"Balancing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slightest noise to alarm an Indian, especially when he is on the watch. That faint plash caused by the jar of the body caught the ear of the listening, peering redskin, who instantly slid his body over the bluff, and balancing himself for an instant, dropped with such precision that he struck the canoe in the very center, and preserved its gravity so well that it tipped neither to the ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... item, yet scarcely capable of balancing the scale against the sports—football, cricket, racing, pelota, bull-fighting—which, in Europe, impassion the common people, and draw most of their champions from the common people. In Europe the advertisement hoardings—especially in the provinces—proclaim sport throughout every month ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... I knew that both of us were glad when presently we rode into a steeper country, and among its folds and carvings lost all sight of the plain. He had not slept, I found. His explanation was that the packs needed better balancing, and after that he had gone up and down the stream on the chance of trout. But his haunted eyes gave me the real reason—they spoke of Steve, no matter what he spoke of; it was to be ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... task the Legislative branch of our Government will, I am confident, continue to meet the demands of democracy whether they relate to the curbing of abuses, the extension of help to those who need help, or the better balancing of our interdependent economies. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... morning with the restful feeling fresh in her heart. There was no half-conscious planning about ways and means before her eyes were open; no shrinking from possible encounters with Dan's idleness or wilfulness; no balancing of possibilities as to his doing well, or doing at all, some piece ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... choice of foods does not consist entirely in balancing the ration as to protein, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... single brush-stroke that does not serve his single purpose; he admits no adventitious dainties, there is nothing to quote. Happy touches are not in his way. Should he find some part of his picture empty he will not fill it with nicely balancing daisies, clouds, or bric-a-brac; he will begin it again. To him it will seem either that he has failed to conceive his work as a whole or that he has failed to realize his conception. Similarly, you will not easily discover a favourite ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... was more sighing than sleep. The men who brought our calabashes walked or dog-trotted it all the way barefooted, and got on faster than we did. The calabashes are fastened one at each end of a pole four or five feet long, and the bearers don't seem to mind the weight, balancing them easily on their shoulders and carrying them safely. We never missed the smallest article, and ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... her mother, in their different ways, were different from any one else she had known. The Princess, who might have been of any age between twenty and forty, had a small triangular face with caressing impudent eyes, a smile like a silent whistle and the gait of a baker's boy balancing his basket. She wore either baggy shabby clothes like a man's, or rich draperies that looked as if they had been rained on; and she seemed equally at ease in either style of dress, and carelessly unconscious of both. She was extremely familiar and unblushingly inquisitive, but ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... about Dublin, and the most characteristic things I saw there were those queer, uncomfortable dog-carts,—a sort of Irish bull on wheels, with the driver on one side balancing the passenger on the other, and the luggage occupying the seat of safety between. It comes the nearest to riding on horseback, and on a side-saddle at that, of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... been convicted of a crime for which several of his less active accomplices had suffered the penalty of death; though he might, and probably would, from length of time and circumstances in his favour, have received the king's pardon. Perhaps, however, on the whole, it was fortunate, that in balancing, as it is known this gallant officer did, between the sense of duty and the sense of feeling, the latter prevailed, and justice yielded to mercy. Had a Bligh or an Edwards been placed in his situation it is to be feared that, judging from their former conduct, passion ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... been affirmed find its proper centre and unity. Christianity is the great unity. In it, as was intimated at the outset, are all the chief elements of organic influence. It is itself the very acme of completeness, and it tends to all symmetry and finish. It is at once conservative and progressive, balancing perfectly the impelling and restraining forces; by a felicitous adjustment of the centripetal and centrifugal, ensuring to human nature its proper orbit. It is the golden girdle wherewith every institution like this should bind her garments of ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... of course, stands erect in the head of the boat, one knee braced against a support. But Bembo disdained this; and was always pulled up to his fish, balancing himself right ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... expense of his son. "Good God!" exclaimed the young man, "how can he use me so? I will go at once to the President, and put the saddle on the right horse." In spite of this provocation, he did not, however, reveal his father's treachery; whilst Lord Lovat was balancing between hopes and fears, and irresolute which side to choose, the Master at last entreated, with tears in his eyes, that "he might no longer be made a tool of—but might have such orders as his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... the dim light of a lantern suspended from the beams, that most of my lads had provided themselves with at least something in the shape of a weapon. Some had armed themselves with tail-blocks, which they had routed out from somewhere; some carried marlinespikes; and others were balancing crowbars and pieces of old iron in their hands; whilst one or two had dragged to light some short lengths of chain, which, wielded by their sinewy arms, might ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... those pleasures—everything else ranking with the last murder and the last opera bouffe, under the head of things to talk about. Nevertheless, he was not indifferent to the prospect of being treated uncivilly by a beautiful woman, or to the counter-balancing fact that his present commission put into his hands an official power of humiliating her. He did not mean to use it needlessly; but there are some persons so gifted in relation to us that their "How do you do?" seems ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... his liberty, a strange delusion took possession of him, which did not leave him until he died. He fancied himself a tight-rope dancer, and from morning to night danced with the gestures and movements of a man who holds a balancing-rod, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... movement perceptible throughout the audience was the little swaying of gay-coloured fans like the balancing of butterflies about to light. Occasionally there would be a vast rustling like the sound of wind in a forest, as the holders of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... out from a dim tapestry hanging on one of the thick stone walls, and he will have to go back to his place beside the sleeping tapestry knight, as soon as he has finished running after the doves, who have left their dovecote and are balancing with their coral feet on the battlements, or walking in the courtyard. Seeing this castle of the Princess's makes me quite envy you having Dunelin. I should like to live in a castle. Do buy Dunelin, as you said you sometimes thought of doing, and invite me to be ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... place. The frogs trumpeted in chorus all night; packs of dogs or jackals swept about in droves, once at full pelt through our tent, like devils of the storm. It was nightmarish, but sleep brought that wonderful balancing force that sometimes clothes itself in dreams, and steeps the spirit in all that is lacking. Just before falling asleep I reflected that Adam and Eve might well have been excused ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... resume all their aristocratical dignity and idleness. I have envied them the enjoyment which they appear to have in their ethereal heights, sporting with clamorous exultation about their lofty bowers; sometimes hovering over them, sometimes partially alighting upon the topmost branches, and there balancing with outstretched wings, and swinging in the breeze. Sometimes they seem to take a fashionable drive to the church, and amuse themselves by circling in airy rings about its spire: at other times a mere garrison is left at home to mount guard in their stronghold at the grove, while the ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... moment later. For Bud, after balancing himself on the top rail, looked across the corral to where Old Billee Dobb was holding a restless pony, and ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... with a start. He began to understand. He writhed in his bonds; a violent contraction of surprise and pain distorted the muscles of his face, but he uttered not a single sigh. He merely turned his head backward, to the right, then to the left, balancing it as a bull does who has been stung in the flanks ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... less than just to the good element. If one intrudes on the Heavens when they are balancing their volt-accounts; if one disturbs the High Gods' market-rates by hurling steel hulls at ninety knots across tremblingly adjusted electric tensions, one must not complain of any rudeness in the reception. Tim met it with an unmoved ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... need a second limitation of their efforts. They cannot hope for success as long as they fancy that reasoning and calculation and sober balancing of dangers and joys, of injuries and advantages, can ever be the decisive factor of progress. They ought not to forget that as soon as this whole problem is brought down to a mere considering of consequences by the individual, their eugenic hopes ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... ninety-eight, was committed to the licentiate Albaro Cambrano, late auditor of this royal Audiencia (whom may God keep in His holy glory!), and because by his end and death the auditing, continuation, and balancing of the accounts, as his Majesty orders and commands in his royal ordinance, have been neglected: therefore, they appointed, and they did so appoint, in place of the said licentiate Alvaro Cambrano, Doctor Antonio de Morga, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... a very real state of mind, conscious of many possibilities beyond that of the atheist, and not excluding that of the polytheist. It is no longer a question of defining or denying a simple central power, but of balancing the brain in a bewilderment of new powers which seem to overlap and might even conflict. Nature herself has become unnatural. The wind is blowing from the other side of the desert, not now with noble truism "There is no God but God," but rather with that other motto ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... be the smarty that I just mentioned," observed the skipper, jerking his thumb toward where Cunningham stood gazing abstractedly over the taffrail, with his feet wide apart and his hands locked behind him, balancing himself to the violent movements ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... the cash had been placed after balancing the previous evening was in a small upper compartment resting on the books. It was the usual practice