"Diminutive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... costly, lay scattered about in studied disorder. There were little antique boxes of chased gold, miniature snuff-boxes, ivory statuettes, objects in dull silver, quite modern, of an exaggerated severity, in which English taste appeared: a diminutive kitchen stove, and upon it a cat drinking from a pan, a cigarette-case simulating a loaf of bread, a coffee-pot to hold matches, and in a casket a complete set of doll's jewelry—necklaces, bracelets, rings, brooches, ear-rings set with diamonds, sapphires, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... their bodies, and length of their claws, I am firmly convinced they're related to me, And to this all philosophers ought to agree; For how could such creatures have got into holes, Unless, ('tis my theory,) they had been moles?" He ceased, then just turn'd his diminutive eyes, First round to the company, then to the skies, And receiving applause from all who sate round, He threw up his hill, and escaped underground. Signor Greyhound, a foreigner, talk'd of the swamps, Of the ague and fever, both caused by ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... the creeping green, there are many varieties of what children call "tree-green," independent little plants rooted deep in the mould, which send up a single stalk about eight inches high. Some of these are such perfect little trees as to appear diminutive copies of the firs and pines towering far above them, and are called "fir club-moss." A pretty evergreen to mix with the more feathery varieties is the Chimaphila umbellata, or prince's-pine. It has bright shining dark green leaves, which have a very bitter ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... that I had the same impression many years ago when first approaching the Alps; and I began to consider, that as the extreme clearness of the atmosphere gave them the appearance of proximity in the far distance, so it would also partly account for the diminutive aspect they persisted in presenting. I dismounted, and scrambled up the bold ledge of rock, and found myself already a hundred feet above the level of the Nile. Here my Arab guide produced cold fowl, bread, wine, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... was like that of the Persian Siamek, the Bithynian Hylas, and the Egyptian Maneros, Son of Menes or the Eternal. The elegy called Maneros was sung at Egyptian banquets, and an effigy enclosed within a diminutive Sarcophagus was handed round to remind the guests of their brief tenure of existence. The beautiful Memnon, also, perished in his prime; and Enoch, whose early death was lamented at Iconium, lived 365 years, the number ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... century ago one of the most inveterate frequenters of book-auctions was a certain Dr. G., of diminutive stature, on account of an awkward deviation of the spine. At that time the appearance of a private purchaser at a sale was a very rare event, and one which, when it occurred, invariably met with ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... perpetual motion, Full of bother And pother, Would make paralytic old Bridget A Fidget. So you see (to my notion), Better leave our downy Diminutive browny Alone, near his "diggings;" Ever free to pursue, Rush round, and renew His loved vaulting Unhalting, His whirling, And curling, And twirling, And swirling, And his ways, on the whole So unsteady! 'Pon my soul, Having gazed Quite amazed, On each wonderful antic ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... zeal, have prescribed, are not required; that we are permitted to enjoy our own interests, and, to a great extent, seek our own happiness; and if we barely obey the suggestions of natural sympathy, and manifest common generosity, it is enough. They would bring down this exalted standard to our own diminutive stature, so that we can measure ourselves by it without inconvenience. But all such efforts are high-handed rebellion, and will prove utterly vain. God has placed it on a pedestal high as the eternal ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... hinges. Rhoda Gray's eyes traveled sharply around her in all directions. It was still light enough to see fairly well, and she might at some future time find the bearings she took now to be of inestimable worth. Not that there was much to remark! They crossed a diminutive and disgustingly dirty backyard, whose sole reason for existence seemed to be that of a receptacle for old tin cans, and were confronted by the rear of what appeared to be a four-story tenement. There was a back door here, and, on the right of the door, fronting the yard, a single ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... of the others were large, strikingly so, and appeared fully to justify the old man's conclusion that their owners must have been strange fellows; but, compared with this mighty mass of bone, they looked small and diminutive like those of pigmies; it must have belonged to a giant, one of those red- haired warriors of whose strength and stature such wondrous tales are told in the ancient chronicles of the north, and whose grave-hills, when ransacked, occasionally reveal secrets which fill the minds of puny moderns ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... fidelity. An esquire is a scutiger (L.), or shield-bearer; for he carried the shield of the knight, when they were travelling and no fighting was going on. A vassal was a "little young man,"— in Low-Latin vassallus, a diminutive of vassus, from the Keltic word gws, a man. (The form vassaletus is also found, which gives us our varlet and valet.) Scutcheon comes from the Lat. scutum, a shield. Then scutcheon or escutcheon came to mean coat-of-arms— ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... the emperor, stopping her diminutive elephants. "Do help him, please. There, now, Zenobia and her daughter are almost out of sight. Put your eggs and things in the cart, Will,—I mean in the chariot. Now let's start. Billy, you can walk in ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... beautiful little miniature theatre,—that is to say, the orchestra and stage. It is fitted with charmingly painted scenery and all the appliances for scenic changes. There are tiny traps, and delicately constructed "lifts," and real footlights fed with burning-fluid, and in the orchestra sits a diminutive conductor before his desk, surrounded by musical manikins, all provided with the smallest of violoncellos, flutes, oboes, drums, and such like. There are characters also on the stage. A Templar in a white cloak is dragging a fainting