"Tympanum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any experiment can show anything, that the source, cause or origin is common both to the properties of light and the formation of the lenses and retina in the eye—both to the properties of sound and the tympanum, malleus, incus and stapes of the ear. No doubt whatever can exist upon the subject, any more than, if we saw a particular order issued to a body of men to perform certain uncommon evolutions, and afterwards saw the same body performing those same evolutions, we could doubt their having received ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... between the divisions of this double door, she leaned her back against the abutting pier, on whose column was a statue of Saint Agnes, the martyr of but thirteen years of age, a little girl like herself, who carried a branch of palm, and at whose feet was a lamb. And in the tympanum, above the lintel, the whole legend of the Virgin Child betrothed to Jesus could be seen in high relief, set forth with a charming simplicity of faith. Her hair, which grew long and covered her like a garment when the Governor, whose son she had refused to marry, gave her up to ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... of fire; mine seemed to drop sparks with sympathy: he bounded up ten feet high—he shrieked, and fell stone dead; Gods, what a shriek it was; I fancy even now I have that shriek and its hill-echo chained to the tympanum of my ear, like the shriek of the shipwrecked hanging over the sea—heavens! it was a pity to slay a king I thought, as I saw him fall in his pride and strength; but by some irresistible instinct, my own gun, pulled, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... bestow upon him the football instinct, with muscles to match; no fairy could do more. But if she bumps up against Heredity, and is powerless to give him the supreme gift, she may compensate for it in a degree by leaving the kind of larynx and tympanum used in the Glee Club. Failing this, she may render next best service by throwing a mandolin in his way and bewitching his parents into paying for lessons. Some twenty years later, behind the enchanted scenes of a specially hired theater, or ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... a small tambourine and with the other he agitated a little bell. From the rim of each tambourine depended a metallic ball, so placed that the least movement of the hand brought it in contact with the resonant tympanum, which caused a strange, continuous undercurrent of pulsating sound. There new performers circled several times about the court, marking the time of their dancing steps by measured thumpings of the tambourines. At the completion of each turn, they made ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... Certain it is that the impressions described were all there was time for, and that when Donaldson turned and spoke we saw his lips move but could hear no sound. Our speed had been such that the pressure of the air upon the tympanum of the ear left us deaf for some minutes. We had made a dash of two miles into cloudland and had accomplished it, we three firmly believed, in little ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... relieving arch of coloured marbles over it, and the apostles Peter and Paul rudely sculptured as supporters of the arch. They occupy a crouching position, and are sculptured on triangular blocks. In the tympanum is the Saviour seated in glory. But what in addition to its quaintness of design gives peculiar interest to this doorway is ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... is she? She'd better dish up, then. He ain't coming." He stood up, walked to the door, and called out, in the pitch necessary to penetrate the old woman's tympanum: "Get along ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... is situated at the inner end of the canal and separates it from the tympanum or middle ear. It is placed like the membrane in the telephone. It is pearly gray in color. This membrane not only serves as a protection to the delicate structures within the tympanum, but also receives the sound vibrations from without ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... went his course, struggling up the narrow channel, until he got arrested by want of passage-room. This impediment evidently enraged him, for he began with exceeding vigour, like a rabbit at a hole, to dig violently away at my tympanum. The queer sensation this amusing measure excited in me is past description. I felt inclined to act as our donkeys once did, when beset by a swarm of bees, who buzzed about their ears and stung their heads and eyes until they were so irritated ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... uttered this gracious opinion sufficiently loud to strike upon the tympanum of the poor fellow at the door, I could perceive his dark eyes glisten, and the blood tinge his woe-begone cheeks; his lips trembled with emotion: there was an evident struggle between offended gentility, ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... that gong! how it does belabor and thrash one's tympanum!" said the judge irritably, as he slowly arose ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... woman, whose enormous mass of hair made her look all the more slender, beat time upon a tympanum formed of a wooden frame slightly curved inward, on which was ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... weight of authority inclines to the last view. It is held that, if artists had become accustomed to carving pedimental groups in wood, the first examples that we have in stone would not show so great inability to deal with the conditions of pedimental composition. If ever the tympanum was simply painted or filled with a group in terracotta, it is easy to see why the fashion died and why consequently we can bring forward no direct proof to-day. It was simply that only figures in ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... RANIDAE.—Tongue nearly circular, entire; palate concave, with two groups of palatine teeth between the orifices of the internal nostrils; jaw toothed; head smooth, high on the side; mouth large; eyes convex, swollen above, tympanum scarcely visible; back rather convex, high on the sides; skin smooth, not porous; limbs rather short; toes 4.5, tapering to a point, nearly free, the palms with roundish tubercles beneath; the fourth hind toe elongate, the rest rather short; the ankle with an oblong, compressed, horny, sharp-edged ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... the inner end of the outer ear passage is the tympanum, known as "the drum of the ear." It is a thin, oval membrane, stretched at an angle across the deep end of the passage, which it completely closes. The tympanum is thus a partition between the passage of the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... end of an aisle, besides being rather too far from the church to agree with its supposed dimensions. The modern iron gate is surmounted by a gilded cross and the name of the church on a framework in the tympanum. The arch is acutely pointed, and moulded in four orders, with a tooth ornament in the hollows, and is in tolerably good condition; but the supporting shafts have been superseded by a wall on each side, with the circular moulded capitals (much ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... "Port Hudson and Vicksburg is ours," garnished with a luminous row of tapers, and, drunk on two bits' worth of lager beer, he has been shrieking out all Union songs he can think of with his horrid children until my tympanum is perfectly cracked. Miriam wants to offer him an extra bottle of lager for the two places of which he claims the monopoly. He would sell his creed for less. Miriam is dying to ask him what he has done with the Confederate uniform he sported before the Yankees came. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... end they stretch a skin very tight over the knees, and thus may be said to use the tympanum in its rudest form, this being the only instance of a musical instrument that I have seen among them. Burder says: "By the timbrels which Miriam and the other women played upon when dancing, we are to understand the tympanum of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... listened and heard sung for the first time lines that were to be imprinted upon his tympanum ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... or three pairs of narrow frontal shields, similar to, and behind the nasal shield, with two odd large vertebral shields; nostrils oblong, in the suture between the outer angle of the nasal shield and the front loreal shields; ears distinct, tympanum sunk; eyes surrounded with a series of scales; belly with two or four series of broad 6-sided ventral shields; tail with three series of broader shields, the central the broadest; limbs two, rudimentary, undivided, scaly, on the side of the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... Turquoise turkiso. Turret tureto. Turtle-dove turto. Tusk dentego. Tutor guvernisto. Twain du. Tweezers prenileto. Twelve dekdu. Twig brancxeto. Twilight vespera krepusko. Twin dunaskito. Twine sxnureto. Twinkle brileti. Twist tordi. Twitter pepi. Two du. Tympanum oreltamburo. Type (model) modelo. Type tipo, preslitero. Typhoid (fever) tifa febro. Typhus tifo. Typical modela. Typographist preslaboristo. Typography tipografio. Tyrannical tirana—ema. Tyranny tiraneco. Tyrant ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... door. Lower down a grand portal with a double doorway, of the same earlier date, leads through a dark vestibule into that incomparable specimen of Early English architecture, the Chapter House. In one of the outer arches are fragments of figures and foliage representing a tree of Jesse, and in the tympanum above we see two decaying but still beautiful {125} stone angels. The centre was once filled by a group of the Virgin with the infant Saviour in her arms, no trace of which now remains. The Chapter House, which was ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... Salvationist's shout, heard a mile hence, I wish, how I wish,—ah! yes, that what we want is!— Some Cockney Narcissus could charm you to silence. Ah, me! no such luck; in the clear autumn twilight Your shriek on my tympanum stridently jars. "Echo" murders repose, mars the daffodil sky light; And if one thing sounds worse 'tis ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... Majesty that I respectfully request that none of the families left by my subordinates shall suffer. The only matter I am anxious about now is this. Atmospheric pressure is increasing, and I feel as if my tympanum were breaking. At 12.30 o'clock respiration is extraordinarily difficult. I am breathing gasoline. I am intoxicated with gasoline. It ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... the doctor looked as though a name so medicinally humble had never before struck the tympanum of his ear. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... erysipelatous inflammation, that makes its appearance on the inside of the flap, and extends itself to the interior of the ear. What we understand by canker, is an acute inflammation of the lining membrane of the ear, destroying the tympanum or drum, and producing total deafness. The secretion is often considerable, and if not removed, will soon fill up the cavity of the ear with a dark reddish deposit, which greatly increases the irritation and inflammation of the parts. Mr. Blaine states that he has seen this ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... time, which shows that Puccio had made efforts to understand the principles of his art. This work contains his name, written after this fashion: Puccio di Fiorenza me Fece. In the same church, in the tympanum above the door of S. Maria Nuova are three half-length figures,—Our Lady, with the Child on her arm, St Peter on the one side and St Francis on the other, by the same artist. In the lower church of S. Francesco at Assisi he further painted in fresco some scenes from ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... undiscovered. In high waves, now mild, now stormy, the festivities went on around him. Warm glances of love caressed his face, still cold with the touch of the grave; and a friend's warm hand patted his bluish, heavy hand. And the music played joyous tunes mingled of the sounds of the tympanum, the pipe, the zither and the dulcimer. It was