"Rigidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about the perversions of this dehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the Professor had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He could only suppose that the man's malady (whatever it was) involved some momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He was not inclined, however, to feel in this case any very compassionate concern. On the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that the Professor's stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to escape from him and leave him ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... ninety-fourth year at the time of her death. In person she was spare; and ere toil and approaching age had bent her frame, she must have been considerably above the middle size. Even after she was far advanced in life, there was in her appearance a rigidity of outline and a sinewy firmness which told of no ordinary powers of endurance. There was much of true benevolence in the cast of her countenance; while the depth of her own Christian feelings gave an expression of calm yet earnest sympathy to her eye, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... provokingly and changed the subject. Why argue with him? The slant with which they got at things was different. Like her father, he had the mental rigidity that is death ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... litanies, which the artists endeavored to represent by various forms and characters of men and animals. The great characteristic attribute was represented by the organ of generation in that state of tension and rigidity which is necessary to the due performance of its functions. Many small images of this kind have been found among the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, attached to bracelets, which the chaste and pious matrons ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... in which there had been little demonstration of devotion and affection. His parents never caressed their children; he and his sister had scarcely kissed each other since their infancy. No matter how fervid their hearts might be, they had also a rigidity, as of paralyzed muscles, which forbade much expression as a shame and an affectation. Jerome had this tendency of the New England character from inheritance and training; but now, in spite of it, he fell down before Squire Eben Merritt, embraced his ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Mademoiselle Honoria, inheriting rigidity from the maternal Cyclops, drew herself up and declined stiffly; but the other, whom the dancing-master had called Rosalie, got up directly and said she ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... I went to Miss Oldcastle, and begged her to come and listen to something in which I wanted her help. She rose courteously though without cordiality, and accompanied me to her mother, who sat with perfect rigidity, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... than intellectuality. The masses of hair were braided and wound coronet-style about the small uplifted head. The eyes, deep, dark, and mystical gave no clue to the inner woman; but the mouth, while it was tender in its curves, had a rigidity of purpose in its expression that fixed the attention. A pretty, rounded chin, a slender, slightly tilted nose, an exquisite throat set off by the cloud of lace—such was the face that Gaston beheld, and presently it ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... continually in action both by night and by day. They either walk, creep, or advance rapidly by prodigious bounds; but they seldom run, owing, it is believed, to the extreme flexibility of their limbs and vertebral column, which cannot preserve the rigidity necessary to that species of movement. Their sense of sight, especially during twilight, is acute; their hearing very perfect, and their perception of smell less so than in the dog tribe. Their most obtuse sense is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... Landmannschaften, Burschenschaften, and the Corps among the students dates back to the days when the students aligned themselves with more rigidity than now, according to the various German states from which they came. The names of the corps still bear this suggestion, though nowadays the alignment is rather social than geographical. The Burschenschaften ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... and grey-haired, but with every muscle rendered as tough as whip-cord by constant exercise. He was dressed carelessly, and more like a Frenchman than an Englishman of the period, while, from his hard features and perpendicular rigidity of stature, he bore some resemblance to a Swiss officer of the guards, who had resided some time at Paris, and caught the costume, but not the ease or manner, of its inhabitants. The truth was, that his language and habits were as ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and I walked up and down I took in mine the small hand which emerged from the great fur cuff of her boat cloak, and gradually its rigidity relaxed under my friendly pressure. I remembered, as I occasionally tightened my grasp upon it, that my dear little baby sister Lois, who was taken away from us before she outgrew her babyhood, used to squeeze my hand in this fashion, and when I asked her what it meant, she invariably ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... sir! march easy!" he cried importantly, and the offender dropped his rigidity, the result being that the sergeant returned to his place in the rear of the company, while Private Gedge relieved his feelings in ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... can explain that rigidity, which Mr. Ruskin tells us, "is a special element of Gothic architecture. Greek and Egyptian buildings," he says—and I should have added, Roman buildings also, in proportion to their age, i.e., to the amount of the Roman elements in them—"stand for the ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... her rigidity, and Mr. Baxter answered for her, in an excited, nervous tone, while he waved his cane on which he had hung his stiff black hat, as if in grotesque imitation of his own long, ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... figure to a startling rigidity. "I ain't a-goin' to work!" he flung out. "Let him do it; he's a nigger!" And this was the last word of ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... sinewy man of forty, with all his fibres indurated and worked down to the whip-cord meagreness and rigidity of a racer, his frame presenting a perfect picture of the sort of being one would fancy suited to the exhausting motion of a dromedary, and to the fare of a desert. He carried a formidable knife, in addition to the long musket of which he had been deprived, and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... as soon as I began to speak that I had won my case. There was no struggle to escape from my arms; and, as I went on, she relaxed even her rigidity, and reposed on my ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... done by; for I had two books, and the poor man looked so hungry for something to read that I couldn't resist sharing my 'goodies.' He will see that I'm a countrified little thing in spite of my fine feathers, and won't be shocked at my want of rigidity and frigidity; so don't look dismal, and I'll be prim and proper all the rest of the way,—if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... The Tonbridgian's rigidity had given place to spasmodic efforts to rise. He got on one knee, and his gloved hand roamed feebly about in search of a hold. It was plain that he had shot his bolt. The referee signed to his seconds, ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... the legs pass are 1/8 in. deep and must be very carefully cut. Their purpose is to give rigidity to the tabouret frame. Bore two holes in each stretcher for the screws that are to fasten the ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor
... makes it so thin, so bloodless, and so unprofitable to remember, in spite of its easy narrative and its "punch." Its success as literature, curiously enough for a new literature and a new race like ours, is limited, not by crudity, or inexpressiveness, but by form, by the very rigidity of its carefully perfected form. Like other patent medicines, it is constructed ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... due to a gonorrhoeal inflammation involving the skin of the whole penis, retention having followed painful micturition, and the swelling of the penis following the retention; the prepuce was enormously distended, and the penis seemed in a state of erection as far as dimension and rigidity were concerned. The man, a steam-boat cook, informed us that it was fully twice as large as when rigidly erect in health. All efforts to reduce the swelling were unavailing; neither punctures, leeches, nor scarifications were of any avail; catheterization was impossible, but, after ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... managing the humours and improving the inclinations of the lower orders, something beside zeal and activity is necessary, even granting (as was the case in this instance) that they are guided by right principles. There was an unfortunate degree of rigidity and austerity about Mrs. Mellicent that was less connected with her heart than her manner, unless we ascribe it to a latent conviction of her own wisdom and an inclination to govern by its acknowledged superiority rather than by acquired influence. The villagers allowed that the ladies were equally ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... for the first time, the statues were not placed in the stiff, perpendicular posture, but, by being inclined to different positions, had a light appearance and an air of movement, which was a great relief from the rigidity which had ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... promulgators of them were dust. The early laws against crime in New England were severe, though death was seldom or never inflicted save for murder. But more irksome to one used to the lax habits of to-day would have been the punctilious rigidity with which they guarded the personal bearing, speech, and dress of the members of their community. Yet we may thank them for having done so; it was a wise precaution; they knew the frailties of the flesh, and how easily license takes an ell if an inch be given it. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... and frozen eyes; with just such a collapsed and shuddering form; yet, withal, could not have shown that terrific look of utter, incurable despair! His fingers, talon-like in their horny paleness and rigidity, clutched his breast, as if to tear some mortal anguish thence, and his glassy eyes were fixed in unutterable reproach upon her face! Thrice he essayed to speak, but a gurgling noise in his throat was the only result. With ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... mathematically accurate, but are nevertheless close approximations to those which would be obtained by a perfect observer using an ideal instrument of geometrical accuracy, standing on an earth of absolute rigidity, and viewing the heavens without the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... petals. Their perfume was the potent spell that now melted her to tears, and the tension of her overtaxed nerves gave way in a passionate burst of sobs. When she rose a few moments later, the storm had passed; the face regained its stony rigidity, and henceforth she fronted fate with ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Dunn thought he was sleeping, and he was just about to call out to him when something in the rigidity of the man's position and his utter stillness ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... Burnham saw the look of surprise in Gray's face when the mountain boy's whole frame stiffened into the rigidity of steel, saw the haughty uplifting of the Blue-grass boy's chin, as he wheeled to go, and like Gray, he, too, thought Jason had never forgotten the old feud between them. For a moment he was tempted to caution Jason about the folly ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... in modern art. His greatness lay in statuesque painting, which he brought nearly to perfection by ideal expression, accurate drawing, and improved coloring. He used but few colors, and softened the rigidity of his predecessors by making the mouth of beauty smile. He gave great expression to the face and figure, and his pictures were models of excellence for the beauty of the eyebrows, the blush upon the cheeks, and the gracefulness of the draperies. He strove, like Phidias, to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... either the sextant or a theodolite was used. The theodolite employed was a light 3 Vernier instrument by Carey Porter, intended for sledging work. This instrument was fairly satisfactory, although possibly rigidity had been sacrificed to lightness to rather too great an extent. Another point which appears worth mentioning is the following: The foot-screws were of brass, the tribrach, into which they fitted, was made of aluminium for the sake of lightness. The two metals ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... bronchos with steady hands. No light touch was his upon the reins, and the bronchos' wild plunging met with a check from those muscular hands of such iron rigidity as to fling them back helpless and amazed ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... mistake scratching—her outstretched wrist, and so would remain suspended while he delicately nibbled from between her fingers her edible offering. For her, he would make an almost painfully real pretence of being a dead cat: extending himself upon the rug with an exaggeratedly death-like rigidity—and so remaining until her command to be alive again brought him briskly to rub himself, rising on his hind legs and purring ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... in its early brightness when Romola was again on her way to San Marco, having obtained through Fra Salvestro, the evening before, the promise of an interview with Fra Girolamo in the chapter-house of the convent. The rigidity with which Savonarola guarded his life from all the pretexts of calumny made such interviews very rare, and whenever they were granted, they were kept free from any appearance of mystery. For this reason the hour chosen was one at which there were likely ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... position, in which, it is true, he had the mayor and the commonwealth attorney to bear him company. There was nothing now to be thought of, but the crime that had been committed, and the judge who was to punish the author. But he tried in vain to assume all the rigidity of his official air and that contempt for human feelings which has made justice so hateful to thousands. His whole being was impregnated with intense satisfaction, up to his beard, cut and trimmed like the box-hedges of an ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... effects are desired, their success depends, however, very largely on the rigidity of the lines and the care with which they are maintained. If a terrace is necessary, it should be in the form of a retaining wall next the street, or else it should lie next the building, giving as broad and continuous a lawn as possible. It should be remembered, however, that ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... stomachs, though they will often crave them. Boiled meat is generally