female form to the parapet of a ruined ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... subordinated. We must not look, therefore, for a large amount or variety of animal life in the Ecuadorian forests. Time was when colossal megatheroids, mastodons, and glyptodons browsed on the foliage of the Andes and the Amazon; but now the terrestrial mammals of this tropical region are few and diminutive. They are likewise old-fashioned, inferior in type as well as bulk to those of the eastern hemisphere, for America was a finished continent long before Europe. "It seems most probable (says Darwin) that the North American elephants, mastodons, horse, and hollow-horned ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Concours Hippique, an ultra-equine fete, where the lovers of the friend of man, and such persons as are fitted by an ungenerous fate with limbs suitable to horsey clothes, meet and bow. In France, as in a neighboring land (less sunny), horsiness is the last refuge of the diminutive. It is your small man who is ever the horsiest in his outward appearance, just as it is your very plain young person who is keenest at ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the children who worked at the looms ten hours a day expressed no discontent; it kept them off the streets; and the operators, in the kindness of their hearts, had actually had the looms made especially to accommodate conveniently the diminutive size of the little workers. Some people might, with great profit to themselves, read Plato's superb allegory of the men in ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... thou and thee, and add to these forms of endearment numerous suffixes. Human names, all animals, plants, metals, stones, trees—anything, in fact—can be used in the diminutive form. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... east of Walpi, and is approached by following the trail at the foot of the same mesa upon which Kuekuechomo is situated. The ruin is located on a small foothill and has a few standing walls. It was evidently diminutive in size and only temporarily inhabited. The best wall found at this ruin lies at the base of the hill, where the spring formerly was. This spring is now filled in, but a circular wall of masonry indicates its great size ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... severalty act, in 1887. Before that date his status was variously defined as that of a member of an independent foreign nation, of a "domestic dependent nation," as a ward of the Government, or, as some one has wittily said, a "perpetual inhabitant with diminutive rights." The Dawes act conferred upon those who accepted allotments of land in severalty the protection of the courts and all the rights of citizenship, including the suffrage. It also provided that the land thus patented to the ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... 1492. We marvel when some adventurous navigator, even now, when every current and wind of the ocean have been observed for five hundred years, and are accurately known and precisely charted, undertakes to cross it in a somewhat diminutive vessel. What, then, must have been the courage of Columbus, when, at the advanced age of fifty-seven, he ventured with his crew upon this perilous undertaking in three frail barks or caravels, the largest of them equipped with ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... appears to have gained rather than lost vigour upon this barren soil, the horses and cattle of the country seem to have degenerated. They are remarkably diminutive. I saw cows not much bigger than Izumo calves, with calves about the size of goats. The horses, or rather ponies, belong to a special breed of which Oki is rather proud—very small, but hardy. I was told that there were larger horses, but I ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... known feature of Bridport and lends quite a distinctive air to the broad High Street which has the vista of its west end filled by the cone-shaped Colmers Hill. South Street leads to West Bay, at the mouth of the diminutive Bride or Brit. The little town of late, mainly through the exertions of the Great Western Railway, has made an attempt to transform itself into a watering place. The coast is attractive and possibly at some future date ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... I—" began the girl, but she did not finish. The little figure before her drew itself to the full extent of its diminutive height. ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... anything but play. And that's why women like Lillah Harrison, who's worth twenty of you and me, have to work themselves to the bone. But I'm tired of playing," she went on, lying flat on the bed, and raising her arms above her head. Thus stretched out, she looked more diminutive ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... a sort of a general post during the repast. However, all ended well, and after coffee various home pets were introduced by our hostess, who is a devoted lover of animals. A nutria appeared and some friendly dogs, and we heard of tame foxes and diminutive ponies to be seen next day. It was a great regret to everyone that The Delineator did not put in an appearance for dinner; he pleaded headache and retired to bed early, perhaps in the hope of getting some sleep before The Instigator ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... Athens, which had stood nine hundred years. At that time just seven philosophers were teaching in that school, the shades of the ancient seven sages of Greece—a striking play of history, like the name of the last West-Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, or, in contemptuous diminutive, Augustulus, combining the names of the founder of the city and the founder ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... shimmering length like a bimetallic serpent to the north and south, he suddenly became conscious of a pair of very sharp eyes resting upon him, which a closer inspection showed belonged to a laborer of seemingly diminutive stature, who was engaged in carrying earth in a wheelbarrow from one dirt-pile to another. As Thaddeus caught his eye the laborer assumed towering proportions. He rose up quite two feet higher in the ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... Anglo-Saxon 'wyrm,' meaning a dragon or snake; or from the Gothic 'waurms,' a serpent; or the Icelandic 'ormur,' or the German 'wurm.' We gather that it conveyed originally an idea of size and power, not as now in the diminutive of both these meanings. Here legendary history helps us. We have the well-known legend of the 'Worm Well' of Lambton Castle, and that of the 'Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh' near Bamborough. In both these legends the 'worm' was a monster of vast size and power—a veritable dragon ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... hunters of Kentucky.