But the slopes rapidly steepened and at length fell away in sheer precipices, compelling a return to the ice.

He went on a score of paces; he seemed to be ascending a steepening slant floor and then to have gone over a sort of ridge and to be descending again.

In fine, the use which the engineer makes of grades and curves, when the physical nature of the country and the nature and amount of the traffic expected are known, may be taken as a pretty sure index of his real professional standing, and sometimes as an index of the moral man; as when, for example, he steepens his grades to suit the contractor's ideas of mechanics,in other words, to save work.

A general improvement in nutrition and other home circumstances might tend to 'steepen' the polygon of variation, i.e. to bring more children near the normal, or it might increase the number of children with exceptional inherited cleverness who were able to reveal that fact, and so 'flatten' it; and either case might make a change desirable in the best proportion between the types of schools or even in the number of the types.

We could at least sympathize with each other in our common miserybear with its weakness, comfort its regrets, hide its mortifications, cherish its poor joys, and smooth the way down the steepening slope to the grave!