preferable to roast meat, for nourishment and digestion. Boiling extracts more of the rank strong juices, and renders it lighter and more diluted. Roasting leaves it fuller of gravy, but it adds to the rigidity of the fibres. The flesh of young animals is best roasted. Fried and broiled meats are difficult to be digested, though they are very nourishing: weak stomachs had better avoid them. Meat pies and puddings cannot be recommended, but strong stomachs may sustain but little inconvenience from ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... new-born infant—she flung forth her child from the warmth of her own bosom to the cold, hireling kindness of the stranger. I think I hear some puritanical, world-observing, starched piece of female rigidity exclaim, "And therein she did a great wickedness." The fact I admit, but the wickedness ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... for reasons which will presently be given, direct induction takes place under peculiar difficulties and disadvantages. As one of the most apt instances, I select his speculation (in the proceedings of the Royal Society for May 16, 1861) on the relations between muscular irritability, cadaveric rigidity, and putrefaction. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... there is more acid within reach, and (b) a slight buckling is not so dangerous, and indeed is not so likely to occur. The plates are now generally made thicker than formerly, so as to secure greater mechanical rigidity. At the same time, the manufacturers aim at getting the active materials in as porous ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... from my former sense of the benediction of God, when suddenly the beauty, all the beauty, of a certain tree spoke to my inmost heart. It told me of fairness that never fails; of the greenness of ivy and the redness of autumn, the rigidity of winter in the branches;—and then I understood that an instant of such contemplation is the whole of life, the very reward of existence, beside which all human expectation is nothing ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... to thank you for saying this;' and Cyril's rigidity relaxed and he spoke more naturally. 'I shall never forget this, Dr. Ross—never, never! But'—here his voice shook—'you will let me go—you will not make me stop when people begin to talk about it? I am no coward, but there are some things too hard to put on any man; and to ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of caste is social rather than religious and has grown gradually: we know for instance that in the time of the Buddha it had not attained to anything like its present complexity and rigidity. Its origin is explicable if we imagine that the Indo-Aryans were an invading people with an unusual interest in religion. The Kshatriyas and Vaisyas mark the distinction between the warriors or nobles and the plebs which is found in other Aryan communities, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... very still. She was sure he understood her by the sudden rigidity of his pose, while his eyes stopped twinkling, and his fingers ceased to travel along the line of his mustache. Her eyes fell before the scrutiny in his, but she lifted them again for one of ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... convenient object that took his fancy, such as the crown of a little boy's head, or the shoulders of a by-stander who had no business there except to taste the brew; a proceeding which would have been deemed humorous but for the air of stern rigidity which that auctioneer's face preserved, tending to show that the eccentricity was a result of that absence of mind which is engendered by the press of affairs, and no freak of fancy ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... connections to the fall tubes, but I have not found this to be the case in practice. There is, of course, no difficulty in eliminating the rubber connections between the fall tubes and the mercury supply from the air trap, but it impresses a greater rigidity on the structure and, as I say, is not in general necessary. It must not be forgotten that the mercury always exercises considerable pressure on the rubber joints, and so there is little tendency for gas to ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... to draw them all from their mood of idle, comfortable speculation to rigidity. Turning to him, searching him, they saw, as it seemed to them, a new being divested of vagueness—dominant, commanding, remorseless. Sitting rigid, his thin, hairy neck stretched outward, he suggested some sinister bird ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had fallen, the man resting face downward, the slender figure of the girl clasped vice-like in his arms, with her tightly closed eyes upturned toward the glaring sun. Their strange, strained, unnatural posture, the rigidity of their limbs, the ghastly pallor of the exposed young face accentuated by dark, dishevelled hair, all alike seemed to indicate death. Never once questioning but that he was confronting the closing ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... moment his face and attitude had changed, the heavy lids drooped over the eyes, the rigidity of the mouth relaxed, and that quaint, half-shy, half-inane smile played around ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... body of the deceased lying in her bed, which had apparently not been disturbed. She had been dead about ten hours, and rigidity was complete in the limbs but not in the trunk. The cause of death was a deep wound extending right across the throat and dividing all the structures down to the spine. It had been inflicted with a single sweep of a knife while deceased was lying ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... a sable, which should be resisted. Why you should avoid using the sable as a rule is that it will make the painting too "slick" and edgy. There is a looseness that is a quality to prize. All the hardness, flatness, and rigidity that are desirable you can get with the bristle brush. When you work too much with sables, the overworking brings a waxy and woodeny surface, which is against all the qualities of atmosphere and luminosity, and of ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... be, the violence and harshness of too definite and exclusive an opinion. For in matters of art, at any rate, thought is inevitably coloured by emotion, and so is fluid rather than fixed, and, recognising its dependence upon moods and upon the passion of fine moments, will not accept the rigidity of a scientific formula or a theological dogma. The critical pleasure, too, that we receive from tracing, through what may seem the intricacies of a sentence, the working of the constructive intelligence, must not be overlooked. As soon as we have realised the design, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... these continual excursions is that I lay claim to no rigidity of purpose; and I should almost be ashamed to come with principles and axioms to those whom I am carrying away. Then why alter the course of their destiny? Why appeal to their sympathy and their confidence? What better lot have I to offer them and what can I hope for even if they respond? ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... it was impossible to explain, on account of the orphan's 'holding his breath': a most terrific proceeding, super-inducing in the orphan lead-colour rigidity and a deadly silence, compared with which his cries were music yielding the height of enjoyment. But as he gradually recovered, Mrs Boffin gradually introduced herself; and smiling peace was gradually wooed back to Mrs Betty ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... concerning anything. The poet did not nail his colors with a cheer to the mast of any of the great questions of the day, ethical or social, and therefore suffered the disparagements of those intelligent friends of his who have been taught to consider a well-defined rigidity of conviction and maintenance, in the midst of all these phenomena of our universe, telluric and uranological, as the test of everything valuable in human character and morals. And thus it has come about, that genius, with its native instincts of reason, truth, and common sense, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... one of his novels, that good humour gives to a plain face the same charm as sunshine lends to an ugly country. I agreed entirely with him, as I looked first on Salisbury Plain, without one gleam to diversify its gloomy extent, and then on Mrs. Swift's unmeaning face, the stern rigidity of which never relaxed into a smile, and contrasted it with the cheerful light of dear Mrs. Hatton's radiant, though ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... those souls which never detach themselves from an affection under any compulsion. The old father, enriched by his extortions in the army, recognized in this charming girl a woman who could restrain his son by the power of virtue, and by the ascendancy of a nature that was firm without rigidity. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... glance fell upon his rifle with the fixed bayonet. And then the swine-dog ran amok. Boudru stood with his back to the door: the blood froze in his veins, and his little body stiffened into absolute rigidity. ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... kingdom of heaven," and yearned towards the penitent Peter, and from the tenderness of his immaculate purity said to the adulteress, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." There are some sectarians in whom the arbitrary narrowness, fierceness, and rigidity of their received creeds have so demoralized and hardened conscience and sensibility in their native healthy directions, and artificially inflamed them in diseased channels, that we verily believe, if the decision of the eternal destiny of the human race were placed in ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... its contrary. There were Eclectics, who picked and chose. But the majority of those who affected a positive philosophy attached themselves either to the Stoic or else to the Epicurean system, not necessarily with orthodox rigidity on every point, but as a general guide—at least in theory—to the conduct of life. Where we belong to a certain religious denomination or church, and "sit under" a certain class of preachers, they belonged to a certain school of philosophy, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... appointed to keep the good-natured, easy-going Empress to the strict line of German court etiquette, to see that the Empress, rather democratic in inclination, did not stray away from the traditional rigidity of the Prussian ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Massachusetts Bay as a thief, well-nigh a murderer, a man lost to all honor, all decency. The one grave exception to the grinning faces of the Privy Councillors was the face of Lord North. He sat fixed in rigidity, too well aware of all that depended upon the glittering slanders of Wedderburn to find any matter of mirth in them. Only one other man in all that assembly of genius and rank and fame and wit carried a countenance as composed as that of Lord ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... alarmed me, and induced me to awake him at once. No sooner had I done this, than, with a bright smile irradiating all his features, he fell back upon his pillow and expired. I noticed that in less than a minute afterward his corpse had all the stern rigidity of stone. His brow was of the coldness of ice. Thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared, only after long pressure from Azrael's hand. Had the sleep-waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his discourse, been addressing me from out the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a deep pathos in his voice, "no one can be better aware than I am that I have made many mistakes in the course of my life; but that quality on which I think I have reason to be satisfied with myself is my rigidity when I know a thing is wrong. There occurs to me now an instance in my career which will prove to you ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... seat and her reserve with as much rigidity as on the former occasion. Unconvinced by this experience, our imaginations still ran riot. They shadowed forth every possible beauty and horror which such a giant chest might contain. The story even of "The Bride of the Mistletoe-Bough" might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... flew round and round and the air shot backwards on both sides of the long car. At 750 revolutions the car was rocking and lurching as if it would soar birdlike into the air. At 800 the powerful pulling propeller began to overcome the rigidity of the framework on which the car rested and as Alan caught and held the car, fearful that it was about to fly away under the propeller power alone, Ned shut ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... weak solutions of the salts of ammonia; for the former do not excite movement, whereas the latter act energetically. A temporary suspension of the [page 73] power of movement due to heat is called by Sachs* heat-rigidity; and this in the case of the sensitive-plant (Mimosa) is induced by its exposure for a few minutes to humid air, raised to 120o-122o Fahr., or 49o to 50o Cent. It deserves notice that the leaves of Drosera, after being immersed ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... The frame is slit at the inner horizontal edges, and then folded in such a way as to make individual clamping-jaws for each end-flange. The clamping-in is done at great pressure, and the resultant plate has great rigidity ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... those who were destined to replace them reorganized the courts, that they might have an instrument wherewith to slaughter a whole race down to the women and children. No less drastic method would serve to temper the rigidity of the aristocratic mind. The phenomenon well repays an hour ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... was still fair. Her face was thin, but her languorous eyes were expressive and her mouth delicate. A certain shadow about its corners may have meant rigidity of will or only a habit of introspection, but it was ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... is infectious," the veteran observer exclaimed, rousing himself, "infectious as far as the victim can possibly make it so. He wishes nothing so much as to impart his opinions in all their rigidity to everybody else. Take your own ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... rigidity and pale— An Indian aloofness lones his brow; He has lived a thousand years Compressed in battle's pains and prayers, Marches ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... hull of finest beryl steel, the ship loomed in the screen. A mighty ship, braced into absolute rigidity by monster cross beams of shining steel. Glowing under the blazing lamps that lighted the scene, it towered into the shadows of the factory, dwarfing the scurrying ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... dignity of deportment, as much the result of habitual self command, as of the proud eminence of distinction on which he stood. The sedative character of middle age, added to long acquired military habits, had given a certain rigidity to his fine form, that might have made him appear to a first observer even older than he was, but the placidity of a countenance beaming good will and affability, speedily removed the impression, and, if the portly figure ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... frame containing a portrait of myself—how obtained I shall never know. The portrait was framed with immortelles, the emblems of death, and the artist had given my face the ghastly pallor and rigidity of the ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... the road, literally like some heavy statue hewn there in the age of the Druids. It seemed impossible that he should ever move. Turnbull grew restless with this rigidity, and at last, after calling his companion twice or thrice, went up and clapped him impatiently on one of his big shoulders. Evan winced and leapt away from him with a repulsion which was not the hate of an unclean thing nor the ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... large whirls of planetary size, they are rather infinitesimal whirls of less than atomic dimensions; still a whirling fluid is believed in to this day, and many are seeking to deduce all the properties of matter (rigidity, elasticity, cohesion gravitation, and the rest) ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... one church. On that Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants were agreed. But should the five Points or the Seven Points obtain the mastery? Should that framework of hammered iron, the Confession and Catechism, be maintained in all its rigidity around the sheepfold, or should the disciples of the arch-heretic Arminius, the salvation-mongers, be permitted to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all—all—very interesting and commendable, no doubt. But for such a procedure to be of any real value it should be entered into by all. Gentlemen"—his rigidity was all gone now and so was his pallor—"I am unwilling to submit myself to what, in my eyes, is an act of unnecessary humiliation. Our word should be enough. I have not the coin——" Stopped by the absolute silence, he cast a distressed look into the faces about him, till it reached that of Mr. ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... severity of the early masters, the great motive struggling still with the minute and rigid hand. So the critics of the last century ignored, or underrated, the works of the earlier Tuscan sculptors. In what Cicero calls "rigidity" of Canachus, combined with what we seem to see of his poetry of conception, his freshness, his solemnity, we may understand no really repellent hardness, but only that earnest patience of labour, the expression of which is constant in all the best work of an early ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... to education and improvement—that suttee, for example, was ever an honoured institution in the province now most advanced. But to the observant student of the Indian people, the evolution of India is almost as noteworthy as the more apparent rigidity. There is a flowering plant common in Northern India, and chiefly notable for the marvel of bearing flowers of different colours upon the same root. The Hindus call it "the sport of Krishna"; Mahomedans, "the flower of Abbas"; for the plant is now incorporate with both the great religions ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... matters in an—automobile is to treat them very unbecomingly. It is not," she continued, and all her unbending rigidity of demeanor ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... was a born soldier, considerate of and kind to his men. He was cool and fearless to a fault. He understood tactics thoroughly, but was wanting in those elements of discipline—its sternness and rigidity that was required to govern troops in actual war. His age counted against him as a strict disciplinarian, but not as a soldier. He was elected to the Legislature of this State before Reconstruction, as ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... effect by the death-like immobility of an obviously painted face. The eyes appeared extraordinarily brilliant. The figure, in a close-fitting dress, admirably made, but by no means fresh, had an elegant stiffness. The rasping voice inviting him to sit down; the rigidity of the upright attitude with one arm extended along the back of the sofa, the white gleam of the big eyeballs setting off the black, fathomless stare of the enlarged pupils, impressed Razumov more than anything he had seen since ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... on which he rested moved a few inches nearer to her. He saw the pearly shadows waver upon her throat, and her lips tremble into rigidity. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... hardness &c adj.; rigidity; renitence^, renitency; inflexibility, temper, callosity, durity^. induration, petrifaction; lapidification^, lapidescence^; vitrification, ossification; crystallization. stone, pebble, flint, marble, rock, fossil, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... M. G. de Torcy has introduced a mesmerized woman into the lion's cage, where she unconsciously puts her head in the lion's mouth: then, in a state of cataleptic rigidity, head and feet resting on two stools, the lion is made to jump over the rigid body, then with paws resting on her body, to pull a string by his teeth and thus fire a pistol. Of course this draws enthusiastic audiences. Medical Freedom. The ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... scorbutic symptoms. Another instance offered in a woman, whom I saw but once. Her gums were spongy and reverted, but not discoloured; her countenance sallow, lips pale, and she suffered under general debility, without local pain or rigidity of the limbs. She remained in this state for a long time, and eventually, as the weather improved, recovered ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... scale, the rider pressed a button on the handle-bar with his left hand once, twice, thrice, or four times, so that the gearing adapted itself without an effort to the rise in the surface. Besides, there were devices for rigidity and compensation. Altogether, it was a most apt and ingenious piece of mechanism. I did not wonder he was proud ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... side of him the dead but imperishable bodies of the long-buried brothers of the convent sat erect in their lidless coffins, their cold, starry eyes glaring at him with lifeless rigidity, their withered fingers locked together on their breasts, their stiffened limbs motionless and still. It was a sight to petrify the stoutest heart; and the monk's quailed before it, though he was a philosopher, and a sceptic to boot. At the upper end of ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... Dr. Hartwell seemed lost in reverie, for he sat with his eyes fixed on the tablecloth, and his head resting on his hand. His features resumed their habitual expression of stern rigidity, and as Beulah looked at him she could scarcely believe that he was the same kind friend who had been so gentle and fatherly in his manner. Intuitively she felt then that she had to deal with a chaotic, passionate, and moody nature, and, as she marked the knitting of his brows ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... this their main belief they were right. They were men and women whose fundamental need was activity, contact with real life, and the opportunity for social expansion; and they keenly felt the chill and fictitious character of the reigning conventionalities. The rigidity of behavior which at this time characterized the Bostonians seemed sometimes ludicrous and sometimes disagreeable to the foreign visitor. There was great gravity, together with a certain pomp and dumbness, and these things were supposed to ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... the bed and distinctly saw himself stretched on his back in the same clothes he had worn on going out. In his face were the lines of death, and a rigidity in the hands that would never ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... establishment will in some way lower men's standard of life, and make them less careful of their spiritual welfare. This is the case, at all events, when theologians oppose scientific conclusions on religious grounds, and not simply from mental dulness or rigidity. And, in so far as it is religious feeling which thus prompts resistance to scientific innovation, it may be said, with some appearance of truth, that there is a conflict between religion ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... her body rigid, for, coming leisurely and pompously toward the house, was General Siddall, in the full panoply of his wonderful tailoring and haberdashery. She thought of flight, but instantly knew that flight was useless; the little general was not there by accident. She waited, her rigidity giving her a deceptive seeming of calm and even ease. He entered the little yard, taking off his glossy hat and exposing the rampant toupee. He smiled at her so slightly that the angle of the needle-pointed mustaches and ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... entrance of a lady and gentleman, rather distingue in dress and bearing, who had stopped before them, and were eying equally the artist, his work, and his companion with somewhat insolent curiosity. Helen felt herself stiffening; her companion drew himself up with soldierly rigidity. For a moment it seemed as if, under that banal influence, they would part with ceremonious continental politeness, but suddenly their hands met in a national handshake, and with a frank smile ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... seen a rigidity smite him as she spoke; and so little startling was it, that she might have fancied it expected, save for her knowing herself too serious to have played at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the old man's limbs the peculiar rigidity of the tissues of persons who live in the open air, accustomed to the inclemencies of the weather and to the endurance of heat and cold,—hardened to everything, in short,—which makes their leathern skin almost a hide, and their nerves an apparatus against physical pain ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... to him, at the edge of the group, are Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky, gesticulating at each other, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. The other guests remain standing stiff. The whole group retain the same position of rigidity for almost a minute and a half. The ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... possible to divide literatures with absolute rigidity by centuries, and although the intellectual life of Alexandria, particularly as applied to science, long survived the Roman conquest, yet at that period the school, which for some time had been gradually ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... into nerveless, satiated cowardice. Perhaps he had acted wrongly in refusing the inspectorship offered him. This reflection gave birth to a stormy struggle in his mind, and he was obliged to brace and shake himself before he could recover his wonted rigidity of principles. However, a moist breeze had risen, and was blowing along the covered way, and he regained some degree of calmness and resolution on being obliged to button up his coat. The wind seemingly swept from his clothes ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... this speech, Lady Maitland changed, in an instant, from a state of violent passion to the rigidity and appearance ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... on the Pacific slope without being a prime favorite for either home use or commerce. The grapes are not high enough in quality for a home vineyard, and, while they ship well, are hard to handle because of the large size and rigidity of the bunches. Another fault is that the vines are subject to root-knot. The chief asset of the variety is handsome appearance of fruit. This variety is remarkable for the number of second-crop bunches which it produces ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... consequences; nor can anything else secure its endurance. In proposing or setting up a moral state, the moral law is relied upon as a real power, and free will is drawn into the realm of causes, where all hangs together, mutually with stringent necessity and rigidity. But we know that the condition of the human will always remains contingent, and that only in the Absolute Being physical coexists with moral necessity. Accordingly if it is wished to depend on the moral conduct of ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... was pale, although there was bloom on the cheeks. The forehead was shadowed by a sparkling cloud of brown hair, the nose was straight, and each little nostril was pink tinted. The ears were like shells. There was a rigidity in her attitude. She laughed abruptly, perhaps a little nervously, and the abrupt laugh revealed the line of tiny white teeth. Thin arms fell straight to the translucent hands, and there was a recollection of Puritan England in ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... obtained through the knowledge that she was longer than a modern Dreadnought. The framework was made of specially light metal, aluminium alloy, and wood. This framework, which was stayed with steel wire, maintained the shape and rigidity of her gas-bags; hence vessels of this type are known as RIGID air-ships. Externally the hull was covered ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... what laudanum Eunice had taken faded, and her lethargy was replaced by an equally still, incredulous amazement. She followed Jasper Penny about with the mechanical rigidity of a minute sleepwalker. They went into a jewelry store beyond, with a square low bow window and white trimming, where he purchased a ring with a ruby, and small gold bracelets with locks and chains. His restless desire was to clothe Eunice in ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... invisible vascular plexus, it can, at will, draw to itself, by a sort of aspiration, the greater part of the living forces which animate the latter. One sees, then, by a singular inversion, life withdrawn from the body, which then exhibits a cadaverous rigidity, and transfers itself entirely to the phantom, which acquires consistency—sometimes even to the point of struggling with persons before whom it materializes. It is but exceptionally that it shows itself in connection with a living person. But as soon as death has snapped the ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... the threads pass, rests on the ankles of the weaver. There is a heavy hook fastened in the ground or floor, and to this the threads at the far end of the web are sewed. A cord fastens the near end to the waist of the weaver, who by spinal rigidity supplies the necessary tension. As the work proceeds, she drags herself along nearer and nearer the hook. This is slow work, only about a foot being accomplished in a day; as in other countries, however, the women enjoy the neighborly chats that their ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... high-featured matron, encased in the rigidity of her Sunday bombazine, gave a prim poke with her umbrella in the ribs of a sparrow-like little man, with a discoloured, scraggy beard, who nodded in one corner of the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the pine-trees. I lift up a corner of the canvas and he is there. In spite of the livid patches on the skin, in spite of the rigidity of the features, and the absence for all time of the glance, it is undoubtedly ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... of his ideal was a Republic embracing every member of the race, purged of the priestcraft and the superstition which had degraded the man to the slave, indebted to itself alone for its independence, and consolidated by the reign of equal law. The rigidity with which Mazzini adhered to his own great project in its completeness, and his impatience with any bargaining away of national rights, excluded him from the work of those practical politicians and men of expedients who in 1859 effected with foreign aid the first step towards Italian ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... diamond not to be enchanted when such a bland smile enlivened the lips of the musketeer. Raoul, following his friend, cajoled the women who admired his beauty, pushed back the men who felt the rigidity of his muscles, and both opened, thanks to these maneuvers, the compact and muddy tide of the populace. They arrived in sight of the two gibbets, from which Raoul turned away his eyes in disgust. As for D'Artagnan, he did not ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... things are and what they ought to be,' as the always-to-be-quoted Hazlitt expressed it, can never write humor. All the way through we shall find that mirth is a matter of relationships, of shift, of rigidity trying to be flexible, of something shocked into ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... attraction, for their absorbent vessels propel the juice upwards, which they drink up from the earth, with great violence; I suppose with much greater than is exerted by the lacteals of animals, probably owing to the greater minuteness of these vessels in vegetables and the greater rigidity of their coats. Dr. Hales in the spring season cut off a vine near the ground, and by fixing tubes on the remaining stump of it, found the sap to rise twenty-one feet in the tube by the propulsive power of these absorbents of the roots of it. Veget. Stat. p. 102. Such a power can not ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... that other lady—she of the cigarette—advanced thus delightfully towards him, Richard's face was white with anger, and his lips rigid with pain—a rigidity begotten of the determination that they should not tremble in altogether too unmanly fashion. Sometimes it is very sad to be young. The flesh is still very tender, so that a scratch hurts more than a sword-thrust later. Only, let it be remembered, the scratch ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... captain, observing a diamond ring on the finger of the corpse, said to one of the sailors, "You may just as well take that off: it can be of no use to him now." The man tried to get it off, but the rigidity of the muscle after death prevented his moving it. "He won't feel your knife, poor fellow," said the captain; "and a finger more or less is no great matter to him now: ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... observed, from all I have cited, that much of the original material is still preserved throughout; but that, like the ivory melting in the hands of Pygmalion, it has lost all its first rigidity and roughness, and, assuming at every touch some variety of aspect, seems to have gained new grace ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... for some time, but the rigidity of her attitude, and the tightness with which she pressed her lips together, showed that her mind was deeply occupied. They both sat silent for some few moments, looking down toward the distant lights of the city. At the farther end of the double row of bushes ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... in London; and up here it's different—I mean, I feel that it may be different. Life in a place like this blows away the restraints of the artificial life at home. I know, oh, I know what I'm saying. I feel all untied in a place like this; the rigidity of one's nature begins to melt and flow. Surely you must understand ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... as if to read thereon a secret, to decipher a name—Menko's or his own. Her exquisite, delicate features had the rigidity of marble; her dark eyes were staring straight ahead, like two spots of light, where nothing, nothing was reflected. Zilah ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... was shown a man who was called "l'homme protee," or protean man. He had an exceptional power over his muscles. Even those muscles ordinarily involuntary he could exercise at will. He could produce such rigidity of stature that a blow by a hammer on his body fell as though on a block of stone. By his power over his abdominal muscles he could give himself different shapes, from the portly alderman to the lean and haggard student, and he ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... appeals to his vanity, both as a man of letters and a man of the world. Since he had seen Ida in her luxurious home, about which there was the same suspicion of vulgarity that clung about herself, the rigidity of his principles ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... system, order, and not with a view of placing in the best lights and shadows the beautiful things to be sold. He saw that Mr. Ludolph was annoyed by the same defect. One bright day, when everything stood out with glaring distinctness, he seemed provoked beyond measure by this inartistic rigidity, and stormed through the store at a ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... sound. In form and movement the woodchuck is not captivating. His body is heavy and flabby. Indeed, such a flaccid, fluid, pouchy carcass, I have never before seen. It has absolutely no muscular tension or rigidity, but is as baggy and shaky as a skin filled with water. Let the rifleman shoot one while it lies basking on a sidelong rock, and its body slumps off, and rolls and spills down the hill, as if it were a mass of ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... anxious to be done with ceremony and get to the dancing; and Mildred did not prolong the intimacy of Alice's enthusiastic whispering. With a faint accession of colour and a smile tending somewhat in the direction of rigidity, she carried Alice's hand immediately onward to Mrs. Palmer's. Alice's own colour showed a little heightening as she accepted the suggestion thus implied; nor was that emotional tint in any wise decreased, ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... into a greater rigidity. I pass over the preliminary examination of this important witness and proceed at once to the point when the coroner, holding out the two or three lines of writing which Mr. Jeffrey had declared to have been left ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... habitually ascetic in his habits. I have heard his son tell, that it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was good, to taste it again, and say,—"Yes, {p.209} it is too good, bairns," and dash a tumbler of cold water into his plate. It is easy, therefore, to imagine with what rigidity he must have enforced the ultra-Catholic severities which marked, in those days, the yearly or half-yearly retreat of the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... upon an object that arrested my attention. It was the body of a very large man lying flat upon his face, his head buried among the roots of a good-sized tree. The arms were stiffly pressed against his side, and his legs projected at full stretch, exhibiting an appearance of motionless rigidity, as though a well-dressed corpse had been rolled over on its face. I at once recognised it as the body of the major, whom I supposed to have fallen dead where ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... Parting the heavy masses of dark hair that enshrouded it she looked—and saw what she had expected to see—the face of Manella Soriso. But it was the death-mask of a face—strangely beautiful—but awful in its white rigidity. Morgana bent over it anxiously, but only for a moment, drawing a small phial from her bosom she forced a few drops of the liquid it contained between the set lips, and with a tiny syringe injected the same at the pulseless wrist and throat. While she busied herself ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... my wife with a sharpness of tone and a rigidity of facial muscle which, considering the handsome compliment I had just paid her, argued, I was afraid, a foregone conclusion. "You always have recourse to some folly of that sort whenever I am desirous of entering into a serious consultation on ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... the breast of his coat, and did not see the sudden rigidity that fell on the girl. For a moment she sat perfectly still; her heart had leapt to her throat, it seemed, and was hammering there.... But by the time he had found the letter she ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... to hold the plow, as the example of Cincinnatus will show us. Time was precious, and thrift and economy were necessary to success. The father was the autocrat in the household, and exercised his power with stern rigidity. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... fluid. The pressure must continue to increase toward the center. We do not know what is the temperature, but it is perfectly possible that at a greater depth the earth may become rigid once more if the effect of pressure in promoting solidity and rigidity continues, as Bridgman tells me he thinks probable. We do not even have to assume a change in the chemical composition of the earth's substance, though it is perfectly allowable. This, then, will be a third layer, once more rigid, perhaps extending to the center and of very considerable ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... inspection party did not keep us long in waiting, for after a brief conference they turned and rode for the contractors under escort. We rode forward, the troop closed up in close formation about the two vehicles, and the general tension rose to that of rigidity. We halted quietly within easy hearing distance, and without noticing us the commandant addressed himself to the occupants of the conveyances, who were ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... glances of inquiry from all around, then bows and gestures and murmurs of disavowal. I alone remained irresponsive, for at that very moment every fibre of my being was strained to nervous rigidity. My senses were preternaturally at work. The marble column against which I was leaning with seeming carelessness, vibrated under my hand. Within its circular depths I could see Abdul descending stealthily and ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... There will have to be sufficient authority lodged in those who exercise oversight to enable them to lead the Christian forces and administer their resources. But we dare not curtail the freedom of conscience, or impede liberty of prophesying, or turn flexibility of organization into rigidity, lest we hamper the Spirit, who divideth to every man severally even as He will. We do not want "metallic beliefs and regimental devotions," but the personal convictions of thinking sons and daughters of the living God, the spontaneous ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... containing the electrode chamber, is rigidly fastened with respect to the body of the transmitter by a rearwardly projecting shank held in a bridge piece 8 which is secured at its ends to the front block. The needed rigidity of the rear electrode is thus obtained and this is probably the reason for calling the instrument the solid-back. The front electrode, on the other hand, is fastened to the center of the diaphragm by means of a shank ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... would cover the four," exclaimed Nick Johnson. "'Twill do!" He put his bow-point to his toe, loosened the string, and laid the weapon aside. Brother Ned slipped his own bow from his shoulder, strung it, tested its tautness and rigidity, and took six arrows from the boy who waited upon the patrons of archery ground. He shot; the arrow went wide. He sighed, rubbed his eyes as though to clear them from mist, and shot again. The shaft lodged on the outer edge of the target, almost splintering the wood. "Better," said ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... calls 'the super-world' of officers, which as such is separate from the men. As a class we find it hard to penetrate the surface of the men—that surface which we can almost see thrust out at us like a shield, in the suddenly assumed rigidity of men as they salute us. We are in an unchristian position, in the sense that we are in a position which Christ would not have occupied. He, I am sure, would have been a regimental stretcher-bearer, truly among and of the ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... be noted in Holy Willie that the poet is not letting himself out in a burst of personal spleen. He is again girding at the rigidity of a lopped and maimed Calvinism, and attacking the creed through the man. The poem is a living presentment of the undiluted, puritanic doctrine of the Auld Light party, to whom Calvinism meant only a belief in hell ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... hours a day and got, in 1916, an average daily wage of 5d.[53] Labour organization is in its infancy, and so is Socialism;[54] but both are certain to spread if the number of industrial workers increases without a very marked improvement in hours and wages. Of course the very rigidity of the Japanese policy, which has given it its strength, makes it incapable of adjusting itself to Socialism and Trade Unionism, which are vigorously persecuted by the Government. And on the other hand ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... there at once. The arteries beat; the muscles are braced; the body raises itself, not by degrees, but at a single impulse, and stands erect. The eyelids unclose. The countenance is not that of a living subject, but of the dead. The paleness of the complexion, the rigidity of the lines, remain; and he looks about with an unmeaning stare, but utters no sound. He waits ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... see men falling among the foe, but still Pausanias stood beside the seers, still he gave no signal to advance. The omens doubtless were unfavourable. His men never shifted a foot as the storm of death flew over them. Their rigidity was more terrifying than any battle-shout. What were these men whose iron discipline bound so fast that they could be pelted to death, and no eyelash seem to quiver? The archers renewed their volley. They shot against a rock. The Barbarians joined ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... with its shoulders drawn up to its ears, and its hands delved into its breeches'-pockets. The hue of its face is a mixture of brick-dust and saffron; and the texture seems that of the skin of a dead frog. There is a rigidity and tension in the features, too, which would make you fancy, if you did not see that that were not the fact, that some one from behind was pinching it with a pair of hot tongs, and that it were either afraid or ashamed ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... For a minute it seemed to be so; then the stony eyes softened and fell, the rigidity of her frame relaxed, and Carmel sank back again on the sofa and tried to read the headlines on the open sheet before her. But her eyes were unequal to the task. With a sob she dropped the paper and entreated the nurse to relate to her from her own knowledge, all that had passed, sparing ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green |
