"Compactness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unresting." I will not deny that it was with a secret glee I watched her. Had I been a gentleman I believe Madame would have found favour in my eyes, she was so handy, neat, thorough in all she did: some people's movements provoke the soul by their loose awkwardness, hers—satisfied by their trim compactness. I stood, in short, fascinated; but it was necessary to make an effort to break this spell a retreat must be beaten. The searcher might have turned and caught me; there would have been nothing for it then but a scene, and she and I would have had to come all at once, with ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... could be employed, particularly where a line in a tariff spelt a fortune to a section of the people, in the manipulation of the floating vote. Parties may boast of their voting strength and their compactness, but their voting strength under the present system of voting is only as strong as its weakest link, discordant or discontented minorities, will permit it to be. The stronger a party is in the ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... lasts for an unlimited period when buried in underground structures. It follows that when exposed to moisture, as its texture is not loose and porous, it cannot take in liquid on account of its compactness, but, withdrawing from the moisture, it resists it and warps, thus making cracks in the structures in which ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... beneficent work. The benefit resulting from cultivating the surface of the ground is counteracted by the first unfavorable change of the weather; a single heavy rain, by saturating the soil, returning it to nearly its original condition of clammy compactness. In favorable seasons, these difficulties are lessened, but man has no control over the seasons, and to-morrow may be as foul as to-day has been fair. A crop of corn on undrained, retentive ground, is subject to injury from disastrous changes of the weather, from planting until harvest. ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... read "an adequate subject," and the words define and defend Browning's principle and practice exactly. There is no characteristic of his work more evident, none more admirable or more rare, than the unity, the compactness and completeness, the skill and care in construction and definiteness in impression, of each poem. I do not know any contemporary of whom this may more truly be said. The assertion will be startling, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the second great virtue of Turgenef's art is the skill with which he contrives to tell the most with the least number of words, the skill with which he contrives to produce the greatest effect with the least expenditure of force. There is a compactness in his stories which I can only describe as Emersonian. Of his six great novels, only one has as many as three hundred pages; of the other five, not one has over two hundred. Turgenef's art is thus in striking contrast with ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... fall of ice, about one hundred feet in height. Like the Mangshan glacier, it was in horizontal ribbon-like strata of beautifully clear ice, showing no dirt bands. Perpendicular stripes of a darker greenish colour could be observed arising from the unequal degrees of compactness of the ice; the strata showed almost horizontal, with no curvatures nor depressions in any part of them. The top, the base and the sides of the glacier were in this case also buried ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... country churches, the belfry stands apart, a squat, square tower, painted red, with a black upper story, and is sometimes larger than the church itself. The houses of the peasants are veritable western shanties, except in color and compactness. No wind finds a cranny to enter, and the roofs of thick thatch, kept down by long, horizontal poles, have an air of warmth and comfort. The stables are banked with earth up to the hay-loft, and the cattle enter their subterranean stalls through sloping doorways like those of ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... than in other European monarchies at that period. It must be owned, however, as before intimated, that the practical operation did not always correspond with the theory of their respective functions in these rude times; and that the powers of the executive, being susceptible of greater compactness and energy in their movements, than could possibly belong to those of more complex bodies, were sufficiently strong in the hands of a resolute prince, to break down the comparatively feeble barriers of the law. Neither were the relative privileges, assigned to the different orders ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... meaning, and the consequent compactness and copiousness of which a Language based on a meaning inherently contained by analogy in the simplest elements of sound would be susceptible, would give to such a Language advantages as the instrument of thought and communication, which are but very partially illustrated in the superiority ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that it is from itself that the emancipation must come; that it is itself which must essentially think, act and strike; that its forces, long torn asunder and dispersed, must be marshalled in invulnerable compactness and iron discipline; and so that its hosts may not again be routed by strategy, no man or set of men should be entrusted with the irrevocable power of executing its decrees, for too often has the courage, boldness and strength of the many been shackled or destroyed by ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... stated that, in each case, the sand was put in in small handfuls and thoroughly mixed with water, but not packed, and allowed to stand for some time before the experiments were tried, to insure the compactness of ordinary conditions. It is seen from Fig. 1, Plate XXVII, that the sand was stable enough to allow the bucket to be put on its side for the moment of being photographed, although it had been pulled out of the water a little less than ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... been upheaved and entirely occupied the surface. Although vast blocks lay heaped in the wildest confusion, they exhibited the peculiar characteristics of all Cyprian