[52] Previous to trying to move their families out to the new country, they made a cache of clothing, implements, and provisions, which in their absence was broken into and plundered. They caught the thief, "a little diminutive, red-headed white man," a runaway convict servant from one of the tide-water counties of Virginia. In the first impulse of anger at finding that he was the criminal, one of the McAfees rushed at him to kill him with his tomahawk; but ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... than the larger variety, because their diminutive size escapes the gardener's eye. A good way to keep them under is to make small holes, about an inch deep, and about the diameter of the little finger, round the plants which they infest. Into these ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... the gloom, like diminutive goblins that beckon; Onward we stagger and gasp in the grip ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... a special trip to New York to labor with the national officers there to this end but was unsuccessful. The headquarters of the Congressional Committee at the opening of this session consisted of two rooms in the Munsey Building at Washington too diminutive to hold even our furniture, to say nothing of our workers. On February 19 it moved to two larger rooms in ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... community Frederick Mergel was born, in a house which attested the pretensions of its builder by the proud addition of a chimney and somewhat less diminutive window panes, but at the same time bespoke the miserable circumstances of its owner by its present state of dilapidation. What had once been a hedge around the yard and the garden had given way to a neglected ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... heels, rendered the human race a caricature of itself. In the eighteenth century, powdered wigs of extraordinary shape, hairbags and queues, frocks and frills, came into fashion for the men; powdered headdresses an ell in height, diminutive waists, and patches for the women. The deformity, unhealthiness, and absurdity of this mode of attire were vainly pointed out by Salzmann, in a piece entitled, "Charles von ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... The hands of Fayaway were as soft and delicate as those of any countess; for an entire exemption from rude labour marks the girlhood and even prime of a Typee woman's life. Her feet, though wholly exposed, were as diminutive and fairly shaped as those which peep from beneath the skirts of a Lima lady's dress. The skin of this young creature, from continual ablutions and the use of mollifying ointments, was inconceivably ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... of rajahs in India are called Rajah Pouts, and as turkeys came from the East, quaere if they were not called Turkey-pouts, as an Eastern diminutive?—WALPOLE.] ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... sympathized with her microscopic cut fingers, he had smiled into her glowing, damp little face when she stuttered to him long tales of bad doggies and big 'ticks; he had brought her "jacks" and paper-dolls and hair ribbons; he loved the diminutive femininity of the creature; she was all a woman, even at three. Alix he proudly called his "boy"; Alix used hair ribbons to tie up her dogs, and demanded hip boots and an air rifle and got them, too, and ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... corresponding with the one I have just described, running about on the lawn of my house in Bath. How the animal got there was a complete mystery, and, what is stranger still, it seemed to recognize me, for it rushed towards me, frantically wagging its diminutive tail. I had not the heart to turn it away, as it seemed quite homeless, and so the forlorn little mongrel was permitted to make its home in my house—and a very happy home it proved to be. For three years all went well, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... I had left him, his small shabby figure in the attitude of a diminutive colossus on my hearthrug. About him were the recently vacated chairs, solemnly and ridiculously suggestive of still continuing the high and choice conversation that had lately finished. The same fancy had evidently taken Andriaovsky, for he was turning from ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... similar to his own, and barking, then running at whistle or crack of whip into the holes to their odd companions, the owls and the rattlesnakes; the herds of antelope emerging from the skyline and brought down to equally diminutive size by the infinite distance, disappearing into the skyline mysteriously as ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... Jackson are in person rather more diminutive and slighter made, especially about the thighs and legs, than the Europeans. It is doubtful whether their society contained a person of six feet high. The tallest I ever measured, reached five feet eleven inches, and men of his height were rarely seen. Baneelon, who towered above ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... to make one shiver—and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, it began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysantheme and her guitar ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... gymnastics; a minute wooden shed filled the right upper corner and served secondarily as a very partial shelter for the men and primarily as a stable for an extraordinary water-wagon, composed of a wooden barrel on two wheels with shafts which would not possibly accommodate anything larger than a diminutive donkey (but in which I myself was to walk not infrequently, as it proved); parallel to the second stone wall, but at a safe distance from it, stretched a couple of iron girders serving as a barbarously cold seat for any unfortunate who could not remain on his feet the entire ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... experiments in the making of porcelain; veritable alchemy, for the turning of clay into gold. The reign of Dresden china was at hand, with one's own world of little men and women more delightfully diminutive still, amid imitations of artificial flowers. The young Duke braced himself for a plot to steal the gifted Herr Boettcher from his enforced residence, as if in prison, at the fortress of Meissen. Why