as if bees were humming, locusts buzzing and birds singing over the happy ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... ed. Schneider, X. 9. Insuper autem ad capsum redae loculamentum firmiter figatur habens tympanum versatile ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... this regard, and who shall venture to question the value and the need of criticism to the promotion of public opinion? In this work the critic has a great advantage over the musician. The musician appeals to the public with volatile and elusive sounds. When he gets past the tympanum of the ear he works upon the emotions and the fancy. The public have no time to let him do more; for the rest they are willing to refer him to the critic, whose business it is continually to hear music for the purpose of forming opinions ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... brought home a viper in his bosom, a wolf into his fold, the wretched minion of a worldly church to lead her son away captive at his will; and partly no doubt from his last uncomfortable sermons, but mainly from the play of Mrs Marshal's tongue on her husband's tympanum, the deacons in full conclave agreed that no further renewal of the invitation to preach "for them" should be made to the schoolmaster—just the end of the business Mr Graham had expected, and for which he had provided. On Tuesday morning he smiled to himself, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... the picks and shovels of twentieth-century Trade Unionism, was a veritable Gothic arch, bricked up to the height of a tall man's waist, but open at the tympanum. Alban hoisted himself to the aperture and, slipping through, his feet discovered the reeking floor of a dank and dripping subway; and guiding himself now by hands outstretched and fingers touching the fungi of the walls, he went on with confidence until the roof lifted above him and the watch-fires ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... impressions even to imagine the causes which guide the creature. There is, in certain events, another world of the senses in which our organs perceive nothing, a world which is closed to us. The eye of the camera sees the invisible and photographs the image of the ultra-violet rays; the tympanum of the microphone hears what to us is silence. A scientific toy, a chemical contrivance surpass us in sensibility. Would it be rash to attribute similar faculties to the delicate organization of ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... of the English horn, which gives a notable pathos (read Berlioz on this despairful elegist, and remember its haunting wail in the last act of "Tristan und Isolde"). The woeful plaint of this voice breathing above a low sinister roll of the tympanum establishes at once the atmosphere of melancholy. Other instruments join the wail, which breaks out wildly from the whole orchestra. Over a waving accompaniment of clarinets, the other wood-winds strike up a more lyric and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... however, of a balm in Gilead. An ingenious Yankee—a commercial traveler—has invented and patented an instrument made of gutta percha, to be fitted to the nose, and pass from that protuberance to the tympanum of the ear. As soon as the snorer begins the sound is carried so perfectly to his own ear, and all other sounds so well excluded, that he awakens in terror. The sanguine inventor believes that after a few nights' trial the wearer will become so disgusted with his own midnight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... governor Joseph Latrobe, Esquire; nor do I believe that the diggers cared about anything else from him. Was it then his being an esquire that brought his administration into contempt? The fact is, a clap of "The Thunder" from Printing House-square boomed on the tympanum of my ear. We diggers got the gracious title of "vagabonds," and our massa "Joe," for his pains to keep friends with us, was put down "an incapable;" all for the honour of British rule, ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... was with water. The greater or smaller pressure exercised on the air by the pulsations of blood in the veins of the hands reacts on the aerial column of an india-rubber tube, and this in its turn on Marey's tympanum (a small chamber half metal and half gutta-percha). This chamber supports a lever carrying an indicator, which rises and falls with the greater or slighter flow of blood in the hand. This lever registers the oscillations on a moving ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... there is no comparison between my actual state and that which it was before. Besides, I perceive daily that I hear more clearly.... My hearing, at present, is very sensitive. Last Friday, the music of the troop which defiled in the square in front of the palace, struck my tympanum so strongly, that for the first time, I was obliged to close ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... interested. One elderly Chinese with huge glasses, a wag in his own way, seeing that I did not speak Chinese, thought to make me understand and divert the crowd by the loudness of his speech, and, insisting that I was deaf, yelled into my ears in tones that shook the tympanum. I told the foolish fellow, in English, that the less he talked the better I could understand him; but he persisted, and poked his face almost into mine, but withdrew it and hobbled off in umbrage when I drew the attention of the bystanders ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... Theophilus. This was that clerk who sold his soul to the Devil and whom Our Lady redeemed. You may find the whole story sculptured on the Tympanum of the exquisite northern door of ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... country house, gave Addison the hint for his comedy of "The Drummer." Young Lewis gloated with a pleasing horror over Glanvil's pages and the wonderful copperplates which embellished them; particularly the one which represents the devil beating his airy tympanum over Mr. Mompesson's house. In the ancient mansion of Stanstead Hall, belonging to a kinsman of his father, where the boy spent a part of his childhood, there was a haunted chamber known as the cedar room. "In maturer years," says his biographer, "Lewis has frequently been heard to declare that ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... bema arch springs from the abacus level and all three apses have low vaults, a somewhat unusual arrangement. This allows of an east window in the tympanum of the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... dislocated harmonies and splintered themes—melodies they are not—in the Pierrot Lunaire. I have been informed that the ear should play a secondary role in this "new" music; no longer through the porches of the ear must filter plangent tones, wooing the tympanum with ravishing accords. It is now the "inner ear," which is symbolic of a higher type of musical art. A complete disassociation of ideas, harmonies, rhythmic life, architectonic is demanded. To quote an admirer ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... is nearly at the west end of the north alley of the cloister. Like the monks' door, it is an insertion, being later than the wall. It is a very fine specimen of late Norman. The tympanum is filled with carving in high relief. In the centre is the Saviour, seated, enclosed within a vesica piscis, His right hand uplifted in blessing, His left hand resting on an open book; His bare feet rest upon the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... inscriptions on the tombs of the Pharaohs, the language of flowers, the "step lively" of the conductor, and the prelude of the milk cans at 4 A. M. Certain large-eared ones even assert that they are wise to the vibrations of the tympanum produced by concussion of the air emanating from Mr. H. James. But who can comprehend the meaning of ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... 1771 the canons instructed Soufflot to throw down the pillar of the central porch, with its beautiful statue of Christ, to make room for their processions to enter. The priceless sculpture of the tympanum was cut through to make a loftier and wider entrance, and the whole symmetry of the west front was grievously destroyed.[156] This hideous architectural deformity remained until a son of the Revolution, Viollet le Duc, restored the portal ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... him a blow in the stomach that doubles him up speechless. The doctor walks over to the window and reads the morning paper for a while. Presently he turns and begins to mutter more to himself than the patient. "Hum!" he says, "there's a slight anaesthesia of the tympanum." "Is that so?" says the patient, in an agony of fear. "What can I do about it, doctor?" "Well," says the doctor, "I want you to keep very quiet; you'll have to go to bed and stay there and keep quiet." In reality, of course, the doctor hasn't the least ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... that science is formed by thought. Now, if we did not possess the faculty of thinking, it would not be given to us by experience. Thought does not enter by the eye or the ear. Imagine a living body not possessed of reason: its eye will reflect objects like a mirror, its tympanum will vibrate to the undulations of the air; but it will have no thoughts, and ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... which extends 220 feet, has a magnificent portico (80 feet wide), of six fluted Ionic columns, 4 feet 6 inches in diameter. The frieze of the entablature is highly enriched, and in the tympanum of the pediment are the royal arms. On the acroteria of the pediment are three statues by John Smyth, viz.—Mercury on the right, with his Caduceus and purse; On the left Fidelity, with her finger on her lip, and a key in her hand; and in the centre Hibernia, resting on her spear, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... a place where it isn't," and that Lardner's assertion is incorrect, except when the containing vessel "was originally full to the brim." But the question of floating depends on the present state of things, not on past history. OLD KING COLE takes the same view as HECLA. TYMPANUM and VINDEX assume that "displaced" means "raised above its original level," and merely explain how it comes to pass that the water, so raised, is less in bulk than the immersed portion of bucket, and thus land themselves—or rather ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... pilasters on the left of the doorway lions' heads and shoulders seem to issue; these, too, may be taken as symbolical of the bellicose disposition of the god to whom the building was dedicated. The pediment with which the facade is crowned is rather low in its proportions. Its tympanum is filled with a kind of reticulated ornament made up of small lozenges or meshes. There is nothing to throw light upon the internal arrangements, but by the aid of this carved sketch the facade may be easily restored, ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... that intense understanding, hell has a topographic reality. We wind along down those nine circles as down a volcanic crater, black, jagged, precipitous, and impinging upon the senses at every step. The sighs and shrieks jar our own tympanum; and the convulsions of the lost excite tremors in our own nerves. No wonder that the children in the streets of Florence, as they saw the sad and earnest man pass along, his face lined with passion and his brow scarred with thought, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... anvil the air around is violently disturbed. This disturbance spreads through the molecules of the air in much the same way as ripples spread from the splash of a stone thrown into a pond. When the sound waves reach the ear they agitate the tympanum, or drum membrane, and we "hear a noise." The hammer is here the transmitter, the air the conductor, the ear ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... assistance of a bass, it is a poor concert, very poor indeed, though there are about ten executants in my immediate vicinity. The tone lacks intensity. My old tympanum is not always capable of perceiving these subtleties of sound. The little that reaches me is extremely sweet and most appropriate to the calm of twilight. Just a little more breadth in your bow-stroke, my dear Green Grasshopper, and your technique would be better than the hoarse Cicada's, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... feet long and eighty feet high, in which that execrable tyrant confined all persons who came within the range of his suspicion, and which was so ingeniously contrived and constructed that Dionysius, by applying his ear to a small hole, where the sounds were collected as upon a tympanum, could catch every syllable that was uttered in the cavern below, and could deal out his proscription and his vengeance accordingly upon all who might dare to dispute his authority or to complain of his cruelty. Or they may have imagined, perhaps, that he would be impatient ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... brought up a little again. The two preceding Numbers were, to a marked extent, more like life than anything I had seen before of the Dial. There was not indeed anything, except the Emersonian Papers alone, which I know by the first ring of them on the tympanum of the mind, that I properly speaking liked; but there was much that I did not dislike, and did half like; and I say, "I fausto pede; that will decidedly do better!" By the bye, it were as well if you kept rather a strict outlook on Alcott and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... command, it was that the attacking hypnotists did not have the chances they had with Father H. of hypnotising their victims; and here again, where action on the ear and eye is concerned, talking with a friend, or indeed any one, is a great safeguard. The tympanum is stirred, the eye moves—the mere irregularity of the breath is an aid. Another reason will be given later. Miss Campbell, whose case—one of experimental thought transference—has been twice referred to, was an intimate ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... dead," said Catice, speaking the same tongue as Spadevil, but with an even harsher accent, so that the tympanum of Maskull's ear was ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... their symphony in a golden autumn morning, and beautiful it was to hear. But in Edinburgh all manner of loud bells join, or rather disjoin, in one swelling, brutal babblement of noise. Now one overtakes another, and now lags behind it; now five or six all strike on the pained tympanum at the same punctual instant of time, and make together a dismal chord of discord; and now for a second all seem to have conspired to hold their peace. Indeed, there are not many uproars in this world more dismal than that of the Sabbath bells in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must for ever remain a mystery; for Hans, at this moment, took up the family volume which had served him for a pillow, and dashed it at the heads of the trio. A scream, so loud that it broke the tympanum of his left ear, seemed to issue from them simultaneously—a thick vapour filled the room, which gradually cleared off, and left no traces of Hans' visitors but three small sticks of stone brimstone. The truth flashed upon the barber—his visitor was the far-famed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... shut; and I have heard of a dumb gentleman in England who was taught to speak (and therefore certainly brought to hear in some degree) by applying the head of a base viol against his teeth, and striking upon the strings with the bow. You may remember the late effect of the drum extending the tympanum of a deaf person to great improvement of his hearing, so long as that was beaten upon; and I could at present name a friend of mine, who though he be exceedingly thick of hearing, by applying a straight stick ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... colonnade, jutting forward in a wing at either end. The flight of steps leading to the central entrance is in itself one hundred and twenty-five feet in extent; the front as a whole covers three hundred and seventy feet. Capping the portico is a sculptured tympanum by Sir Richard Westmacott, representing the "Progress of Civilization" not unworthily. As a whole, the building is one of the few in London that are worth visiting for an inspection of their exterior alone. It seems admirably designed to be, as it is, the repository of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... Bombastophone is very original and effective. Whenever he sees that the attention of his audience is flagging he introduces an interlude of "bombination," which renders lethargy impossible and exercises an indescribably stimulating effect on the tympanum. The current of air is supplied by a bellows operated by an eight-cylinder Brome engine, but Mr. Boomer works the keys himself, climbing up and down them with a rapidity which must be seen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... known Bourseul was not practical enough to try his own suggestion, and never made a telephone. About 1860, Reis built several forms of electrical telephonic apparatus, all imitating in some degree the human ear, with its auditory tube, tympanum, etc., and examples of the apparatus were exhibited in public not only in Germany, but in England. There is a variety of testimony to the effect that not only musical sounds, but stray words and phrases, were actually transmitted with mediocre, casual success. It was impossible, however, to maintain ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... "I've a real conviction on that point. It's come to me of late years that one reason we haven't any national art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace-like railway stations and hotels. Our national tympanum is so deafened by that blare of sumptuousness that we have no ears for the still, small voice of beauty. And perhaps," he paused, looking down absently at a crumb he rolled between his thumb and finger on the table, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... still dormant, buried in a slumber profound and unconscious,—such as only a "darkey" can enjoy. The cry "Overboard!" uttered by little William had made no impression upon the tympanum of his wide-spread ears,—nor the exclamations that succeeded in the harsher voice of the sailor. Equally unheard by him had been the scream coming across the water, though along with it he might have heard the utterance of ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... cervical muscles are very strong. The eyes are microscopical, and almost concealed in the fur. At one time it was a popular delusion that the mole was devoid of the power of sight, but this is not the case. The sense of hearing is extremely acute, and the tympanum is large, although externally there is no aural development. The tail is short, the fur set vertically in the skin, whence it is soft and velvety. The bones of the pubis do not join, and the young when produced are large. The mammae are six in ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... reflects the waves inwardly to beat upon the tympanum, or ear drum, a membrane diaphragm. The uses of the rolls or convolutions of the outer ear are not conclusively known, but it is observed that when they are filled up evenly with a wax or its equivalent, the sense of direction of sound is impaired, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... which collects in it serves the same purpose. But is too much wax collects, it prevents the air from playing well upon the drum, and therefore makes you deaf. Across the end of this canal, a membrane or skin called the tympanum is stretched, like the parchment over the head of a drum, and it is this membrane which moves to and fro as the air-waves strike on it. A violent box on the ear will sometimes break this delicate membrane, or injure ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... a line from Harviss recalled the Professor to town. He had been looking forward with immense zest to this second meeting; Harviss's college roar was in his tympanum, and he pictured himself following up the protracted chuckle which would follow his friend's progress through the manuscript. He was proud of the adroitness with which he had kept his secret from Harviss, had maintained to the last the pretense of a serious work, in order ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the branch very slowly and with exceeding care, he guided the egg into Bane's mouth. He observed the precise moment when it touched the sleeper's tongue, and then exploded a yell into Dougall's ear that nearly burst the tympanum. ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... my faith," said the exquisite, "in the true English style, all fol de rol, and a vile chorus to split the tympanum of one's auricular organs: do, for heaven's sake, Echo, let us have some divertissement of a less boisterous character." "Agreed," said Eglantine, winking at Echo; "we'll have a round of sculls. Every man ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the horn of the guard, and sometimes the voice of the coachman, now chiding, now encouraging his horses, as they toiled through the deep and miry ways. At length a tremendous crack of a whip saluted the tympanum of my ear, and I started up broad awake, nearly oversetting the chair on which I reclined—and, lo! I was in the dingy room before the fire, which was by this time half- extinguished. In my dream I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... little air-waves in mathematical combination, that beat against a tiny drum at the back of one's ear. And these mathematical combinations and the laws that govern them have existed forever, before Moses, before Pan, long before either a larynx or a tympanum had been ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... hear the conductor calling 'all aboard' as I enter the depot, my heart first stops, then palpitates, and my legs respond to the air-waves falling on my tympanum by quickening their movements. If I stumble as I run, the sensation of falling provokes a movement of the hands towards the direction of the fall, the effect of which is to shield the body from too sudden a shock. If a cinder enter my eye, its lids close forcibly and a copious flow of tears ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... as this in some low-down hostelry on the level of the street, with German waiters breathing heavily down the back of one's neck and two fiddles and a piano hitting up ragtime about three feet from one's tympanum, would be false economy. Here, fanned by cool breezes and surrounded by passably fair women and brave men, one may do a certain amount of tissue-restoring. Moreover, there is little danger up here of being slugged ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... builders secured increased depth by projecting the portals out beyond the wall, and crowned them with elaborate gables. The vast central door was divided in two by a pier adorned with a niche and statue. Over this the tympanum of the arch was carved with scriptural reliefs; the jambs and arches were profusely adorned with figures of saints, apostles, martyrs, and angels, under elaborate canopies. The porches of Laon, Bourges, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... represent the glory of the Church. Her hand is raised as in the act of teaching. Christ, also, has the nimbus, but with the cross upon it, and raises his hand in the attitude of benediction. In the tympanum of the semicircle over the Madonna, written in letters of gold on purple, surrounded by the word "Sancta" in ordinary ink, is the monogram of Maria, having a small sun and moon above it, and other inscriptions, ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... shouting and yelling in corybantic chorus. They yelled and shouted, one could see it by their open mouths and glittering eyes; but not a sound from human lungs could reach our ears. The overwhelming incessant thunder of the bells drowned all. It thrilled the tympanum, ran through the marrow of the spine, vibrated in the inmost entrails. Yet the brain was only steadied and excited by this sea of brazen noise. After a few moments I knew the place and felt at home in it. Then I enjoyed a spectacle which sculptors might ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... communicated to my eye, from the luminous, extended, coloured body. At the instant I smell something, my sense is irritated, or put in motion, by the parts that exhale from the odoriferous body. At the moment I hear a sound, the tympanum of my ear is struck by the air, put in motion by a sonorous body, which would not act if it were not in motion itself. Whence it evidently follows, that, without motion, I can neither feel, see, distinguish, compare, judge, nor occupy my ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... species of Tomodactylus possessing the following combination of characters: (1) tips of two outer fingers truncate, about twice width of narrowest part of digit; (2) tympanum small, less than one half diameter of eye; (3) ventral surfaces smooth; (4) contrasting marbled pattern on back and top of head, and (5) venter whitish, ...