rocks (excepting the calcareous limestone) in their utter want of compactness. I have never seen in Cyprus any hard rock (except jurassic limestone), whether gneiss, syenite, or others, that would yield an unblemished stone to the mason's chisel of ten feet in length by a square of two feet. This peculiarity is not the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the lateral movement of the piston is communicated by connecting-rods to the rotatory movement of the crank-shaft. Mr. Nasmyth says of it, that "on account of its great simplicity and GET-AT-ABILITY of parts, its compactness and self-contained steadiness, this engine has been the parent of a vast progeny, all more or less marked by the distinguishing features of the original design, which is still in as high favour ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... entertainment are the guests so dependent upon one another for mutual entertainment as at a dinner, both by reason of its smallness and the compactness of arrangement, it will be seen that an equal care devolves upon the hostess in seating as in ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Poona. It was placed in the angle between two rocks; it measures in front 7 inches wide, and 1.5 in. high; posteriorly it slopes away into an obtuse angle fitting the crevice in which it was deposited; the cavity is 4 in. in diameter, perfectly circular, and 2.25 in depth. The compactness of the nest is such that it might be thrown about without being damaged. It is composed throughout of fine black roots, only a stray piece or two of light coloured grass being intermixed, and the whole basal portion is cemented together ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... calmly, not excitedly. What is the real function, the essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is a letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. I think she never saw a spelling-book in her life. The spelling is her own. There isn't a waste letter ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fishing expedition in that part of the country. A facsimile of one of these, taken from an old rubbing and reproduced in Dr Bushell's Handbook of Chinese Art, shows that great strides had been made in this writing towards symmetry, compactness and conventionalism. The vogue of the Greater Seal appears to have lasted until the reign of the First Emperor, 221-210 B.C. (see History), when a further modification took place. For many centuries China had been split up into a number of practically ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... quickness and sudden ferocity of the tiger than those suggested by the heavy, lion-like jowl of the English mastiff. His ears, too, were close cropped, in accordance with the Russian fashion, and somehow the compactness this gave to his head seemed to throw forward and bring into prominence his great fiery eyes, that reflected red lights as he moved, and did not tend to inspire confidence in ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... room constituted the entire home. A shed roof slanted from eight feet high on the door and window side to a bit more than five on the other. A bed in one corner took up most of the space, and the remaining necessities were bestowed with the compactness of a ship's cabin. The rough boards of the roof and walls had been hidden by a covering of newspapers, with a row of illustrations pasted picture height. Cushions and curtains of turkey-red calico ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... than one musician, it has been suggested to negotiate with the talented artist who plays the drum with his knee, the cymbals with his elbow, the triangle with his shoulder, the bells with this head, and the Pan's pipes with his mouth—thus uniting the powers of a full orchestra with the compactness of an individual. An immense number of Margate slippers and donkeys have been imported within the last few days, and there is every probability of this pretty little peninsula becoming a formidable rival ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the material world presents in its history an illustration of the great principle and theory of progress. It is quite certain that our planet was once a very different thing from what it is now; it differed in form, in substance, in compactness, in everything from its present condition. We do not know that it was once wholly aeriform, mere gasses in combination, too crude to admit of solidarity; but reasoning back from established facts, the conclusion is almost irresistible, that this earth, now so rock-ribbed and solid, so ponderous, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... growth. Fortunately the very word "boom," in its significance as applied to inflated real estate values, has no meaning in these towns, with the result that they are compact. One may search in vain for the "house to let" sign. When no more houses were needed, no more houses were built. This compactness of form, cleanliness, and the elimination to a great extent of the rectangular block, contribute in no small measure to that indefinable suggestion of the Old World—a charm that haunts the memory ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... profound analytic power; his visions were clear, and he was emphatically the master of statement. His pursuit of the truth was indefatigable, terrible. He reasoned from his well-chosen principles with such clearness, force, and compactness, that the tallest intellects in the land bowed to him with respect. He was the strongest man I ever saw, looking at him from the stand-point of his reason—the throne of his logic. He came down from that height with an irresistible ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... open soil, than by a compact and close one. Water is held in the soil between the minute particles of earth. If these particles be pressed together compactly, there is no space left between them for water. The same is true of soil naturally compact. This compactness exists more or less in most subsoils, certainly in all through which water does not readily pass. Hence, all these subsoils are rendered more permeable to water by being broken up and divided; and more retentive ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... divide the opposing force by penetrating through an interval found, or made, in it, and then to concentrate upon that one of the fractions which can be least easily helped by the other. In a column of ships this will usually be the rear. The compactness of the order attacked, the number of the ships cut off, the length of time during which they can be isolated and outnumbered, will all affect the results. A very great factor in the issue will be ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... invention, and was composed of four rings within a fifth, each of which was rivetted. Single-chain mail was worn by the Crusaders, in Henry III's time; and when the number of rings was doubled, it became double-chain mail. Its great advantages were compactness and pliability. Horses were now ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... composters are not very large. Compactness may be an advantage to people with very small yards or who may want to compost on their terrace or porch. But if the C/N of the materials is not favorable, decomposition can take a long, long time and several bins may have to be used in tandem. Unless they ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... bedrooms, sitting and dining-rooms, kitchen, smoking-room, store-rooms, oil tanks, etc. In the center was a room, fifteen feet square, that was called the engine-room. Everything that could be thought of that could add to comfort had been supplied, always with reference to compactness and weight. Not an ounce of superfluous weight would the architect allow. He had calculated very carefully and knew to a pound, almost, just what his great ship would carry, and how much fuel would keep her afloat a certain number of hours. But the thing that aroused the admiration of the public ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... where they had been felled, with the bark still clinging to them, and without having undergone other transformation than being cut to a certain length, and notched at either end, so as to sink into each other, when crossed at right angles, until their bodies met, thereby forming a structure of compactness, strength and solidity. Some ten or twelve feet from the ground, the two upper end logs of the cabin projected a foot or eighteen inches beyond the lower, and supported what were called butting poles—poles which crossed these projections at right angles, and, ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... confidential slate an imaginary description of how, upon a balmy evening at dusk, two figures might have been observed in the market-garden ground round the corner, of whom one, being a manly form, bent over the other, being a womanly form of short stature and some compactness, and breathed in a low voice the words, 'Emma Peecher, wilt thou be my own?' after which the womanly form's head reposed upon the manly form's shoulder, and the nightingales tuned up. Though all unseen, and unsuspected by the pupils, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was soon over, and we stood admiring the machine while Norton expatiated on the compactness of his ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... which, by the action of frost, subjects the rock to rapid disintegration. Portions of the rock may, nevertheless, be selected partially free from this difficulty, and which are possessed of sufficient compactness to render them of value as a coarse building stone; horn-stone, striped jasper (imperfect); hog-toothed spar, calcareous spar, and fluor spar, are imbedded in the rock, although the latter is ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... is, on the whole, rather a neat town, containing from twelve to fourteen thousand inhabitants; but being built, especially in the outskirts, without much regard to compactness, it covers more ground than many places of double the amount in population. It stands upon a little bay, formed by two projecting headlands, and can boast of a tolerable harbour excellent roadstead. In its immediate vicinity the country a more uniformly ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... ox. Short and as squattily packed down as a Buddha, the great sinews of his strength bulged in his short neck and in the backs of the calves of his legs, even rippled beneath his coat. It was as if a compress had reduced him from great height down to his tightest compactness, concentrating the strength of him. Even in repose, the undershot jaw was plunged forward, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... states. They could account for and describe the genesis of the social union, as Plato and Aristotle had in different ways been able to do many centuries before; and they could prescribe some of the conditions of its being maintained in vigour and compactness. Some of them could even see in a vague way the interdependence of peoples and the community of the real interests of different nations, each nation, as De la Riviere expressed it, being only a ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... name given to the divided roots of the spruce fir, which the natives wove into a degree of compactness that rendered it capable of containing a fluid. Watape fibre was also used to sew together different parts of the bark canoes. They also made fibre or thread from willow bark. Their cooking vessels made of this watape not only contained water, but water ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... secret of the appeal, to his mind, of the successfully foreshortened thing, where representation is arrived at, as I have already elsewhere had occasion to urge, not by the addition of items (a light that has for its attendant shadow a possible dryness) but by the art of figuring synthetically, a compactness into which the imagination may cut thick, as into the rich density of wedding-cake. The moral of all which indeed, I fear, is, perhaps too trivially, but that the "thick," the false, the dissembling second half of the work before me, associated ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... of Ourrias, who sneaks back and strikes his enemy down with the trident. "With a mighty groan the hapless boy rolls at full length upon the grass, and the grass yields, bloody, and over his earthy limbs the ants of the fields already make their way." The rapidity, the compactness of the sentences, impressed Gaston Paris as very remarkable. The assassin gallops away upon his mare, and seeks by night to cross the Rhone. A singularly felicitous use of the supernatural is made here. Ourrias is carried to the bottom of the river by the goblins and spirits that come ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... avocations at the barn, and its necessary attachments; and the greatest convenience in storage, and the housing of the various stock, grains, implements, and whatever else may demand accommodation, are other considerations to be taken into the account, all to have a bearing upon them. Compactness is always an object in such buildings, when not obtained at a sacrifice of some greater advantage, and should be one of the items considered in placing them; and in their construction, next to the arrangement of them in the most convenient possible manner ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... legerdemain, spend or lose their capital in a very short space of time, and return to England to abuse the place, the people, and everything connected with colonization.—Sydney. Australian Handbook (admirable for its wisdom and compactness). ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... without having the proximity too obvious. City kitchens are now usually made just large enough to accommodate required paraphernalia and to afford sufficient freeway for the cook. Many families do no home baking, and where fruit and vegetables are preserved the basement is utilized. Compactness in the kitchen saves hundreds of steps in the course of a day, and though it is difficult for us to forget the spacious room thought necessary by our parents, we may well learn, for our own comfort, to profit by the modern reasoning that opposes waste space. Still, ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... that all through the geological ages the continents had been increasing in size and compactness, and that just at the close of the Tertiary Age they received a considerable addition of land to the north. The astronomer also informs us that at a comparatively recent epoch the eccentricity of the earth's orbit became very ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... it must, more or less seriously, impair the solidity and vigor of the cavalry charge proper; in which a whole line, with "boot to boot" compactness, comes at once to the shock, like some terrific mechanical engine; and in which the riders in the front rank are compelled to dash on with full speed to the last; knowing that if they slacken rein, even for a moment, they would be ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt
... The compactness of Webster's statements occasionally reminds us of the epigrammatic point which characterizes so many of the statements of Burke. Thus, in presenting a memorial to Congress, signed by many prominent men of business, against President Jackson's system of finance, he saw at once ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... taking it easily, being in no hurry. He had come to this point by the stage the night before, and now he was waiting for its return to take him back to Folsom. He had been lunching, and was seated on a stone by a small creek. He looked up and saw them, and their gait, and ominous compactness. What he did was not the thing for him to do. He leaped into cover and drew his revolver. This attempt at defence and escape was really for the sake of the gold-dust he had in his pocket. But when he recognized the sheriff's voice, telling ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... naked protuberances, and do not appear intended to cover them when not inflated. On the sides of the neck, and across the breast, below the protuberances, the feathers are particularly short, rigid, and acute, laying over each other with the same compactness and regularity as the scales of a fish, excepting that their extremities are not rounded, but acutely pointed. Lower down the breast these feathers, however, begin to assume more of the ordinary shape; but the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... require different handling, and more space is needed for some than for others. An essay is not necessarily too long because it fills five columns, or fifty pages; but periodical and newspaper writing demands compactness, conciseness, concentration; and the fact of being paid by measurement, is a writer's ever-present temptation ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... good to someone." That I take to be the keystone of him. "I want to be a Good Influence upon all the people I meet." I do not think it has ever dawned upon him that he himself is any way short of perfection; and, so far as I can see, the triumph and end of his good influence is cleanliness of cuff, compactness of umbrella, and general assimilation ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the novels previous to 1905, the conscientious artistry, the compactness of structure, and the unity of tone commonly associated with poetry. What other qualities characteristic of poetry appear ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... the pet achievement of the market gardener. The great aim is not to produce size only, "but the fine, white, creamy color, compactness, and what is technically called curdy appearance, from its resemblance to the curd of milk in its preparation for cheese. When the flower begins to open, or when it is of a warty or frost-like appearance, it is ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... despotisms of Europe chose to send us. Growing up by a natural process, educating the people to the proper exercise of their high trust, correcting mistakes, and adjusting difficulties as we progressed, the noble building would have settled into greater compactness as it arose in height, and all its various proportions been in harmony. We should have built slowly but surely. But when there was thrown upon us a mass of material wholly unfit for any political structure, and we were compelled to pile it in hap-hazard, it was not long before ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... with the huge stables, into which we drove whilst the horses were putting to or baiting, were very clean and commodious. The rooms, with a door into this hall-like stable and storehouse in one, were decent; and there was a compactness in the appearance of the whole family lying thus snugly together under the same roof that carried my fancy back to the primitive times, which probably never existed with such a golden lustre as the animated imagination lends when ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... hear the footstep which she might have recognised ringing rapidly down the frosty road. She was too busy rustling about with perpetual motion, folding and refolding, and smoothing into miraculous compactness all the heterogeneous elements of that mass. When a sudden knock came to the door she started, struck with alarm, then paused a moment, looking round her, and perceiving at one hasty glance that nobody could possibly enter without seeing both ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... influence over the affairs of all the Provinces. In his tune, moreover, the English interest, under the auspices of an undisturbed dynasty, and a cautious, politic Prince (Henry VII.), began by slow and almost imperceptible degrees to recover the unity and compactness it had lost ever since the Red ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... since he left Congress in 1849. In all the elements that constitute the great lawyer he had few equals. He was great both at nisi prius and before an appellate tribunal. He seized the strong points of a cause, and presented them with clearness and great compactness. His mind was logical and direct, and he did not indulge in extraneous discussion. Generalities and platitudes had no charms for him. An unfailing vein of humor never deserted him; and he was able to claim the attention of court and jury, when the cause was the most uninteresting, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... seventy-fours, and one sixty-four. From the intelligence received the previous day of the enemy's proximity, the admiral kept the command throughout the night in two columns, in close order, a formation suited by its compactness to a hazy night, and at the same time manageable in case of encountering an enemy suddenly. The course was south by west, almost perpendicular to that of the Spaniards. The two fleets were thus running, one from ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... was smoothly formed, her face a full oval, her hair and eyes blond and blue in a strong light, but brown and steel-gray at other times, and her complexion of that ripe fairness into which a ruddier color will sometimes fade. Her form, neither plump nor square, had yet a firm, elastic compactness, and her slightest movement conveyed a certain impression of ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... most of the dwellings, made the work of city improvements in the way of paving, sewerage and water supply, at first very slow of execution. The light gravelly soil, on which the greater portion of the city is built, enabled these works to be postponed, until the increased number and compactness of the population, and excess of wealth, would ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... somewhat indifferent to the adventure, was caught by the redness and whiteness, the brandnewness and compactness of the little houses; she was seduced beyond prudence by the ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the other hand, the extreme compactness of the political structure made representation unnecessary and prevented it from being thought of in circumstances where it might have proved of immense value. In an aristocratic Greek city, like Sparta, all the members of the ruling class met together and voted in the ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... and English comfort, mine host?" said the immovable captain; "do you think, good sir, that I measure fitness and propriety by square and compass, as if I were planning Solomon's temple anew? All I mean to say is, that the Alacrity is a vessel of singular compactness and magical arrangement of room. Like the tent of that handsome brother of the fairy, in the Arabian Nights, she is big or she is little, as occasion needeth; and now, hang me, if I don't think I have uttered ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the day, Hepburn got far more credit and honour than old sedate Bannerman; for his lads were lighter in the heel, glegger in the eye, and brisker in the manoeuvres of war: moreover, they were all far more similar in their garb and appearance, which gave them a seeming compactness that the countrymen had nothing like. But when the sham contest began, it was not long till Bannerman's disciples showed the proofs of their master's better skill to such a mark, that Hepburn grew hot, and so kindled his men by reproaches, that ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... while making a trip in the ill-fated Red Cloud to the cave of the diamond makers, and he determined to have his new craft thus provided against emergencies. The wireless outfit of the Humming-Bird was a marvel of compactness. ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... heart of the universe, and Pump Street was the heart of Notting Hill, this was the heart of Pump Street. The fact that they were all small and side by side realised that feeling for a formidable comfort and compactness which, as we have said, was the heart of his patriotism, and of all patriotism. The grocer (who had a wine and spirit licence) was included because he could provision the garrison; the old curiosity shop because it contained enough swords, pistols, partisans, cross-bows, and blunderbusses ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... uniform in size, shape and construction, there was nothing to prevent the occupant from subsequently enlarging and improving his house. For the present, however, the interests of all were best served by speed and compactness. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... expanded and followed out in detail in the opening of 'Homer and the Homeridae;' but this is evidently the note from which that grew, and is here given alike on account of its compactness and felicity.—ED.] ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... elements. If one imagines them to be vortex-rings, they may differ in size, thickness, and rate of rotation; either of these might make all the observed difference between the elements, including their density. In the second way, density implies compactness of molecules. Thus if a cubic foot of air be compressed until it occupies but half a cubic foot, each cubic inch will have twice as many molecules in it as at first. The amount of air per unit volume will have been doubled, the weight will ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... desperately breaking and perishing to fall, the white disembodied ghosts of rapids, down to the bottom of the vast and deep ravine through which the river rushed away. Now the waters seemed to mass themselves a hundred feet high in a wall of snowy compactness, now to disperse into their multitudinous particles and hang like some vaporous cloud from the cliff. Every moment renewed the vision of beauty in some rare and fantastic shape; and its loveliness isolated it, in spite of the great town on the other shore, the station with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... description of these boats in No. 25, Vol. XXI., special mention was made of the compactness of the engines. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... found in the Temple of Victory and Concord, in the Duke of Buckingham's gardens at Stowe. So admirable is the preservation of the original in every part, owing to the dry and pure air of Languedoc, as almost to operate as a disadvantage. Its freshness and compactness suggest rather too much the idea of a modern pavilion of twenty or thirty years standing, instead of that of a temple; and if I may venture to say so, the same want of the aerugo of age, which renders it more valuable as an architectural relic, produces an ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... by some subterranean passage from the bottom of Halemaumau. There was no material change in the sunken portion of the crater except a continual falling in of rocks and debris from its banks as the contraction from its former intense heat loosened their compactness and sent them hurling some 200 or 300 feet below, giving forth at times a boom as of distant thunder, followed by clouds of cinders and ashes shooting up into the air 100 to 300 feet, proportionate, doubtless, to the size of ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... beauty, cheapness, and compactness. The whole works— poems, and sonnets—are contained in one small volume: yet the page is perfectly clear and readable... For the busy man, above all for the working Student, the Globe Edition is the best of ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... charms of Richmond at once. The rich sloping meadows by the river, crowned with dense woodlands, surround us and form a beautiful setting of green for the town, which has come down from the fantastic days of the Norman Conquest without any drastic or unseemly changes, and thus has still the compactness and the ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... perseverance, decision, vigilance, self-control, arrogance, love of power, firmness, and hardihood. These faculties express concentration of purpose and their functional equivalents are power of elaboration, constructiveness, condensation, firmness of fiber, compactness of frame, and endurance of organization. The pulse is full, firm, and regular, the muscles are strong and well marked, the hair and skin dark, the temporal region is not broadly developed, the face is angular, its lines denoting ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... 120 illustrates the control wiring of the new steel motorcars. The method of assembling the apparatus differs materially from that adopted in wiring the outfit of cars first ordered, and, as the result of greater compactness which has been attained, the aggregate length of the wiring has been ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... the middle height, perfectly well made and sinewy, but rather spare than stout. His eyes, hair, beard, and complexion were brown. His head was small, symmetrically-shaped, combining the alertness and compactness characteristic of the soldier; with the capacious brow furrowed prematurely with the horizontal lines of thought, denoting the statesman and the sage. His physical appearance was, therefore, in harmony, with his organization, which was of antique model. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... whereof men shall find much in experience, little in books." The essays contain the quintessence of Bacon's practical wisdom, his wide knowledge of the world of {92} men. The truth and depth of his sayings, and the extent of ground which they cover, as well as the weighty compactness of his style, have given many of them the currency of proverbs. "Revenge is a kind of wild justice." "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune." "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... a ship are massive wooden timbers, which extend across from side to side in a series of tiers. They serve the purpose of binding the sides together, of preventing them from collapsing, and of supporting the decks, as well as of giving compactness and great strength to ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... sizzling sauce-pans over kitchen-fires. Everywhere were endless ingenuities in the way of camp-furniture and household decoration. Farther down the road a path between fir-boughs led to a hidden hospital, a marvel of underground compactness. While we chatted with the surgeon a soldier came in from the trenches: an elderly, bearded man, with a good average civilian face—the kind that one runs against by hundreds in any French crowd. He had a scalp-wound ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... estimate. It is rare, however, to find him attain the exceptional stature, quite commonly observed with the white, though, where he yields to the latter in this respect, there is compensation for it in the way of greater breadth and compactness. There are, of course, isolated cases, in which he is distinguished by as great height as has ever been reached by ordinary man, and, in these instances, I have never failed to notice that his form ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... was a tall, strong, charming girl who wore for him, at first, exactly the look of her adventurous situation, a suggestion, in all her person, in motion and gesture, in free, vivid, yet altogether happy indications of dress, from the becoming compactness of her hat to the shade of tan in her shoes, of winds and waves and custom-houses, of far countries and long journeys, the knowledge of how and where and the habit, founded on experience, of not being ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... this pueblo is quite different from that of the present villages, and approaches the older types in symmetry and compactness. There is a notable absence of the arrangement of rooms into long parallel rows. This typical Tusayan feature is only slightly approximated in some subordinate rows within the court. The plan suggests that the original pueblo was built about three sides of a rectangular court, ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... nose—though for decency's sake my governess insisted on giving me a clean one of vast size and stubborn texture on Sundays. It was stowed away unfolded in the remotest corner of my pocket, where it was gradually pressed into a beautiful compactness by the other contents, which were knives. After a while, I remember, the handkerchief being brought to light on Sundays to make room for a successor, and being manifestly perfectly clean, we came to an agreement that it should ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... will find much help from the indication of the correct use of prepositions, the misuse of which is one of the most common of errors, and one of the most difficult to avoid, while their right use gives to style cohesion, firmness, and compactness, and is an important aid to perspicuity. To the text of the synonyms is appended a set of Questions and Examples to adapt the work for use as a text-book. Aside from the purposes of the class-room, this portion will ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Catamaran,—every day, almost every hour, had they been doing something to improve her,—either by giving the craft greater strength and compactness, or in some other way rendering her more worthy both of the sea ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... infantine bones, they were such as needed not to fail of straightness in the limbs, compactness in the body, smallness in hands and feet, and exceeding symmetry and comeliness throughout. Possibly between the two sides of the occipital profile there may have been an Incaean tendency to inequality; but if by any ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle-deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab, and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... has still many fragments of his late army hovering about us, and, aided by an exasperated population, he may again unite in treble our numbers and fall upon us to advantage if we rest inactive in the security of past victories. Compactness, vigilance, and discipline are therefore our only securities. Let every good officer and man look to these cautions and enjoin ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... raw or unmalted corn; the close compactness of their working tun, or fermenting backs; the order and progressive succession with which they conduct the process; and the pains they necessarily take to arrive at a perfect attenuation, by a long protracted fermentation, with the early conviction ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... it matter? I was going to say, as you have that sort of appearance, your company will produce a favourable effect on Mrs. Tackleton that will be. And, though I don't think your good lady's very friendly to me in this matter, still she can't help herself from falling into my views, for there's a compactness and cosiness of appearance about her that always tells, even in an indifferent case. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... by the five thousand which have far less ability in characterization or in grouping. The persons remain in one's memory as real individuals, which is saying a good deal; the dialogue, though excessive in quantity, is neither tame nor flippant; and there is an attractive compactness in the plot, which is all comprised within one house in an unknown city. But this plot soon gets beyond the author's grasp, nevertheless; she creates individualities, and can do nothing with them but kill ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... vices, tames at length the selfish host, into the laborious slaves and mechanic implements of the self-interested. Thus, without public spirit, nay, by the predominance of the opposite quality, the latter are the public benefactors: and, giving steadfastness and compactness to the whole, lay in the ground of the canvass, on which minds of finer texture may ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... have given him a place in his ninth heaven, if he could have foreseen his translation. It is most astonishing, giving not only the literal corresponding phrase, but the spirit of the original, the true Dantesque manner. It should be cited as an evidence of the compactness, the pliability, the sweetness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... ours. There is a hint of a typical difference in the American and the Englishman which I have long recognized in the two elms as compared to each other. It may be fanciful, but I have thought that the compactness and robustness about the English elm, which are replaced by the long, tapering limbs and willowy grace and far-spreading reach of our own, might find a certain parallelism in the people, especially the females of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... upon an endless belt of moist felt, while the "wire" passes under and back to continue a fresh supply. The paper is as yet too fragile to travel alone, and the web felt carries it between two metal rolls called the first press-rolls. These squeeze out more water, give a greater degree of compactness to the fibers, smooth the upper surface, and finally deliver the web of paper to a second felt apron which carries it under and to the back of the second press-rolls. In this way the under surface comes to the top, and is in its turn subjected to the smoothing process. A delicate scraper or blade, ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... of that. If everybody is to have independent thought, would there not be a fearful instability and want of compactness? Another thing, too—conformity often saves so much ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... the rest, and had the pleasure of hearing their involuntary exclamations of admiration at the marching of the men. The easy swinging step, the graceful poise of the musket on the shoulder, as if it were a toy and not a burden, and the compactness of the column were all noticed and praised with a heartiness which was very grateful to my ears. I no longer felt any doubt that the division stood well in the opinion ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... gravities of the predominant minerals in the ore. Ores are a mixture of many minerals; the proportions vary through the same ore-body. Despite this, a few partial analyses, which are usually available from assays of samples and metallurgical tests, and a general inspection as to the compactness of the ore, give a fairly reliable basis for approximation, especially if a reasonable discount be allowed for safety. In such discount must be reflected regard for the porosity of the ore, and the margin of safety necessary may vary from 10 to ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... season. The only danger is neglect, and especially when the livestock is removed to the pasture fields in the spring. If no water is added from time to time, hot fermentation replaces the harmless kind because air can penetrate through the bed of manure. Compactness and moisture can save the plant-food with small loss throughout the summer, and a body of good manure is available when needed for ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... He says that to be naked is better than any purple robe, and to sleep on the bare ground is the softest bed; and he gives as a proof of each thing that he affirms his own courage, his tranquillity, his freedom, and the healthy appearance and compactness of his body. There is no enemy near, he says; all is peace. How so, Diogenes? "See," he replies, "if I am struck, if I have been wounded, if I have fled from any man." This is what a scout ought to be. But you come to us and tell us one ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... this edition is "a marvel of beauty, cheapness, and compactness.... For the busy man, above all for the working student, this is the best of ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... greater length than is usual in Clement's free quotations. I doubt whether as long a piece of discourse can be found treated with equal freedom, unless it is the two doubtful cases in c. viii and c. xxix. (3) It will not fail to be noticed that the passage as it stands in Clement has a roundness, a compactness, a balance of style, which give it an individual and independent appearance. Fusions effected by an unconscious process of thought are, it is true, sometimes marked by this completeness; still there is a difficulty in supposing the terse antitheses of the Clementine version to be derived from the ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... for himself, of what precision, compactness, and energy, a language is capable, which has so little need of circumlocution. It must be mentioned, however, that not all these verbs are complete; as indeed it is obvious from their very nature, that in many of them, various tenses must be wanting. It is probably for this reason, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... and the Alps, Russia during the same period had annexed the bulk of Poland, and the two great German powers had enlarged themselves both to the east and the west. The Empire had practically ceased to be; but its ruin had given fresh extension and compactness to the states which had profited by it. The cessions of Prussia had been small beside her gains. The losses of Austria had been more than counterbalanced in Italy by her acquisition of Venice, and far more than counterbalanced by secularizations and ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... own satisfaction, out of it. Sharp eyes saw him, and sharp wits were pleased, and a strong demand had arisen that he should perform this feat perpetually. Good nerve, as well as strong spring, and compactness of power are needed for it; and even in this athletic age there are few who find ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... possessions of Charles lacked unity alike in territorial compactness, political distinction, and local rule, and in national characteristics, language, and laws. His peculiar position exposed him to the jealous rivalry of Louis XI of France. The King's object was the consolidation of his monarchy, while Charles aimed to extend his duchy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... were of heavy physique, but as they sat facing each other an observer would have remarked that Elton's visage possessed a clean-cut compactness of expression despite its rotund contour. His closely trimmed whiskers, his small, clear, penetrating eyes, and the effect of neatness conveyed by his personal appearance were so many external indications of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... M. d'Orbigny found the remains of two rodents (Ctenomys Bonariensis and Kerodon antiquus) and the jaw of a Canis: when on the river I could clearly distinguish in this fine line of cliffs, "horizontal lines of variation both in tint and compactness." (I quote these words from my note-book, as written down on the spot, on account of the general absence of stratification in the Pampean formation having been insisted on by M. d'Orbigny as a proof of the diluvial origin of this great deposit.) The plain northward of this point is very ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... For more compactness and that we may be more useful we are gathered in still smaller circles in the home group. And there you have the same varieties again; brothers, sisters, husband and wife; all different in temperaments and tastes. It is fortunate that it should be so. If the ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... difficult duty. His perceptions were keen, his analysis was extraordinarily rapid, his power of expression remarkable. On his feet, as the phrase went, he had no equal in the House. In the five-minute discussion in Committee of the Whole he was an intellectual marvel. The compactness and clearness of his statement, the facts and arguments which he could marshal in that brief time, were a constant surprise and delight to his hearers. No man in Congress during the present generation has rivaled his singular power in ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... that Brussels is almost certain to make upon the visitor is its compactness. Its population, including the outskirts, is nowadays rather over 600,000; but it is almost impossible to realize that nearly one-eleventh of the whole population of Belgium is concentrated in this one city, or, as might be said, in Greater Brussels. Perhaps the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various |
