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Elastic   Listen
noun
Elastic  n.  An elastic woven fabric, as a belt, braces or suspenders, etc., made in part of India rubber. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Elastic" Quotes from Famous Books



... some light grey, and one, who bore the heaviest load of all, a snowy white. His master called him "Aleppo," and chided him gently for his weariness. Phil made himself known to him as he knelt to be unloaded, throwing the weight of his body on the thick elastic pads that Nature had given him on his broad chest and on each elbow and knee of his fore-limbs. These elastic cushions, Phil saw, were on the front of his hind knees too, and smaller ones ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... and resolute soul in spite of her slender and fragile frame; she had also an elastic disposition, which rose up swiftly from any prostration, and refused to be cast down utterly. So now this strength of her nature asserted itself; and triumphing over her momentary weakness, she resolved to go at once and see Wiggins himself. With these subordinates she had nothing ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... the true way to lengthen each day. Time is infinitely elastic. The noblest work is to do 'the works of Him that sent me.' There should be no care for the future. It is in His hand. There will be room in it for doing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... from her rear, Arrests the waxing darkness drear, And summons to her silent call, Sweeping, in their airy pall, The unshrived ghosts, in fairy trance, To join her moonshine morris-dance; While around the mystic ring The shadowy shapes elastic spring, Then with a passing shriek they fly, Wrapt in mists, along the sky, And oft are by the shepherd seen In his lone night-watch ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... and trim of figure, clear complexion and piercing gray eyes of peculiar brilliancy, softened by a merry twinkle betokening latent mischief, young Perkins was a youth fair and interesting to look upon. He walked with quick, elastic step, carried his head a little on one side, and had a habit, when anything struck his fancy pleasantly, of shrugging his shoulders and rubbing his hands together in a vigorous way, that seemed to declare in unmistakable terms that he was ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... at every step as he walks by the river such steady certainty, such reassurance from all sides, the trees bowing, the grey spires soft in the blue, voices blowing and seeming suspended in the air, the springy air of May, the elastic air with its particles—chestnut bloom, pollen, whatever it is that gives the May air its potency, blurring the trees, gumming the buds, daubing the green. And the river too runs past, not at flood, nor swiftly, but cloying the oar that dips in it and drops white drops from the blade, swimming ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... other men toiled seemed to him but empty bubbles; the only wealth he prized was his soul's increase in love and understanding: "If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like sweet-scented herbs—is more elastic, starry and immortal—that is ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... Fischer went by on the other side of the way, and it made us sick and faint to see him, remembering the doom that was upon him, and we the cause of it. And how unconscious he was that anything had happened to him! You could see by his elastic step and his alert manner that he was well satisfied with himself for doing that hard turn for poor Frau Brandt. He kept glancing back over his shoulder expectantly. And, sure enough, pretty soon Frau Brandt ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... complicated system of sliding parts moving over small but beautifully curved friction bearings. And while upon this matter of detail, it is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of electricity. In this way the curious parallelism to animal motions, which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder, was attained. Such ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... relay of interpreters, with the final answer boiled down to a "no" in English. For a language that has only a few words like shauri, backsheesh, apana, and chukula the native lingo is a most elastic one. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... success, he thrusts the ingenious instrument either at the calves, or neck of the flying thief; and the point B coming in contact with the calf, or the nape of the neck, opens, and admits the leg, or head into the centre C, and the sides D and E, being elastic, instantly close again, the centre C being adapted to fit a man's neck, or leg, and no more. The most careless reader may easily perceive the relative positions of the guardian and the breaker of the Law, when the former is at the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... the father of his Emmeline, that his feelings should have thus changed towards him, that he should admire and esteem instead of condemn, was a matter of truly heartfelt pleasure. Hope would have shook aloft her elastic wings, and carried him beyond himself, had not that letter in the same hour dashed to the earth his soaring fancy, and placed the seal upon his doom. He could not be mistaken; Mr. Hamilton knew all that had passed between ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... that it is the best box in the house. It will hold all the friends any man breathing has any use for. It would hold the largest family who ever received the Queen's bounty. Box A is one of those elastic boxes, ladies and gentlemen, which have no limit. You can fill it chock full, and if the right person knocks at the door there will still be room for another. Who will start ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... were some pleasures for the poor boy even here, although deprived of home comforts. How kindly has God appointed that the elastic spirit of childhood cannot be crushed! and to one of the fanciful and enthusiastic temperament of our hero it was indeed a great blessing. The objects met with in a great and populous city are always striking; and our little ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers

... head, and his whole appearance was that of a most emaciated person. For many years of his life he was in most delicate health; so feeble he could not stand or walk. He was moved about in a chair with wheels. His intellect, however, was strong and elastic, and his voice was sufficient to enable him to make a public speech. He wrote much. He was not always consistent in his views. He opposed secession, then advocated it; then again denied that secession was warranted ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... soup and sausages and succulences inconceivable. Accustomed to the Spartan fare of vagabondage I plunged into the dishes head foremost like a hungry puppy. Should I eat such a meal as that to-day it would be my death. Hey for the light heart and elastic stomach of youth! Some fifty persons, the ban and arriere ban of the relations of the young couple, guzzled in a wedged and weltering mass. Wizened grandfathers and stolid large-eyed children ate and panted in the suffocating heat, and gorged again. Not till half way through the repast did tongues ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... tablespoonfuls of sugar, one teaspoonful of salt, and, when the liquid becomes lukewarm, one yeastcake dissolved in half a cup of water, boiled and cooled. With a broad-bladed knife cut and mix in enough well-dried flour, sifted, to make a stiff dough (about seven cups). Knead until the dough is elastic; cover, and set to rise in a temperature of about 70 deg. Fahr. When the dough has doubled in bulk, "cut down" and knead slightly without removing from the mixing-bowl. When again double in bulk, shape into two double loaves ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill

... it you, then, chum?' exclaimed Ted, as he swung round on his high heels. (In those days the Sunday rig of men like Ted Reilly comprised much-polished, pointed-toe, elastic-side boots with very high heels, and voluminously 'bell-bottomed' trousers.) I rattled questions at him, as peas from a pea-shooter; and when I had laid aside my buckets he pumped away at my right arm, as though providing water to put a ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... measure would have seemed radical. But in politics time is wonderfully elastic. Those two years had been packed with turmoil. Kansas had been the scene of a bloody conflict. Regardless of which side had a majority on the ground, extremists on each side had demanded recognition for the government set up by their own party. By contrast, Toombs's ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... awaking and finding his papers gone. But her fearfulness and excitement was not that of weakness, rather that of a finely nervous nature, having strong elements of imagination, and, therefore, great capacities for suffering as for joy; but yet elastic, vigorous, and possessing unusual powers of endurance. Such natures rebuild as fast as they are exhausted. In the devitalising time preceding the dawn she had felt a sudden faintness come over her for a moment; but her will surmounted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... episode, describing the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, with an elaborate catalogue of the English and Irish rivers, and the names of the sea-nymphs. In truth, he had exhausted his proper allegory, or he got tired of it. His poem became an elastic framework, into which he could fit whatever interested him and tempted him to composition. The gravity of the first books disappears. He passes into satire and caricature. We meet with Braggadochio and Trompart, with the discomfiture of Malecasta, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... was a faint rasping sound, then a sharp crack, and the rustle of two half-nutshells through the leaves. One of them struck the side of the hazel-stump and bounded off like an elastic ball. Before the dormouse had collected his wits, a fine kernel was thrust through the nest and the squirrel had once more ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... the night are such that you greet them with joy and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-smelling herbs—is more elastic, more starry, ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... the hut, Kirsty went in, and Steenie crept after her. They had covered the floor of it with heather, the stalks set upright and close packed, so that, even where the bells were worn off, it still made a thick long-piled carpet, elastic and warm. When the door was shut, they were ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... be composes of globles of air and perfectly imbraces the part of the feather which extends through the skin.the wind pipe terminates in the center of the lower part of the upper and unfeathered part of the pouch and is secured by an elastic valve commanded at pleasure. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... general, but not a whit more explicable, than the former. We have now fewer causes to seek for, but not one of these few has been discovered. When we have resolved electricity or gravitation into the presence of an elastic medium, it is a mere figure of speech to say, that we have discovered the cause of the electric phenomena or of gravity. That is just as far off as ever; for we have yet to discover the principle whence flow necessarily all the phenomena ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... wrong with our generalship was the system which put the High Command into the hands of a group of men belonging to the old school of war, unable, by reason of their age and traditions, to get away from rigid methods and to become elastic in face of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... for twenty hours together. His head is bullet-shaped, his neck short, his body all thickened up to the shoulders, tailing out to the merest streak of feather. His form is like a plummet—he is not unlike the heavily weighted minnow used in trolling for pike. Before the bend of the firmly elastic rod, the leaded minnow slides out through the air, running true and sinking without splash into the water. It is proportioned and weighted so that its flight, which is a long fall, may be smooth, and perfectly under control. If wings could ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... time-table and life of a school is like that of a hot water heating system which spreads an equal warmth through all parts of a building. Teachers of other subjects will find that such training provides them with pupils more responsive, more elastic and of more character than they otherwise would be. Therefore, the study of rhythm, as well as education by means of rhythm, ought to be most closely connected ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze

... England conscience," replied Hard. "My conscience is as elastic and pleasantly disposed as an Irishman's. Bunker Hill ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... girls or women, would justify the suspicion that it was not always the same game, and that it in any way resembled our game is not to be imagined. Base- ball in its mildest form is essentially a robust game, and it would require an elastic imagination to conceive of little girls possessed of physical powers such as its ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward

... and physiological chemistry teach that this is so—and prove it. If this composition were lacking in a certain quantity of organic magnesia, the bones would grow hard and brittle. It is the magnesia that turns the tissue into perfect, elastic form. ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... paper, and the whole covered with the equalizing press, above described, would probably be an improvement, but we have not heard of its being tried. At all events, pressing by screw presses, or weighty non-elastic bodies, must be avoided, as tending to bruise the stalks and other protuberant ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... year of the Revolution. For instance, in regard to the patriotic contribution, the Assembly left it to the conscience of each person to fix his own quota; at the end of six months, consciences are found too elastic, and the Assembly is obliged to confer this right on the municipalities. The result is[3248] that this or that individual who taxed himself at forty-eight livres, is taxed at a hundred and fifty; another, a cultivator, who had offered six livres, is judged to be able to pay over ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of their elements to trammel and to cramp the life, the energy, the lofty aspirations of spiritual minds. And among the great problems now before us for the edification and extension of our modern churches, are not all thoughtful men anxious to see how in every case they may be made more elastic, more perfectly adapted in their organization, as well as in their plans of benevolence, to the demands of the present day; and specially how they may be so widened as to draw into the church in largest degree the piety, the experience, the zeal of the lay members of which our churches ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various

... bow take a piece of any tough, elastic wood, as cedar, ash, sassafras or hickory, well-seasoned, about your own length. Trim it so as to taper gradually from the centre to the ends, keeping it flat, at first, until you have it as in this sketch—for a boy, say, five feet in ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... penalties. If he be the possessor of a decent coat and hat, and can scrape any acquaintance with any one concerned, he may get introduced to that overworked and greatly perplexed official, the under-sheriff, who will stave him off if possible,—knowing that even an under-sheriff cannot make space elastic,—but, if the introduction has been acknowledged as good, will probably find a seat for him if he persevere to the end. But the seat when obtained must be kept in possession from morning to evening, and the fight must be renewed from day to day. And ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... of the most remarkable phenomena in nature; but yet with reference to the general system of things, he could consider attraction but as an effect, whose cause at that time he did not attempt to trace. But when he afterwards began to account for it by a subtle elastic aether, this great man (if in so great a man it be not impious to discover anything like a blemish) seemed to have quitted his usual cautious manner of philosophising: since, perhaps, allowing all that has been advanced on ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... extremity to the back of the bee. The pollen-mass of the male plant (for the sexes are separate in this orchid) is thus carried to the flower of the female plant, where it is brought into contact with the stigma, which is viscid enough to break certain elastic threads, and retain the pollen, thus ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... house for the materials of this unprecedented March feast in the woods, and the old gentleman, as if made buoyant by the good promise of his little project in the children's behalf, followed with a step wonderfully elastic for ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... by turns over to Wall's to Sunday-school. When Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots, and there was no end of rows about them in the family—for the mother made him lend them to his sister Annie, to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn. There were only about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... with a very large quantity of beadwork, a bonnet adorned with purple cherries, green tulips and orange-coloured ostrich tips, a pelisse, to which bugles had been applied with no uncertain hand, and an opal necklace. Her gloves were of white, her boots of black kid, the latter being furnished with elastic sides, and over her left wrist she carried a plush reticule, whose mouth was kept shut by a tightly-drawn scarlet riband. On the left side of her pelisse reposed a round bouquet of violets about the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... there need of sleeping under roof nor of lighting candles to grope his way to pallet of straw, when he might have the blue vault of heaven arching over him, and all God's stars for lamps, and for a bed a horse blanket stretched over an elastic couch of pine needles. There were two gaunt pines that had been dropping their polished spills for centuries, perhaps silently adding, year by year, another layer of aromatic springiness to poor Tom's bed. Flinging his tired ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... favourite object; and I have often admired the taste displayed in the marking of a chief's leg, on which I have seen a cocoa-nut tree correctly and distinctly drawn; its roots spreading at the heel, its elastic stalk pencilled as it were along the tendon, and its waving plume gracefully spread out on the broad part of the calf. Sometimes a couple of stems would be twined up from the heel and divide on the calf, each bearing a ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne

... "No," he said, "it is nod der ring, but der elastic spiral. Der progress she march, it is true, round und round, but she is arrive always der one turn higher, und der pressure on ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... be immediately reached, but as a step in that direction and as a means of securing a more elastic currency and obviating other objections to the present arrangement of bank circulation the Secretary of the Treasury presents in his report a scheme modifying present banking laws and providing for the issue of circulating ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... else; and since then I have been poorly enough, otherwise I should have answered your letter long before this, for I enjoy extremely discussing such points as those in your last note. But what a villain you are to heap gratuitous insults on my ELASTIC theory: you might as well call the virtue of a lady elastic, as the virtue of a theory accommodating in its favours. Whatever you may say, I feel that my theory does give me some advantages in discussing these points. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... strange bird-trap rose from the waters of the lake in a series of circular arches, formed of elastic branches bent to the needed shape, and covered with folds of fine network, making the roof. Little by little diminishing in size, the arches and their net-work followed the secret windings of the creek inland to its end. Built back ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... implication. This was part of what he liked in the good lady, that she didn't repeat, and also that she gave him a delicate sense of her shyly wishing him to know it. That was in itself a hint of possibilities between them, of a relation, beneficent and elastic for him, which wouldn't engage him further than he could see. Yet even as he afresh made this out he felt how strange it all was. She wanted, Susan Shepherd then, as appeared, the same thing Kate wanted, only wanted it, as still further appeared, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... feet, was a girl. A girl of fifteen or sixteen, naked, except for a kilt of gaily-striped material reaching from her waist to her knees. Her long black hair was drawn back from the forehead, and tied behind with a loop of the elastic vine. A scarlet blossom was stuck behind her right ear, after the fashion of a clerk's pen. Her face was beautiful, powdered with tiny freckles; especially under the eyes, which were of a deep, tranquil blue-grey. She half sat, half ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... times in his convulsive leaps the mouse succeeded in touching the snake's body,—but with his feet only, never once with those destructive little teeth. The snake held him inexorably, with a steady, elastic pressure which yielded just so far, and never quite far enough. And in a minute or two the mouse's brave ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... and bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, away it scudded with an elastic spring over the snow crust, straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length, and soon put the forest between me and itself—the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of Nature. Not without reason was its slenderness. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... of the beach, and then slowly lift their grassy shoulders on the other side of the gully. As the cliffs are of immense height, these indentations are profound, and drain off a little of the exhilaration of the too elastic pedestrian. The first fond trike him as delightfully picturesque, and he is down the long slope on one side and up the gigantic hump on the other before he has time to feel hot. But the second is greeted with ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... in the travellers the same hearts that had made light of hardship and fatigue. Sidney was no longer flying from a harsh master, and his step was not elastic with the energy of fear that looked behind, and of hope that smiled before. He was going a toilsome, weary journey, he knew not why nor whither; just, too, when he had made a friend, whose soothing words haunted his childish fancy. He was displeased with ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... table in the close room for the open deck under an awning, and the ever-flowing breeze which the motion of the vessel forbids to sink into a calm, give vigour to the tired system, restore the conscious enjoyment of elastic health, and even mock us for the moment with the belief that age is an illusion, and that 'the wild freshness' of the morning of life has not yet passed away for ever. Above our heads is the arch of the sky, around us the ocean, rolling free and fresh as it ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... appears in their place. There is not the slightest parity between the passive and active powers of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have given rise to it. At 32 deg. Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush away from one another with great force. Water, at the same temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... of distant shots from the hunt, and Robert's heart beat very fast, but, if the young Onondaga felt emotion, he did not show it. At twilight, they ate a frugal supper, and when the night had fully come they rose and walked about a little to make their stiffened muscles elastic again. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... high-banked hazel hedge which overhung the road. Heedless of the impediments thrown in his way by the undergrowth of a rough ring fence, he struck through the opening that presented itself, and, climbing over the moss-grown paling, trod presently upon the elastic ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... him where he lay beside her to slip the pack straps over his shoulders. Then she drew toward her the little osier cage in which their only remaining carrier-pigeon rested secured by elastic bands, grasped the smaller sack with the other ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... are not artists in England? And where, tell me where, do artists gather in squads that Ethel Cottages do not spring up like the tents of an army with banners? For even painters must eat and be lodged, the aboriginal habitations are not of elastic capacity, the inns are of feeble digestion, and the third summer of an artistic invasion is sure to find "Ethels" and "Mabels" in red brick and stunning whitewash, and, like our row of laborers' cottages, cursed by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... and, indeed, is so thick that it requires to be diluted with water before being used. This milk is also employed as glue. It hardens when exposed to the air, and becomes very tough and slightly elastic, and is said to be quite as good and ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... an observing man, and that morning he had picked up a pin and stuck it in the lapel of his rough coat, but he had done this hastily and carelessly. The pin was of a recently invented kind, being of a light, elastic metal, with its head of steel. As Cunningham leaned forward the pin slipped out of his coat; it fell through one of the openings in the grating, and descended the shaft ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... Song, which, when in bonds I lay, Broke from the grinding chain its links away. While the sweet notes their swelling numbers rolled, Back flew the bolts, the trembling gates unfold; Free as the breeze the elastic limbs advance, Course the far field, or braid ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... the sharp sting of cold, but elastic and pure as on a mountain peak. Being becalmed for a day or two off a wooded point, the skipper sent a boat ashore for fuel and water. Arthur eagerly volunteered to help; and after half an hour's rowing through the calm ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... the Panjab.—Hinduism has always been, and to-day is more than ever, a very elastic term. The Census Superintendent, himself a high caste Hindu, wrote: "The definition which would cover the Hindu of the modern times is that he should be born of parents not belonging to some recognised religion other than Hinduism, marry within ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... opened his bag and from it drew a small powder-spraying outfit such as I have seen used for spraying bug-powder. He then took out a sort of muzzle with an elastic band on it and slipped it over his head so that the muzzle ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... the bronze vases found at Thebes and other parts of Egypt show great skill in the art of compounding metals, and were highly polished. Their bronze knives and daggers had an elastic spring, as if made of steel. Wilkinson expresses his surprise at the porcelain vessels recently discovered, as well as admiration of them, especially of their rich colors and beautiful shapes. There is a porcelain bowl of exquisite workmanship in the British Museum inscribed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... premeditated assault—in short, of robbery with violence. It must be inquired into—reported, of course, at head-quarters, without loss of time. Would Monsieur be pleased to describe the stolen sketch-book? An oblong, green volume, secured by an elastic band; contains sketches in pencil and water-colors; value uncertain—Good. And the accused ... would Monsieur also be pleased to describe the person of the accused? His probable age, for instance; his height; the color of his hair, eyes, and ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... theatre, the Neys engaged one of the gondolas which an association keeps there in readiness, and which is propelled by a screw worked by an elastic spring; and we steered out into the lake. The lake was lit up as brilliantly as if it were day, by elevated electric lights, with reflectors all round the shore. We had that evening the special pleasure of hearing a new cantata by Walter, the most renowned composer of Freeland, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... edge of a little brook, and then the parson himself, a young man just from Cambridge, who was occupied in sketching one of the picturesque points in the scenery about his new habitation. A few minutes active climbing brought us among the heath, formming a thick elastic carpet under our feet, on which we were glad to seat ourselves for a moment's rest. We heard the cuckoo upon every side, and when we rose to pursue our walk we frequently startled the moor-fowl, singly or in flocks. The time allowed ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... externally since we saw him last, however inly changed since he last stood on those unwelcoming floors; the form still retained the same vigour and symmetry,—the same unspeakable dignity of mien and bearing; the same thoughtful bend of the proud neck,—so distinct, in its elastic rebound, from the stoop of debility or age, thick as ever the rich mass of dark-brown hair, though, when in the impatience of some painful thought his hand swept the loose curls from his forehead, the silver threads ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... materialized. Their romantic minds could see the gold at the end of the rainbow. Theirs was not the pride of administering a well-ordered, inherited system, but the joy of building a new system, in their minds wholly elastic, to be sure, but still inspired by ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... of all this? Just what you would have supposed. She had led a life of simple, unbounded love and trust,—a buoyant, elastic gladness,—a dream of sunshine. No gray cloud had ever lowered in her sky, no thunderbolt smitten her joys, no winter rain chilled her warmth. Only the white fleeciness of morning mist had flitted sometimes over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... time she reached the water-trough her old manner had returned. Her step became once more elastic and firm; her strong will asserted itself. She had work to do, and at once. In two hours the board would meet. She needed all her energies and resources. The lovers must wait; she could not decide any question for ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith

... an atmosphere where those of nature are prone to droop and difficult to bring to maturity. The mental powers acquire their full robustness where the cheek loses its ruddy hue and the limbs their elastic step, and pale thought sits on manly brows, and the watchman, as he walks his rounds, sees the student's lamp burning far into ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... a footstep; but he could not persuade himself that the slow and lingering tread of the person approaching him was that of Susan, so much did it differ from the buoyant and elastic step with which she used to trip along. On looking through the branches, however, he perceived her coming towards him, carrying the pitcher as usual in her hand. The blood was already careering at full speed through his veins, and the palpitations of ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... Torelli. Moliere was equal to the emergency. Never, perhaps, was a literary work written to order so worthy of being preserved for future generations. Not only were the intermediate ballets made sufficiently elastic to give scope for the ingenuity of the poet's auxiliaries, but the written scenes themselves were admirably contrived to display all the varied ...
— The Bores • Moliere

... mind, you will perceive at a glance that the economic working of Newcomen's engine seems to require two irreconcilable conditions. When the piston descends, the cylinder is required to be cold, otherwise it meets some steam there, still very elastic, which retards the operation very much, and diminishes the effect of the external atmosphere. Then, when steam at the temperature of 100 deg. flows into the same cylinder and finds it cold, the steam restores its heat by becoming partially fluid, and until ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... Newton still more forcibly illustrates the position, that in forming physical theories we draw for our materials upon the world of fact. Before he began to deal with light, he was intimately acquainted with the laws of elastic collision, which all of you have seen more or less perfectly illustrated on a billiard-table. As regards the collision of sensible elastic masses, Newton knew the angle of incidence to be equal to the angle of reflection, and he also ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... six months we find him reading sixty volumes; and some of them as solid as Patrick's Exposition and Tillotson's Sermons. With such avidity for information, professional and miscellaneous, and with a style which was always elastic and easy, and with brilliant talent constantly gleaming over the surface of unruffled temper and warm affections, it is not wonderful that his friends hoped and desired for him high distinction; but it evinces unusual and precocious attainments, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... squander, hating the long days That will not bring me either Rest or Thee, This health I hack and ravage as with knives, These nerves I fain would shatter, and this heart I fain would break—this heart that, traitor-like, Beats on with foolish and elastic beat: If, after all, this life I waste and kill Should still be thine, may still be lived for thee! And this the dreadful trial of my love, This silence and this blank that makes me mad, That I be man to-day of all the days My one poor hope ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... inner depth of forest far away. Save for this, the silence was as intense as the vastness and color of the scene, till it opened and resolved itself into one broad insect hum. The children took a couple of steps forward, under their feet the elastic sod sank and rose with a spurt of silver jets; they sprang back to their seats, and the shading tree above shook down a shining shower in rillets of silver rain. They remained for a minute, then, resting there. Singularly enough, Longfer Hill, which had previously been upon their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... vihinsa and makes nonsense of the idea. Altogether, though highly ornate, the metaphors are original. Of course, the idea is eminently oriental. Eastern rhetoric being fond of spinning out metaphors and similes, which, in the hands of Eastern poets, become highly elastic. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... visitors might buy,—fruit, shells, sponges, flowers, straw hats, canes, and more traps than I can remember. Some of them had very nice things, and others would have closed out their stock for seven cents. The liveliest and brightest of all these was a tall, slim, black, elastic, smooth-tongued young girl, named Priscilla. She nearly always wore shoes, which distinguished her from her fellow-countrywomen. Her eyes sparkled like a fire-cracker of a dark night, and she had a mind as sharp as a fish-hook. The moment Corny mentioned her ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton

... as a last resource, so that his assets of hopefulness had a sort of gorgeous superfluity about them. Of what might be the capacity of his father's pocket, Fred had only a vague notion: was not trade elastic? And would not the deficiencies of one year be made up for by the surplus of another? The Vincys lived in an easy profuse way, not with any new ostentation, but according to the family habits and traditions, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... fastened up Nero, Susan, with a heavy heart, proceeded to examine the ground around the hut. In several places she observed the impression of a small moccasined foot; but not a child's. The tracks were deeply marked, unlike the usual light, elastic tread of an Indian. From this circumstance Susan easily inferred that the woman had been carrying her child when attacked by the dog. There was nothing to show why she had come so near the hut: most probably the hopes of some petty plunder had been the inducement. Susan ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... English words in a dictionary, the quantities of the syllables are certainly not "fixed" as they are in Greek and Latin, but the moment one begins to read a passage of English poetry aloud, and becomes conscious of its underlying type of rhythm, he fits elastic units of "feet" into the steadily flowing or pulsing intervals of time. The "foot" becomes, as it were, a rubber link in a moving bicycle chain. The revolutions of the chain mark the rhythm; and the stressed or unstressed or lightly stressed ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... soothsayer only stared upon the florin with big eyes; the oracle could not be persuaded to reply; and the Countess kissed him lightly, gave him the florin, set him down upon the path, and resumed her way with swinging and elastic gait. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... whole trees were torn up by their roots, and those, too, of considerable size. This the elephant sometimes does to get at their foliage, which upon such trees grows beyond the reach of his proboscis. By prostrating them of course he gets their whole frondage within easy distance of his elastic nose, and can strip it off at pleasure. At times, however, he tears up a tree to make a meal of its roots—as there are several species with sweet juicy roots, of which the elephant is extremely fond. These he drags out of the ground with his trunk, having ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... feet with the lithe ease of a boy and held out her hand to me. I took it and we walked thus across the beach to the cottage, and during that walk, with her firm, warm hand fast in mine and her clean, elastic step beside me, I swore to myself that neither she nor Roger should ever regret what she had done to me, nor know it, if I could keep the knowledge from them. The last part of this vow was impossible of fulfillment, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... worthy Doctor Guillotin, Bailly likewise, time-honored historian of astronomy, and the Abbe Sieyes, cold, but elastic, wiry, instinct with the pride of logic, passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. This is the Sieyes who shall be system-builder, constitutional-builder-general, and build constitutions which shall unfortunately fall before we ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... his "anchel" that she was to move from the Rue Taitbout to the Rue Saint-Georges, where she was to have "ein little palace" where her memories would no longer rise up in antagonism to their happiness, the pavement felt elastic under his feet; he walked like a young man in a young man's dream. As he turned the corner of the Rue des Trois Freres, in the middle of his dream, and of the road, the Baron beheld Europe coming towards him, looking very ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... but there are no idlers to be observed. Hirsute eccentricities have also disappeared; the beard is rarely seen, and the moustache is not considered a necessary ornament. The faded careworn look of the American ladies has given place to the bright complexion, the dimpled smile, and the active elastic tread, so peculiarly English. Indeed, in walking along the streets, there is nothing to tell that one is not in England; and if anything were needed to complete the illusion, those sure tokens of British civilisation, a jail and a lunatic asylum, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... It was an elastic table, anyway, that table of the Corner House girls. It was of a real cozy size when the family was alone. Mrs. MacCall sat nearest the swing-door into the butler's pantry, although Uncle Rufus would seldom hear to the housekeeper going into the kitchen after she had once seated ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... corsair-ship. The fury of the tempest of the preceding night had thrown it so high upon the shoal whereon it had struck, and the sea was now comparatively so calm, that Nisida was enabled to approach close up to it. With little difficulty she succeeded in reaching the deck,—that deck whose elastic surface lately vibrated to the tread of many daring, desperate young men—but now desolate and broken in ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... drawn up, his head hung at a dreadful angle to his body, and the clatter of his heels against the door made the noise which had broken in upon our conversation. In an instant I had caught him round the waist, and held him up while Holmes and Pycroft untied the elastic bands which had disappeared between the livid creases of skin. Then we carried him into the other room, where he lay with a clay-colored face, puffing his purple lips in and out with every breath—a dreadful wreck of all that he had been but five ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... made. Harry's tall, slight form, black hair, and large brown eyes were a vivid antithesis to John's blond blue-eyed strength and comeliness. To her youngest son, Mrs. Hatton, who was a daughter of the Norman house of D'Artoe, had transmitted her quick temperament, her dark beauty, and her elastic grace ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... imperfect socket of the orbit does not seem to afford sufficient scope and room. There is an admirable provision for this in the removal of a certain portion of the orbital process of the frontal bone on the outer and upper part of the external ridge, and the substitution of an elastic cartilage. This cartilage momentarily yields to the swelling of the muscles; and then, by its inherent elasticity, the external ridge of the orbit resumes its pristine form. The orbit of the dog, the pig, and the cat, exhibits this ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... swinging cadence of bells came pealing through the stillness,—bells of every tone, that smote the air with soft or loud resonance as the faint wind wafted the sounds toward them,—and then they began to climb the little hill, Sah-luma walking somewhat in advance, with a tread as light and elastic as that of a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... attractiveness of form and feature, Miss Graciella Treadwell possessed a fine complexion, a clear eye, and an elastic spirit. She was also well endowed with certain other characteristics of youth; among them ingenuousness, which, if it be a fault, experience is sure to correct; and impulsiveness, which even the school of hard knocks is not always able to eradicate, though it may chasten. To the good points ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... drawing-room, or half an hour's talk in casual meetings in afternoon walks on Wimbledon Common, was always a particularly agreeable incident. Some men and women have the quality of atmosphere. The egotism of the natural man is surrounded by an elastic medium. Mr. Greg was one of these personalities with an atmosphere elastic, stimulating, elevating, and yet composing. We do wrong to narrow our interests to those only of our contemporaries who figure with great lustre and eclat in the world. Some of the quiet characters ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley

... in those inscrutable caverns, as if it discoursed secret wonders of fairy-land, and carried treasures of the elves and gnomes. Zero, with his utmost rigors, could not still its speech for a day or fix his grip upon those elastic limbs. Indeed, the frosty god conspired with it for our delight; building crystal bridges, with tracery of lace delicater than Valenciennes, and spangled string-pieces, and fretted vaultings, whimsical sierras, stalactite and stalagmite. An ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... The quick, elastic nature adjusted itself at once. To some kinds of success, nothing is so important as the ability to forget—to sweep the mind free of everything irrelevant and superfluous. Marcella Boyce, and all ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and white, but the spring was already advanced. The wet soil smelt of spring. Clear cold water ran everywhere from under the loose, thawing snow. The branches of the trees were springy and elastic. For miles and miles around, the country opened up in ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... komatik and dogs and three people. The ice in the middle, however, which had looked so sure from the landwash, proved to be "black"—that is, very, very thin, though being salt-water ice, it was elastic. It was waving up and down so as almost to make one seasick, but in its elasticity lay our only chance of safety. We flung ourselves down at full length on the komatik to give as broad a surface of resistance as possible, and what encouragement was given the dogs ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... cleaning and wiped, and also the inside of the ground joint. The surface of the stopcock should then be smeared with a thin coating of vaseline and replaced. It should be attached to the burette by means of a wire, or elastic band, to ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... should fall into the hands of any sensitive American who cannot bear to be told that the working of the institutions of his country is far from perfect; that in spite of the advantage she has over all other nations in the elastic freshness and vigour of her youth, she is far from being a model for the earth to copy; and that even in those pictures of the national manners with which he quarrels most, there is still (after the lapse of several years, each of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... from Jove; 110 So drove Tydides into sudden flight The Trojans; phalanx after phalanx fled Before the terror of his single arm. When him Lycaon's son illustrious saw Scouring the field, and from before his face 115 The ranks dispersing wide, at once he bent Against Tydides his elastic bow. The arrow met him in his swift career Sure-aim'd; it struck direct the hollow mail Of his right shoulder, with resistless force 120 Transfix'd it, and his hauberk stain'd with blood. Loud shouted then Lycaon's ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... it stand about an hour, and then wash the starch out of it by kneading it under a stream of running water or in a pan of water, changing the water frequently. The result will be a tough, yellowish gray, elastic mass called gluten. This is the same as the wheat gum and is called an albuminoid because it contains nitrogen and is like albumen, a substance like ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... faith and philosophy, to attain, as he says, "fixed principles" in politics, morals, and religion, to fix one mode of life as the essence of life, refusing to see the parts as parts only; and all the time his own pathetic history pleads for a more [104] elastic moral philosophy than his, and cries out against every formula less living and ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... the "tarantass" is a sort of berline hung on five pieces of rather elastic wood between wheels placed rather wide apart and of moderate height; that this carriage is driven by a "yemtchik," on the front seat, who has three horses, to whom is added a postilion, the "faletre," when it is necessary to ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... discouragement. On the present occasion he piqued himself upon leaving on the minds of his companions a favourable impression of one who, under such disastrous circumstances, could sustain his misfortunes with ease and gaiety. His spirits, though not unyielding, were abundantly elastic, and soon seconded his efforts. The trio were engaged in very lively discourse, apparently delighted with each other, and the kind host was pressing a third bottle of Burgundy, when the sound of a drum was heard at some distance. The Major, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... chess, bagatelle and the illustrated papers, or if more energetically disposed, in the airy gymnasium adjoining the reading-room, where they could indulge in friendly rivalry with boxing gloves or single-stick, or feed the appetites of their growing muscles with dumb-bells and elastic contrivances. Mr. Taynton had spent a couple of hours there, losing a game of chess to one youthful adversary, but getting back his laurels over bagatelle, and before he left, had arranged for a geological ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson

... and powerful. His long neck fitted into well-placed shoulders. He had great depth of girth, immense length from shoulder-points to hips, big cannon-bones, and elastic pasterns. There was neither amiability nor pride in his mien; rather a sullen sense of brute power, such as may have belonged to the knights of the Middle Ages. Now and again he curled his lips away from the bit and laid his ears back as if he intended ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... over a large fire, which is kept up for seven or eight hours, the process requiringunremitting attention to avoid cracks and make the plank bend with the proper dip at the two ends. Wooden straddlers, made by cleaving pieces of tough elastic wood and fixing them with wedges, are inserted into the opening, their compass being altered gradually as the work goes on, but in different degrees according to the part of the boat operated upon. Our casca turned ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... chair as though he found it hard to keep his seat; and I should have felt bound in pity to call upon him next, even if I had not already determined to do so. He rose with alacrity; and it was impossible not to be struck by the contrast he presented to Cantilupe. His elastic upright figure, his firm chin, the exuberance of his gestures, the clear ring of his voice, expressed admirably the intellectual and nervous force which he possessed in a higher degree than any man I have ever come ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... obscurity surrounds the invention of barometers in which variations in pressure are rendered apparent by the alteration in the volume of an elastic chamber. The credit of the invention is usually given to Lucien Vidie, who patented his instrument in 1845, but similar instruments were in use much earlier. Thus in 1799 Nicolas Jacques Conte (1755-1805), director of the aerostatical school ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... light and elastic, and can be used successfully in contrivances for the rescue of men from the perils of the deep. The cork jacket and the lifeboat have been the means of saving many lives, for cork will float on the surface of the ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... that is a very good length," said Mother Blossom. "We shan't need her again till after lunch, shall we, Miss Florence? I want her to go uptown and get some elastic for ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley

... America occupies in it as the chief repository of those surpluses of foods, materials, and manufactured goods which Europe needs so sorely. The term 'surplus' is, of course, somewhat deceptive. Surplus depends largely on home consumption, itself an elastic condition. But for practical purposes we may take the exportable surplus to mean the product which remains for sale abroad after the normal wants of the home population are supplied. It might mean something more, ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson

... bee must rub off some against his underside as he sucks the nectar. He actually seems to pump the pollen that has fallen into the forward part of the keel upon himself, as he moves about. As soon as he leaves the flower, the elastic wings resume their former position, thus closing the keel to prevent waste of pollen. Take a sweet pea from the garden, press down its wings with the thumb and forefinger to imitate the action of the bee on them; note how the keel opens to display its treasures, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... cares, and run to the cottage door: peeping over their shoulders, the maidens admire and fear. The shuffling clowns raise up their heads gradually, until they stand erect and proud; the slouch in the back is taken out, their heavy walk is changed to a firm yet elastic tread, every muscle appears more braced, every nerve, by degrees, new strung; the blood circulates rapidly: pulses quicken, hearts throb, eyes brighten, and as the martial sound pervades their rustic frames, the Cimons of the plough are converted, as if by magic, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the voice was that of a girl. The song was barely at an end, when he soon espied in the opposite direction, a beautiful girl advancing with majestic and elastic step; a girl quite unlike any ordinary mortal being. There is this poem, which gives ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... with humour. Buzzby was fond of being thought old, and he looked much older than he really was. Men guessed his age at fifty-five, but they were ten years out in their reckoning; for John had numbered only forty-five summers, and was as tough and muscular as ever he had been—although not quite so elastic. ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... money will be spent upon the thing when its price is high than when it is low, while the opposite is true in the latter case. This distinction is of considerable importance in connection with many problems (e.g. of taxation); and the terms, elastic demand and inelastic demand, are worth remembering. We may thus express the above conclusions by saying that the demand for sewing-cotton is highly inelastic, and that the demand for coal miners is more elastic ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... wares in the world, a little smoothness goes farther than a great deal of talent sometimes. If you happen to be cursed with a real talent, then you've got to be very smooth indeed, or you'll never get your money back." Bowers snapped the elastic ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... plots, are found, characteristically, in his valets and his servant-maids. He satirises the miser, the hypocrite, the bas-bleu, but he chuckles over Frosine and Gros-Rene; he loves them for their freedom of speech and their elastic minds, ready in words or deeds. They are his chorus, if the chorus might be ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... of. In this, eight years and a half after the First Part of "Don Quixote" had appeared, we get the first hint of a forthcoming Second Part. "You shall see shortly," he says, "the further exploits of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza." His idea of "shortly" was a somewhat elastic one, for, as we know by the date to Sancho's letter, he had barely one-half of the book ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... his humbler environment. On Wednesday it was conveyed to Winona that they would come for Merle in a few days, which left the Penniman household and the twins variously concerned as to the precise meaning of this phrase. It sounded elastic. But on Thursday Winona was able to announce that the day would be Saturday. They would come for Merle Saturday afternoon. She had been told this distinctly by Mrs. Harvey D. Though her informant had set no hour, Winona thought it would be three o'clock. She believed ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... death of such as have long been accustomed to the free use of ardent spirit, it is said the organ is generally found harder than in temperate persons. It has no longer that delicate and elastic texture. Its arteries become diminished in size, and lose their transparency, while the veins and sinuses are ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... sent to France at the outbreak of war. The value of General Henderson's work lies in the fact that, in spite of official stinginess and meagre supplies of every kind, he built up a skeleton organisation so elastic and so well thought out that it conformed to war requirements as well as even the German plans fitted in with their aerial needs. On the 4th of August, 1914, the nominal British air strength of the military wing was 179 machines. Of these, 82 machines proceeded to France, landing ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... tablespoonful of olive oil, and work the oil and flour together with the fingers exactly as you work a small piece of butter into the flour at the commencement of making puff paste. Next add sufficient water to make the whole into an elastic paste; roll it out and let it set between two tins containing ice, similar to the method ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... cannot expect to have it. But when technical expressions are properly formed, even a bad writer can make himself understood. In the early days of Buddhist philosophy in the Pali literature, this difficulty is greatly felt. There are some technical terms here which are still very elastic and their repetition in different places in more or less different senses heighten the difficulty of understanding the real meaning ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... long festoons, rested a huge black snake; a bird two thirds grown was slowly disappearing between his expanded jaws. As he seemed unconscious of my presence, I quietly observed the proceedings. By slow degrees he compassed the bird about with his elastic mouth; his head flattened, his neck writhed and swelled, and two or three undulatory movements of his glistening body finished the work. Then he cautiously raised himself up, his tongue flaming from his mouth the while, curved over the nest, and with wavy subtle motions, explored the interior. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... royal commissioners appeared at the Charterhouse to require the submission of the brethren. The regular clergy through the kingdom had bent to the storm. The conscience of the London Carthusians was less elastic; they were the first and, with the exception of More and Fisher, the only recusants. "The prior did answer to the commissioners," Maurice tells us, "that he knew nothing of such matters, and could not meddle ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... in the soft gloom under the roof. They would wake up now and again, to be sure, and squeak, and crowd each other a little. Or perhaps rouse themselves enough to make a long and careful toilet, combing their exquisitely fine fur with their delicate claws, and passing every corner of the elastic silken membrane of their wings daintily between their lips. But as for what went on in the gaudy light on the outer side of the roof, it concerned ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... escapes alive—By Jove, there he is!" and the subject of his speech came as briskly up the walk as if the thermometer had been in the seventies instead of the nineties. His dress was quiet and elegant, and his form erect and step elastic. ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... would only be in the way. The Major gave no specific instructions to Captain Winton, but left much to his discretion. It was intimated to him that he might return to Atlamalco in the course of a few days,—an elastic term which might be halved or doubled without any blame attaching ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... the nature of its skeleton, which is composed of more bones than later in life, when several have fused together to form one to give the mature body a more rigid frame. Furthermore, the individual bones are not so firm, consisting of an elastic material called cartilage, so that some movements which in an adult would cause such serious injuries as fractures and dislocations are perfectly ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... Marcus," said Sejus, as he caught the ball with difficulty, "the gallop from Lorium has made me somewhat stiff of joint, and I pitch and catch but poorly. Keep the pila flying, and I may grow more elastic, though just now I feel much like our last text from Epictetus, that the good Rusticus gave us yesterday—'a little soul bearing about ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... an hour that bear struggled fiercely to free itself, and often did the shaken hunter fear that he had miscalculated the strength of his ropes, but they stood the test well, and, being elastic, acted in some degree like lines of indiarubber. At the end of that time the bear fell prone from exhaustion, which, to do him justice, was more the ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... a brief account was given of the theory that gases and vapours are in ceaseless motion. This motion suffers no abatement from friction, and hence we may infer that the molecules concerned are perfectly elastic. The opinion is gaining ground among physicists that all the properties of matter, transparency, chemical combinability, and the rest, are due to immanent motion in particular orbits, with diverse velocities. If this be established, then these motions ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... grew so rosy with pleasure, and her tread was so elastic from maternal pride and exultation at the prospects of her daughters, that his compliments seemed ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... that he walked with the elastic step of a young man, while his face certainly showed no ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger

... States, as I understand them, are more elastic than those in Europe. In England, until a few years ago, a man could not contract a legal marriage with his deceased wife's sister, although he could marry the betrothed wife of his deceased brother. It is curious to compare the Chinese ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang



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