not bring pots and wheels to Rosenmold, and prosecute his discoveries there? The Grand-duke, indeed, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... purveyor of news, Fong Wu had others. An ailing countryman, whether seized with malaria or suffering from an injury, found ready and efficient attention. The bark of dogwood, properly cooked, gave a liquid that killed the ague; and oil from a diminutive bottle, or a red powder whetted upon the skin with a silver piece, brought out the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... still commemorates "the great battle" of that day, stretches now a trilateral patch of pasture-land, which faces a small house. At that time this space was rough forest-ground, and where now, in the hedge, rise two small trees, types of the diminutive offspring of our niggard and ignoble civilization, rose then two huge oaks, coeval with the warriors of the Norman Conquest. They grew close together; yet, though their roots interlaced, though their branches mingled, one had not taken nourishment ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... discovery that of the said product of nature there remained little beyond the tail, while Sobakevitch, with an air as though at least HE had not eaten it, was engaged in plunging his fork into a much more diminutive piece of fish which happened to be resting on an adjacent platter. After his divorce from the sturgeon, Sobakevitch ate and drank no more, but sat frowning and blinking in ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... mythic character. Since visiting Shetland I have thought a great deal about the Picts, but cannot come to any satisfactory conclusion. Were they Celts? were they Laps? Macbeth could hardly have been a Lap, but then the tradition of the country that they were a diminutive race, and their name Pight or Pict, which I almost think is the same as petit—pixolo—puj—pigmy. It is a truly perplexing subject—quite as much so as that of Fingal, and whether he was a Scotsman or an Irishman I have never been able to decide, as there has been so much ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... diminutive of picca (Span. and Ital.), a spear-head; and was given to this article of foppery from a fancied resemblance of its stiffened plaits to the bristled points of these weapons. Blount thinks, and apparently with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... were loose-livers, and the scandal of the surrounding countryside. But even in this environment the monk's family had made themselves conspicuous by their low and unmentionable customs. The young Gregory, known by the diminutive of Gricha, began his exploits at a very tender age, and earned the sobriquet of Rasputin, which means "debauched." He was mixed up in all kinds of dubious affairs—for instance, thefts of horses, the bearing of ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... hand-shake with more cordiality and a nod for good-by. I never saw a keener eye than his, and the way that he held himself up, so straight that he seemed almost to lean backwards, with his forehead thrown forward, and the piercing eyes looking out from under their heavy brows, and his diminutive stature coupled with the imposing bearing, combined to make a very peculiar and vivid impression on me. Griffiths afterwards translated his laconism for me as an invitation to come to see him if I ever came back to England, and added that though he was in the worst of tempers ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... 94 of Vol. I, and here the weather, having suddenly become tropical, the Baron felt that his mighty brain "whirled, swam to a giddiness, and subsided." He has been stopped occasionally en route; he had come into view of "the diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile cerebellum." Then he retraced his steps, puzzled a bit, but after a "modest quencher" Swivellerian libation, he hit upon a luminous passage which warned him "in plain speech"—and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... Regie's money-box, and the other two immediately lost in the mat in the pony-carriage. However, Hester found them, and slipped them inside their white gloves, and the expedition started, accompanied by Boulou, a diminutive yellow-and-white dog of French extraction. Boulou was a well-meaning, kind little soul. There was a certain hurried arrogance about his hind-legs, but it was only manner. He was not in reality more conceited than most small dogs who ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... has been cultivated in England more for the value of the timber than for its fruit. There are several varieties, differing chiefly in the size of the nut, from the diminutive ben-nut, to the large or double French sort. The only improvement which can be expected in this, is a hardier sort which would be less susceptible of damage ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... Ambassadeurs were crowded by the Parisians consuming their brandied cherries under the canopy of fluttering light green leaves of the opening limes. I sat, one of the audience, and heard the band clashing, and watched the dancers flit on and off the glittering diminutive stage, ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... mile in vertical thickness. In these deposits vast numbers of tropical animals were entombed, and here the oldest equine remains occur, four species of which have been described. These belong to the genus Orohippus (Marsh), and are all of a diminutive size, hardly bigger than a fox. The skeletons of these animals resemble that of the horse in many respects, much more indeed than any other existing species, but, instead of the single toe on each foot, so characteristic of all modern equines, the various species of Orohippus had four toes ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Theuderich with the aid of the Saxons. See Felix Dahn, "Urgeschichte", iii, 73-79. He, too, comes from the Low German tradition. (9) "Bloedel" is Bleda, the brother of Attila, with whom he reigned conjointly from A.D. 433 to 445. In our poem the name appears frequently with the diminutive ending, as "Bloedelin". (10) "Werbel and Swemmel", who doubtless owe their introduction to some minstrel, enjoy special favor and are intrusted with the important mission of inviting the Burgundians to Etzel's court, ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... several of the savages pass across in the same direction as the first, and now he noticed, what had escaped him before, that they were diminutive creatures, certainly not more than four feet high. He had clearly stumbled upon a settlement of forest pigmies. From what he had read of pigmy races he knew that it required extreme patience and ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... cautiously; the surface of the ground was in some places soft and yielding, and we knew not to what brimstone depths an unwary step might sink us. There were little ravines to be crossed, which had to be first carefully sounded. As we proceeded on the soft, crustaceous surface, diminutive spouts of vapor would spit forth, as if to resent our intrusion. In skirting the edge of the lake, its temperature and taste were both tested; the former varied with the distance from the seething bubbling going on at the extremity; in some places the hand could be kept in, but 130 deg. was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... said he, as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight figures and diminutive stature, looking pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell for whom curiosity had been ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... and higher they arrived at a small open place near the top of the knob. In its midst was a diminutive log cabin, consisting of only one room. Turner stopped his horses in front of the cabin, dismounted, and requested the girls to do the same. He unbarred the door, and the three entered. By means of flint, steel, tinder, and burnt rags Turner made a light. Viola observed that the ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... had a very refreshing shower bath under a thundering cascade of water tumbling over the edge of a gorge. Near at hand, and conveniently so, too, for the priesthood, is a small shrine sacred to the Hindoo god Brahin, a diminutive edition of whom stands on a little pedestal, amidst braziers, lamps, figures with elephants' heads and human bodies, and other monstrosities. You may be certain there was a mendicant priest in ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... for his dogs, in their joy at seeing him, gave expression to it in their own peculiar way. A big Muskymote knocked down a little Corbeau and straightway began to worry it, while a Chocolat did the same with a diminutive tete-noire. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Blue-grass lad's face changed, whitening a little as he sprang forward to meet him, but Jason, motioning with his thumb, swerved behind the chimney, where the stranger swiftly threw off his coat, the mountain boy spat on his hands, and like two diminutive demons they went at each other fiercely and silently. A few minutes later the two little girls rounding the chimney corner saw them—Gray on top and Jason writhing and biting under him like a tortured snake. A moment more Mavis's strong little hand had the stranger ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... his disaffection. In a burst of hot summer weather he had obtained permission to bathe in a modest-sized pond in the orchard, and thither one afternoon Groby had bent his steps, attracted by loud imprecations of anger mingled with the shriller chattering of monkey-language. He beheld his plump diminutive servitor, clad only in a waistcoat and a pair of socks, storming ineffectually at the monkey which was seated on a low branch of an apple tree, abstractedly fingering the remainder of the boy's outfit, which he had removed just out ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... been seen proudly parading round with a brood of diminutive downy young ones, so shy and retiring is this bird in its domestic habits that naturalists have been unable to determine when and how it builds its nest. The natives assert that it nests in high trees, but their statement ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... extracted from the MSS. of Mr. Syme, writer to the signet. Those, who are desirous of more information, may consult Craig de Feudis, Lib. II. dig. 9. sec. 24. It is hoped the reader will excuse this digression, though somewhat professional; especially as there can be little doubt, that this diminutive republic must soon share the fate of mightier states; for, in consequence of the increase of commerce, lands possessed under this singular tenure, being now often brought to sale, and purchased by the neighbouring proprietors, will, in process of time, be included in their ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... recesses now valueless, do I look upon as nevertheless so much gold—its now despised contents one day to disperse themselves upon kings and nobles, in the senate and the theatres. I need not tell you what this diminutive bottle might have been had for, before the Kalends. Yet, by Hercules, should I have sold it even then for less? for should I not have divined its fortune? The wheel is ever turning, turning. But, most excellent Piso, men of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... buffalo camp about eight o'clock and had a toilsome march of two hours over ridges of hills covered with a ragged forest of scrub-oaks and broken by deep gullies. Among the oaks I observed many of the most diminutive size, some not above a foot high, yet bearing abundance of ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... New Jersey State Horticultural Society, I find the following interesting paper from the pen of Mr. C. W. Idell, a commission merchant, whose intelligent interest in fruits extends beyond their current price. He gives so graphic a picture of the diminutive beginning of small fruit growing and marketing, that I am led to ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... bees is the most tiny, although an equally industrious workman. He is a little smaller than our common house-fly, and he builds his diminutive nest in the hollow of a tree, where the entrance to his mansion is a hole no larger than would be made by a ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... yourself a very diminutive man, carelessly—very carelessly—dressed; a face lined, care-worn, and so expressionless that it reminded one of 'that dull, changeless brow, where cold Obstruction's apathy appalls the gazing mourner's heart,'—a face like death in life. The instant ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... in width. It was uninhabited and there were no large animals on it. It was Frank Merrill's theory that it was the exposed peak of a huge extinct volcano. In the center, filling the crater, was a little fresh-water lake. The island was heavily wooded; but in contour it presented only diminutive contrasts of hill and valley. And except as the semi-tropical foliage offered novelties of leaf and flower, the beauties of unfamiliar shapes and colors, it did not seem particularly interesting. Ralph Addington ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... pointed to a diminutive figure standing at the end of the long table, and engaged in folding some ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the Commander-in-Chief Morillo, and Admiral Enrile, had that morning proceeded to the works at Boca Chica, so we only found El Senor Montalvo, the Captain-General of the Province, a little kiln-dried diminutive Spaniard. Morillo used to call him "uno muneco Creollo," but withal he was a gentlemanlike man in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... some uncertainty. Is its cause something of absolute and substantive existence without me, or is it not? Is its cause something of the very same nature, as the thing that gave me a similar sensation in a matter of comparatively a pigmy and diminutive extension? ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... together like a chain in its belly. Apart from this it is boneless. Had Aristotle known this, Aristotle who records as a most remarkable phenomenon the fact that the fish known as the small sea-ass alone of all fishes has its diminutive heart placed in its stomach, he would assuredly have ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... a glance the neat uniform of the nurse, the General's smart, if diminutive, apparel, and the unmistakable though somewhat ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... which the Marquis of Tullibardine unfurled the standard, amidst unbounded enthusiasm. It was made of white and blue silk. Meanwhile the Laird of Keppoch was observed advancing with a contingent of 300 of his Macdonells. At the head of the diminutive force thus made up, Prince Charles embarked on a contest with a power the most formidable in Europe. And the daring of this small band was even more conspicuous when they at once determined to march direct on the capital of the kingdom. Glenfinnan, formed not unlike an amphitheatre, and easy ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... young man lay stretched upon a narrow bed which filled an entire wall of the one and only sitting-room in a diminutive London flat. On the wall opposite was a fireplace and a small sideboard; against the third wall stood a couple of upright chairs. In the centre of the room stood a table. A wicker arm-chair did duty for an invalid tray, and held a selection of pipes, books, and writing materials, also a bottle ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... another inmate, in the person of a queer little Frenchman, who has his breakfast, tea, and lodging here, and finds his dinner elsewhere. Monsieur S——— does not appear to be more than twenty-one years old,—a diminutive figure, with eyes askew, and otherwise of an ungainly physiognomy; he is ill-dressed also, in a coarse blue coat, thin cotton pantaloons, and unbrushed boots; altogether with as little of French coxcombry as can well be imagined, though with something of the monkey aspect inseparable from a little ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are scattered here and there without any apparent law or ascertained principle of arrangement. Seeing how imperfect is our acquaintance with even the larger objects of this class, it is rash to insist on the antiquity or permanence of such diminutive objects, or to dogmatise about the cessation of lunar activity in connection with features where the volcanic history of our globe, if it is of any value as an analogue, teaches us it ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... corner of her lips lingered a tender droop oddly at variance with the childish dimple of the finely moulded chin. Though the girl's red hair—like flame, as the lawyer had first thought, gave her an alive look, the little form under the queer straight dress was diminutive to frailty. ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... a fever on me, or coming on. Gros is in the next room bargaining for rubies and sapphires; but I do not feel disposed to indulge in such extravagances.... The steamer in which we are to proceed to-morrow looks very small, with diminutive portholes. We shall be a large party, and, I fear, very ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... drew our eyes to the Place of the Constitution; and, indeed, I had forgotten to say, that that majestic square was filled with military, with exceedingly small firelocks, the men ludicrously young and diminutive for the most part, in a uniform at once cheap and tawdry,—like those supplied to the warriors at Astley's, or from still humbler theatrical wardrobes: indeed, the whole scene was just like that of a little theatre; the houses curiously small, with arcades and balconies, out of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... formed by overhanging blocks of granite. Deep river pools and deceitful morasses, over which the cotton grass flutters its white tassels, are thought to be the "gates" of their country, where they possess diminutive flocks and herds of their own. Malicious, yet hardly demoniacal, they are precisely Dryden's "spirits ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... vocabulary, by fixing in his language two significant words. One served to explain the virtue most familiar to him—bienfaisance; and that irritable vanity which magnifies its ephemeral fame, the sage reduced to a mortifying diminutive—la gloriole! ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that Foote must have meant a diminutive, or POCKET edition.] I mentioned my doubts to Dr Johnson, who said, he would go two miles out of his way to see Lord Monboddo. I therefore sent Joseph ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... broad basin, the land retiring on each side of us. The estuary to the northward is called Southampton Water, the town of that name being seated on its margin. The opening in the Isle of Wight is little more than a very wide mouth to a very diminutive river or creek, and Cowes, divided into East and West, lines its shores. The anchorage in the arm of the sea off this little haven was well filled with vessels, chiefly the yachts of amateur seamen, and ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a diminutive khaki figure, an inch or so shorter than his rifle with bayonet fixed, stood peering haughtily from beneath a steel helmet, several sizes too ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... of his order. And the Kshatriyas and the Vaisyas also, O monarch, follow practices contrary to those that are proper for their own orders. And men become short-lived, weak in strength, energy, and prowess; and endued with small might and diminutive bodies, they become scarcely truthful in speech. And the human population dwindles away over large tracts of country, and the regions of the earth, North and South, and East and West, become crowded with animals and beasts of prey. And during this period, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... your sins shall find you out." This complicated matters considerably. He consulted his cash-books, bank-books, bill-books, sales-books, order-books, ledgers, etcetera, etcetera, again and again, for hours at a time, without arriving at any satisfactory result. He went to his diminutive office early in the morning, and sat there late at night; and did not, by so doing, improve his finances a whit, although he succeeded in materially injuring his health. He worried the life of poor meek Grinder to such ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... looked (from a certain fullness about the hips,) as if it was intended to be worn with a hoop. Her slender throat was encircled by a black riband, with a small locket attached to it; and upon the top of her head rested a diminutive lace cap. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the gully next morning, following the main street, which changed direction every few yards, "paved" with three-inch cobbles, the sidewalks two feet wide, leaving one pedestrian to jump off it each time two met. A diminutive streetcar drawn by mules with jingling bells passed now and then. Peons swarmed here also, but there was by no means the abject poverty of San Luis Potosi, and Americans seemed in considerable favor, as their mines in the vicinity give the town its ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the jealousy of my otherwise gentle rat when it saw me petting a mouse, and it would watch for an opportunity to spring upon its diminutive rival and put a speedy end ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Dollar Princess;" from somewhere over in the dark and mysterious alleyways came the regular beating of a tom-tom. The magnificent and picturesque town car with its gaudy ragamuffins swayed by in train of its diminutive mule. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... while at Fort Warren, however interesting and instructive it might be to our friends. A large portion of the forenoon was devoted to squad and company drill, and of the afternoon to battalion drill. The colonel, though a very diminutive man in stature, was an enthusiast in military matters, and had the reputation of being one of the most thorough and skilful officers in the state. Tom Somers, who, since he joined the company, had felt ashamed of himself because he was no bigger, became quite reconciled to his ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... lasted—we found ourselves surrounded by Christians, who, having perceived us in our light skiff, had come to our aid, conveyed us to their hospitable dwelling, and took the most pious care of us. We had not long been disembarked when Theresa was taken with the pains of labour, and was confined of a very diminutive, sickly child. I went down on my knees before the innocent little creature that had so miraculously escaped from slavery, and prayed for it—it ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... brilliant crimson hue, burning amid the green wheat-fields, as if some Tyrian mantle had been flung there. The long, harmonious slopes and rounded summits of the hills were covered with drifts of a beautiful purple clover, and a diminutive variety of the achillea, or yarrow, with glowing yellow blossoms. The leaves had a pleasant aromatic odor, and filled the air with their refreshing breath, as they were crushed under the hoofs of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... shoulder, was stuck a large eagle feather, the insignia of a chief. At his feet, where he had crumpled down under the enemy's bullets, lay the Indian lad in a huddled heap. It did not need the tiny eagle feather in the diminutive turban to convince Charley's observant eye that it was a case of father and son, a chief and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... We have seen in the illustrations in Chapters III and IV, openings of considerable size so located in the face of the outer wall as to unfit them for use as doorways, and others whose size is wholly inadequate, but which are still provided with the typical though diminutive single-paneled door. Many of these small openings, occurring most frequently in the back walls of house rows, have the jambs, lintels, etc., characteristic of the typical modern door. However, as the drawings above referred ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... this afternoon fresh fish, and dried and unfresh, and the vendors thereof. There were many kinds of so-called fresh fish, but the most were dried, to mere skin and bone, sharks and sprats, piled in baskets or hanging in bundles. Diminutive wrinkled women sat on little bits of wet mat in rows, and chopped the "fresh" fish into little morsels with little choppers by the light of little cruisie oil lamps, that flickered and smoked beside them, and lit up ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... whence the rumour of work and safety had spread over the pastoral Campo, forcing its way also, even as the waters of a high flood, into the nooks and crannies of the distant blue walls of the Sierras. Father first, in a pointed straw hat, then the mother with the bigger children, generally also a diminutive donkey, all under burdens, except the leader himself, or perhaps some grown girl, the pride of the family, stepping barefooted and straight as an arrow, with braids of raven hair, a thick, haughty ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... vii. 6, xv. 26, 27. Not [Transcriber's note: Greek word here], but [Transcriber's note: another Greek word here], the diminutive for little ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... certainly more accurate. Again he speaks of "la Rue des Infantes" at Madrid, (8, 1)—"De los Infantos is the name of a street in that city—and in the same sentence names "une vieille dame Inesile Cantarille." Inesilla is the Spanish diminutive of Ines, and Cantarilla of Cantaro. The last word alludes to the expression "mozas de Cantaro," for women of inferior degree. Philip III. shuts up Sirena "dans la maison des repenties." This is also the name of a convent at Madrid, called "casa de las ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... snorting flame and its eyes smouldering fires, but instead its eyes were neat little windows with tidy curtains, for the monster turned out to be three diminutive houses on wheels drawn by a huge motor. What their end and purpose might be, is imaginable. If it is for the comfort of the High Command en campagne, the great clumsy procession rivaling the speed of a snail is a heap of trouble ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... of the day and most of the night the rue Vaugirard is busy. During the morning, push-carts loaded with red gooseberries, green peas, fresh sardines, and mackerel, their sides shining like silver, line the curb in front of the small shops. Diminutive donkeys, harnessed to picturesque two-wheeled carts piled high with vegetables, twitch their long ears and doze in the shady corners of the street. The gutters, flushed with clear water, flash in the sunlight. Baskets full of ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... their entire lives on the stems, sucking the juices through their little beaks, just as the aphids moor themselves to the tender rose-twigs, might be mistaken for thorns during one of their protective masquerades. Again they look like diminutive flocks of fowl, their heads ever pointing in one direction, no matter how the vine may twist and turn - always toward the top of the branch, that they may the better siphon the sap down their tiny throats. Toward the end of summer ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... poorer quarters of the town. Indeed, the count was so far reduced in his circumstances that he was even then negotiating (so it was rumoured) with a travelling company of clowns and acrobats, who had had the misfortune to lose their performing dwarf, for the sale of his diminutive daughter Filomena. Sir Hercules arrived in time to save her from this untoward fate, for he was so much charmed by Filomena's grace and beauty, that at the end of three days' courtship he made her a formal offer of marriage, which was accepted by her ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... be no halt in the work of building up the Navy, providing every year additional fighting craft. We are a very rich country, vast in extent of territory and great in population; a country, moreover, which has an Army diminutive indeed when compared with that of any other first-class power. We have deliberately made our own certain foreign policies which demand the possession of a first-class navy. The isthmian canal will greatly increase the efficiency of our Navy ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the broad avenue, through the final arch of which, as through a huge Gothic window, I saw the hall in the distance. Everything about me looked strange, rich, and lovely. Accustomed to the scanty flowers and diminutive wood of my own country, what I now saw gave me a feeling of majestic plenty, which I can recall at will, but which I have never experienced again. Behind the trees which formed the avenue, I saw a shrubbery, composed entirely of flowering plants, almost ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... thought of it—it was like a secret memory of the Venn, of that desolate spot over which they had triumphed, and to which they made only this slight concession. And did not "Woelfchen"—if they made that the diminutive of ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... The diminutive lungs were as readily open to suggestion as the wee heart: a few movements of the twigs they called arms, and the breath came. O'Connell closed the mouth and it remained closed, adjusted the limbs, and they stayed in the positions in which ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... and practice precluded the cleaning of the coach. The passengers, among whom were several ladies, wearing coquettish bonnets with ribbons or beau-catchers attached, were too weary even to view with wonder the odd-looking theatrical caravan. Only the driver, a diminutive person with puckered face the color of dried apples, so venerable as to be known as Old Hundred, seemed as spry and cheery ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... turnkeys' rooms in the new gaol is to be seen an article of harness, that at first sight creates surprise in the mind of the beholder, when considering what animal of the brute creation exists of so diminutive a size as to admit of its use; but on enquiry it will be found to be a bridle, perfect in head band, throat lash, &c., for a fellow creature. There is attached to it a round piece of ironwood of almost 4 ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... minutes they were off again. We then felt sure the ship was going to stay and was landing some one. When the boats were getting fairly near the shore we went down. A tremendously heavy shower came on which drove us to seek shelter in a diminutive cave. The sea had become rougher. We watched the boats working their way in from the east; they were being tossed and pitched about like corks and the spray was dashing all over them. Our interest grew as they neared the shore. How we scanned them to see who was on board. As they drew ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... was no car in sight. A few had crawled past on their way to the Battery, but none had come back. It was frightfully cold. Betty stamped her feet, slapped her arms, warmed first one aching ear and then the other. Still no car. A diminutive newsboy had stopped by her side, and in despair she ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... bauchles—that is, the under part of old boots cut from the legs. As to his face, lo and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west—yea, the sun blazing in all his glory—had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and twinkling; but his nose made up for them—and that it did—being portly in all its dimensions broad and long, and as to colour, liker a radish than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure as ever man of woman born clapped ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... to elapse, for refreshments, and when the curtain rises, GIMFRISKY, who has emerged through a diminutive hole, is discovered in the costume of AJAX defying the lightning, or something of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... Gothic kilthei, "womb"). The Lowland-Scotch dialect still preserves an old word for "child" in bairn, cognate with Anglo-Saxon bearn, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, and Gothic barn (the Gothic had a diminutive barnilo, "baby"), Sanskrit bharna, which signifies "the borne one," "that which is born," from the primitive Indo-European root bhr, "to bear, to carry in the womb," whence our "to bear" and the German ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain |
