"Balloon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unnatural, which makes its effect on the nervous system more powerful, yet that does not explain the feeling of tension which I have been experiencing, the silent straining tension of an overloaded cable, the tension of a toy balloon overfull with air. I have a constant feeling of dreadful expectancy, of imminent disaster, mixed with a sense of pain and a lively—almost childlike—curiosity. To say that this is disquieting would be a complete ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... on the first of the next month to celebrate the centenary of the "accession of the illustrious family of Brunswick to the throne"—so ran the public notice. There was to be a grand display in the parks, a sham naval action on the Serpentine, and a balloon ascent. ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... of the Willing Mind. The Willing Mind lagged along in the rear without her topsails till about half-past two in the afternoon, when Captain Weeks became suddenly alert. He bore away till he was right before the wind, hoisted every scrap of sail he could carry, rigged out a spinnaker with his balloon fore-sail, and made a clean run for the coast of Denmark. Deakin explained the manoeuvre to Duncan. "The old man's ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... Spaniards had in the use of smokeless powder were conspicuous throughout the scenes of fighting both at Santiago and Manila. We had, however, at Santiago a war balloon of the actual service, of which General Shafter says: "General Kent forced the head of his column alongside of the cavalry column as far as the narrow trail permitted, and thus hurried his arrival at the San Juan ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Bridgewater—why we have half a dozen new launches every week, and as great a variety of names, shape, size, and colour, as there are ships in the navy—we have the heavy coach, light coach, Caterpillar, and Mail—the Balloon, Comet, Fly, Dart, Regulator, Telegraph, Courier, Times, High-flyer, Hope, with as many others as would fill a list as long as my tandem-whip. What you now see is one of the new patent safety-coaches—you can't have an overturn if you're ever so disposed for a spree. The old city cormorants, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the day of which I speak. The deep bay of the locomotive came up on the still autumn air, and a cloud of dazzling white vapour rose like a balloon above the trees and drifted slowly into thin curls and feathers against the blue sky. It was, even in this trifling detail, a homelike landscape, for Bill had told us how, from the square hall window of High Wigborough, you could see the white puffs of invisible trains on the lonely little loopline ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... she was a year old. Then, just when the old Admiral was beginning to grumble because there seemed to be no prospect of a grand-nephew to inherit Woodbine, Mary Ashby presented him with not only an heir but an heiress as well, and the old gentleman came very near a balloon ascension. ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... an elongated chap whose specialty, besides capturing balloon fliers out in right field with wonderful celerity, consisted in great throwing to the home plate, and also some slugging when ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... Morey had explained the changes to Fuller, Arcot had the suit on, and was floating five or six feet in the air, like a grotesque captive balloon. ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... associated by any links whatever, but immanently intertwisted, indwelling in the idea. Therefore it happened that a man, however heartsick of this tumid, bladdery delusion, although to him it was a balloon, by science punctured, lacerated, collapsing, trailed through ditch and mud under the rough handling and the fearful realities of life, yet he durst not avow his private feelings. That would have been even worse than with us: ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the music-kite—the car of the music-balloon rather, having thus descended near enough to the earth to be a temptation to some of the walkers afoot, they must catch at it! The moment the last-mentioned song was ended, almost before its death-note had left the lips of the singer, one of the friends' friends was on his feet. Without ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... negro is a fixture in this country. He is not going out of it; he is not going to die out, and he is not going to be driven out. Nor is his exodus from the country desirable. I am frank in saying if they, every one of them, could be packed in a balloon, carried over the water, and emptied into Africa, I would not have it done, unless, indeed, it were already arranged that the balloon should return by the way of Germany, Ireland, Scotland, etc., and bring us a return cargo of white laborers. ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... washing, as soon as she made certain no one saw her, gave place to another manoeuvre. She stretched as though her bones were of the very best elastic. Gathering herself together, she arched her round body till it resembled a toy balloon straining to rise against the pull of four thin ropes that held it tightly to the ground. Then, unable to float off through the air, as she had expected, she slowly again subsided. The balloon deflated. She licked her chops, twitched her whiskers, curled her tail neatly round ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... a perforated lung, my liver is a swelling sponge, eating crowds my waistband like a balloon, I have a swimming in my head and a sinking at my heart, and I can not say litany for happy release from these for my knees creak with rheumatism. The devil has done his worst, Robert, for these are his—plague and pestilence, being final, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... never pictured to myself, the distance lost in the driving spray; and, while I looked, the wave passed from under us, and we went down and down with a rapidity of descent which was almost like falling from a balloon. Then, after another moment's rest in the valley, came the shuddering half apprehension of the next wave as it rose above us, threatening again, and then, after again soaring aloft, down again into the driving of the spray; the old ship rolling, plunging, and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... of attack on the assumption that Lee's army was dispersed along the Rappahannock. His balloon had reported large Confederate bivouacs below Skinker's Neck, and he appears to have believed that Lee, alarmed by his demonstrations near Port Royal, had posted half his army in that neighbourhood. Utterly unsuspicious that a trap had been laid for him, he had resolved to take advantage of this ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... near by.... The same sunlight floods both the book and nature, the doubting poet and the believing preacher, as well as the mobile dreamer, who, in the midst of all these various existences, allows himself to be swayed by every passing breath, and delights, stretched along the car of his balloon, in floating aimlessly through all the sounds and shallows of the ether, and in realizing within himself all the harmonies and dissonances of the soul, of feeling, and of thought. Idleness and contemplation! Slumber of the will, lapses of the vital force, indolence of the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... surprise, "I pushed the market up until a certain lady, whom you and I both know, thought it unwise to go further, and then I sprung the sudden discovery of Colombian oil fields on them; and the market crashed like a burst balloon. The lady cleared some two millions on the rig. No, I didn't have a drop of Colombian oil to grease the chute. It was ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... balloon," was Edmund's reply, and as he spoke he touched another knob, and we felt the car, as I must now call it, come to rest. Then Edmund opened a shutter at one side, and we all sprang up to look out. Below us we saw roofs and ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... new and unexpected uses. During the siege, it was converted into a vast military storehouse and filled with a heterogeneous mass of goods. After the siege the building fell into the hands of the Commune and the roof was turned into a balloon station. The ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... they may seem, are subject to this force: the tiniest speck in a sunbeam and the most volatile vapour, equally with the heaviest metal and the hugest block, the particles of bodies as well as the bodies themselves. The rising of a balloon in the air may seem an exception to this law; but it is not so; for the balloon rises, not because the particles of the gas with which it is inflated are not acted upon by the earth's attraction, but because the air outside being bulk for bulk heavier than the air inside, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... balloon A, Pl. V. Fig. 10. capable of holding 17 or 18 pints, or about half a cubical foot, having the brass cap bcde strongly cemented to its neck, and to which the tube and stop-cock f g is fixed by a tight screw. This apparatus is connected by the double screw represented separately at Fig. 12. to ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... press upon the ground as lightly as an empty cart, and a small horse could draw it with ease. A bale of cotton, with one of these machines attached, could be handled and carried by a boy. A car, with a number of these machines, could be made to rise in the air like a balloon. Everything, in fact, that was heavy could be made light; and as a great part of labor, all over the world, is caused by the attraction of gravitation, so this repellent force, wherever applied, would make weight less and work easier. I told her of many, ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... bitter humor when she compared her moment of sentiment to a toy balloon pulled down from the blue by ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... boys," declared the balloonist, when he heard of their contemplated trip, "and wouldn't it be a queer thing now if we happened to come across one another down in Dixieland? I'm heading for Atlanta, to steer my big balloon to the eastward at the first favorable chance, in order to settle some questions about air currents that have long been baffling us all. Depend on it, if I could do you any sort of a favor I'd go far out of my way to try and even up the ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... flop up to winders an' scare the people! I'll light on the liberty pole an' crow; An' I'll say to the gawpin' fools below, 'What world's this 'ere That I've come near?' 15 Fer I'll make 'em b'lieve I'm a chap f'm the moon; An' I'll try a race 'ith their ol' balloon!" ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the well in order. Tying the others down we proceeded to water each camel in turn. Picture our surprise and joy when each turned from the bucket without drinking more than two gallons. Billy rolled up like a great balloon, and one would have sworn that he had just had a long drink. What was this miracle? Here were camels, after an eight days' drought, travelling eight to ten hours daily in hot weather, over rough stones and gravel, actually turning away ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... put the wet rag on it soaked with some stuff or another. Oh, I shouldn't care a bit, only it keeps on swelling up like a balloon, and it'll make a fellow look ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... good originally, and age had improved it. Used as he was to the appalling balloon juice sold in the drinking dens of the "Barbary coast" at San Francisco, or the public-houses of the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... fellow-passengers, an old one and a young one. This is exactly what passed—you may judge from it the length of our suspense: Suddenly we were off the rail and beating the ground as the car of a half-emptied balloon might. The old lady cried out 'My God!' and the young one screamed. I caught hold of them both (the old lady sat opposite, and the young one on my left) and said: 'We can't help ourselves, but we can be quiet and composed. Pray, don't cry out!' The old lady immediately ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... des Beaux Arts," the "Palais d'Industrie," "Liberty Enlightening the World," and other objects, poppa carefully noting against each of them "seen from Eiffel Tower." As we made our way to the river side we noticed four other people, two ladies and two gentlemen, looking at the military balloon hanging over Meudon. They all had their backs to us, and there was to me something dissimilarly familiar about three of those backs. While I was trying to analyse it one of the gentlemen turned, and ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... place. The boy is living on green corn alone and has already thrown down over four bushels of cobs. Even if the corn holds out there is still danger that the boy will reach a height where he will be frozen to death. There is some talk of attempting his rescue with a balloon.—Topeka Capital. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... again. He didn't have to invite the law. It arrived in three ground cruisers and two jetcopter emergency squads that came closing in like a collapsing balloon. ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... A BALLOON was going up from Boston Common, and two children were out upon a hill in the country watching for it. "There it is!" said Willy, as he pointed to a black speck right ...
— The Nursery, December 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 6 • Various
... both. Went to enquire about the Frankford stage which leaves at nine. Went into a large Quakers' meeting house—both Pilling and John Wood in town, but could not manage to meet them. Visited the Exchange, a handsome edifice built of white marble. Another balloon in the sky. ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... Till 'twas his fate that useful truth to find, 'Tis sometimes prudent not to speak the mind. With wine inflated, man is all upblown, And feels a power which he believes his own; With fancy soaring to the skies, he thinks His all the virtues all the while he drinks; But when the gas from the balloon is gone, When sober thoughts and serious cares come on, Where then the worth that in himself he found? Vanish'd—and he sank grov'lling on the ground. Still some conceit will Benbow's mind inflate, Poor as he is,—'tis pleasant to relate The joys ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... should be an ass as well as a thankless vagabond if they did), but because of that unspeakable restless something which would render it almost as impossible for me to remain here and not see the thing complete, as it would be for a full balloon, left to itself, not to go up. I do not intend coming from here, but by way of Milan and Turin (previously going to Venice), and so, across the wildest pass of the Alps that may be open, to Strasburg. . . . As you dislike the Young England gentleman I shall knock him out, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... pronounced by Balzac, in "Le Cure de Tours," "one of the finest monuments of French architecture." The Palais de Justice was the seat of the Government of Leon Gambetta in the autumn of 1870, after the dictator had been obliged to retire in his balloon from Paris and before the Assembly was constituted at Bordeaux. The Germans occupied Tours during that terrible winter: it is astonishing, the number of places the Germans occupied. It is hardly too much to say that, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... last style of bonnets, Madam?' She answered, 'Sir, do not press the matter. I am but young; you can speak to my papa.' The consequences were, that they took an ice-cream, and went up to the clouds in an air-balloon; and the amiable world said, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... Dutchman who, in those hours between sunset and sunrise, managed to lose his blown-out appearance somehow, became as it were deflated, and thereafter for a good long time moved in our midst wrinkled and slack all over like a half-collapsed balloon. The whimpering of our deck-boy, a skinny, impressionable little scarecrow out of a training-ship, for whom, because of the tender immaturity of his nerves, this display of German Ocean frightfulness was too much (before the year was out he developed into a sufficiently cheeky ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... sky; but there was to be seen no balloon from which she could have fallen on that spot. When he brought his distracted gaze down, it rested on a child holding on with a brown little paw to the pink satin gown. He had run out of the grass after her. Had Davidson ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... ocean which not long before they had traversed in such a terrible condition. They observed, with emotion, all that part to the north of the coast on which the catastrophe had taken place. It was there that Cyrus Harding had disappeared. They looked to see if some portion of their balloon, to which a man might possibly cling, yet existed. Nothing! The sea was but one vast watery desert. As to the coast, it was solitary also. Neither the reporter nor Neb could be anywhere seen. But it was possible that at this time they were ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... dwellings, whether in populous city or lonely country, continually experience every shock that thrills the Earth's crust? At sea, where between waves or winds or paddles or screws or machinery, everything is tremor, quiver or jar? In the air, where the balloon is incessantly twirling, oscillating, on account of the ever varying strata of different densities, and even occasionally threatening to spill you out? The Projectile alone, floating grandly through the absolute void, in the midst of the profoundest silence, could offer to its inmates the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... kept in petto Now to produce in a "divine sestetto"!! "While Poesy," with these delightful doxies, "Sustains her part" in all the "upper" boxes! "Thus lifted gloriously, you'll sweep along," Borne in the vast balloon of Busby's song; 40 "Shine in your farce, masque, scenery, and play" (For this last line George had a holiday). "Old Drury never, never soar'd so high," So says the Manager, and so say I. "But hold," you say, "this self-complacent boast;" Is this the Poem which the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... 'I'm goin' ter tie it to Poll's balloon, an' let go of the string, an' then it'll go straight to heaven,' and, with the letter reposing in his cheek, he began to ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... abrupt check of movement, a shock, and no more, save the silent rolling of the boat from side to side like a balloon in the air. This strange stillness ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... his arms vigorously will find that overt defiance of the Law of Gravity brings very serious penalties indeed. The wise man seeks the loopholes in the law, and loopholes are caused by other laws which counteract—not defy!—the given law. A balloon full of hydrogen "falls up" in obedience to the Law of Gravity. A contradiction? A paradox? No. It is the Law of Gravity which causes the density and pressure of a planet's atmosphere to decrease with altitude, and that decrease in ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... Soon the great balloon-shaped cod-end with its solid mass of fish rose slowly into the air, and some of the men laid hold to be ready to swing it inboard and deposit it on the deck, when, suddenly, the stout rope that bound the lower end of the bag gave way. The entire mass of ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... the above was penned, we learn that it has been ascertained by a balloon reconnaissance that a projected flank movement, planned by General McCLELLAN and confided to a very limited number, had been completely anticipated—indicating the basest treachery in a high quarter. Very agreeable ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... schoolmaster would have offered could Bonaventure ever have so shamefully forgotten himself. Yet the chagrin of having at once so violently and so impotently belittled himself added one sting more to his fate. He was in despair. An escaped balloon, a burst bubble, could hardly have seemed more utterly beyond his reach than now did Marguerite. And he could not blame her. She was right, he said sternly to himself—right to treat his portrait as something that reminded her of nothing, whether it did so or not; to play on with undisturbed inspiration; ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... 'For brass I will bring gold; and for iron, silver.' The brass and the iron may be worth something, but if we barter them away and get instead gold and silver, we are gainers by the transaction. Fling out the ballast if you wish the balloon to rise. Let the hundred talents go if you wish to get 'the more than this.' And listen to the New Testament variation of this man of God's promise, 'If thou wilt have treasure in heaven, go and sell all that thou hast, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... examined in detail from the 'Aurora' in January 1913 and found to be an island, which was named Drygalski Island, for it is evidently the ice-covered "high-land" observed by Professor Drygalski (German Expedition, 1902) from his balloon.—ED. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the cypress-bordered path of Mollie's first visit, and joined the stream of people going along the road, like themselves, to see the balloon ascent. Mollie felt very gay and festive; everybody feminine wore light frocks, the sun was bright but not too hot, the grass was green, and the whole countryside was frothed with almond-blossom, white and pink. Birds flew briskly about, indifferent to balloons, and horses with shining chestnut ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... veered off her course closer to the wind, and almost immediately the boys could see the white flutter of some extra canvas being spread at her bows. As this new piece filled out, it proved to be a great balloon jib, which increased her sail area by nearly half. Her head came off the wind again and she went bowing along over the swells to the southward faster than one would have imagined possible. Bonnet ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... Female ballast is no good; masculine ballast is the only kind that's safe if you want to make life's journey in a love balloon. [SHE turns to RUTH CHESTER.] Ruth—the trouble with you is, you're too sad lately, and show such a lack of interest. I should think you might be in love, only I haven't been able to find the man. Anyway, if you aren't in love, you must pretend an interest in things. ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... tear it away from some town or arsenal it has covered. And a factor of primary importance in this warfare, because of the importance of seeing the board, a factor which will be enormously stimulated to develop in the future, will be the aerial factor. Already we have seen the captive balloon as an incidental accessory of considerable importance even in the wild country warfare of South Africa. In the warfare that will go on in the highly-organized European States of the opening century, the special ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... forth into the moonlight. She was a dainty little figure with a white neck, round arms, and a slender waist, at the extremity of which her scarlet petticoat jutted out over a hoop, as if she were standing in a balloon. Moreover, her face was oval and pretty, her hair dark beneath the little cap, and her bright eyes possessed a sly freedom, which triumphed over those ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... laughing reply. "Bless my loose ribs! but I wouldn't miss him for anything. He's in a new play called 'Up in a Balloon Boys.' It's great!" and Mr. Damon named a certain comic moving picture star in whose horse-play Mr. Damon took a curious interest. Tom and Ned were glad enough to go, Tom that he might have a chance to do a certain amount of thinking, and ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... the thing down upon him. For a space he stared up, reining in his prancing horse with the instinct born of years of horsemanship. Then the flat of a sword smote his back, and a blade flashed overhead and cut the drifting balloon of spider-web free, and the whole mass lifted softly and drove ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... reckoning; the hour in which he, brought face to face with Charles Wilbraham, should expose him before men for what he was. The hour when Charles Wilbraham should face him, reduced at last to impotent silence, deflated to limp nothingness like a gas balloon, and find no word of defence. Shamed and dishonoured, he would slink away, at long last in the wrong. In the wrong himself, after all these years of putting others there. Truly, Henry's hour ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... as one had to consider the navigable balloon the aerial side of warfare remained unimportant. A Zeppelin is little good for any purpose but scouting and espionage. It can carry very little weight in proportion to its vast size, and, what is more important, it cannot drop ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... "By Jove, you're right!" he exclaimed in English. "It is a woman!" He burst into an unexpected laugh. "It isn't balloon breeches; it's hips!" he cried. This correction seemed to him singularly ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... the doctor and a pump we pulled him through. When he was able to be shipped home I went down to the train to see him off and as he kissed me goodby he said, 'Don't you worry, kid, I won't forget this.' I didn't pay any attention to his chatter, thinking it nothing but balloon juice. But this letter says that he died about a week ago and left ten thousand to me in such a way that it won't do his wife no good to yelp. Ten thousand! Gee, ain't that an awful huge lot of money for one poor little merry-merry to be burdened with! The lawyers sent that first hundred along ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... levels where selfishness feeds fat and then rots. The spirit is raised by any great and unselfish emotion. There is buoyancy and glad consciousness of elevation in all the self-sacrifice of love, which dilates and lifts the spirit as the light gas smoothes out the limp folds of silk in a balloon, and sends it heavenwards, a full sphere. Only service or surrender, which is thus cheerful because it is the natural expression of love, is true service in God's sight. Whosoever, then, had his spirit raised and made buoyant by a great glad resolve to give ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the scattering of seeds, by their being furnished with special structures of very different kinds. The diverse modes by which such seeds are dispersed are well expressed by Mr. Darwin. He says:[50] "Seeds are disseminated {66} by their minuteness,—by their capsule being converted into a light balloon-like envelope,—by being embedded in pulp or flesh, formed of the most diverse parts, and rendered nutritious, as well as conspicuously coloured, so as to attract and be devoured by birds,—by having hooks and grapnels ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... own sakes; he who forgives has divested himself of envy and resentment, of all that oppressed and fettered the spirit, making it powerless to rise. This is why we must forgive: that so we may burst the bonds which impede our free movement, our ascent. When we cut the cable of a balloon, we do not consider whether this is just towards the earth, and whether the cable deserves it; we do it because it is necessary, to enable the balloon to rise. He who ascends, moreover, enjoys ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... an aeronaut was brief. His first ascent was made August 30, 1871; his last, July 15, 1875. The story of the first is characteristic of the man. In his lexicon there was no such word as "fail." His balloon was small, holding only eight thousand cubic feet of gas. The gas was of poor quality, and when ready to rise he found it impossible even to make a start until all ballast had been thrown from the basket; ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... swelling with vulgar pompousness, "to see that you recognize the rights of property and the claims of vested interests. And we trust," he added, "that Labour has learned a lesson it will not soon forget." Then he sat down with the majesty of a balloon descending. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... sizes to suit convenience. The practicability of this plan does not seem to be doubtful. Its advantages are obvious. Instead of having to purchase, as for a railway, the whole line of track passed over, the company for a balloon-way would only have to procure those spots of ground on which they proposed to erect stationary engines; and these need in no case be of peculiar value, since their being a hundred yards one way or the other would make little difference. ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... there; for, shut up in the capital, it lost touch with the provinces, save when balloons and carrier-pigeons eluded the German sharpshooters and brought precious news[55]. The mistake was seen in time to enable a man of wondrous energy to leave Paris by balloon on October 7, to descend as a veritable deus ex machina on the faltering Delegation at Tours, and to stir the blood of France by his invective. There was a touch of the melodramatic not only in his apparition but in his speeches. Frenchmen, however, follow a ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Harper was the first to scale the clouds in a balloon from this town, January 4, 1785. He rose again on the 31, from the Tennis Court, in Coleshill Street, and is said to have sailed a distance of 57 miles in 80 minutes. Mr. Sadler went up from Vauxhall, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... those tricks is to be played from the foot-lights upon a member of the audience the girl who does it is always careful to select that circular gentleman down front. Let her try to mix up confetti or a toy balloon with a tall skinny man and the police would get ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... a parachute device. He was taken up in a balloon to make a test of the apparatus. Arrived at a height of a thousand feet, he climbed over the edge of the basket, and dropped out. He had fallen two hundred yards when he remarked to himself, in a ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... edge. That is the Tower of London. We see it behind the masts of sailing-vessels and the chimneys of steamers, gray and misty in the distance. Let us come nearer to it. Four square towers, crowned by four Oriental-looking domes, not unlike the lower half of an inverted balloon: these towers at the angles of a square building with buttressed and battlemented walls, with two ranges of round-arched windows on the side towards us. But connected with this building are other towers, round, square, octagon, walls with embrasures, moats, loop-holes, turrets, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... with a balloon-like stomach and a rubicund face framed in grizzled whiskers. His wife—tall, strong, resolute, loud in voice and rapid of decision—represented order and arithmetic in the business, which he enlivened by his jollity ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 'live thing' in the tree was a captive balloon. The box on the ground was a battery. The wire from the battery was connected with a firework bomb, which, when Tuxall pressed the switch, exploded, releasing a flaming 'dropper.' About the time the 'dropper' reached the earth Tuxall lighted up his well-oiled barn. All Harwick, having had its attention ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the homes of men. Many an unnoticed girl in a dank walled garden had tossed herself into the hammock with the same intolerant gesture with which she might have tossed herself into the Thames; and that wind rent the waving wall of woods and lifted the hammock like a balloon, and showed her shapes of quaint clouds far beyond, and pictures of bright villages far below, as if she rode heaven in a fairy boat. Many a dusty clerk or cleric, plodding a telescopic road of poplars, thought for the hundredth ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... as though a change had taken place in the motion of the schooner, which was sliding along on the surface of the quiet sea, with a slight list to starboard. And yet, there was neither rolling nor pitching. Yes, I felt myself carried off as though my bunk were the car of an air-balloon. I was not mistaken, and I had ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... contains, or some other association alien to its visual aspect. If one looks up at a fine mass of cumulus clouds above a London street, the ordinary passer-by who follows one's gaze expects to see a balloon or a flying-machine at least, and when he sees it is only clouds he is apt to wonder what one is gazing at. The beautiful form and colour of the cloud seem to be unobserved. Clouds mean nothing to him but an accumulation of water dust that may bring rain. ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... manner as he calmly adjusted his glasses and read the letter of Judge Fine brought the blood to my face. It seemed to puncture my balloon, so to speak, and I was falling toward the earth and so swiftly my head swam. He laid the letter on his desk and, without looking up and as coolly as if he were asking for the ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... the folded object began to unfold itself and to puff itself up like a little mushroom. In a matter of seconds, Chris could see what it was becoming, and before he could wink ten times, a balloon with a basket hanging from it, quite big enough for two boys, hung swaying in the air. Chris examined it with pleasure and then struck the ground three times again. The balloon gently collapsed and refolded itself, basket and all, into ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... growing steadily more misty even down near the water, and now as the released balloon shot up into an altitude of five, ten, and presently twelve thousand feet, everything in Heaven and earth disappeared except that white and clammy fog. By a simultaneous impulse he lit a cigarette and I a pipe, and I remember very plainly wondering ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... make-up of the German bed must be laid to the door of the guilty goose. The pillows are so soft that your head is ever sinking, never at rest. Instead of easily applied blankets, that you can adapt to the temperature, you are given a great cloud of feathers, sewn in a balloon-like bag, which floats upon you according to your degree of restlessness, and leaves you for the floor, when in stupid sleepiness you endeavor to protect your whole person at once with its flimsy and ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... I am rather afraid to swim under there. The balloon may sink and carry me under. But if I were certain in exactly what spot the man is imprisoned, I'd have a try ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... reader, however impatient, must listen to this allusion—whoever has seen a balloon, may have observed that in its flaccid state it can be folded and unfolded with the greatest ease, and it is manageable even by a child; but when once filled, the force of multitudes cannot restrain, nor the art of man direct its course. Such is the human mind—so tractable ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... of Framing on a New and Improved System With Specific Instructions for Building Balloon Frames, Barn Frames, Mill; Frames, Warehouses, Church Spires, etc. Comprising also a System of Bridge Building, with Bills, Estimates of Cost, and valuable Tables. Illustrated by forty four plates, comprising ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... morning. Following is a summary of the outfit taken from an inventory made at Indian Harbour: Our canoe was 18 feet long, canvas covered, and weighed about 80 pounds. The tent was of the type known as miner's, 6 1/2 x 7 feet, made of balloon silk and waterproofed. We had three pairs of blankets and one single blanket; two tarpaulins; five duck waterproof bags; one dozen small waterproof bags of balloon silk for note books; two .45-70 Winchester rifles; two 10-inch barrel .22-calibre pistols for shooting grouse ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... side. I ought to have secured the migrs when they returned. The aristocracy would have soon adored me; and I needed it; it is the true, the only support of a monarchy, its moderator, its lever, its resisting point; without it, the state is like a ship without a rudder, a balloon in mid-air. Now, the strength, the charm of the aristocracy lies in its antiquity, the only thing I could not create." It must be confessed that from an old Republican general, for the man who had sent Augereau to execute the coup d'tat of the 18th Fructidor, and who the 13th Vendmiaire, from ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... watched his figure shaking and quivering, we heard, like groans, from beneath the handkerchief, "Oh ur-rh-ha—ar—uh! Bless me!" When he took down his handkerchief and happened to see Juno rising from her knees, he swelled up again like a balloon, and then eased off gradually in splutterings and moans as a dying porpoise. After which, he went and pacified Juno, and tried to explain to her what a wicked trick we had been guilty of, and that the band of smugglers, after all, were only the boys she knew so well, and he proceeded ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... has been made of Emerson's mysticism. He was an intellectual rather than an emotional mystic, and withal a cautious one. He never let go the string of his balloon. He never threw over all his ballast of common sense so as to rise above an atmosphere in which a rational being could breathe. I found in his library William Law's edition of Jacob Behmen. There were all those wonderful diagrams over which the reader ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... said to be only six miles off, and a party of his men cut the water supply of the town. The Klip, however, a fair-sized river, runs through Ladysmith, so that there was no danger of thirst. The British had inflated and sent up a balloon, to the amazement of the back-veld Boers; its report confirmed the fact that the enemy was in force in front ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... talk as they will Of their steam-engine skill, But, as sure as the sun shines at noon, Straps, boilers, and springs Are a wagon to wings, Compared with the air-balloon. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... stock with them, and had staked them for admission to all the side shows, and when they had come out of the last side show, and were hungry, he had bought a mess of hot wiener sausages for them, and while they were eating them somebody yelled that the balloon was going to go up, and the boys grabbed their wieners and run across the fair grounds, losing Uncle Ike; and being tired, and not caring to see a young girl go up a mile in the air, and come down with a parachute, with a good prospect of flattening herself ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... There was not a breath of air blowing in the clearing, but the clouds were racing across the moon miles up above our heads, and the moon looked as though it was scudding through them in the opposite direction like a great white fire balloon. It was dark along the edge of the clearing, for the jungle threw a heavy shadow, and Juggins kept knocking those great clumsy feet of his against the stumps, and swearing ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... while the sunshine lay upon his path,—all these things, like so many strong winds, sweep across the soul so that it cannot rest in the cheerless tranquility of honesty, but casts up mire and dirt. How stately the balloon rises and sails over continents, as over petty landscapes! The slightest slit in its frail covering sends it tumbling down, swaying widely, whirling and pitching hither and thither, until it plunges into some dark glen, out of the path of honest men, and too ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... to it. I know how to do it. And if your doll wants a ride, Vi, I'll give her one in my balloon. I can tie a basket to the balloon and put your doll in it—in ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... bet you you will, Mr. Bangs," she declared. "Anybody that's been through the kind of times you have, livin' along with critters that steal the shirt off your back, ain't goin' to let a blowed-up gas balloon like Raish Pulcifer stump you. My savin' ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... few and easily overcome. In the first place, the cork must be air-tight, and it is best made so by pouring a little melted paraffin over it, care being taken not to close the tube. The rubber bags were taken from toy balloon-whistles. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... streets of Paris. I had only to speak of Alsace to bring him to a mood of sullen ugliness and hatred. He was, I have no doubt, a pretty good-tempered man; he was certainly warm-hearted; his apparent harshness to his balloon-venders was probably nothing more than necessary parental severity, and he was always ready to recognize their successes. But I have never seen a more wicked and desperate expression than an allusion to ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs: when he walked, it was the struggling gait of one in fetters; when he rode, he had no command or direction of his horse, but was carried as if in a balloon." His daily habits were exceedingly irregular; he took his meals at unusual hours; and either ate voraciously, or abstained rigorously. He studied by fits and starts; but when he did read, it was with such rapidity and eagerness, that, as some one said, it seemed as if he would tear ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... single piece is a hair supposing more of them are orderly, does that show that strength, does that show that joint, does that show that balloon famously. Does it. ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... been pushed across some 2,000 yards nearer than ourselves, supported by the King's Royal Rifles, the Scottish Rifles, the Durhams, and the Borderers; to our right front was also to be seen the Engineer balloon, under Captain Phillips, R.E., being filled with gas. About 10 a.m. a message came up from General Lyttelton to bring four guns into action on our left flank, which I did at once under Ogilvy's orders, and a little later Captain ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... slow-moving forefathers, but is not the time coming when our thirty miles an hour will be laughed at as much as their five? when our passage from Calais to Dover will be made by the turn of a winch, and Paris will be within the penny-post delivery? when the balloon will carry our letters and ourselves; until that still more rapid period, when we shall ride on cannon-shot, and make but a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... to them, as they looked, that the whole side of the mountain had burst open and allowed a giant dirigible balloon to ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... to have a balloon when he grew up, and a sweet-stuff shop, an elephant, a garden full of apples and plums, a tall black horse, and ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... omnibus, to or fro every ten or twelve minutes; the marchand de coco with his bell; a regiment of the line with its band; a chorus of peripatetic Orpheonistes—a swallow, a butterfly, a humblebee; a far-off balloon, oh, joy!—any sight or sound to relieve the tedium of those two mortal school-hours that dragged their weary lengths from half past one till half past three—every day ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... sidewise, but he was outside her range of vision. "I don't LIKE having you sit where I can't see you," she said crossly. "Freud may have thought it was a good idea, but I think it's a lousy one." She clenched her hands and stared at nothing. The silence stretched thinner and thinner, like a balloon blown big, until the temptation to rupture it was too great to resist. "I didn't see the truck this morning. Nor hear it. There was no reason at all for me to slow down ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... shortly after dawn. As far as Raf could see the island was barren of life, or else any creature native to it kept prudently out of the way while the flyers were there. They took off, the globe rising like a balloon into the morning sky, the flitter waiting until it was air-borne before ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... wanted to travel and see the world, but he did not know how to start. Until, all of a sudden, a diamond ring was hidden in his leg and a balloon carried him ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... all the minor details very plausibly worked out, such as locating by means of pilot balloons the air currents at the proper height for the large balloons, automatic arrangements for keeping the balloon at the proper height after it was let go from the vessel, and so on. His scheme is nothing but the idea of the drifting or current torpedo, which was so popular during our war, transferred to the upper air. An automatic flying machine would be one step farther than this inventor's idea, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... nothing to laugh at and he tried to make Stephen talk, but Stephen was very silent. On the whole the conversation was dull, Peter thought, and once he nodded and was very nearly asleep, and fancied that the gentleman from London was spreading like a balloon and filling all the room. There was no mention ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... shattered knee and two toes dangling from the foot. Captain Wycherley snipped them off with a pair of scissors. The man winced and they dropped on to the floor. The anaesthetist administered gas. It was some time, however, before the patient lost consciousness, for the balloon that adjoined the mouthpiece leaked badly and once the rubber-tubing was blown off the ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... Rising directly from sea-level to an elevation of nearly eleven thousand feet, the observer on its summit at night finds himself, as it were, lost in the midst of the sky. But for the black flanks of the great cone on which he stands he might fancy himself to be in a balloon. On the occasion to which I refer the world beneath was virtually invisible in the moonless night. The blaze of the constellations overhead was astonishingly brilliant, yet amid all their magnificence my attention was ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... than the cross of St. Paul's, but curving over him like the hanging blossom of a harebell, was a cavernous crag of snow. A hundred feet below him, like a landscape seen from a balloon, lay snowy flats as white and as far away. He saw a little boy stagger, with many catastrophic slides, to that toppling peak; and seizing another little boy by the leg, send him flying away down to the distant silver plains. There he sank and ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... because it is lighter than water; iron sinks because it is heavier; but a substance which possessed exactly the specific gravity of water would neither float nor sink, but would remain suspended in the water like a balloon in midair. Taken, then, a liquid which is heavy—the most convenient is methylene iodide, whose specific gravity is 3.3—a fragment of zircon will sink in this, and a fragment of tourmaline will float, but a fragment of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... his eye, and he was pointing it towards a sail which was rapidly approaching the shore. So broad and lofty was the canvass, that the hull looked like the small car of a balloon, in comparison to it, as if just gliding over the surface of ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... spires of Sainte-Clotilde, the bluish Pantheon, erect on a height, its fine colonnade showing against the sky, overlooked the city, poised in the air, as it were, motionless, with the silken hues of a captive balloon. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... mouse doesn't go to sleep in the cat's cradle and scare poor pussy so her tail swells up like a balloon, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... the world looks solid from a balloon. I heard one man say to another just now, 'How long do you suppose Henderson will last?' Probably we shall all come down by the run ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... we Americans might possess a desirable thunder-storm which should be observed hanging over Washington, and which we should annex by means of electrical communications transpiercing it in every direction, and a resident governor fixed at the centre in a balloon. France has gorged Kabylia, with the rest of Algeria, but she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... to darken the wintry sun for a moment, and then another quaking of the air, after which what was left of the two Flying Fishes fell in little fragments into the water, splashing here and there as though they had been shingle ballast thrown out of a balloon. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... had hoped that Hugh would excuse him altogether. He explained that this sixpence was not all, nor the chief part. He told that, when the whole school was on the heath, one Saturday, they had seen a balloon rising at a distance, and some boys began betting about what direction it would move in when it ceased to rise perpendicularly. The betting spread till the boys told him he must bet, or he would be the only one left out, and would look ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... emptied like a burst balloon. Next instant he felt himself lifted into mid air as though ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... ball-room a sight to see? Seats piled on seats, all cushioned with red velvet, and one end curving round like a great red horseshoe, with flags and flowers and shields running below the bottommost tier; a great swinging balloon of sparkling glass poured its light, like July sunshine, down on a crowd of people, that looked more like born angels than human creatures. It fairly made me dizzy to look at 'em from Cousin Dempster's box-seat, which was right in the end of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... delegated two of their members, MM. Cremieux and Glaiz-Bizoin, to go to Tours and govern the provinces; but being both elderly men of weak health, they were hardly up to their work; and early in October M. Gambetta was ordered by his colleagues to join them. He had to leave Paris in a balloon, and in going over the German lines nearly met with misadventure, through the balloon sinking till it came within range of some marksmen's rifles. He reached Tours in safety, however, and set to work at once with marvellous activity to organize resistance against the invasion. He was ably ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... sure, and a little blue ball puffed out like a child's balloon, burst, and dissipated itself in a thin, trailing ribbon, which the wind caught and swept to nothing. At the same time something spatted into the trail ahead of him, sending up a little ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... when a man that sails in a balloon Down looking sees the solid shining ground Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon,— ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... their rank; all etiquette." The entertainments at government-house were ceremonies, rather than parties of pleasure. As the servant opened the door, he seemed to say, "you may come in, but don't speak." Some more daring spirit would venture a remark, as ballast is thrown out to send a balloon above the fogs; but caution, like Sancho's physician, interdicted the perilous indulgence, and restored the watchful silence. No Dutchman would willingly endure the Humdrumstadt on the Derwent, notwithstanding its natural advantages and ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... those two enterprising and admirable families went through, were as varied as they were endless, and each day brought a thrilling development of the situation. Nicholas Spoopjack thought nothing of going out in a diving-bell in the morning, and a balloon in the afternoon, while the Bobityshooties entertained royalty to dinner in the kitchen cupboard, and feasted luxuriously on the cruets, and the pinked-out paper ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... his thoughts he drove that day to the village of Vorontsovo to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to destroy the foe, and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The balloon was not yet ready, but Pierre learned that it was being constructed by the Emperor's desire. The Emperor had written to Count Rostopchin ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... newspapers, chiefly. Immense bales of the unsold copies of the New York Free Press are now exported for the purpose. They are preferred to any other papers because, when placed anywhere in the balloon, they Lie so, and, having already fallen from grace, falling from a balloon ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... sobriety, I do not intend to denounce enthusiasm, but to urge a necessity of organising enthusiasm. I only recommend people not to venture upon flying machines before they have studied the laws of mechanics; but I earnestly hope that some day we may be able to call a balloon as we now call a cab. To point out the method, and to admit that it is not laborious, is not to discourage aspiration, but to look facts in the face: not to preach abandonment of enthusiasm, but to urge that enthusiasm ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that the toy-theatre is the best of all toys. It sometimes fails; but generally because people are mistaken in the matter of what it is meant to do, and what it can or cannot be expected to do; as if people should use a toy balloon as a football or a skipping rope as a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... far as I can make out it's a dirigible balloon that has been blown out to sea. They tried to give me their position, and as near as I can comprehend their message, they are between us and the shore somewhere within a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... chosen for the start of his balloon ascension was a field upon the crest of the Palisades above the ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... striking climatic conditions are produced by the daily interaction of the Pacific Ocean and the Colorado Desert, infinitely diversified in minor particulars by the exceedingly broken character of the region—a jumble of bare mountains, fruitful foot-hills, and rich valleys. It would be only from a balloon that one could get an adequate idea of ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... against the destruction of the rubber by the sunlight. I first observed this destruction while experimenting with a cheap and convenient form of gauge. I used, as an inexpensive gauge, an ordinary toy balloon, and I could tell, with sufficient accuracy, how much pressure I had applied, by the swelling of the balloon. This balloon ruptured from some unknown cause, and I made a substitute for it out of a round sheet of thin flat rubber, gathered all around the circumference. I made holes about one-quarter ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... far as we can, the operation of one physical or organic law by employing the agency of another, as in the appliances of Mechanics, the experiments of Chemistry, and the art of Navigation. When the aeronaut inflates his balloon with a gas specifically lighter than atmospheric air, or the ship-builder constructs vessels of wood or iron, so that when filled with air they shall be lighter than water, and float with their cargo on its surface, each is attempting to counteract the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... bet it's slower than the rise of a toy balloon." Seaton threw down the papers and picked up his slide-rule, a twenty-inch trigonometrical duplex. "You'll concede that it is allowable to neglect the radial component of the orbital velocity of the earth for a first ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... for all the world like a bird or a balloon," said Ted, as his companion hurried him along; "if I don't git some ballast soon in the shape o' grub, ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... inevitably develops into the bore. There are not many Doctor Johnsons, to set forth upon their first romantic voyage at sixty-four. If we wish to scale Mont Blanc or visit a thieves' kitchen in the East End, to go down in a diving dress or up in a balloon, we must be about it while we are still young. It will not do to delay until we are clogged with prudence and limping with rheumatism, and people begin to ask us: "What does Gravity out of bed?" Youth is the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his mind to face. However, as some compensation, he proposed to improve the art of flying, which was, as every body must acknowledge, in a condition disgraceful to civilized society. As he had made many a fire balloon, and had succeeded in some attempts at bringing down cats by parachutes, it was not very difficult to fly downwards from moderate elevations. But, as he was reproached by my sister for never flying back again,—which, however, was a far different thing, and not even ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... bores it is, to bore Congress for a hundred thousand dollars to go to the Pole! If Captain HALL wants adventure, let him travel to the Halls of the MONTEZUMAS. If he wishes only to be left out in the cold, let him go to Chili; or else up in a balloon; or let him make himself Republican candidate for something in New York. We believe the North Pole would rather be let alone. The whole subject is, at all events, too HAYES-y just now to be comprehended. There is a sort of KANE-ine madness, which shows itself not in fear of water but ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... hain't anything—and when they pile up their pretensions so high they can't carry 'em steady—for my part I'd rather keep out o' their way. They're no pleasure to me; and if they think they're an honour, it's an opinion I don't share. Gertrude Masters ain't no better than a balloon; full of gas; she hain't weight enough to keep her on her feet; and Mrs.—what's her name?—Genevy—she's as smooth as an eel. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... mean to say that you looked peaked when you had sore throat," she announced, "then there's somethin' the matter with your mind or your eyesight, one or t'other. You peaked? Why, your face was swelled up like a young one's balloon Fourth of July Day. And as for bein' pale! My soul! I give you my word I couldn't scurcely tell where your neck left off and the strip of red flannel you made me ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... eastward. At this part of the voyage King Edward VII. Land was discovered, but the thick ice-floes prevented the expedition from landing. On the way back the ship entered the same bight that Borchgrevink had visited in 1900, and a balloon ascent was made on the Barrier. The bay ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... could possibly need, for I never believed in the siege. But during the first few weeks I played at whist with bad luck, and since then so many old friends have borrowed of me that I doubt if I have 200 francs left. I have despatched four letters to Duplessis by pigeon and balloon, entreating him to send me 25,000 francs by some trusty fellow who will pierce the Prussian lines. I have had two answers: 1st, that he will find a man; 2nd, that the man is found and on his way. Trust to that man, my dear friend, and meanwhile ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... take reports is to belaive the exact opposite o' what's towld ye, an' so ye'll come nearest the truth. It's thrue I had a close shave. Wan day I felt a sort o' light-hiddedness—as if I was a kind o' livin' balloon—and was floatin' away, whin the doctor came ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... are the serpents, stars, fire-rain, etc., forming the furniture of a rocket, discharged into the air, when the rocket has terminated its flight, or arrived at its maximum of ascension? What forms the difference between a balloon, in fireworks, and a rocket? As the balloon contains also furniture, and is projected vertically from a mortar, how is fire communicated to it, so as to burst it in the air? Is the fuse used, in this case, the same as that for bombs, howitzers, and grenades? ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... midday the whole country was in commotion. The same sort of people commingled that one would expect to see if there was a balloon to go up, and a man to go down, or be hung at the same place. Fine ladies in all the colours of the rainbow; and swarthy, beady-eyed dames, with their stalwart, big-calved, basket-carrying comrades; gentle young people from behind the counter; ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... away from us is the sun? Are we to answer just as we think, or just as we know? On a fine summer day, when we can see him clearly, it looks as if a short trip in a balloon might take us to his throne in the sky, yet we know—because the astronomers tell us so—that he is more than ninety-one millions of miles distant ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... tourists who expected to leave for America and the outside world on the Noa-Noa, overflowed with evidence of their delight. The consuls of the powers met at the Cercle Militaire the governor, and laughed hectically at the absurd balloon of tittle-tattle which had been pricked by the Noa-Noa's facts. There had been absolutely nothing to the rumors but the fears or the antipathies ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Mook, Turn, oh, turn about and look! Once a month you leave your room, With your head like a balloon: Try to catch us, if you can; Turn and look, my ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... had been bought. The bonfire was thus doubled in size, and made a blaze which, on the hill, would be seen for many a mile. We had a whole holiday to give us time to pile up the heap; and in the evening parents and many other friends crowded to the field as spectators. Sometimes a lighted balloon or two, of varied colours, would be sent up, which were watched by the bright eyes of sisters and cousins, until they were lost ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... With wandering Sindbad ploughs the stormy sea, With Gotham's sages hears the billows roll (Illustrious trio of the venturous bowl, Too early shipwrecked, for they died too soon To see their offspring launch the great balloon); Tracks the dark brigand to his mountain lair, Slays the grim giant, saves the lady fair, Fights all his country's battles o'er again From Bunker's blazing height to Lundy's Lane; Floats with the mighty captains as they sailed, Before whose flag the flaming red-cross ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... think I may?" said the doctor. He sat down and threw his hat on the floor.—"What shall I do with Mrs. Derrick? She will want to send me off in a balloon, on some air journey that will never land me on earth!—or find some other vanishing medium most prompt and irrevocable—all as a penalty for my having ventured to leap a fence in company with ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... framework of the ship is hollow. Every single thing you see—even the chairs and tables—they're all made of the metal aerolite (as it's generally called). It's almost as thin as paper, and it's far stronger than any steel. Now it's the framework of the ship that takes the place of the old balloon. It's infinitely safer, too, for it's divided by automatically closing stops into tens of thousands of compartments, so a leak here and there makes practically no difference. Well, when the ship's at rest, as it is now, ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson |
