"Barometer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feet, none of which wear boots. Polar bears and Esquimos are also found there, but in scattered and inconsiderable quantities. These two races spend most of their time chasing each other in order to keep themselves warm, which they do by degrees which are often registered on a barometer. They also eat each other and get scurvy. Outside of these relaxations their existence is stagnant and unexciting. I sometimes fancy that if I had the misfortune to be born a polar bear or an Esquimo I would not have ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Cornelius Drebbel, who performed such astounding feats for the amusement of Rudolph of Germany and James of Britain, is also supposed to have invented the thermometer and the barometer. But this claim has been disputed. The inventions of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I have often remarked—is like a barometer in the promptitude of its reflection of every momentary phase, and all these things are duly discounted by old Parliamentary hands accustomed to panics when a check comes to what has been a most successful campaign on the whole. And in the meantime, if there had been any tendency to disintegration, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the invention; all I could manage to say was that if it was ever proper to wrap a napkin round a dial it was certainly in a dining-room. On the sideboard were two huge lamps like those on the counter of a restaurant. Above the other sideboard hung a barometer, excessively ornate, which seems to play a great part in their existence; Rogron gazed at it as he might at his future wife. Between the two windows is a white porcelain stove in a niche overloaded with ornament. The walls glow with ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... short time, I was invited down. A leg of cured pork, and a roasted fowl, were very acceptable to a midshipman at any time, but particularly so to me; and, when accompanied by a few glasses of the Madeira, the barometer of my spirits rose in proportion ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... has been in use for measuring corn, potatoes, &c., from a very early date; the value varying locally and with the article measured. The "imperial bushel", legally established in Great Britain in 1826, contains 2218.192 cub.in., or 80 lb of distilled water, determined at 62 deg. F., with the barometer at 30 in. Previously, the standard bushel used was known as the "Winchester bushel", so named from the standard being kept in the town hall at Winchester; it contained 2150.42 cub. in. This standard is the basis of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... after our trial run that day, we caught the first rip of the gale which the gummed-over moon and the low barometer had forecast the night before. It was too rough to tie her up to the supply-ship, so the sub was anchored—they carry anchors too—a short distance away, with three men left on her for an anchor watch, the idea being to take them off later for a hot meal. But after the rest of us were safe ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... does not know that in rural districts the clover is looked upon as a capital barometer, the leaves becoming rough to the feel when a storm is impending. A writer, quoted by Mr. Thiselton-Dyer, says that when tempestuous weather is coming the clover will 'start and rise up as if it were ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... was of opinion, that the value of lands and houses was the best estimate of the wealth of a nation, and that it was practicable to obtain such a valuation. This is the true barometer of wealth. The one now proposed is imperfect in itself, and unequal between the States. It has been objected that negroes eat the food of freemen, and therefore should be taxed. Horses also eat the food of freemen; therefore they ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... care. When accurately adjusted, it should move neither way. Now read off the volume of the NO gas in cubic centimetres from the measuring tube. Read also the thermometer suspended near the bulb, and take the height of the barometer in millimetres. The calculation is ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... on the alert to prevent storms and tempests. Now that the children's barometer seemed at "set fair" she ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... storm, when the sun goes under a cloud, or on a dull day, each little weather prophet closes. A score of pretty folk-names given it in every land it adopts testifies to its sensitiveness as a barometer. Under bright skies the flower may be said to open out flat at about nine in the morning and to begin to close at three in ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... profound respect for tillers of the soil. Years before he had written: "Generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandmen is the proportion of its sound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption." He rejoiced in the agricultural possibilities of America. Could he have had his way, he would have made the republic, in the apt phrase of Mr. Henry Adams, "an enlarged Virginia—a society ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... of that complex affair, the human organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods. The soul, so called, is as sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected by lack of sleep, by smells and sounds, by food, by the weather—whether a day be sapphire or obsidian. And the resolutions arising from one mood are thwarted by the actions of the next. Janet had observed this phenomenon, and sometimes, when it troubled her, she thought herself ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as only he and Winona had felt it would, and presently it began to be hinted that a great nation, apparently unconcerned with its beginning, might eventually be compelled to a livelier interest in it. Herman Vielhaber was a publicly exposed barometer of this sentiment. At the beginning he beamed upon the world and predicted the Fatherland's speedy triumph over all the treacherous foes. When the triumph was unaccountably delayed he appeared mysterious, but not less confident. The Prussian system might involve delay, but Prussian might ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... land-owner, and considering his age—he was hardly over thirty—he displayed surprising sobriety, a certain seriousness, even pedantry. He lived according to a minutely elaborated, half-philosophical, half- practical system, like clock-work; not this alone, but also by the thermometer, barometer, aerometer, hydrometer, Hippocrates, Hufeland, Plato, Kant, Knigge, and Lord Chesterfield. But at times he had violent attacks of sudden passion, and gave the impression of being about to run with his head right through a wall. At such times every ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... the community like an atmosphere. Captain Doane was one of the finest men I have ever known—highminded, tolerant, sympathetic, and full of understanding, He was not only my friend, but my church barometer. He occupied a front pew, close to the pulpit; and when I was preaching without making much appeal he sat looking me straight in the face, listening courteously, but without interest. When I got into my subject, ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... a deep-sea cable exaggerates in an instructive manner the phenomena of telegraphy over long aerial lines. The two ends of a cable may be in regions of widely diverse electrical potential, or pressure, just as the readings of the barometer at these two places may differ much. If a copper wire were allowed to offer itself as a gateless conductor it would equalize these variations of potential with serious injury to itself. Accordingly the rule ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... guns might be thundering in front of the fortifications. The communiques from Joffre became less frequent and more laconic. Their wording was like some trembling, fateful needle of a barometer, pausing, reacting a little, but going down, down, down, indicator of the heart-pressure of Paris, shrivelling the flesh, tightening the nerves. Already Paris was in a state of siege, in one sense. Her exits were guarded against all who were not in uniform and going to fight; to all who had no ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... south coast of the Australian continent, though the usual westerly winds and gales of the highest latitudes prevail during the greater portion of the year, hurricanes are not infrequent. Gales commence at NW with a low barometer, increasing at W and SW, and gradually veering to the south. True cyclones occur at New Zealand. The log of the Adelaide for 29th February, 1870, describes one which travelled at the rate of ten miles an hour, and had all the veerings, calm centre, etc., of a true tropical hurricane. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... thought, 'The Master has told us before.' Sorrows anticipated are more easily met. It is when the vessel is caught with all its sails set that it is almost sure to go down, and, at all events, sure to be badly damaged in the typhoon. But when the barometer has been watched, and its fall has given warning, and everything movable has been made fast, and every spare yard has been sent below, and all tightened up and ship-shape—then she can ride out the storm. Forewarned is forearmed. Savages think, when an eclipse comes, that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... circumstances, and concluded that by letting go the weather-braces of the top-sails and the top-sail halyards at the same time, I should thereby render these sails almost powerless. Besides this, I proposed to myself to keep a sharp look-out on the barometer in the cabin, and if I observed at any time a sudden fall in it, I resolved that I would instantly set about my multiform appliances for reducing sail, so as to avoid being taken at unawares. Thus I sailed prosperously for two weeks, with a fair wind, so ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Parisian bourgeois. Our friend coughed twice, and then, drawing in his head and his arm, re-entered his room like a tortoise into his shell. D'Harmental saw with pleasure that he might dispense with buying a barometer, and that this neighbor would render him the same service as the butterflies which come out in the sunshine, and remain obstinately shut up in their hermitages on the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... "expands" it and makes a little keep the train going after it has once got into its pace. There are the steam and water "gauges," to tell the "driver" and fireman when the steam is at proper pressure, and when the water is high enough in the boiler. The steam gauge is like a clock, or an Aneroid barometer, right before the driver. Those other handles near it are the whistle-handles. One whistle is small, and very shrill, to warn people on the line, and to tell people the train is coming. The other is a deep-toned booming whistle which tells of danger perhaps, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... sunshine when the pilot came on board: but suddenly the wind had veered to an ugly quarter, and had just begun to pipe up into something like half a gale. Captain Breaker went to the pilot-house, looked at the barometer, and then directed Mr. Dashington to crowd on all sail, for he intended to drive the vessel to her ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... a Barometer. If he and Mr. Hilgus, the Real Estate Man, came home together fifteen feet apart, she would know it had been a ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... the frequenters. She has an uncanny instinct for the psychology of the moment. She knows just when "Columbia" will be the proper thing to play, and when the crowd demands the newest rag-time. She will feel an atmospheric change as unswervingly as any barometer, and switch in a moment from "Good-bye Girls, Good-bye" to the love duet from Faust. She can play Chopin just as well as she can play Sousa, and she will tactfully strike up "It's Always Fair Weather" when ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... and gazed at the flame with a gloomy air as he drank his grog of kirsch and seltzer. From time to time some belated traveller crossed the salon, with soaked gaiters and streaming mackintosh, looked at the great barometer hanging to the wall, tapped it, consulted the mercury as to the weather of the following day, and went off to bed in consternation. Not a word; no other manifestations of life than the crackling of the fire, the pattering on the panes, and the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... biscuits and cold grog, but I doubt if any of us before or since, ever partook of a meal with such an appetite as we did then. The beef disappeared as if by magic; the bones were polished off until they were as white as ivory, whilst the rum sank in the flask like the quicksilver in a barometer, on the approach of ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... temperature of boiling water varied arithmetically with the height, and at the rate of one degree of the thermometric scale for every 549.05 feet. Multiplying the difference of the boiling-point by this number of feet, we have the elevation. The weight of the atmosphere, as indicated by the barometer, is also a means for ascertaining the height of mountains or of plains; but correction must be made for the effects of expansion or contraction, and for capillarity, or the attraction between the mercury and the glass tube, at least whenever great exactness is required. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... glen; so bright were the flashes, being alternately fork and sheet lightning, that for nearly an hour the glare never ceased. The thunder was much louder than last night's, and a slight mizzling rain for about an hour fell. The barometer had fallen considerably for the last two days, so I anticipated a change. The rain was too slight to be of any use; the temperature of the atmosphere, however, was quite changed, for by the morning the thermometer was down ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... aerostatic establishments. He was at the head of the newly created Conservatoire des arts et metiers, and occupied himself with experiments in new compositions of permanent colours, and in 1798 constructed a metal-covered barometer for measuring comparative heights, by observing the weight of mercury issuing from the tube. Summoned by Bonaparte to take part as chief of the aerostatic corps in the expedition to Egypt, he considerably extended his field of activity, and for three years and a half was, to quote ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... dead if he lived, filled him with peculiar and at times conspicuous emotions. It was like attending to a living corpse, if such a thing could be conceived. And Mercer had conceived it. Kent had come to regard him as more or less of a barometer giving away Cardigan's secrets. He had not told Cardigan, but had kept the discovery for his ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... that during the month the average fluctuation of the barometer at Cape Sheridan amounts to 1.2 inches, being greatest in ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... ruled by the wheat-crop within his own horizon, and the wheat-crop by the weather. Thus in person, he became a sort of flesh-barometer, with feelers always directed to the sky and wind around him. The local atmosphere was everything to him; the atmospheres of other countries a matter of indifference. The people, too, who were not farmers, the rural multitude, saw in the god of the weather a more important personage ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... of the calm, the barometer fell so low as to induce Captain Osborn to believe that they should have a severe gale, and every preparation was made to meet it, should it come on. Nor was he mistaken: towards midnight the clouds gathered up fast, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... bad news to paralyze. From cheer to despair, from the slightest sense of discomfort to the agony of lacerated nerves, digestive power goes down. Affected thus, digestive power wanes or increases, goes down or up, as mercury in a barometer ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... Morgan remarks, "tells us that a glacier behaves in many respects like a river, and discusses how the crust of the earth behaves under the stresses to which it is subjected. Weatherwise people comment on the behavior of the mercury in the barometer as a storm approaches. When Mary, the nurse maid, returns with the little Miss Smiths from Master Brown's birthday party, she is narrowly questioned as ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... natural philosophy, which is popularly termed "Suction," may be exhibited in a thousand different ways, and yet all are the result of but one cause. When we witness the various phenomena of the air and common pump,—the barometer and the cupping glass,—the sipping of our tea, and the traversing of an insect on the mirror or the roof,—the operations appear so very dissimilar, that we are ready to attribute them to the action of a variety of agents. But it is not so;—for when we trace ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... of October to the 1st of April. In the winter season there are extremely violent gales of wind from the north-west, that sometimes last for three days together. Their arrival is generally foretold by the rapid falling of the barometer; and at Perth it is almost always preceded by the rising of the estuary. A singular storm visited the district of Australind in the night of the 17th June, 1842. It crossed the Leschenault estuary, and entered the forest, making a lane through the trees ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... she stood in front of him critically, with her head on one side. Without knowing it, the child had come to look upon the state of the poor king's hat as emblematical of his state of mind. When it shut up like a closed concertina his barometer ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... At Quebec, the barometer of piety, if I may be excused so bold a metaphor, held at the same level as that of Montreal, and he would be greatly deceived who, having read only the history of the early years of the latter city, should despair of finding in the centre of edification founded by Champlain, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... it. Born at Granville and thoroughly Norman in character, the admiral concealed the most unshakable determination under an appearance of the greatest good-nature. I never met a more thorough-born sailor. He divined what weather was coming, foretold it long before the barometer did, and took all the necessary precautions in advance. He was the very personification of the seafaring instinct. Besides this, he had a long record of bravery behind him. At Navarino, where he commanded the Armide, he came up and lay with true ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... chapter will be to give the reader some little insight into the habits of the woodcock, and the mode of snaring them in the forests of Le Morvan, during the month of November. At the close of this month, Dame Nature's barometer, their instinct, far better than the quicksilver, tells them the December rains are close at hand; and that if they remain in their hiding-places in the low grounds, they will be driven out by the approaching deluge. They at length make up their ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... but the wind had changed to the east and the barometer threatened more bad weather to come. When Seth came in to breakfast he found his helper sound asleep in a kitchen chair, his head on the table. The young man was pretty well worn out. Atkins insisted upon his going ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... material for the literary artist. A good hay day is a good day for the writer and the poet, because it has a certain crispness and pureness; it is positive; it is rich in sunshine; there is a potency in the blue sky which you feel; the high barometer raises your spirits; your thoughts ripen as the hay cures. You can sit in a circle of shade beneath a tree in the fields, or in front of the open hay-barn doors, as I do, and feel the fruition and ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... or the other." Curran objected to Byron's talking of himself as a great drawback on his poetry. "Any subject," he said, "but that eternal one of self. I am weary of knowing once a month the state of any man's hopes or fears, rights or wrongs. I would as soon read a register of the weather, the barometer up to so many inches to-day and down so many inches to-morrow. I feel scepticism all over me at the sight of agonies on paper—things that come as regular and notorious as the full of ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... ease the hawser as much as possible, Captain Barrington, when he had noted the drop of the barometer, had ordered a "bridle," or rope attachment, placed on the end of the cable, so as to give it elasticity and lessen the effect of sudden strains, but the mountainous seas that pounded against the blunt bows of the Southern Cross were proving the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... hours of Madras, the barometer fell rapidly. Great clouds rose up upon the horizon, and the captain ordered all ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... acquaintance, but whom, in spite of many carefully concealed advances, he had found it impossible to know better. Captain Pratt had reached that stage in his profession of raising himself when he had become a social barometer. He was excessively careful whom he knew, what women he danced with, what houses he visited; and any of his acquaintances who cared to ascertain their own social status to a hair's-breadth had only to apply to it the touchstone of Captain ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... do recover. In the meantime, they are perforce reducing their consumption—their standard of living—because they have largely exhausted their securities, commodities or credit to continue the borrowing of our commodities for their own short production, as during the war. The exchange barometer is today witness of the end of this procedure of living on borrowed money. In passing, it may be mentioned that exchange is no more a cause of their inability to buy from us than is the barometer the cause of blizzards. The storm is that ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... question, which has raised great contention among philosophers: viz. whereas water is more than eight hundred times heavier than air, how does it happen, that the latter when replete with watery vapours, depresses the mercury in the barometer; so that its fall is an indication of rain?[11]" he has also enquired into "the weight of the atmosphere on a human body, and its different pressure at different times;[12]" and he has illustrated and confirmed the medicinal part by several ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... an equal number of respirations we consume more oxygen at the level of the sea than on a mountain. The quantity of oxygen inspired and carbonic acid expired must, therefore, vary with the height of the barometer. In our climate the difference between summer and winter in the carbon expired, and therefore necessary for food, is as ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... hitherto been clear, became overcast, heavy masses of dark, thunderous cloud slowly gathering in the south-western quarter and gradually spreading athwart the sky until the whole of the visible heavens were obscured. The barometer dropped slightly, indicating, in conjunction with the aspect of the sky, a probable change of wind and a consequent interruption to their hitherto highly ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... spotless to all eyes but its own. One little stain of rust will be conspicuous on a brightly polished blade, but if it be all dirty and dull, a dozen more or fewer will make little difference. As men grow better they become like that glycerine barometer recently introduced, on which a fall or a rise that would have been invisible with mercury to record it takes up inches, and is glaringly conspicuous. Good people sometimes wonder, and sometimes are made doubtful and sad about themselves, by this abiding and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... passed through this belt, and rejoiced in the growing clearness of the upper sky, I saw that my only prospect would be in cloud-land. After many windings, along which the blossoms and buds of the fruit-trees indicated the altitude as exactly as any barometer, we finally reached the crest of the topmost height, the frontier of Appenzell and the battle-field of Voeglisegg, where the herdsman first measured his strength with the soldier and the monk, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... arriving at the sea-level, make daily observations with your boiling-point thermometer, barometer, and aneroid, as they are all subject to changes in their index-errors. As soon as you have an opportunity, compare them with a standard barometer, compare also your ordinary thermometer and azimuth-compass with standard instruments, and finally, have them carefully re-verified ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... finally settled down into a quiet monotonous routine of eating, smoking, watching the barometer, and sleeping twelve hours a day. The gale with which we were favoured two weeks ago afforded a pleasant thrill of temporary excitement and a valuable topic of conversation; but we have all come to coincide in the opinion of the Major, that it was a "curious thing," and are anxiously ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... hundred stations scattered over the continent, exactly synchronized by telegraph, yielded deductions that steadily grew more and more consistent and reliable, until at length those particularly fickle instruments, the weather-vane, the thermometer, the barometer and the magnetic fluid, have formed, in combination, almost an "arm of precision." The predictions put forth in the "small hours" each morning by the central office in Washington assume only the modest title of "Probabilities." Some additional expenditure, with a doubling of the number of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Elysium. During the whole evening he exchanged not a syllable with Mr. Gresham,—who indeed was not much given to converse with those around him in the House. Erle said a few good-natured words to him, and Mr. Monk praised him highly. But in reading the general barometer of the party as regarded himself, he did not find that the mercury went up. He was wretchedly anxious, and angry with himself for his own anxiety. He scorned to say a word that should sound like an entreaty; and yet he had placed his whole heart on a thing which seemed to be slipping from him for ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... there will be either wind or rain. There is neither wind nor rain. .'. The barometer has ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... assumed a different appearance—the white clouds had been exchanged for others dark and murky, the wind roared at intervals, and the rain came down in torrents. Captain Wilson went down into the cabin to examine the barometer. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... appears, from Captain Stirling's report, that the thermometer, in the hot months of January, February, and March, averaged, in the morning, about 60 deg.; at noon, about 78 deg.; and in the evening 65 deg. The barometer averaged about 30 deg. The weather generally fine,—some rain and showery weather, and occasionally thunder ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... The barometer being adapted only to ascertain the degree of exhaustion in the condenser where its variations were small, the vibrations of the mercury rendered it very difficult, if not impracticable, to ascertain the state of the exhaustion of the cylinder at the different ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... nice, and now the Isthmus of Panama was only two days ahead, across the Caribbean Sea; but the report spread that the barometer was falling and a change in weather evidently was due. Toward evening the sailors tightened the awning and made things more secure, as if they were preparing for a storm. The sun set gorgeously crimson—an angry sun; the petrels, skimming the waves about the ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... the room other nymphs, painted at full length in lively colors, are bearing aloft various symbols of the sea—this one a sextant, that a chart, another a compass, a fourth a bannerol, sufficiently prosaic in idea, though not ungraceful in fact, as witness the floating damsel who carries a barometer lightly as a mermaid carries her glass, or the figure with the red-gold hair whose back alone we see as she unrolls her map. But it is not easy to say why we should recur to mythology for our national ornamentation, or why ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... indication of our having a gale, the barometer having fallen considerably since the morning; while the sea got up more and more and the horizon ahead became banked with a mass of blue-black clouds as dark as night, patches of lighter vapour also scudding rapidly ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the captain's breakfast dishes, made his weather memoranda from the barometer for posting in the main saloon, and was dusting the captain's table, when he chanced to notice the framed picture of a ship on the cabin wall. He had seen it before, but now he noticed the tiny name, scarcely decipherable, ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... not to melt. Towards evening the barometer, which had been falling all day, went lower and lower. All creation was still. Not a sound broke the awful quiet; only in our ears there seemed to be an unnatural singing which was painful, and we closed our eyes in weariness, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... "The domestic barometer is set rather that way," said Cicely. "You see, Murrey has been away for ever so long, and, of course, there will be lots of things he won't be used to, and I'm afraid matters may be rather strained ...
— When William Came • Saki
... wordless ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to mark how the .. barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time before emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... reached, Gay Lussac alone made a second ascent, on the morning of September 15, 1804, from the garden of the Repository of Models, and rose, by a gradual ascent, to a great elevation. He continued to take observations at short intervals of the state of the barometer, the thermometer, and the hygrometer, of which he has given a tabular view, but he unfortunately neglected to mark the time at which they were made—a point of material importance, for the results would of course be modified by the progress of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... knitting—that classic task seemed done; but she was smoothing and folding the completed work with her white comely hand, and smiling over it, as if in complacent approval, when I entered the room. At the fire-side sat the he-colonel inspecting a newly-invented barometer; at another window, in the farthest recess of the room, stood Miss Jane Poyntz, with a young gentleman whom I had never before seen, but who turned his eyes full upon me with a haughty look as the servant announced my name. He was tall, well proportioned, decidedly handsome, but with that expression ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "His music is a barometer," continued the lady, "and by it the neighborhood nightly observes whether Miss Sherwood has been nice to ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... noticed that the measurements are independent of the actual height of the barometer, and if several readings are taken continuously, the result will not be sensibly affected by a simultaneous change of the barometer. Almost all the readings were taken at a temperature of about 20 C., and in the present state of the work corrections ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... of the planet, nearly the whole of its population enjoy the advantages of tropical regularity. There are two brief rainy seasons on the Equator and in its neighbourhood, and one at each of the tropics. Outside these the cold of winter is aggravated by cloud and mist. The barometer records from 20 inches to 21 inches at the sea-level. Storms are slight, brief, and infrequent; the tides are insignificant; and sea-voyages were safe and easy even before Martial ingenuity devised vessels which ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... walking and sat conversing until nearly ten o'clock, when, by general consent, they retired, except Will, who remained up to keep a lookout, and to watch the barometer ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... My strength to preserve my son's secret had failed me, and my only chance of resisting the betrayal of it lay in the childish resource of keeping out of the way. I shut myself into my room till I could bear it no longer. I watched my opportunity, and paid stolen visits over and over again to the barometer in the hall. I mounted to Morgan's rooms at the top of the tower, and looked out hopelessly through rain-mist and scud for signs of a carriage on the flooded valley-road below us. I stole down again to the servants' hall, and questioned the old postman (half-tipsy by this ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... one taste one bottle, one taste one fish, one taste one barometer. This shows no distinguishing sign when ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... he set himself in earnest to cut out his friend with Mrs. Woffington. He had already caused his correspondence with that lady to grow warm and more tender, by degrees. Keeping a copy of his last, he always knew where he was. Cupid's barometer rose by rule; and so he arrived by just gradations at an artful climax, and made her in terms of chivalrous affection, an offer of a house, etc., three hundred a year, etc., not forgetting his heart, etc. He knew that the ladies of the stage ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... of the ships having been completed, every thing was ready for the captain's departure. When, in the afternoon of that day, the vessels were upon the point of sailing, the mercury in the barometer fell unusually low; and there was every other presage of an approaching storm, which might reasonably be expected to come from the southward. This circumstance induced our commander in some degree to hesitate, and especially as night was at ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... "The barometer is falling," remarked Rucker as he prepared to go below. "We're going to have a nasty spell, I guess. You might take a double reef in that jib if it gets worse. If there's any shortnin' of sail beyond that, call ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... of the heights of mountains appended to the second edition of his Elements of Geometry, the altitude of this remarkable peak is stated to be 5162 English feet, but on what authority is not mentioned. That of Ben Nevis, in Inverness-shire, as ascertained by the barometer, is 4380.