— A New Species of Frog (Genus Tomodactylus) from Western Mexico • Robert G. Webb
... nothing left of the monastery; but much of the abbey church, which dates from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, has been fortunately preserved. The interior is not remarkable, but the large and elaborate bas-relief of the Last Judgment which fills the tympanum of the portal is considered the most precious example of mediaeval sculpture in the Bas-Limousin. The face of the Saviour, expressive of something above all human passions and motives, shows a really God-like ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... songs, for a prelude, Lightly strike on the stretched tympanum, pride and joy in my city, How she led the rest to arms—how she gave the cue, How at once with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment, she sprang; O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless! O strongest ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... which I am just now able to recollect. Perhaps the basement story, upon which this double columned colonnade of the Corinthian Order runs, is somewhat too plain—a sort of affectation of the rustic. The alto-relievo figures in the centre of the tympanum have a decisive and appropriate effect. The advantage both of the Thuileries and Louvre is, that they are well seen from the principal thoroughfares of Paris: that is to say, along the quays, and from the chief streets running from the more ancient parts on the south side of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and his mouth too. Surprise has this effect—to make one dumb, Yet leave the gate which Eloquence slips through As wide as if a long speech were to come. Nigh and more nigh the awful echoes drew, Tremendous to a mortal tympanum: His eyes were open, and (as was before Stated) his mouth. What ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... screams at every accident. Everything that is done in the universe seems to be done only to make a noise upon it. Every morning, whatsoever thing has been changed, and whatsoever thing has been unchanged, during the night, comes up to batter its report on the omni-audient tympanum of the universe, the drum-head of the press. And then we are inside of it. It may be music to the gods who dwell beyond the blue ether, but it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... part of the cabinet consisted of a series of drawers, rising one above the other, and terminated by a triangular pediment, its tympanum ornamented with some beautiful little bronzes. The drawers themselves were concealed by two doors, opening in the centre, and covered with a most intricate design ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... carved. The doorway of Malmesbury Church has eight arches, recessed one within the other. These arches are supported by one or more shafts, which are sometimes carved. Above the door and below the arch is the tympanum, covered with sculpture, representing scriptural subjects, such as the figure of the Saviour in allusion to His saying, "I am the door," or the Agnus Dei, or Adam and Eve, or such legendary or symbolical subjects as St. George and the Dragon, or ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... which we often find in the tympanum at the back of the head of the arch, is generally covered with rude sculpture in basso relievo, sometimes representing a scriptural subject, as the temptation of our first parents on the tympanum of a Norman doorway at Thurley Church, Bedfordshire; sometimes a ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... middle ear, or tympanum,(120) consists of an irregular cavity in the temporal bone which is lined with mucous membrane and filled with air. It is connected with the pharynx by a slender canal called the Eustachian tube. Extending across the middle ear and connecting with the membrana tympani on one side, and ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... The commissioners insisted on twelve columns, as emblematical of the twelve apostles, and Wren could not obtain stones of sufficient size; but (as Mr. Gwilt observes) it would have been better to have had joined pillars rather than a Composite heaped on a Corinthian portico. In the tympanum is the Conversion of St. Paul, sculptured in high relief by Bird; on the apex is a colossal figure of St. Paul, and on the right and left are St. Peter and St. James. Over the southern portico is sculptured the Phoenix; over the north are the royal arms and regalia, while on each ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... tired of. The preachers have mastered a goodly number of them, and teach them to all comers; but, Mr. Lees being a singer, of course, when he arrived, there were high singing festivals, and the practice at evening prayers was sometimes so vigorous and prolonged that the tympanum of one of my ears began to show symptoms of defeat. These hymns I regard as a most powerful auxiliary to the other Gospel agencies at work, and I hope a great ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... front of the building are a number of cannon, trophies taken in different campaigns. Standing before the hotel is the statue of Prince Eugne. On either side of the entrance are statues of Mars and Minerva by Coustou the younger. In the tympanum of the semicircle over the center of the faade is Louis XIV. on horseback. Behind the faade is a vast courtyard surrounded by open corridors lined with frescoes of the history of France; those of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... If malicious suggestions whisper [1] evil through the mind's tympanum, this were no apology for acting evilly. We are responsible for our thoughts and acts; and instead of aiding other people's devices by obeying them,—and then whining over misfortune,— [5] rise and overthrow both. If a criminal coax the unwary man to commit a crime, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... impotence to strive with the subtle element about and above. They prove nothing so conclusively as that we can't fly-a fact still more strikingly proven by the constant thud of people tumbling out of them. To a Titan of comprehensive ear, who could catch the noises of a world upon his single tympanum as Hector caught Argive javelins upon his shield, the patter of dropping aronauts would sound like the gentle pelting of hailstones upon a dusty highway-so thick ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... the room above came the soft, racking, petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve without injury, but whoever wears his heart upon his tympanum gets it not far from ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... music, but these excellent people do not begin to understand the intense pleasure with which one listens, whose auricular nerves are more highly developed. But this rare and soul-stirring enjoyment is many times accompanied, as in my case, with acute suffering whenever the tympanum is made to resound with the slightest discord. The most painful moments of my life, physically speaking, have been those in which I have been forced to listen to diabolical noises. A harsh, rasping sound has often given me a pang more severe than neuralgia, while even an uncultivated ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... an ornament which occurs also inside the door. Each arch has its own shaft, and the groups of five on each side are elaborately banded. The shafts have richly sculptured capitals, and in those on the south side, as well as in the tympanum, the signs of the Evangelists appear. The shafts second from the door on either side are carved with statues, two of the oldest in England. These are much mutilated, but they were thought worthy of great praise by Flaxman. That on the spectator's left is said to represent King Henry ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... wete;" a realism as far removed from the coarseness of a Rubens as from the irreverence of too many religious teachers, who will repeat and repeat again the most sacred words for the merest logical ends until the tympanum of the moral ear hears without hearing the sounds that ought to be felt as well as held holiest. They bear strongly, too, upon the outcome of feeling in action, although doubtless there was the same tendency ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... tympanic membrane, separates this from the drum. A chain of small bones, the malleus (m.), the incus (i.), the os orbiculare (o.or.), a very small bone, and a stirrup-shaped stapes, swing across the tympanum, from the tympanic membrane to the internal ear. At two points the bony investment of this last is incomplete— at the fenestra rotunda (f.r.), and at the fenestra ovalis, (f.o.), into which latter the end of the stapes fits, and so communicates the sound ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... and he knew also that he must tell her so. It was no easy matter, and his walk slackened, till, at the corner of the great thoroughfare, he stood still, looking at a poor woman who ground a tuneless hand-organ. The instrument of tympanum torture was on wheels, and to the back of it was attached a cradle. In the cradle was a dirty little baby, licking its fist and listening with conscientious attention to the perpetual trangle-tringle-jangle of the ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... carefully walled-up entrance; this was for the use of the dead, and it was believed that the ghost entered or left it at will. The door for the use of the living, sometimes preceded by a portico, was almost always characterized by great simplicity. Over it is a cylindrical tympanum, or a smooth flagstone, bearing sometimes merely the name of the dead person, sometimes his titles and descent, sometimes a prayer for his welfare, and an enumeration of the days during which he was entitled to receive the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... external organs of sense are the coverings of the immediate organs of sense, and are mechanically adapted for the reception or transmission of peculiar bodies, or of their qualities, as the cornea and humours of the eye, the tympanum of the ear, the cuticle of the finders ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... front of the British Museum for the first time, the visitor will not fail to notice the Grecian Ionic facade, ornamented with forty-four columns, and rising at its extreme point to the height of sixty-six feet. The sculpture which decorates the tympanum of the portico is the work of Sir Richard Westmacott, and is an allegorical representation of the progress of civilisation. The spiritual influences that have successively worked upon the savage natures of the dark ages, have here distinct types. Religion tames the savage; ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... called the vital agent. But when it was discovered that the heart is constructed upon the recognized rules of hydraulics; the eye upon the most refined principles of optics; that the ear was furnished with the means of dealing with the three characteristics of sound—its tympanum for intensity, its cochlea for pitch, and its semicircular canals for quality; and that the air, brought into the great air passages, calling into play atmospheric pressure, was conveyed upon physical principles ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... placed a deliberate hand on her call bell and, as its vibrations dinged and smote upon the shrinking tympanum, a rigid and breathless expectancy would pervade the silence ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... a favourable moment for calling a drum a tympanum and giving descriptions of the different forms, curves, and lengths of the various trumpets used by the Roman soldiery in their warlike processions, all of which Slegge voted bosh, and intimated his opinion to the next boy that old Rampson had better go to the other end ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn |
