"Contraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boilers have of late become gigantic foes to human life. Explosions have increased, are increasing, and should be diminished; and they are, in many instances, caused by boilers being strained and weakened by sudden contraction from having their surfaces exposed when the fire has been withdrawn from them. Boilers are also materially injured by the excessive furnace heat which it is necessary to maintain to compensate for the large amount of caloric which is dissipated from their surfaces, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... dinner-time, and took the morsels in the most orderly manner. He was very affectionate, good-tempered, and cleanly. He died of a disease which affects many carnivorous animals in confinement—a contraction of the lower opening of the stomach, which prevents ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... every speech, made either in opposition to resumption or in favor of inflation, a portion of the community known as "the debtor class" has appeared as the object of the orator's tenderest solicitude. The great reason for not returning to specie payments hitherto has been the fear that contraction would press hard on "the debtor class;" it is for "the debtor class" we need more paper "per capita;" and indeed, no matter what proposal we make in the direction of financial reform, we are met by pictures of the frightful effects which ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... The present tense is inflected by adding the personal endings to the present stem, and its first person uses -o and not -m. The form /amo: is for /ama-o:, the two vowels /a-o: contracting to /o:. In /moneo: there is no contraction. Nearly all regular verbs ending in -eo belong to ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... in particular, was talking as we went along. I liked to hear him talk. He had been telling us how a thing that is to be strong ought to look strong, too, and from that had got somehow to the topic of expansion and contraction in bridges, with variations of temperature. "It isn't only the steel bridges that do it," he said. "Stone arch bridges do it, too. The crown of the arch rises and falls. The Greeks and Romans and Egyptians knew that expansion and ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... word Rap is probably a contraction of "raparee," and was the name given to the tokens that passed current in Ireland for copper coins of small value. Generally it referred to debased coins; hence it may be allied to "raparee," who might be considered as a debased citizen. The raparees were so called from the rapary ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... agricultural and mining sectors, a more favorable atmosphere for business initiatives, a more realistic exchange rate, fairly low inflation, and the continued support of international organizations. Economic recovery since the 2005 flood-related contraction has been buoyed by increases in remittances and foreign direct investment. Chronic problems include a shortage of skilled labor and a deficient infrastructure. The government is juggling a sizable external debt against the urgent need for expanded public investment. In March 2007, the Inter-American ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... had fifty arguments of safety, and precedent, and high authority to justify her. But, indeed, we may observe, that in a religious attorney these illiberal scruples do not often occur. Mr. M'Slime knew the advantages of religion too well, to feel that contraction of the mind and principles, which in so many ordinary cases occasions religion and common morality to become almost identical. Religion was to him a friend—a patroness in whose graces he stood so high, that she permitted him to do many things which those who were more estranged ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... philosopher, that the offenses which are committed through desire are more blamable than those which are committed through anger. For he who is excited by anger seems to turn away from reason with a certain pain and unconscious contraction; but he who offends through desire, being overpowered by pleasure, seems to be in a manner more intemperate and more womanish in his offences. Rightly, then, and in a way worthy of philosophy, he said that the offence which is committed with pleasure ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... figures (the majority five years before had been fifteen hundred), Bobbie could not forbear an exclamation which produced another contraction of Lady Lucy's tired brow. Lady Niton gave a very audible "Whew!"—to which she hastened to add: "Well, Lucy, what does it matter? Twenty-four is as good ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty; Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there; makes marriage-vows As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow; Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... did not take the anaesthetic well, and part of the experiment was made under INCOMPLETE ANAESTHESIA." There was noted, also, "contraction of the abdominal muscles, on account of ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... single living body. The second is the vast system of iron muscles which, as it were, move the limbs of the mighty organism one upon another. What was the railroad-force which put the Sixth Regiment in Baltimore on the 19th of April but a contraction and extension of the arm of Massachusetts with a clenched fist full of bayonets at the end ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... extends N.W. and S.E., and is eighteen leagues long in that direction. Its greatest breadth, which is at the S.E, end, is eight leagues. The N.W. end is two- thirds this breadth, and near the middle, one-third. This contraction is occasioned by a wide and pretty deep bay on the S.W. side. To judge of this island from what we saw of it, it must be very fertile and well inhabited. The land on the sea-coast is rather low, and lies with a gentle slope from the hills which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... natural conditions in the United States—a change which, fifteen or twenty years ago, could not have been foreseen. The extraordinary development of the whole Western country, with the inevitable contraction of the range of all big game, and the absolute reduction in the numbers of the game consequent on its destruction by skin hunters, head hunters and tooth hunters, has obliged the Boone and Crockett Club, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... "Phil. Sid." may be a contraction of philos sidus, and the Latin sidus being changed to the Greek astron, we get astron philos ("star-lover"). The "star" he loved was Penelope Devereux, whom he calls Stella ("star"), and to whom he was betrothed. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... hand, there must be actual present knowledge of the present facts which make an act dangerous. The act is not enough by itself. An act, it is true, imports intention in a certain sense. It is a muscular contraction, and something more. A spasm is not an act. The contraction of the muscles must be willed. And as an adult who is master of himself foresees with mysterious accuracy the outward adjustment which will follow his inward effort, that adjustment may be said to ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... central ones; and at three months this wearing off is very apparent, till at four months all the incisor teeth appear worn, but the inner ones the most. Now the teeth begin slowly to diminish in size by a kind of contraction, as well as wearing down, and the distance apart ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... contraction of Brian's brow at this moment. To Mr. Colquhoun the moments of doubt were full of anguish. Perchance Jeff had given his life for his son's, for life seemed long in returning to the little face ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... very intense, as in the north, it sometimes acts on the organism so briskly as to depress and destroy its powers with astonishing rapidity. As the action of cold is most frequently slow and death does not take place until after several hours' exposure, the contraction that diminishes the caliber of the vessels more and more deeply, repels the blood toward the cavities of the head, chest, and abdomen; it causes, in the circulation of the lungs, and in that of the venous system of the head, an embarrassment that ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... said, not understanding. There was a slight contraction of pain at his heart, a slight tension on his brows. Something he wanted to grasp ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... contracts as it dries, and in the process apparently disperses and clings to any other bodies rather than to itself. To put this in another way, if air is allowed to insinuate itself between the two surfaces which it is desirable to bring into closest conjunction, the contraction, particularly if good, while in progress, will cause a separation in the central mass of the glue, while the two surfaces will be left as before, independent of each other, but more clogged. Pressure must therefore be invariably brought to bear behind the opposing parts, so as to drive ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... is quickly introduced into the cooling system of an overheated motor, contraction and considerable strain on the engine housing will result. If you can repeat the treatment a few times, cracking ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... of course nonsense. We have a full account of the human mechanism, and can see that it is throughout worked by association, admitting the primary fact of experience that the idea causes the muscular contraction. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... take place. The blood from the capillaries is then collected into a series of tubes, the veins, by which it is returned to the heart. This circulation is maintained by means of a pumping organ or heart, which receives the blood from the veins and by the contraction of its powerful walls forces this into the arteries, the direction of flow being determined as in a pump, by a system of valves. The waste products of cell life pass from the cells into the fluid about them, and are in part directly returned into the blood, but for the greater ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... by any other method. I may also observe that as these motor-centres occur in the grey matter of the hemispheres, a strong probability arises that they are not only the motor-centres, but also the volitional centres which originate the intellectual commands for the contraction of this and that group of muscles. Unfortunately we cannot interrogate an animal whether, when we stimulate a motor-centre, we arouse in the animal's mind an act of will to throw the corresponding group of muscles into action; but that ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... cord, while they are the means of man's intercourse with the external world, at the same time re-act upon the automatic muscles in digestion and sensation. Since the movement of the muscular fibres consists in the change of contraction and expansion, it follows that Gymnastics must bring about a change of movement which shall both contract and ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... is here, I hold, a corruption of "I (or Ayy) h""yes indeed he." [I take "aywah" (as I would read the word) to be a different spelling for "aywa"yes indeed, which according to Spitta Bey, Gr. p. 168 is a contraction of "Ay (I) wa'llhi," yes by Allah. "What? thy lover?" asks the husband, and she emphatically affirms the fact, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... there was no quiver on the still, pale lips, no contraction of the polished forehead; but the rigidity of her face broke up suddenly in a smile of indescribable mournfulness,—a smile where self-contempt and pity and hopeless bitterness all lent ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... considerable dementia or confusion and cases in a state of remission are apt to give normal test records. As we proceed from the records of such cases to those of cases showing mental deterioration we observe a gradual reduction in the values of reactions, contraction of the mental horizon,[1] and the appearance of the phenomenon of perseveration. We submit the following ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... impugn the cause rendered, that "pilosity is incident to orifices of moisture—muscosi fontes, &c." Nor the cause rendered, that "the firmness of hides is for the armour of the body against extremities of heat or cold," doth not impugn the cause rendered, that "contraction of pores is incident to the outwardest parts, in regard of their adjacence to foreign or unlike bodies;" and so of the rest, both causes being true and compatible, the one declaring an intention, the other a consequence only. Neither ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... weapon. I got these from two policemen who tried to arrest me an hour or so ago. And I also remind you, Senhor, that if the armed men you have posted to prevent my escape try to shoot me, that the inevitable contraction of my muscles will send two bullets into your heart—even if I am dead. I am a dead man, Senhor, if you give the word, but so are ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... Dr. FRANK, that a surgeon of St. Petersburg succeeded by passing the worm through a canula, and the canula through the sphincter ani muscle, so as to obviate the resistance caused by its contraction. In this manner, he easily succeeded in withdrawing the taenia ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... mark of contraction is over the n: t.i. the n has its tail curled over its back ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... want to be hanged, Johnny Shearman?" he asked again gravely. The lad burst into gasping sobs, and looked up at his captor with an agony of fear in his bloodshot eyes. "No," continued Mr. Landale, "I am sure you don't, eh?" with a renewed ominous contraction of the hand. "It's a fearful thing, is hanging. And yet many a lad, hardly older than you, has been hanged for less than you are doing. Magistrates can get people hanged, and I am a magistrate, you know. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... proceeded some distance before meeting with game. What intense and inexpressible stillness through the grand woods! Arthur started, and almost exclaimed, when, from a pine tree close to him, issued a report sharp as a pistol shot. It was only the violent contraction of the wood from the severe frost, as he knew in a moment; and the deer browsing yonder on branch tops never winced, though a whisper or a footfall would have sent them bounding away. Presently the crack of Argent's rifle was followed by the spring of a buck high into the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... doing ourselves and the race by habitually lowering our powers of life and energy in such a manner. As a matter of fact it is doubtful whether any persons have ever been found who would say that their stays were at all tight; and, indeed, by a muscular contraction they can apparently prove that they are not so by moving them about on themselves, and thus probably believe what they say. That they are in error all the same they can easily assure themselves by first ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... corpse in artful insinuations and obvious misrepresentations. Thus, inwardly corroded by the venom it distills, his physical machine gets out of order, like that of Marat, but with other symptoms. When speaking in the tribune "his hands crisp with a sort of nervous contraction;" sudden tremors agitate "his shoulders and neck, shaking him convulsively to and fro."[31150] "His bilious complexion becomes livid," his eyelids quiver under his spectacles, and how he looks! "Ah," said a Montagnard, "you would have voted as we did on the 9th of Thermidor, had you seen his green ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... through mismanagement and speculation, in which Scott had no part, went down in ruin, Scott found to his surprise that he owed a vast sum. In his "Gurnal" of September 5, 1827, he wrote: "The debts for which I am legally responsible, though no party to this contraction, amount to L30,000." But although his legal responsibility was for so great a sum, he felt that morally he was responsible for a far greater amount. When the printing house of James Ballantyne & Co., the publishing house of Constable, and Hunt and Robinson, failed, they failed for ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... ones—accidental ones—usual ones." Natural—"a wry face, squint eyes, wry mouth, nose," &c. Accidental. "Loss of an eye, a cut on the cheek, or other part of the face, pits of the small-pox and the like." Usual. "Contraction of the eyes and mouth, or closing or gaping of the latter, or drawing it in somewhat to this or that side, upwards or downwards," &c. As for other bodily infirmities, how many have wry necks, hunchbacks, bandy legs—withered or short arms, or one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... we are most rationally allowed to, that Mars has undergone a progressive secularization in cooling, that contraction has acted upon its surface as it has on ours, that water has accumulated in basins and depressed troughs, that atmospheric currents have been started, that meteorological changes in consequence have followed, and that ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... more than Mears and Pool, and Larpent (Fr. I'arpent), Lemaitre, and Lestrange more than Acres, Masters, and Strange. There are few names of less heroic sound than Spark and Codlin, yet the former is sometimes a contraction of the picturesque Sparrow-hawk, used as a personal name by the Anglo-Saxons, while the latter can be traced back via the earlier forms Quodling (still found), Querdling, Querdelyoun to ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... expansion, Drawing nearer, or contraction, Falling, rising, Slanting, crossing, Convex, concave, curved ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... carried out by the end of the year 1812. A strong breakwater, about 800 feet long, was also run out from the south shore, leaving a space of about 250 feet as an entrance, thereby giving greater protection to the shipping in the harbour, while the contraction of the channel, by increasing the "scour," tended to give a much greater depth of water ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... It is an historical fact that the public has its medical freaks, without being called an invalid, and that whole nations "go daft" on the shallowest impositions. At one time the English were made to believe that all diseases were caused by the contraction of one small muscle of the body; at another, Parliament itself helped make up the five thousand pounds given by the aristocracy to one Joanna Stephens for an omnipotent powder, decoction, and pills, composed chiefly of egg-shells ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... was, she was looking more bewitching than ever; her slim arms gleaming through the black lace of her sleeves, and the gold threads in her soft masses of chestnut hair sparkling in the light of the shaded lamp behind her. The slight contraction of her eyebrows and the mutinous downward curve of her ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... a large part of the people in the West were finding fault with "contraction." Calling in the greenbacks, they held, was making money scarce and lowering prices. Congress, therefore, in 1868 yielded to the pressure, and ordered that further contraction should stop and that there should not be less ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... but stooped at my bidding and gave the pitiful young face a pro longed stare. When he looked up again it was with a puzzled contraction of ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... noticed when we entered Nikolaus's room was the time —a quarter to 10. Could that be correct? Only such a few minutes to live! I felt a contraction at my heart. Nikolaus jumped up and gave us a glad welcome. He was in good spirits over his plannings for his party and had not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Brion together, though this made very little difference. The first died suddenly as hands like steel claws found his neck and in a single spasmodic contraction did such damage to the large blood vessels there that they burst and tiny hemorrhages filled his brain. The second man had time for a single scream, though he died just as swiftly when those hands closed on ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... tempi, tempi that sprang from the expressively light mechanism of the prevailing pianos of Chopin's day. Von Bulow declares that "the requisite suppleness of the hand in gradual extension and rapid contraction will be most quickly attained if the player does not disdain first of all to impress on the individual fingers the chord which is the foundation of each arpeggio;" a sound pedagogic point. He also inveighs against the disposition to play the octave basses arpeggio. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... therefore, consists of a tube with a bulb, such as you see here, containing a fluid whose degrees of dilatation and contraction are indicated by a scale to which the tube is fixed. The degree which indicates the boiling point, simply means that, when the fluid is sufficiently dilated to rise to this point, the heat is such that water exposed ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... had been the scene of Erica's exploit, Rolf laid aside his rod, with the bright hook that herrings so much admire, to guide his canoe through the currents caused by the approach of the rocks, and contraction of the passage; and he then wished he had brought Erica with him, so lovely was the scene. Every crevice of the rocks, even where there seemed to be no soil, was tufted with bushes, every twig of which was bursting into the ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... his haggard face. His unsmiling eyes, so pale and unmeaning, stared stupidly at the children. And suddenly the merry smile died out of the young faces, and an odd contraction of their brows suggested a dawning sympathy which came ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... before long. We urged him to take some nourishment. He peremptorily refused. He felt the contraction of the stomach which is so common in those parts, and was ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... which we are utterly unacquainted with; nor could Vision, Rarification, or any of our School-mens fine Terms, stand me in any stead in this case; but here was such Additions of piercing Organs, Particles of Transparence, Emission, Transmission, Mediums, Contraction of Rays, and a Thousand Applications of things prepar'd for the wondrous Operation, that you may be sure are requisite for the bringing to pass something yet unheard of ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... was recognised by Glisson, but it was first prominently brought forward in the Hallerian doctrine of the "vis insita" of muscles. If muscle can contract without nerve, there is an end of the Cartesian mechanical explanation of its contraction by the influx of ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... reader under the strongest enchantment. Homer not only appears the inventor of poetry, but excels all the inventors of other arts, in this, that he has swallowed up the honour of those who succeeded him. What he has done admitted no increase, it only left room for contraction or regulation. He showed all the stretch of fancy at once; and if he has failed in some of his flights, it was but because he attempted everything. A work of this kind seems like a mighty tree, which rises from the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... before it, and for the same reason. The land begins to rise, and cast the warm shallow seas from its face. The expansion of life has been more rapid and remarkable than it had ever been before, in corresponding periods of abundant food and easy conditions; the contraction comes more quickly than it had ever done before. Mountain masses begin to rise in nearly all parts of the world. The advance is slow and not continuous, but as time goes on the Atlas, Alps, Pyrenees, Apennines, Caucasus, Himalaya, Rocky Mountains, and Andes rise higher and ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... perceived the same figure standing by her bedside. He appeared in his uniform, the hands pressed across the breast, the hair dishevelled, the face very pale. His large dark eyes were fixed full upon her; their expression was that of great excitement, and there was a peculiar contraction of the mouth, habitual to him when agitated. She saw him, even to each minute particular of his dress, as distinctly as she had ever done in her life; and she remembers to have noticed between his hands the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... with the old contraction of her eyebrows. "I don't think so, because, as I told you before, it isn't really my doing at all. It isn't that I won't give up my religion—it is my religion that won't give up me. Supposing that a blind man ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... increased standard of living in an increasing population without a greatly increased transport equipment. Moreover, there are very great social problems underlying our transport system; today their contraction is forcing a congestion of our population around the great cities with all that these overswollen settlements import. Even such great disturbances as the coal strike have a minor root in our inadequate transportation facilities ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... sweet and tender were the accents in which he spoke these few simple works, that the tears filled Angela's eyes, and Abbe Vergniaud, resting his head on one hand, felt a strange contraction in his throat, and began to think of possible happy days yet to be passed perchance in seclusion with this long- denied son of his, who had sprung out of the secret ways of love, first to slay and then to redeem him. Could there be a more plain and exact measuring out ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... when the word, though contracted in the middle, retains its original pronunciation; as "Dr." or "Mr." But it is used where the contraction is at the end ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... ST. PETERSBURG (1703).—After chastising the Czar [Footnote: Czar is probably a contraction of Caesar. The title was adopted by the rulers of Russia because they regarded themselves as the successors and heirs of the Caesars of Rome and Constantinople.] at Narva, the Swedish king turned south and marched into Poland to punish Augustus for the part he had ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... not look at it like that. Yet, when I recall some of the cases I've seen contraction induced ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... personally unaffected by the failure of the bank, and could not be induced to accelerate his speed. Beating only made him more stubborn, and when Bideabout stretched his legs out to the furthest possible extent apart that was possible, and then brought them together with a sudden contraction so as to dig his heels into the horse's ribs, that brought Clutch ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... or twisted character of the fibre is caused by the unequal contraction of the outer scales, and depends in a great measure upon the hygroscopic nature of the wool. It may be entirely removed for the time by wetting the wool in hot water, then drying it in a stretched condition, or the curl may be artificially induced by unequal ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... The painful contraction in the chest of the lad grew easier, and black specks that had come before his eyes floated away. He returned to a firm land of reality, but he knew that his strength was not yet sufficient to permit of their going on. Tayoga came ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that something lived in him that was not there the day before, for, instead of the flaccid immobility in which he was mired all day, he was shaken at that moment by violent tremors, and on his expressionless, dead face there was a wrinkle of suffering life, a contraction as of pain. Jansoulet, profoundly moved, gazed at that thin, wasted, earth-colored face, on which the beard, having appropriated all the vitality of the body, grew with surprising vigor; then he stooped, placed his lips on the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... vestibules, but for comfort having a covering of wood in the audience room. The roof was of iron and masonry, the outer covering of slate being secured to masonry blocks. The iron roof beams of over one hundred feet span, were mounted on rollers to allow for contraction and expansion. The ceiling of the audience room was of iron. The ornamental work of the proscenium, the tier balustrades, and the frames of the partitions between the boxes were all of metal. The stage ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... group, Glenfernie with a painter of landscape, Deschamps, and an Oriental, member of some mission to the West. Meeting so, they stopped short. Their nostrils dilated, there seemed to come a stirring over their bodies. Inwardly they felt a painful constriction, a contraction to something hard, intent, and fanged. This was the more strongly felt by Alexander, but Ian felt it, too. Did Glenfernie mean to dog him through life—think that he would be let to do so? Alone in a forest, very far back, they ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... type was not of Ibsen's invention; he found it in those rustic tales, inimitably resumed by Asbjoernson and Moe, in which he shows us that his memory was steeped. Here, too, he found the Boeig, a monster of Norse superstition, vast and cold, slippery and invisible, capable of infinite contraction and expansion. The conception that this horror would stand in symbol for a certain development of selfish national instability seems to have seized him later, and Peer Gynt, which began as a farce, continued as a fable. The nearest ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... bid god-yield as for your pains] I believe yield, or, as it is in the folio of 1623, eyld, is a corrupted contraction of shield. The wish implores not reward ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... a too elevated and exulting joy on the possession of them is unbecoming; just as though it might be allowable to laugh, to giggle would be indecent. Thus, a mind enlarged by joy is as blameable as a contraction of it by grief; and eager longing is a sign of as much levity in desiring as immoderate joy is in possessing; and, as those who are too dejected are said to be effeminate, so they who are too elated with joy are properly called volatile; and as feeling envy is a part of grief, and ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... consists of expansion, contraction and modulation, the latter being the union of the ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... countenance with a sweetness, a loveliness, which was strange, and sometimes startling, from the brilliancy of its expression. A ruddy glow, like the blush of a summer sunset, dwelt in either cheek, and a slight contraction at both corners of the mouth gave her face a half-mirthful look; but her forehead, full in the upper and lateral portions, seemed almost too severely intellectual for the other features. She possessed a wealth of luxuriant black hair, which she had a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... experience. As a rule the most trying and embarrassing part of encountering a former lover is that you wonder what, under Heaven, induced you to like him so well? Here the position was reversed, so that Henrietta wondered—with a sickening little contraction of the heart—what, under Heaven, had prevented her liking him much more, why, under Heaven, she ever let him go? Of course, as things turned out, it was all for the best, since her insensibility made for ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... total ruin." The spirit of all his communications was to infuse the distrust which he honestly felt, and which he certainly took no pains to disguise; to impress upon his countrymen the importance of improving the present emergency by the enlargement, instead of the threatened contraction of their liberties, and to enforce with all his energy the necessity of a firm union. He assured the estates that Don John had been sent, in this simple manner, to the country, because the King and cabinet had begun to despair of carrying their point by force. At the same ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was deeply affected by the young girl's affection for him, when a trembling hand touched his arm. He turned round. Jeanne de Cernay was before him, pale and wan; her eyes sunken into her head like two black nails, and her lips tightened by a violent contraction. The Prince stood thunderstruck at the sight of her. He looked around him. Nobody was observing him. Pierre was beside Marechal, who was whispering those words which only true friends can find in the sad hours of life. Madame Desvarennes was holding Micheline in her arms. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... Have easily, as spirits, evaded swift By quick contraction or remove; but now Foul ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... allowing it to undergo absorption. Some claim that the zoosperms are matured in these organs. They always contain seminal fluid after the age of puberty. During coition, their contents are forcibly expelled by a spasmodic contraction of the muscles which surround them and the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... man!" exclaimed JOHN, the Smith, to THOMAS the Jones—a contraction of joiner. "It is these combinations—co-operations, as Sir EVANS, the Clerk at the church over yonder hath it—that ruin trade." Before THOMAS the Jones or joiner could reply, there was a crash, and it was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... a danger in all this?" said Lestrange. "No, I don't want to say anything priggish," he added, seeing a contraction of Father Payne's brows; "I only want to say what I feel. I recognise the fascination of it as much as anyone can—but isn't it, as you said about travelling, a kind of intoxication? I mean, may it not be right to interpose it, but yet not right to follow it? Isn't it a selfish thing, and doesn't ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... six miles from Northampton. Well, good night; I have writ you such a volume, that you see I am forced to page it. The Duke has had a stroke of the palsy, but is quite recovered, except in some letters, which he cannot pronounce; and it is still visible in the contraction of one side of his mouth. My compliments ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... her, adhering even to the letter of her instructions, and only once was goaded into more active mendacity. The conversation had turned upon "Debs," and the consul had remarked on the singularity of the name. A guest from the north observed, however, that the name was undoubtedly a contraction. "Possibly it might have been 'Debborough,' or even the same name ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Mrs. Collins trembled and grew cold. She looked entreatingly from the detective to the lawyer, as if seeking some explanation of this new and entirely unexpected blow. Britz, noting the helpless bewilderment of the woman, experienced a painful contraction of heart, as if it were ordained that he must share the suffering which he had inflicted on her. Presently she lifted her face to his in a look of silent protest, and he felt a stinging sense of shame at the shabby part he was compelled to ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... says Dr. Green, "one remotest corner or little inlet of the minute blood-vessels of the human body that does not feel some wavelet from the convulsions occasioned by a good hearty laugh." In medical terms, it stimulates the vasomotor centers, and the spasmodic contraction of the blood-vessels causes the blood to flow quickly. Laughter accelerates the respiration, and gives warmth and glow to the whole system. It brightens the eye, increases the perspiration, expands the chest, forces the poisoned air ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... muscle special to her profession, like the triceps of the pugilist or the dancing-girls' calves. She was vain enough to put on a silk stocking, poked out her foot from under the bedclothes, let them feel "her egg," made it jump under their fingers by a sudden contraction. ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... the first German settlers of the county, then lived near the base of the rising battle ground, and carried on a tan-yard. He owned a valuable servant, named Fess, (contraction of Festus,) whose whole soul was exerted in making good sole leather, and upper too, for the surrounding country. This servant, greatly attached to his kind master, was forced off, very much against his will, by ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... ordinary way, and in the present depressed state of agricultural industry, is well known. Lands in this State will not now sell for more than a third or fourth of what they would have brought a few years ago, perhaps at the very time of the contraction of the debts for which they are now to be sold. The low price in foreign markets, for a series of years past, of agricultural produce, of wheat generally, of tobacco most commonly, and the accumulation of duties on the articles of consumption not produced within our State, not only disable ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... rocks cooled from their highest parts downwards, cracks or fissures have been formed in them by contraction, and these have been filled from the still-fluid mass below. At the beginning these injections have been the same as the first massive intrusive rocks, either granite or greenstone; but as the rocks gradually cooled, the fissures reached greater and ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... with kisses, concealing in this way her trouble and remorse, for from this time henceforward the unhappy woman was a prey to remorse, and never thought of her child without an agonized contraction ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... liked it," he remarked, smiling. "They are not bad fellows at heart, but they've got the poison in their systems which seems, somehow or other, to become part of the equipment of the politician—self-interest, over-egotism, contraction of interest. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Burdon-Sanderson's experiments, detailed at the last meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, show that the same electrical currents are developed upon the closing of the Dionaea-trap as in the contraction of a muscle. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... consider in this connection is the fact that there is no strength properly applied without movement; but when right movements are not used, the voice is pushed and forced by local effort and by contraction of the lung cells and of the throat. This of course means physical restraint, and physical restraint prevents self-expression. Singing is more psychological than physiological; hence the importance of free self-expression. Direct physical effort produces physical ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... is in itself sufficient, but the look that accompanies it—betraying as it does even more disgust than hatred—stings her to self-control. Slowly she rises to her feet. As she does so, a spasm, a contraction near her heart, causes her to place her hand involuntarily against her side, while a dull gray shadow covers ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... went out of her face. The smile lingered, but it had become merely a muscular contraction, like the smile on dead lips. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... ignition has ceased, shows that this fire has continued for a very considerable time, or that the same thing had occurred at a much earlier period. In the form of the adjacent hills I observed nothing peculiar, unless it be a contraction not very common of the lower parts of ravines. The geological structure is, as might be expected, more remarkable. Other summits of the range are porphyritic,** but the hills of Wingen present a variety of rocks, within a small space. In the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... result of contractions. Few would trace in "dipsey," a sounding-lead, the words "deep sea"; or in "futtocks" the combination "foot-hooks,"—the name of the connecting-pieces of the floor-timbers of a ship. "Breast-hook" has escaped contraction. Sailors have, indeed, a passion for metamorphosing words,—especially proper names. Those lie a little out of our track; but two instances are too good to be omitted:—The "Bellerophon," of the British navy, was always known as the "Bully-ruffian," and the "Ville de Milan," a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various |