for Harding to remove it and hand it over to Eustace, who checked the contents while the books and documents necessary for the day's work were ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... Nikolai—that awkward, dark, long girl, who ran about in that bodice that was too short for her, looking like a half-peeled, bent prawn in the back, and went balancing along the edge of the gutter, as if she were going to be a tightrope dancer—without any education? Upon her word, if it had been any other than Ludvig Veyergang, she would have had him peeping after ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... he went to sleep, it was not where Delilah could wield the shears. A most irritating prudence—irritating to friends and intimates of all degrees and kinds, in a race of beings with a mania for being trusted implicitly but with no balancing mania for deserving ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... than a foot or two. Faith! We must take the risk. I go first Rene—hush! 'tis best so—the lady would prefer that you remain, while I test the passage. The devil himself may be waiting there." He gazed down, balancing himself on the edge, the cord gripped ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... knowing how futile it would be. If one of them was doing a great work, like Mlle. Javal, I could meet her quite easily through some member of her committee; but when Frenchwomen of this class, which in its almost terrified exclusiveness reminds me only of our own social groups balancing on the very tip of the pyramid and clutching one another lest some intruder topple them off, or cast the faintest shadow on their hard-won prestige, are working in small groups composed of their own friends, I could ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Their system of balancing evil with good, reduces all sin to a thing of little importance. "If any man sin" in Burmah, his religion tells him of no "advocate with the Father" on whose altar he may lay the tribute of a believing, penitent, obedient and grateful heart; but instead, it tells ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... which caused his death. This inference makes the Mosaic law false to its own principles. A pecuniary loss was no part of the legal claim, where a person took the life of another. In such case, the law spurned money, whatever the sum. God would not cheapen human life, by balancing it with such a weight. "Ye shall take NO SATISFACTION for the life of a murderer, but he shall surely be put to death." Num. xxxv. 31. Even in excusable homicide, where an axe slipped from the helve and killed a man, no sum of money availed to release from confinement ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... at the pace the monkeys were going, he knew his friends would be left far behind. It was useless to look down, for he could only see the topsides of the branches, so he stared upward and saw, far away in the blue, Rann the Kite balancing and wheeling as he kept watch over the jungle waiting for things to die. Rann saw that the monkeys were carrying something, and dropped a few hundred yards to find out whether their load was good to eat. He whistled ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... rivulets. It was one of those wild streams that lavish, among our romantic solitudes, unheeded beauties enough to fill the sketch-book of a hunter of the picturesque. Sometimes it would leap down rocky shelves, making small cascades, over which the trees threw their broad balancing sprays and long nameless weeds hung in fringes from the impending banks, dripping with diamond drops. Sometimes it would brawl and fret along a ravine in the matted shade of a forest, filling it with ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... to a certain extent, Steve found himself engaged in some practical thoughts. He had lately been balancing his books, and the result was not encouraging. He was now reviewing this with a certain grim despondency and also a certain ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... trying to slip his arm around her without being too abrupt about it; as if he were taming some creature of the wild which he wished not to frighten. Marion was drawing herself together, balancing herself to land a blow on his jaw and then run. She believed she could outrun him, now that they were in the trail. But at that moment she caught sight of a figure slinking behind a stump, and she exclaimed ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... a very small voice right close to him. He looked and looked, and at last he spied Little Snow Bunting balancing ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... king's son's body followed his head, and he sat for a moment, balancing clumsily on that narrow top, before vanishing suddenly, to the accompaniment of a heavy thump that was the last sound he made in ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... for he doubted the check he had written and left for Hannah had ever been presented and cashed, for in the balancing of his bankbook he never saw ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... and the small area caused by this is the only space in the yards and yards of table unencumbered by the "fiddles." The Captain scorns the aid of such mechanical contrivances, and chatters away unconcerned, gracefully balancing his soup-plate in his hands the while. I followed his example as one to the manner born, but had I not been a bit of an amateur conjuror I am afraid that I should not have been so successful. The Captain challenged me, however, to make a sketch with the same ease as I ate my dinner—and ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... they might be a great deal better than they are. Oh, Jane, I really can eat nothing served up as it is done here; and that grumbling old man's Kilmarnock nightcap, and his snuff, are enough to disgust one. Even at tea did you notice Peggy stirring the teacup with such vigour, and balancing her saucer in ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... smuggler. The counterfeit bowed his head by the side of the silent Alida, without reply. The 'Skimmer of the Seas' regarded the group, a moment, with manly interest; and then touching the arm of Ludlow, he walked, with a balancing step, along the spars, until they had reached a spot where they might confer without causing unnecessary alarm to ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... we vie with each other in doing our worst; flashes of laughter rumble and crackle. The trumpeter does a handspring in the dormitory, one of his friends joins him, a third jumps on his bed as on a springboard and bounces up and down, his arms balancing, his shirt flying; his neighbor breaks into a triumphant cancan; the major enters abruptly, orders four men of the line he has brought with him to seize the dancers, and announces to us that he is going to draw up a report and send it ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... logs. Over the sickening upheaval he bounded this way and that, with miraculous sure-footedness. He reached the pitching log whereon Rosy-Lilly still clung. He clutched her by the frock. He tucked her under one arm like a rag-baby. Then he turned, balancing himself for an instant, and came ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... each incident was very hard work. It meant waiting here and there, jumping trenches, scrambling through entanglements, stumbling into shell-holes, and at times fairly hanging by my eyebrows to the edge of trenches, balancing my camera in a way that one would have deemed almost impossible. But I am gratified to think that I managed to keep up with the King, and I succeeded in recording every ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... whose dress seemed to lend her an extraordinary vivacity, came towards him, balancing the plate on the tips ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Reformation in Germany had been adjourned for half a century by the Augsburg religious peace, just concluded. It was held in suspense in France through the Macchiavellian policy which Catharine de Medici had just adopted, and was for several years to prosecute, of balancing one party against the other, so as to neutralize all power but her own. The great contest was accordingly transferred to the Netherlands, to be fought out for the rest of the century, while the whole of Christendom were to look anxiously for the result. From the East and from the West ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... car rolls and swings over the wide waste beneath the blue sky day after day, under its black flag of smoke, in the early gray of morning, when the men were waiting their turns at the ablution bowls, a slip of a boy, perhaps aged seven, stood balancing himself on his little legs, clad in knicker-bockers, biding his time, with all the nonchalance of an old campaigner. "How did you sleep, cap?" asked a well-meaning elderly gentleman. "Well, thank you," was the dignified response; "as I always do on a sleeping-car." Always does? Great ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... disturbances should be looked after the all-wise God of the universe created birds and gave them the power of flight that they might the more readily move about rapidly from place to place, where their services might be needed in balancing affairs. Hence birds have naturally and rightfully been called the "balancers" in nature. This being true, let us see just what ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the left by means of the outline of the mass of hair, and also by shading this single figure more strongly, he has contrived to keep a perfect balance. The head of Job is also turned to the left, while he stands slightly on that side, still further balancing the three figures on the right. (This does not show so well in the illustration here reproduced as in the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... his impatient resentment on behalf of the daughter of Epps Candage, Captain Mayo remained. Just then the accredited minstrel of the yachtsmen stood up, balancing himself in a tender. He was clearly revealed by the lights, and was magnified by the aureole of tinted fog which surrounded him. He sang, in waltz time, ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... bow, and was taking my aim, when Gabriel, passing me, made a signal to forbear, and rushing upon the thief, he kicked him in the back, just as he was balancing the saddles upon his head. The thief fell down, and attempted to struggle, but the prodigious muscular strength of Gabriel was too much for him; in a moment he laid half strangled and motionless. We bound him firmly ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... across the decks of which our heterogeneous crowd began to make its way with as little scrambling as possible, on account of the petticoat-hoops, which are capital monitors in a turmoil. Women swayed their babies like balancing-poles, as they tottered along the gangway-plank. Men tried to secure themselves from being brushed into eternity by the powerful sweep of skirts. My own personal reminiscence of this transit from the wharf to the gallant bark of our choice is melancholy ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... multiplicity, made so much the more effort to withdraw itself on to itself. A part is no sooner detached than it tends to reunite itself, if not to all the rest, at least to what is nearest to it. Hence, throughout the whole realm of life, a balancing between individuation and association. Individuals join together into a society; but the society, as soon as formed, tends to melt the associated individuals into a new organism, so as to become itself an individual, able in its turn to be part ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... a great variety of charming posturings as they hunt for their food upon the blossoms and tender fresh twigs, now creeping like a nuthatch along the bark and peering into the crevices, now gracefully swaying and balancing like a goldfinch upon a slender, pendent stem. One little sprite pauses in its hunt for the insects to raise its pretty head and trill a ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... suggested by his historical studies, and both had haunted his thoughts for years,—'The Knights of Malta' and 'Wallenstein'. The former, if his plan had been carried out, would have yielded a play of the classical type, with few characters and a severely simple structure. In the final balancing of the two subjects 'Wallenstein' prevailed, no doubt because it seemed in advance the easier and the more promising. It pointed to a familiar field where history itself had already shaped in the rough a stupendous and fascinating ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... from Mr. O'Connell's most elaborate letter, his distinctly expressed preference for Federalism, and the single reason upon which the preference is founded. The remainder consists for the most part of a sort of logical equation, balancing the component elements of both plans, from which is ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... Knight," said Gaston, also leaping to the ground, while Eustace cautiously advanced along the narrow frame of wood on which the drawbridge had rested, slippery with the wet, and rendered still more perilous by the darkness. Gaston followed, balancing himself with some difficulty, and at last they safely reached the other side. Eustace tried the heavy gates, but found them fastened on the inside with a ponderous wooden bar. "Most strange!" muttered he; "yet come on, Gaston, I can find an entrance, unless old Ralph be ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the restlessness of a period too rapidly changing to be always sure of its ground that needlessly confuse the issues of family obligation and personal loyalty to accepted tasks. There are many tendencies toward extreme individualism which need balancing by clearer ideals of social serviceableness. Especially is this true in the case of women somewhat intoxicated by the belated freedom and power which came to them after too prolonged a struggle against inherited bonds. There are many economic and educational requirements ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... him, and was attentive to, the greatest enemies of the Cardinal, whom he expected every moment; and, balancing himself with one foot over the other, an hereditary habit of his family, he spoke quickly, but pausing from time to time to make a gracious inclination of the head, or a gesture of the hand, to those who passed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... it, to babble nonsense. The gleams and glitter of intellectual soap-and-water bubbles are mistaken for the rainbow-glories of genius. The worthless pyrites is continually mistaken for gold. Even intellect condescends to intellectual jugglery, balancing thoughts as a juggler balances pipes on his chin. In all Congresses we have the inexhaustible flow of babble, and Faction's clamorous knavery in discussion, until the divine power of speech, that privilege ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... is, the "falling" which gives one of its titles to this malady. It is called "the falling sickness." There is a peculiarity in the falling of one who is affected in this way. In some cases consciousness partially remains, but the balancing power of the brain is lost. A patient in this case sees the ground rise till it strikes him violently on the forehead. We remember a friend telling us that he was walking along a railway, when all at once the rail seemed ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... sufficient to reach the vitals through that thick hide and the mass of flesh behind. With an infinite and wonderful patience he waited, knowing that my life or death hung in the balance. While Jana held his foot over me, while he felt me with his trunk, still Hans waited, balancing the arguments for and against firing upon the scales of experience in his clever old mind, and in the end coming to a right ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... to convey the extreme monotony of all these representations, because the monotony is not merely one of sentiment by selection of the dramatic moment, but of the visible composition of the paintings, of the outlines of the groups and the balancing of them. A monotony so complete that any one of us almost knows what to expect, in all save technical matters and the choice of models, on being told that in such a place there is an old Italian fresco, or panel, or canvas, representing ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... this, too, proved unlike his expectations. Heppner, after his fashion, kept him hard at it. Like every recruit, he had to begin with riding bareback; then after a time came the more difficult task of balancing on the slippery saddle without stirrups; and only after considerable practice would the sergeant-major occasionally allow him to let the stirrups down. There were days on which he had more than twenty falls from his ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the rascals!" interrupted the other, with a smothered, but bitter laugh. "There is pleasure in the thing!—In order to punish, they must possess the power; an experiment often made, but never yet successful. You understand balancing accounts with the law, by showing a broad sheet of canvas! ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... streak of obduracy which history has attributed to the Quakers under persecution. In vain he haunted the mill-dam, and bribed the boys with traps and pop-guns, and lingered at the well-curb to ask Dorothy for water, which did not reach his thirst. She was there in the flesh, with her arms aloft, balancing the well-sweep, while he stooped with his lips at the bucket; but in spirit she was unapproachable. He felt, with disgust at his own persistence, that she even grudged him the water! He grew savage and restless, and fretted over the subtle changes ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... aside by a pair of long arms, and the next instant a huge hairy creature, with a hideous countenance, appeared in sight, advancing slowly into the open; I could distinguish its fierce eyes glowing at us, the face black and wrinkled, and distorted with rage, as it came forward balancing its monstrous body with its long arms, while at every few seconds it stopped and beat its breast, at the same time throwing back its head to give utterance to one of its tremendous roars. We might have been excused had we really taken it for a forest demon, for nothing which the imagination ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... exactly like the tail of a bird, and contracts and expands in every direction. Then besides that there are two wings, one on each side, and these can be used, if necessary, in case the screws go wrong, as propellers. But usually they are simply for balancing and gliding. You see, barring collisions, there's hardly the possibility of an accident. If one set of things fails, there's always something else to take its place. At the very worst, we can but be ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... like the touch of a finger which launches a boat balancing in the ways onto the deep. It tossed her on a sea of agitation. She was swept away on a flood ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... night-seeing, danger-dodging, jumping the little gullies, reveling in the rush. Sandy and Sam sat slightly forward, loose-seated, thigh-muscles and knees feeling the withers rather than pressing them, balancing their own limber bodies to every movement ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... circled close to the cabin of the balloon, had fired a volley, whether directly at it or above or below it, he could not tell. Now the plane circled close again. But what was this? A man was climbing to the upper rigging of the plane. Now he was standing, balancing himself directly on top. Johnny recognized the slim figure of Pant. Now the plane, with engine dead, drifted toward the cabin of the balloon. They were almost even with it. There came three snorts of the engine and the plane shot beneath the ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... was still in evidence, always repeating the same word, "Help." The boys hesitated no longer, but went rattling down the slope at a speed which spoke well for their balancing powers! As they entered the little canyon from the north, Jimmie halted and settled back on a rock, his hand on ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... leaned against it, felt for the knob, turned it, carefully backed away from the door and opened it. Holding the edge, he eased himself around it and, balancing on the outer side, closed it again with elaborate care. Then he took a tentative step and lifted his hand ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... stood, rather weary, balancing myself upon my snow-shoes, I heard a wolf's howl quite near to me. Raising my head, I saw no wolf, but an Eskimo dog—the very dog I had encountered in New ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... to bestow upon her one solemn and expensive object, a boon as it were, carefully selected, after much thought and balancing of merits; but the consideration was spent on the nature of the gift—-not on the desires of the recipient. There was the piano she could not play, the statue she did not admire, the set of Dante she never read, the heavy gold bracelet, the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... held that," said he, slowly, balancing the glove in his hand, "I was a wicked man with bad intentions through and through. When I first held it I became an honest man, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... to our Christmas breakfast of bacon and eggs, coffee, cocoa, and marmalade. Imagine such a menu in the tropics! The butter is liquid, and from each of us, clad in singlets and white ducks, the sweat streams. The day begins unpropitiously. John Thomas, the mess-room steward, balancing himself on the top step of our companion-way with three cups of boiling cocoa in his hands, slips and thunders to the bottom. There is a chaotic mixture of scalded boy, broken cups, and steam on the floor, and we giggle nervously in ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... fine sandy beach as far as the entrance of the Sumpudin river. We saw many wild hogs; and on one occasion I was able to get within twenty yards of some ten of them together, among some large drift-wood. Just as I was crawling over a tree and balancing, I found myself confronted by these animals; but they were out of sight almost before I could cock my gun and fire. They were of a large size, and most of them we saw during the evening either dirty white, or white and black. At night, after we had retired ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... at which a succession of colored waiters carried trays heaped with different varieties of home-made cakes and tarts, from which the beaux supplied the belles, and at the same time ministered to their own wants, balancing a well-loaded plate on one knee, while they held a cup and saucer, replete with fragrant decoctions from the Chinese plant "which ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... his glossy crest, slant his shining tail to the level of his body, until he looked most like some bright venomous snake, daunting them with shrill abuse and feint of battle. Then suddenly he would go tilting and balancing down the gully in fine disdain, only to return in a day or two to make sure the foolish bodies ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the world had held possession of his heart, and, balancing the advantages of a religious and a secular life, he chose, as most young people would choose, the attractions of court, to which his parents' rank entitled him, and leaving Glastonbury he repaired ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... cat was the immediate result, performed solemnly by Jimbo, and watched by Jinny, still balancing the jar of jam, with an expression of countenance that was half amazement and half shock. Collisions with creatures of his size and splendour were ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... his usual generosity, when he says that the Senora's gift of her daughter to the Alferez was not quite so disinterested as it seemed to be. Certainly it was not so disinterested as European ignorance might fancy it: but it was quite as much so as it ought to have been, in balancing the interests of a child. Very true it is—that, being a genuine Spaniard, who was still a rare creature in so vast a world as Peru, being a Spartan amongst Helots, an Englishman amongst Savages, an Alferez would in those days have been a natural ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... during the two days of rioting had been taken away already by their friends and relations, but several figures could be seen sitting up balancing their bandaged heads in time to the music. Charles Gould dismounted. A sleepy mozo coming out of the bakery door took hold of the horse's bridle; the practicante endeavoured to conceal his guitar hastily; the girls, unabashed, stepped back ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... accepted the Darwinian principle as a definite contribution to knowledge; and so far the whole body of biologists has followed him. Beyond this the truth of the Darwinian principle is a matter of inference or judgment; of balancing probabilities and improbabilities. In multitude of counsellors there is said to be wisdom, and what we learn from the counsellors of biology all over the world is that some maintain that natural selection is the only probable agency in effecting ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... he was balancing whether he should set out the next morning, or the morning after. But finding he had nothing to do, and Col. Morden being in town, (which, however, I told him not of,) I turned the scale; and he ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... an hour and a half for the boats to draw near. Two boats came up. The first took half and the other took the balance, including myself. We had great difficulty about this time in balancing the boat, as the men would lean too far, but we were all taken aboard the already crowded boat, and in about a half or three-quarters of an hour later we were picked up by ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... delighted at the exchange, and though the pipkin was just a trifle awkward for him to manage, he succeeded, after infinite trouble, in balancing it on his head and went away gingerly, tink-a-tink, tin k- a-tink, down the road, with his tail over his arm for fear he should trip on it. And all the time he kept saying to himself, "What a lucky fellow I am! and clever, too! Such a hand ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... has no right to put to sea, and resign when the storm comes. Besides what supports a wicked government more than good men taking office under it, even though they secretly determine not to carry out all its provisions? The slave balancing in his lonely hovel the chance of escape, knows nothing of your secret reservations, your future intentions. He sees only the swarming millions at the North ostensibly sworn to restore him to his master, if he escape a little way. Perchance it is your false oath, which you don't mean to keep, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... only by first dividing it into two, then dividing each of the parts into two, etc., producing 2, 4, 8, 16, etc., equal parts, but ten never. This results from the fact, that doubling or folding is the only direct mode of dividing real quantities into equal parts, and that balancing is the nearest indirect mode,—two facts that go far to prove binary division to be proper to weights, measures, and coins. Moreover, use evidently requires things to be divided by two more frequently than by any other number,—a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... amiable old lady, to whom her costume seemed to impart extraordinary animation, came prancing forward, balancing her plate on the ends ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... competition, the same eternal movement of flux and reflux, the same whirlpool of life, which is extinguished only to reappear: tending always towards an equilibrium which is incessantly destroyed. And it is thanks to this balancing that the integral of life remains everywhere and always almost identical ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... give us a long drag," said the master, as he stood balancing himself on the clumsy elects in the bows of the boat, using his lance as an adept in saltation poises his pole on the wire, the water curling fairly above the gunwale forward, with the rapid movement ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... behind the bell-tower, flooding the cloudless, luminous blue-green heavens with orange and gold, when pastures and the shadows of trees merged in a fairy tinted blue haze unite in wondrous harmony - when the milkers come home with heavy tread, balancing at their sides the pails of cobalt blue - when all that sounds is harmonious from the striking of the clock on the tower to the rattling of a homeward driving cart, and all that breathes from the coarse Hollanders to the dull cows seems wrapped ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... He advanced, balancing himself first on one leg, then on the other, with that irregular walk of the sailor, who, used to the rolling and tossing of the waves, is surprised to find anything immovable beneath ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... and the clearing-house had only recently been thought of in New York, and had not yet been introduced in Philadelphia. Instead of a clearing-house service, messengers ran daily between banks and brokerage firms, balancing accounts on pass-books, exchanging bills, and, once a week, transferring the gold coin, which was the only thing that could be accepted for balances due, since there was no stable national currency. "On 'change," when the gong struck announcing ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser |
