flames are once fairly kindled in dry weather, they will spread in all directions as the wind varies, burning sometimes for weeks together, until they have swept over miles of woodland, withering the verdure, destroying the wood already cut, and greatly injuring many trees which they do not consume. Several years since, in the month of June, there was quite an extensive fire on the eastern range of hills; it lasted for ten days or a fortnight, spreading several miles in different ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... unshrinking gaze, Sustain, rash youth, the withering blaze Of that unearthly eye, That blasts where'er it lights—the breath That, like the Simoom, scatters death On all that ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... have been the joys of youth. I have had so exquisite a pleasure in the mere sense of living that old age, as it comes near, terrifies me by its dull eyes and gray hairs. I have lived the life of a butterfly. Summer is over, and I see my flowers withering; and my wings are chilled by the first airs of winter. Yes, I envy Trevanion; for in public life no man is ever young, and while he can work ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mercy for slackers. She was possessed of a certain amount of dry humor, greatly appreciated by the form en bloc, though each quaked privately lest, through some unlucky slip, she might find herself the object of the smart but withering satires. Despite her strictness, "Bunty" was popular. She was an admirable tennis player, and a formidable champion in a match "Mistresses v. Girls." Her strong personality fascinated Winona, who would have done much to gain her approval. ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... venerable Kanwa has sent me by these hermits?— Perchance their sacred rites have been disturbed By demons, or some evil has befallen The innocent herds, their favorites, that graze Within the precincts of the hermitage; Or haply, through my sins, some withering blight Has nipped the creeping plants that spread their arms Around the hallowed grove. Such troubled thoughts Crowd through my mind, and fill me ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... were edged with yellow, he would keep out of the way altogether. It shamed him terribly to think of his momentary panic; he cursed himself for a coward, and dug his clenched fists into both pockets. But even as he stood there, withering himself with self-scorn, he could not help hoping that his aunt and uncle would find it convenient to go to Paris soon. That would leave him free to take his own chances by remaining, to be near Lorraine. For it did not occur to him that he might leave Morteyn ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... with the story of Bamfylde Moore Carew in its every detail. Then I touched upon beer, the British bruiser, “gentility-nonsense,” the “trumpery great”; then upon etymology, traced hoity-toityism to toit, a roof,—but only to have my shallow philology dismissed with a withering smile. I tried other subjects in the same direction, but with small success, till in a lucky moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett. There is a very scarce eighteenth-century pamphlet narrating the story of Ambrose Gwinett, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... journey to London, and the whole of her glittering toilette apparatus lay about on the marble dressing-table. The atmosphere of the room was almost oppressive for the rich odors of perfumes in bottles whose gold stoppers had not been replaced. A bunch of hot-house flowers was withering upon a tiny writing-table. Two or three handsome dresses lay in a heap upon the ground, and the open doors of a wardrobe revealed the treasures within. Jewelry, ivory-backed hair-brushes, and exquisite china were scattered ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... the one in gray. How should the charge be met? By immediate and steady fire, or by withholding his fire till the lines were face to face, and then pouring upon the Federals a blighting storm of lead? Gordon decided on the latter, believing that a sudden and withering burst of deadly hail in the faces of men with empty guns would be more ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... mustn't sigh. I expect to be congratulated, not pitied," said Julian, gaily. "A wife will sweeten all the cares and sorrows of life, and instead of withering away my prime in selfish isolation, and spending these still half-youthful years in loneliness, and without a real home, I shall feel myself complete in the materials of happiness. After all, ambition such as ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... our nuptial hour Draws on apace; four happy days bring in Another moon; but, oh, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame or a dowager, Long withering out a young ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... him jocularly to know why he was so finely dressed. George Washington overwhelmed her with a look of such infinite contempt and such withering scorn that all the other servants forthwith fell upon her for "interferin' in Unc' George Wash'n'ton's business." At last the Major entered the garden and bade George Washington follow him; and George ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... fired, as they could be brought to bear on the lugger, as she forged alongside. The sweeps had already been got in, and the lugger's eight guns poured their contents simultaneously into the brig, then a withering volley was fired, and, headed by O'Grady, the soldiers ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... Christian gathered up her pack of terriers, hound puppies, and red setters, with the farm collie to complete its absurdity, and walked fast. October was just ending; the willows along the river-bank were yellow, the reeds in the ditches that ran beneath each fence were greying and withering. The successive profiles of wood and hill, down the valley of the river went from orange and brown to a reddish purple, until, in the large serenity of the autumn evening, they softened to the universal blue ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour? All assemblies of jollity, all places of public entertainment, exhibit examples of strength wasting in riot, and beauty withering in irregularity; nor is it easy to enter a house in which part of the family is not groaning in repentance of past intemperance, and part admitting disease by negligence, or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... is blithe and gay—except for one depressing thought. The nearer you get to the New York custom-house, the heavier becomes the load of luggage on your mind. Dresses, hats, wraps, lingerie, so gaily bought in Paris, lie withering like Dead Sea fruit in the forlorn cold storage of furiously labelled ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... the depths of my soul, And visions prophetical burst on my sight, As he carried me forth in the power of his might. Around me I saw in a desolate heap The relics of those who had slept their death-sleep, In the midst of the valley, all reckless and bare, Like the hope of my country, lie withering there,— ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... story of that chance meeting. You were very liberal on account of old acquaintance's sake, were you not? entertained the boy till his pocket was empty, didn't you?" and the lawyer cast a look of withering contempt on ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... exclaimed, "Mr. Hamilton!" while a suspicion of the truth flashed like lightning upon her. The next moment he stood before them, Uncle Nat, his glittering black eyes fixed upon Eugenia, who quailed beneath that withering glance. ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... powers. Instead of flying straight before it, and being inevitably overtaken, she ran at once to the river and galloped madly down the shallow margin. Before the flames were actually upon her, she was beyond the zone of their fury. But she felt the withering blast of them, and their appalling roar was in her ears. With starting eyes and wide, palpitating nostrils, she ran on and on, and stopped only when she sank exhausted in a rude cove. There she lay with panting sides and watched far behind her the wide red arc ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... deal of this sort of chaff was current, so that the most dunder-headed boy had plenty on the tip of his tongue. A small and indignant knot of townspeople, headed by a stout and severe middle-aged woman, with two big boys, her sons, followed the keeper, endeavouring by caustic remarks and withering glances to stop the flood of chaff, and restore the legitimate authority and the reign of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... popularity of these pictures is undoubted; wherever they hang, and they hang everywhere, except in the New English Art Club, couples linger. "How charming, how beautifully dressed, how refined she looks!" and the wife who has not married a man a la hauteur de ses sentiments casts on him a withering glance, which says, "Why can't you afford to let me be ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... so long and so vociferous, that in my momentary anger I prayed some one might burst a blood-vessel, and frighten the rest. I put on a look of indescribable indignation, and cast a glance of what I intended should be most withering scorn on the assembly; but alas! my infernal harlequin costume ruined the effect; and confound me, if they did not laugh the louder. I turned from one to the other with the air of a man who marks out victims for his future wrath; but with no better success; at last, amid ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... 's beginning for to fa', The bonnie White Rose it is withering an' a'; But I'll water 't wi' the blude of usurping tyrannie, An' green it will graw in my ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... hung in the creases of the miller's clothes. He wore his Sunday hat and the Sunday polish on his shoes; and his wife was arrayed in her best Paisley shawl. She carried also a bunch of cottage flowers, withering in her large hot hand. It was clear they had never seen a locomotive before, and wished to show it all respect. They had taken a smaller house in the next valley, where they attempted to live on their savings; and had been trying vainly and pitifully to struggle with all ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tinkled and quavered. From a dark lane somewhere off the broader thoroughfare, a single voice sang out in serenade. The Corso was bright with unusual lights, and strewn with the birdseed and plaster-of-Paris 'confetti,' with yellow sand and sprigs of box leaves, and withering flowers, and there was about all the neighbourhood that peculiar smell of plaster and crushed flower-stalks which belonged then to the street carnival of Rome. Further on, in the dim quarters by the Tiber, the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Armande. "Oh, Chesnel, no one but you would think of such a thing!" she added, with a withering look; before such a look from a woman's eyes no mortal can stand. "There is but one crime that a noble can commit—the crime of high treason; and when he is beheaded, the block is covered with a black cloth, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... the men of the day, corrupted and distracted as they are by foreign innovations, could real strength be found? Alas! Art was surely doomed, and his own life,—the life of the last great Kano, futile and perishable as the withering ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... however, and worth double the money which we pay him. Her Grace is of one of the few families in Great Britain which are found in the Almanach de Gotha. She is like a magnificent old ruin, almost feudal in fact, and as proud as Lucifer. Her stare is said to be withering, and the poise of her head makes a man's tongue cleave to the ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... pure heart there was an unclean cast and a withering effect prevalent throughout all the departments of this hall, and my heart burned as I continued observing how the agents of Satan plied their subtle influences so as to popularize this cosmopolitan resort. So effectually has Satan entrenched his views that some of the ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... that of comic or ironic or tragic meaning packed in a syllable, a gesture, a dumb silence. Miss Gale riddles the tedious affectations of the Deacon household almost without a word of comment; none the less she exhibits them under a withering light. The daughter, she says, "was as primitive as pollen"—and biology rushes in to explain Di's blind philanderings. "In the conversations of Dwight and Ina," it is said of the husband and wife, "you saw the historical home forming ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... there in that word? A word that is merited, positive, withering, it is agreed. But why? It is still but a word. Can you kill a ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... the tendency of your no commandment no law system. Why Jesus tells you that the teachings of the bible have no other foundations to stand upon. Well the multitude would not believe him then as you and others will not now. See what confusion and shame they suffered and bore in withering silence from his simple direction about enforcing the old law for the violation of the seventh commandment. Here she is master, "Now Moses in the law, (not God's code of laws,) commanded that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou?" ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... meetings on the street, Jake Vodell with stirring oratory kindled the fire of his cause. In the councils of the unions, through individuals and groups, with clever arguments and inflaming literature, he sought recruits. With stinging sarcasm and withering scorn he taunted the laboring people—told them they were fools and cowards to submit to the degrading slavery of their capitalist owners. With biting invective and blistering epithet he pictured their employer ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... naval host Did many a Roman chief and Asian King[15.B.] To doubtful conflict, certain slaughter bring: Look where the second Caesar's trophies rose![147][16.B.] Now, like the hands that reared them, withering: Imperial Anarchs, doubling human woes![ez] GOD! was thy globe ordained for such to win ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... a vast white flame. With it came the blasting, withering wind from the gulf. A red haze, like that of earlier sunsets, seemed to come sweeping on the wind, and it roared up the arroyo, and went bellowing into the crater, and rushed on in fury to ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... in reviewing the situation subsequently commented. But at the time she said nothing. She merely looked. Her rage was gone, her anger spent. Only disgust remained. It was that which her face expressed. It was withering. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... in the slime. When he pounded on the tank, the stuff collapsed in upon itself in withering flatness. ...
— Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? • Bryce Walton
... Amazon, with withering sarcasm; "good-mornin', madam. I think you'll know it the nex' time I darkens your doors, I think you will. Served me right, though, we'en I demeaned myself to come; I might 'a' knowed what treatment I'd 'eceive from ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... did that, did you?" interposed Isobel, contemplating him steadily. "Well, I am glad to know who could have been so cowardly," she added with withering contempt. "Now I begin to wonder whether a letter which some years ago, I brought to the Abbey House to be forwarded to Godfrey, was ever posted to him who did not receive it, or whether, perhaps, it fell into the ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... their yokes and dragged the plow point through the bosom of the earth, been half so genuine and deep. It was good to be alive, to sleep, to eat, to toil! Cities had lost their charm. David's sin was no longer a withering and blasting, but a chastening and restraining memory. His clearing was a kingdom, his cabin a palace, and he was soon to have a queen! He had reserved his sowing for the last day of his self-imposed seclusion, which ended ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... is the rose distilled Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn Grows, lives, ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt, in my mind, a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my imagination, I commanded rain to fall, and, by comparing the time of my command with that of the inundation, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... didn't, but our vanishing helped. The tree, where there had been no tree before—that helped. The insane and uncanny variety of fruits—the sudden withering—all these things are helps. Let him think as he may, reason as he may, one thing is certain, he will water the tree. But between this and night he will begin his changed career with a very natural ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wishful to be withering 'Tis hard to be confined to "blithering," And to express explosive thinkin' One longs for some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... gloomy crevice the bright holly grows: The ivy waves fresh o'er the withering rose, And the evergreen love of a virtuous wife Soothes the roughness of care—cheers the winter ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the dusk. In the nibbling, iterative way of the old, he started a kind of reflection; but it was as if a harmattan had blown along the usual courses of his thought, drying up his little brooklet of recollection and withering the old aquatic star-flowers that grew along its banks. His mind, in its meandering among old images, groped, paused, fell pensive. His head sank lower between his shoulders, and the shoulders eased back against the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year: It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir:— It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... always do. You may read Richard Steele's love letters for pleasure, and have it. The love letters of Keats scorch and sting; and the worst of it is that you cannot avoid reflecting upon the transitory character of such a passion. Withering young love like this does not last. It may burn itself out, or, what is quite as likely, it may become sober and rational. But in its earlier maddened state it cannot possibly last; a man would die under it. Men as a rule do not so die, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... was a certain moisture and softness about the high temperature at Colombo, which we had experienced a month before; while here there was a dry, burning directness of the sun's power which was absolutely withering. As we passed over the road, swayed hither and thither upon the backs of the huge animals, it was amusing to watch the gambols of the wild monkeys in the trees, and to observe the flocks of wild peacocks in the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... apparent, abandoned, as they then were, alike by man, beast, and bird. No living thing remained in these valleys, for water, that element so essential to life, was a want too obvious in the dismal silence, (for not an insect hummed,) and the yellow hues of withering vegetation." On the next page of the journal, under the events of the following day, what a contrast appears:—"The evening was beautiful; the new grass springing in places where it had been burnt, presented a shining verdure in the rays of the descending sun; the songs of the birds accorded ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... will persuade America by the eloquence of American principles. In one of the fierce Western battles among the mountains, General Thomas was watching a body of his troops painfully pushing their way up a steep hill against a withering fire. Victory seemed impossible, and the General—even he a rock of valor and patriotism—exclaimed, "They can't do it; they'll never reach the top!" His chief-of-staff, watching the struggle with equal earnestness, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third—for I recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking up behind the signs, and over the lampposts,—that my respected acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt clothes—which he preferred from their not dirtying ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... out a long withering, wiry note ringing through the leaves and along the brick pavement, and the next instant the leaders were gathered up, the wheel-horses hauled taut, the hub of the front wheel of the coach halting within an inch of the horse-block ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... company felt that way about it, for Dane was not popular. She gave no handle for an active grievance, to be sure. She wasn't superior in the sense in which Dolly used the word. She didn't look haughty nor say withering things to people, nor tell passionately-believed stories designed to convince her hearers that her rightful place in the world was immensely higher than the one she now occupied. One didn't hear her exclaiming ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the utmost reach Of suns, their legions withering at His nod, Died into day hearing the voice of God; And seas new made, immense and furious, each Plunged and rolled forward, feeling for a beach; He walked the waters with effulgence shod. This being made, He yearned for worlds to make From other chaos out beyond our night— ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... as it were, and any extension of their territory impossible by reason of the insurmountable barrier around them, they had led an untroubled life, all unknowing of the fearful forces beneath their feet. But now they found the foundations of the rocks beneath breaking up; that withering, incessant shower of ashes and scoriae destroyed all their crops; the mild and delicate air changed into a heavy, sulphurous miasma; while overhead the beneficent face of the bright-blue sky had become a horrible canopy of deadly black, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Daisy. She flounced her full skirts, cast a withering glance at young Bell, and once more looked out of the ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... Bob Quirk, giving me a withering look; "what is sixty-five thousand dollars on ten thousand beeves, within an hour of delivery and at thirty-seven and a half a head? You all know that the old man has strained his credit on this summer's drive, and he's got to have the money when he goes home. A fifteen or twenty ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... of Greek dwellers at Corinth, and some settlements of various nationalities, including one of Jews, were living there. A few miles away, at the shrine of Poseidon, were held the athletic Isthmian games, and still by the sea-shore there grow the pine trees, such as furnished the quickly withering wreaths which were given to ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... was hopelessly roused. "Never did that before," gurgled out of his net, just as we were dropping off once more; but a withering request from the Dandy to "gather experience somewhere else," silenced him till dawn, when he had the wisdom to rise without ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... alone. A maid had, indeed, a hard time to live in colonial days, did she persevere in her singular choice of remaining single. Perhaps the colonists "proverb'd with the grandsire phrase," that women dying maids lead apes in hell. Maidens "withering on the virgin thorn," in single blessedness, were hard to find. One Mistress Poole lived unmarried to great old age, and helped to found the town of Taunton under most discouraging rebuffs; and in the Plymouth church record of March ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... flowerlike that it is always a little fresh surprise to see them blooming in winter. Their tenderness, their down, their colour, their fulness—which is like that of a thick rose or of a tight grape—look out of season. Children in the withering wind are like the soft golden-pink roses that fill the barrows in Oxford Street, breathing a southern calm on the north wind. The child has something better than warmth in the cold, something more subtly out ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... This dessication or withering takes place everywhere; but in some places the surplus of fruit, which the tree is unable to nourish, is alone subject to it. In others, as Araquita and Caucagua, it withers in proportion to the northerly rains. An unsuitable soil occasions another kind of decay. The pods become stinted, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... for the prisoner turned to me with a bow. "Yes, sir," he said with dignity, "I am M. de Pavannes. I have not the honour of knowing you, but you seem to be a gentleman." He cast a withering glance at the captain as he said this. "Perhaps you will explain to me why this violence has been done to me. If you can, I shall consider it a favour; if ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... prone on the ground then and poured a withering fire into the fort and trenches, which quickly ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... laughing devil in his sneer, That caused emotions both of rage and fear: And where his frown of hatred darkly fell, Hope, withering ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... morning dawned after a restless, sleepless night. Phantoms of terror haunted her couch. The agonies of anticipated remorse had cast a withering shadow on her thoughts. She could not believe her own depravity in entertaining for a moment such a ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman, and to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible a doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with the fear before it of the withering scorn of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that we were sitting down in some safe place, instead of travelling on horseback over this withering tract, and that I had the map before me to make you understand ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... are, first the hospice of the French Jesuits, now officers' quarters; then a long white shed, the soldiers' hospital; and highest (1,700 feet) the box which lodges their commandant. Even the seldom-seen 'Sugarloaf' was fairly outlined against the mild blue vault. Although the withering hand of summer was on the scene, the old charnel-house looked lovely; even the low lines of the Bullom shore borrowed a kind of beauty from the air. The hues were those of Heligoland set in frames of lapis lazuli above and ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... they had worked reasonably hard already, their faces grew gaunter and harder under the strain, and as yet they had come upon little sign of any richer ore. In the meanwhile it was very hot, and all day the withering sprays of the fallen firs emitted heavy, honey-like odors under the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... disappointment, and the barrenness of his future. The hot sun beat down upon the shadeless prairies with the intensity of a living flame. But it seemed as nothing to the heat of his own passion—his own fiery rebellion against the decree of destiny—altogether powerless against the withering despair that had choked all the aspirations and ambitions which, his whole life long, he had cultivated and nourished in the soil ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... through the withering cold and powdery snow moved the black figure of despair tottering slowly away from the sound of rifles which grew fainter at each step. He chattered and mumbled, half to himself, half to the unseen influences of nature, while the ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... that bears the band of shame within her breast, And wanders through the mocking land, denied a place of rest? What one is this, your hue and cry pursue with withering hate, Until her best hope is to die, nor meet ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... later—had begun. Bright treated them with characteristic contempt. He inveighed with all his force against the men who were going about declaring that Mr. Gladstone was unfit to be the leader of the party, and, with that accent of withering scorn which was one of his most formidable weapons as an orator, he cried, "If they have another leader who can take Mr. Gladstone's place, why do they not let us see him? Where have they been hiding him until now?" That single ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... noticed, here and there, gray hairs among his black ones. Tiredness was written on Kamala's beautiful face, tiredness from walking a long path, which has no happy destination, tiredness and the beginning of withering, and concealed, still unsaid, perhaps not even conscious anxiety: fear of old age, fear of the autumn, fear of having to die. With a sigh, he had bid his farewell to her, the soul full of reluctance, and full of ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise: So generations in their course decay; So flourish these when ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Brussels carpet, and even the oilcloth around the toilette-table was remembered. They saw that the round table was covered with a red tablecloth, and that writing materials were there, a pair of stays, a pair of tan gloves, and some withering flowers. They saw the ball-dress that Lady Helen had worn thrown over the arm-chair; the silk stockings, the satin shoes—and a gleam of sunlight that found its way between the blinds fell upon a piece of white petticoat. Lady Helen lay in the ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... of the world, to win which we are bidden to sacrifice our moral manhood; this frown of the world, whose terrors are more awful than the withering up of truth and the slow going out of light within the souls of us? Consider the triviality of life and conversation and purpose, in the bulk of those whose approval is held out for our prize and the mark of our high calling. Measure, if you can, the empire ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... La Cibot, with a withering look at Pons. "You may keep well for all the harm I wish you. When you can speak to me pleasantly, when you can believe that what I do is done for the best, I will come back again. Till then I shall stay in my own room. You were like my own child to me; did anybody ever see a child revolt ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... as we walked through it, with a brittle dryness that testified how perfectly parched-up was everything. A single spark would instantly have wrapped the whole face of the country in one sheet of fire. Slight blasts of heated withering air, as if from an oven, would occasionally strike the face as we walked along; sometimes they were loaded with those peculiar and most agreeable odours that arise from different kinds of gums. Still the white eucalyptus and the palm, wore in comparison with the other vegetation, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... a pernicious one. He who for ever thinks, that his "charity must begin at home," is in great danger of becoming an indifferent citizen, and of withering those feelings of philanthropy, which in all sound estimation constitute the crowning glory of man. He will perhaps have a reasonable affection towards what he calls his own flesh and blood, and may assist even a stranger ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... driver of the green taxi, saw that. And he was so fearful lest the driver of the red omnibus should lose one withering participle of the apostrophe he had provoked, that he could not be bothered with the exigencies of traffic and the Rule of ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... acts of mutual kindness, and he now stood forth to avenge them with a good will. The friends of Verres tried to procure a Praevaricatio, or sham accusation, conducted by a friend of the defendant, but Cicero stopped this by his brilliant and withering invective on Caecilius, the unlucky candidate for this dishonourable office. The judges, who were all senators, could not but award the prosecution to Cicero, who, determined to obtain a conviction, conducted it with the utmost despatch. Waiving his right to speak, and bringing on the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... meprisable." The spelling in her tumultuous notes threw a light upon that of very fine ladies in the seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to 1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most of her thoughts. In her letters of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the painted wooden altar. He knelt down and endeavored to collect his thoughts, but the rude surroundings of this rustic sanctuary did not tend to comfort his troubled spirit, and he became conscious of a sudden withering of all religious fervor. He turned and left the place, taking a path that led through the forest. It did not interest him more than the village; the woods spoke no language which his heart could understand; he could not distinguish an ash from an oak, and all the different ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... with withering scorn. 'But, then, I thought you were trying to catch him. He tells me now you won't have him, and you won't tell him where you are going. I call it sheer insolence. Where do you hail from, girl, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... let me pluck that silver hair Which 'mid thy clustering curls I see; The withering type of time or care Has nothing, sure, to do with thee. The Grey Hair. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... stars would not have been divided into the signs of the Zodiac but for the fanciful eye of astrologers. Automata might arise and be destroyed without any value coming or going; only a form-loving observer could say that anything fortunate or tragic had occurred, as poets might at the budding or withering of a flower. Some of nature's automata, however, love themselves, and comment on the form they achieve or abandon; these constellations of atoms are genuine beasts. Their consciousness and their interest in their own individuality rescues that individuality from the realm ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... emblems of mourning turned her childish mind away from the object of her journey, and left her as unconscious as the young girl herself that the mortgage had extended from the land to the lives of herself and her husband, and that in that promise it had laid its withering hand on the future of her ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... the fig-tree? It was not in the least to blame; and it seems most unreasonable to have expected it to bear figs out of season. Instead of withering it away, it would have been as great a miracle, and far more beautiful, and, one would think, of more beneficent influence, to have made it suddenly rich with ripe fruit. Then, to be sure, it might have died joyfully, having answered so good a purpose. I have been reminded of this ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... longer had she sung:—but with a frown, Revenge impatient rose: He threw the blood-stained sword in thunder down; And with a withering look The war-denouncing trumpet took And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe! And ever and anon he beat The doubling drum with furious heat; And, though sometimes, each dreamy pause between, Dejected Pity, at his side, Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of home truths in language that it seemed there was no possibility of misunderstanding; and they had done all this so convincingly that the dormant spirit of good that was in him had been effectually awakened. The withering scorn with which his sister had commented upon his behaviour in general and the offensive and contemptible traits of character that he had flaunted so flagrantly in all our faces had scorched and shrivelled his boyish soul; the picture of himself as others saw ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... and patches on my tattered uniform, for steering me clear of the camp followers; but more than all for the cheery words of solace for those 'gone West,' for the blessed face of a woman from the homeland in the midst of withering blight and desolation—for these I am indebted to ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... helpless hands were frozen: For she, the woeful mother, had gone mad, And laid it down, regardless of its fate And of her own. Yet had she many days Of sorrow in the world, but never wept. She lived on alms; and carried in her hand Some withering stalks, she gathered in the spring; When they asked the cause, she smiled, and said, They were her sisters, and would come and watch Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke Of her deceiver, father, mother, home, Or child, or heaven, or hell, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... wolves! O grant my prayer, That I may see, before I die, the seed Of Irij hurl just vengeance on the heads Of his assassins; hear, O hear my prayer." —Thus he in sorrow for his favourite son Obscured the light which might have sparkled still, Withering the jasmine flower of happy days; So that his ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... seemed to leap upon them from almost every angle. Some of the enemy machine-guns were captured by our troops, who used them with deadly effect upon the then retiring foe. All the objectives were obtained with clock-like precision. Again and again the victorious troops were subjected to withering counter-attacks, and shells fell around them like hail. There was no faltering. They held the recovered ground in the face of a merciless tornado ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... sunlight. Her eyes sparkled, but there was no triumph in the girl's fine, resolute face. This man might lay his father's wealth at her feet, borrowed plumes in which he was quite content to shine; his heart—and a smile of withering scorn crossed her red lips. She would be a little dearer than his horse: dogs the fastidious man could not endure. Practically his wooing ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... haste to be rich, that has taken hold of the heart and life of too many professedly Christian parents. There is no time for God's Word or earnest prayer with and for the children. There is often little if any religious instruction or Christian example. The little ones breathe in a withering, poisonous, materialistic atmosphere. The germs of the divine life, implanted in baptism, either lie dormant, or are blighted after their first manifestations. They grow up with the idea that the great object of life is to gain the most, and make ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... abruptly, "your doll-baby face does your intelligence an injustice—Miss Smith, I apologize." And before the astonished and indignant Alicia could summon a withering retort, he added heartily: "This whole place is quite the real thing, you know—almost too good to be true and too true to be good. Would you mind telling me how you happened to think of letting me ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... mischief. If the flames are once fairly kindled in dry weather, they will spread in all directions as the wind varies, burning sometimes for weeks together, until they have swept over miles of woodland, withering the verdure, destroying the wood already cut, and greatly injuring many trees which they do not consume. Several years since, in the month of June, there was quite an extensive fire on the eastern range of hills; it lasted for ten days or a fortnight, spreading several miles ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... more so. The air overhead in its upper chambers were hurtling with the obscure sound; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had re-opened the wounds of France. Crecy and Poictiers, those withering overthrows for the chivalry of France, had been tranquillized by more than half a century; but this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the whole series of battles and endless skirmishes take their stations as parts in one drama. The graves that had closed sixty years ago, seemed to fly open ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... but that he had taken no active part in affairs for about ten years, he concludes, in a clever vein of compliment, thus: "If you graciously please to extend indulgence to your suppliant in taking me out of this withering durance, you will find mercy will establish you more than power, though all the days of your life were as pregnant with victories as your twice-auspicious Third of September." The appeal to Cromwell's magnanimity was successful. Cleveland was released, came to London, and lived ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... these pictures is undoubted; wherever they hang, and they hang everywhere, except in the New English Art Club, couples linger. "How charming, how beautifully dressed, how refined she looks!" and the wife who has not married a man a la hauteur de ses sentiments casts on him a withering glance, which says, "Why can't you afford to let me be painted ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... If it goes on, my aunt will have an administration as important as that of a European state. Oh! you are happy here, you people; you are busy. I amuse myself! And if you knew how it wearies me! I am withering, consuming myself, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... it's form that of the red currant common to our gardens. the perianth of the fructification is one leaved, five cleft, abreviated and tubular, the corolla is monopetallous funnel-shaped; very long, superior, withering and of a fine orrange colour. five stamens and one pistillum; of the first, the fillaments are capillare, inserted into the corolla, equal, and converging; the anther ovate, biffid and incumbent. with rispect to the second the germ is roundish, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... regard such visions have for ever fled and all is cancelled but being aware that tender relations are in contemplation beg to state that I heartily wish well to both and find no fault with either not the least, it may be withering to know that ere the hand of Time had made me much less slim than formerly and dreadfully red on the slightest exertion particularly after eating I well know when it takes the form of a rash, it might ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... which something could be written, two stanzas on the 'shadow of the chrysanthemums,' and the 'dream about chrysanthemums' must be tagged on as numbers ten and eleven. While the last section should be 'the withering of the chrysanthemums' so as to bring to a close the sentiments expressed in the foregoing subjects. In this wise the fine scenery and fine doings of the third part of autumn, will both alike be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a dark and misty Sunday morning in July, his regiment was ordered to charge across the river Ourcq and take the hill beyond, from where the enemy's machine guns were pouring down a withering rain of bullets. His own battalion, he learned, was not to be in the lead. So he promptly asked and obtained permission ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... turned towards them, a little drooping, his hands in their own natural position on breast and neck. A faint pink-tinted wrapper lay in soft folds about him, with its white frills at neck and wrists,—on his breast a bunch of the first snowdrops spoke of the "everlasting spring, and never withering flowers!" ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... only as memories: she judged them as we judge transient and departed things. All existence seemed to beat with a lower pulse than her own, and her religious faith was a solitary cry, the struggle out of a nightmare in which every object was withering and shrinking away from her. Each remembered thing in the room was disenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency, till her wandering gaze came to the group of miniatures, and there at last she saw something which had gathered new breath and meaning: it was the miniature of Mr. Casaubon's ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... on the road, and if he don't slip you one with a shovel for your withering ignorance he'll tell you just what I'm telling you now. Yes, you and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... and although the plunging fire scathed and devastated the dark ranks of the Guards, on they came,—Ney himself, on foot, at their head. Twice the leading division of that gallant column turned completely round, as the withering fire wasted and consumed them; but they were ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... these things! for—light as is the task to traders in death's dark trappings; painful and soul-subduing are those withering details to the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... after phasis, by unalterable laws, towards prescribed issues? How often must we say, and yet not rightly lay to heart: The seed that is sown, it will spring! Given the summer's blossoming, then there is also given the autumnal withering: so is it ordered not with seedfields only, but with transactions, arrangements, philosophies, societies, French Revolutions, whatsoever man works with in this lower world. The Beginning holds in it the End, and all that leads thereto; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... degree)—true yellow fever, which is no more than the highest grade of malarious disease; but this has never occurred in European towns, unless during the driest seasons—seasons actually blighted by drought, when hot withering land winds have destroyed surface vegetation, and as in the locality of Gibraltar, have left the low-lying becalmed, and leeward town to corrupt without perflation or ventilation amidst its own accumulated exhalations. I know not how I can ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... wife, whose existence he had not noticed hitherto, more agreeable than Lady Dunstable's table with its racked countenances, and its too ample supply of pencils and paper. A deadly crime! When Lady Dunstable, on the stroke of midnight, swept through the rooms to gather her guests for bed, she cast a withering glance on Doris and ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... turnpike, behind which is a grove swarming with rebel troops. Our boys are almost on the road, when, at a distance of less than thirty yards, they find themselves confronted by overwhelming numbers, who pour a withering fire into their ranks. The Seventy-seventh receives the fire nobly, and, although far ahead of all the other regiments, stands its ground and returns the fire with spirit, although it is but death ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... private charge uttered in a tone of withering scorn was that the President failed to respond as a man would to the national insult offered by Germany in sinking the Lusitania because there was something womanish about him and he would tell, to prove ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... enemy's horse suddenly appeared on the flank of the column of Infantry compelling them to form square to resist cavalry, and thus the brave little party were placed in a precarious position, being cut off from their supports. A withering volley from the right and rear face of the square, followed by a rapid file-firing from the standing ranks, emptied quite a number of saddles and drove the ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... bold myriads on the withering heath Stay the fell SYROC'S suffocative breath; 65 Arrest SIMOOM in his realms of sand, The poisoned javelin balanced in his hand;— Fierce on blue streams he rides the tainted air, Points his keen eye, and waves his whistling hair; While, as he turns, the undulating ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... welded into the past, My love of you with the purple Indian dusk, With its clinging scent of sandal incense and musk, And withering jasmin flowers. My eyes grow dim and my senses fail at last, While the lonely hours Follow each other, silently, one by one, Till the night is ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... and fiercely heaved his bosom in his shame, And his red glance fell on Karna like a tongue of withering flame! ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... never," laughed Bessie, casting a backward and withering glance at the aliens as she moved away with her trayful of scarlet blossoms to the branchers' table, where another relay of workers twisted green leaves among the scarlet and tied them ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... of his wife, who seemed to be the chief partner in the firm, and we were glad to accept his offer; while the incapacitated man whom we had rejected acquiesced in the new arrangement with a bow so little withering, and with such genuine politeness, that, in spite of his over-much wine, he won my heart. The landlord himself did not profess to know the glacieres; but he knew the man who lived nearest to them, and proposed to lead us to his friend's chalet, whence we should doubtless ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... French public does nothing at such a time; it remains absorbed in its concerts at Paris, where everyone knows everyone else so well that they are not able and do not dare to criticise freely. And so our art is withering away in an atmosphere of coteries, instead of seeking the open air and enjoying a vigorous fight with foreign art. For the majority of our critics would rather deny the existence of foreign art than try to understand it. Never have I regretted their ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... brides? They say holy Church is His Bride, and she is one. Then how can all the vestals in all the convents be each of them His bride? I suppose I cannot understand as I ought to do. Perhaps I should have understood better if that might have been had been—if I had not stood withering all these years, taught to crush down this poor dried heart of mine. They will not let me have any thing to love. When Mother Ada thought I was growing too fond of little Erneburg, she took her away from me and gave ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... you petty spirits of region low, Offend our hearing; hush! How dare you ghosts Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt, you know, Sky-planted batters all rebelling coasts? Poor shadows of Elysium, hence, and rest Upon your never-withering banks of flowers. Be not with mortal accidents opprest: No care of yours it is; you know 'tis ours. Whom best I love I cross; to make my gift, The more delay'd, delighted. Be content; Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift. His ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... is far better than that calm and withering heat—this rouses me," said Amine, as she cast her eyes up, and watched the forked lightning till her vision became obscured. "Yes, this is as it should be. Lightning, strike me if you please—waves wash me off and bury me in a briny tomb—pour the wrath of the whole elements ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... long, lazy days on the Palomar. June had cast its withering smile upon the San Gregorio and the green hills had turned to a parched brown. Grasshoppers whirred everywhere; squirrels whistled; occasional little dust-devils whirled up the now thoroughly dry ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the Psammead with withering irony, 'not at all! Of course not! Quite the contrary! Exactly so! Only she happened to wish that she might soon find herself in your country. And soon may mean ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... in most cases to have been brought into action by the impulse of private malice. They occasioned mortality of greater or less extent in man and beast. They blighted the opening prospect of a plentiful harvest. They covered the heavens with clouds, and sent abroad withering and malignant blasts. They undermined the health of those who were so unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were notorious two or ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... exclaimed Elise, with a withering glance. "The idea of anybody being in such company as ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... mother,—Madame Grandet rapidly approached her end. Every day she grew weaker and wasted visibly, as women of her age when attacked by serious illness are wont to do. She was fragile as the foliage in autumn; the radiance of heaven shone through her as the sun strikes athwart the withering leaves and gilds them. It was a death worthy of her life,—a Christian death; and is not that sublime? In the month of October, 1822, her virtues, her angelic patience, her love for her daughter, seemed to ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... cast a withering look at his clerk, but the mischief was done: denial was useless. He seemed fated to blunder in this affair. "Well, yes," he declared, "it's true. Valorsay HAS defrauded me, and I have sworn to have my revenge. I won't rest until ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... I had been chasing Cuthbert. I had a store of withering phrases burning to be poured over his unmentionable head. ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... along the line. Moments are ages now. Seconds are years. How fast men live when everything is at stake! Ah! but how fast they die down in that ravine! Up, down, across, through, over it, drive the withering blasts, cutting, tearing, sweeping through the column, which shakes, wavers, totters, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... there. A fine, big, strapping young woman she was, with a strong face, and a pair of fearless, black eyes. She sat bolt upright against the log wall, talking to Mary Lauchie, a sweet, pale-faced girl; and occasionally casting a withering glance in the direction of the bench behind the stove, where the Weaver was alternately striving to efface himself and to attract ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... coolly. "Isn't that just what is the matter? The sex-imagination often outlives the withering of the sex-glands. Come now, admit it. Forget that you are a pastel-tinted remnant of the old order and ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning, not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitually unites the absolutely local and individual with the greatest wildness and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... personal prejudices, and galling hatreds against conspicuous sinners, not Sin—which so widely prevail among men of warped understandings and unchristian and uncharitable hearts. No; the superstitions and dogmas concerning Sin had not laid their withering maxims upon our hearts. We perceived how that evil was but good disguised, and a knave a saint in his way; how that in other planets, perhaps, what we deem wrong, may there be deemed right; even as some substances, without undergoing any mutations in themselves ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Halliwell and Mrs. Cravens, but that one is a mental vacuum and the other a ripsnortin' old virago is established beyond the peradventure of a doubt. Everybody connected with the Karnival is doing the Artful Dodger act to escape the withering storm of indignation which the pitiful episode called forth from the American people. The most encouraging feature of the whole affair is the withdrawal of several of Chillicothe's society girls from the contest because of the gratuitous ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... very bad, O'Brien," said another scribe mournfully. "Forgive him, Senator. I will have something to say to him later." Withering glances were cast at the unlucky one, who seemed about to sink under the table, and the wind outside howled dismally, and rattled the ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... dwell upon the dead! Poor wretched Outcast! I will weep for thee, And sorrow for forlorn humanity. Yes I will weep, but not that thou art come To the stern Sabbath of the silent tomb: For squalid Want, and the black scorpion Care, Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there. I sorrow for the ills thy life has known As thro' the world's long pilgrimage, alone, Haunted by Poverty and woe-begone, Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on: Thy youth in ignorance and labour past, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... accordance with an old custom, he might have required that they should pass through his chapel yard on the Raise before leaving the parish, but he had waived his right to this tribute to episcopacy. After offering a suitable blessing, he turned away, not without a withering glance at the weaver, who was muttering rather too audibly an adaptation ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... gone for the bust, Henry took a humbler tone, and in a low voice began to excuse his absence; and I think he would have told the real truth, if he had been encouraged a little; but he was met with a cold and withering assurance that it was a matter of no consequence. Henry thought this unfair, and, knowing in his own heart it was ungrateful, he rebelled. He bit his lip, sat down as gloomy as the grave, and resumed his work, silent ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... a pleading look on the twins, but when Lucian granted him only a withering smile, and Julian with his cane in his folded arms said majestically, "Go, you hopeless ass," ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... or what he had done, he knew not; but never had he seemed so aged by a score of years as he was represented in the glass in that cold grey morning light. While his soul was what it was, why should he have been encumbered with that withering carcase, without the ability to shift it off for another, as his ideal Beloved had ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... crisis in the Church's history, these Councils were actually held, and presided over by the Pope, either in person or by his duly appointed representatives, for the purpose of clearing up and adjusting disputed points, or to smite, with a withering anathema, the various heresies as they arose, century after century. But in the meantime, the Church, which had been planted "like a grain of mustard seed, which is the least of all seeds" (Mark iv. 31), was fulfilling the prophecy that had been made in regard to her, and "was shooting out great ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... Burke, who received a ball in the knee. He fell from his horse, but the mishap was for the moment kept from the men. Lieut.-Col. Fowler assumed command, and before the Rebel regiment had time to reload, four hundred smooth bores sent a withering volley crashing through their ranks. This ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... In habit it is similar to C. Berlandieri. A plant 8 in. across bears about twenty short branches, each of which, under careful cultivation will produce several flowers in the months of May and June, and these, when expanded, last about eight days before withering; they close every afternoon, opening about ten o'clock in the morning. The petals are arranged in a single series, spreading so as to form a shallow cup, and are notched on the edges near the upper end. They are coloured a deep purple-lilac on the upper half, the lower ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... manner the great doctrines of the Gospel, but occasionally indulging in volcanic outbursts of indignation against the hierarchical corruptions of his day, and pouring out upon them the lava-tides of withering rebuke. ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... placed on her brow She has flung on a distant foot-stool now; The flowers, exhaling their fragrance sweet, Lie crushed and withering at her feet; Gloves and tablets she has suffered to fall— She seems so weary after ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... face into a very grave and confidential twist, when Mrs. Paget's equerry, the young gentleman before mentioned, offered his arm, and, giving Frank a withering look, warned the lady of ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... state, might have got along without work, or only such slight employment as a perfect garden with no weeds in it demanded. But as soon as they had sinned, the best thing for them was to be turned out where they would have to work. We know what a withering thing it is for a man to have nothing to do. Old Ashbel Green, at fourscore years, when asked why he kept on working, said: "I do so to keep out of mischief." We see that a man who has a large amount ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... all Britain had been raised with stirring and thrilling power for justice and humanity. The testimony of an eye witness is to the effect, that never did the grand old man seem in finer form. His undimmed eye flashed as he spoke with withering scorn against hypocrisy and with hottest hate against wrong. His natural force was not abated, his health robust, and his conviction unsubdued. His deeply lined and pale face was transfigured with the glow of righteous ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... look of withering contempt, and flung my bait out with a splash that must have scared all the crabs out of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... thee In the furnace dark and still. There, with dreariest mockery, 39 Making thee eat, against thy will, Blackest Pennsylvanian stone; But thou dost avenge thy doom, For, from out thy catacomb, Day and night thy wrath is blown In a withering simoom, And, adown that cavern drear, Thy black pitfall in the floor, Staggers the lusty antique cheer, Despairing, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... grow again and leave their nest. 'Oh!' saith the Psalmist, 'that I had a dove's Pinions to flee away, and be at rest!' And who that recollects young years and loves,— Though hoary now, and with a withering breast, And palsied fancy, which no longer roves Beyond its dimm'd eye's sphere,—but would much rather Sigh like his son, than cough like ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... was evidently more the effect of accident, than of design. Willoughby started, as he caught the first glance of his beloved parent's face; and he felt a chill pass over his whole frame. There she sat upright, motionless, tearless, without any of the alleviating weaknesses of a less withering grief, her mild countenance exposed to the light of the lamp, and her eyes riveted on the face of the dead. In this posture had she remained for hours; no tender cares on the part of her daughters; no attentions from her domestics; no outbreaking of her own sorrows, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Peking and elsewhere such as startled even itself. Of all branches of education, the science of gauging people and events by their relative importance defies study most insolently. For three or four generations, society has united in withering with contempt and opprobrium the shameless futility of Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. du Barry; yet, if one bid at an auction for some object that had been approved by the taste of either lady, one quickly found that it were better to buy half-a-dozen Napoleons or Frederics, or Maria Theresas, or ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... summer, and in its uncertainty inclines now to the one and now to the other, and now to both at once—wooing summer in the sunshine, and lingering still with winter in the shade—it was, in short, on one of those mornings, when it is hot and cold, wet and dry, bright and lowering, sad and cheerful, withering and genial, in the compass of one short hour, that old John Willet, who was dropping asleep over the copper boiler, was roused by the sound of a horse's feet, and glancing out at window, beheld a traveller of goodly promise, checking ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... that fervent prayer, reef, and come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as ever. So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed the outlines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Yet trusting more to the dog than to ourselves, we at length came in sight of the scene of our former exploits. All was quiet and still in the vicinity. Not a twig moved, unless displaced by a gaudy-colored parrot, too lazy, under the withering influence of the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... response. Indeed it may be said that there is no other method by which the moment of cessation of vitality can be so satisfactorily distinguished. Ordinarily, we are able to judge that a plant has died, only after various indirect effects of death, such as withering, have begun to appear. But in the electric response we have an immediate indication of the arrest of vitality, and we are thereby enabled to determine the death-point, which it is impossible to do by ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... spreads a gracious shade We placed him, wrapped and pillowed; and he heard The charm of birds, the whisper of the vines, The ripple of the blue Propontic sea. Placid and pleased he lay; but we were sad To see the snowy hair and silver beard Like withering mosses on a fallen oak, And feel that he, whose vast philosophy Had cast such sacred branches o'er the fields Where Athens pastures her dull sheep, lay fallen, And never more should know the spring! Confess You too had ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... made his name famous, down to his untimely death. The letterpress description of 'Foreign Affairs' was written by Mr. Percival Leigh, who—also after an interval—steadily contributed. Mr. Douglas Jerrold began to wield Punch's baton in No. 9. His 'Peel Regularly Called in' was the first of those withering political satires, signed with a 'J' in the corner of each page opposite to the cartoon, that conferred on Punch a wholesome influence in politics. Mr. Albert Smith made his debut in this wise:—At the birth of Punch had just died a periodical called (I think) ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... if a spell had loosened them, down came a little shower of withering rose-leaves from the Maypole. Alas for the young lovers! No sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion than they were sensible of something vague and unsubstantial in their former pleasures, and felt a dreary presentiment of inevitable change. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... divided, or ought to have divided, her from us, considerably passed the line of demarcation. Lady de Brantefield, with all the pride of all the De Brantefields since the Norman Conquest concentrated in her countenance, threw an excommunicating, withering look upon the arm—but the elbow felt it not—it never stirred. The lady seemed not to be made of penetrable stuff. In happy ignorance she sat fanning herself for a few seconds; then suddenly starting ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... temptation to seize the phlegmatic page by the collar, and give him such another shaking as he would not get over for a week to come; but suddenly recollecting he was Leoline's brother, and by the same token a marquis or thereabouts, he merely paused to cast a withering look upon him, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... hundred yards of the position occupied by Couch's division, which was lying down in the weeds and partially screened by them. A blast of bugles—a roll of drums—a few sharp words of command; and up rose the before-dormant mass to their feet. A scorching, withering fire of small-arms, delivered by companies from left to right, and with the greatest deliberation, was sent directly into the faces of the advancing rebels—such a close and deadly fire as seems almost as impossible ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... their tail-feathers are fixed in a radiating position, but they can depress and elevate them. I remember in a pigeon-book seeing withering contempt expressed at some naturalist for not knowing this important point! Page 111 (156/2. The reference is to the original little green paper books in which the lectures first appeared; the paging in the bound volume dated 1863 is slightly different. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Doctor calls "our weaning," and learned that dinners with circuitous courses and divers other Continental and English refinements, well enough in their way, cannot be accomplished in families with two or three untrained servants, without an expense of care and anxiety which makes them heart-withering to the delicate wife, and too severe a trial to occur often. America is the land of subdivided fortunes, of a general average of wealth and comfort, and there ought to be, therefore, an understanding in the social basis far more simple ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... reading the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age, so they in turn are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... world many a deep tragedy enacted in the heart of a poor, forgotten, uncared-for boy . . . But I thank God, that though I felt and suffered, the scathing blast neither blunted my perceptions of natural and moral beauty, nor, by withering the affections of my heart, made me a selfish man. Often when I look back I wonder how I bore the burden—how I did not end the evil day ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... was divided into the great Sheikhs and the little Sheikhs, and among the latter was the Sheikh Khottar. The proximity of this village to Beirut, its elevated position, cool air, and fine fountain of water, made it a favorite summer retreat for the missionaries from the withering heats of the plain. Sheikh Khottar and his wife the Sitt, having both died, their orphan son Selim and daughter Abla, called the Sitt (or lady) Abla, were placed under the care of other members of the family of Telhuk. The missionaries opened a school for boys and Selim attended ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... in tomorrow morning's paper, of convincing him (the "Gazette") that he (the "Tea-Pot") both can and will be his own master, as regards style; he (the "Tea-Pot") intending to show him (the "Gazette") the supreme, and indeed the withering contempt with which the criticism of him (the "Gazette") inspires the independent bosom of him (the "TeaPot") by composing for the especial gratification (?) of him (the "Gazette") a leading article, of some extent, in which the beautiful vowel—the emblem of Eternity—yet so offensive ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
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