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... barometer every morning, and says it will clear up in the afternoon. Shall we go out now, or shall we give ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... The barometer has risen, the sunshine of pardon breaks through the clouds. If only it were all over! Such excitement is infectious! (To IDA.) You see you do not yet have to think ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... water, and you feel it burdened by a great weight; air is therefore heavy. Put air in equilibrium with other bodies, and you can measure its weight. From these observations were constructed the barometer, the siphon, the air-gun, and the air-pump. All the laws of statics and hydrostatics were discovered by experiments as simple as these. I would not have my pupil study them in a laboratory of experimental physics. I dislike all that array of machines and instruments. The parade ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... John Ryder's eyes that were regarded as the most reliable barometer of his mental condition. Wonderful eyes they were, strangely eloquent and expressive, and their most singular feature was that they possessed the uncanny power of changing colour like a cat's. When their owner was at peace ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... had been a fashionable resort for sporting squires at the beginning of the century. The hall was wainscotted in yellow painted wood; on the right-hand side there was a large brown press, with glass doors, surmounted by a pair of buffalo horns; on the opposite wall hung a barometer; and the wide, slowly sloping staircase, with its low thick banisters, ascended in front of the street door. The apartments were not, however, furnished with ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... The Principles Involved. The Application of the Gyroscope. Fore and Aft Gyroscopic Control. Angle Indicator. Pendulum Stabilizer. Steering and Controlling Wheel. Automatic Stabilizing Wings. Barometers. Aneroid Barometer. Hydroplanes. Sustaining Weight of Pontoons. Shape ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... meadows, hot suns, birds singing, etc., in midwinter, with a cool, steady breeze from the sea invigorating me all the while, is no doubt just what I require; but to-day we have a north-easter, which answers to your south-west wind, with pouring rain, and yet my spirits are not going down with the barometer. All the same, the said barometer will probably soon recover himself; for I believe these heavy storms seldom last long. There is no fire in the room where I sit, which is the Bishop's room when he is here; no fire-place indeed, as it opens into Mrs. Selwyn's room. The thermometer ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are so weak-minded as to affect pictures and statues. Mr. Harcourt Talboys was far too practical to indulge in any foolish fancies. A barometer and an umbrella-stand were the only adornments ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... hundred grains, and showed how it might be applied to measure the length of wire by its resistance. He was awarded a medal for his paper by the Society. The same year he invented an apparatus which enabled the reading of a thermometer or a barometer to be registered at a distance by means of an electric contact made by the mercury. A sound telegraph, in which the signals were given by the strokes of a bell, was also patented by Cooke and Wheatstone in May ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Thus, 100 c.c. of an ordinary aqueous solution would, if heated from 10 C. to 20 C., expand to about 100.15 c.c. 100 c.c. of a gas similarly warmed would expand to about 103.5 c.c., and a fall of one inch in the barometer would have a very similar effect. And in measuring gases we have not only to take into account variations in volume due to changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure, but also that which is observed when a gas is measured wet ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... added to which there was not time to tell it. Little Sally St. Leonard played his wife, and Robina was his mother-in-law. So much depends upon one's mood. What an ocean of boredom might be saved if science could but give us a barometer foretelling us our changes of temperament! How much more to our comfort we could plan our lives, knowing that on Monday, say, we should be feeling frivolous; on ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... of a fly, or vane, suggests the principle of an instrument for measuring the altitude of mountains, which perhaps deserves a trial, since, if it succeed only tolerably, it will form a much more portable instrument than the barometer. It is well known that the barometer indicates the weight of a column of the atmosphere above it, whose base is equal to the bore of the tube. It is also known that the density of the air adjacent to the instrument will depend both on the weight of air above it, and on the heat of the ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... before the world, instead of shrinking in modest reserve beneath their own green leaves, like the Puritan primrose and the retiring violet? The answer is, Because of the extreme rarity of the mountain air. It's the barometer that does it. At first sight, I will readily admit, this explanation seems as fanciful as the traditional connection between Goodwin Sands and Tenterden Steeple. But, like the amateur stories in country papers, it is 'founded on fact,' for all that. (Imagine, by the way, a tale founded entirely ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... afternoon of the third day following the suicide of the skipper that the Trade wind, which up to then had been blowing with its usual steadiness, began to weaken, and upon consulting the barometer I found that the mercury was falling rather rapidly. At the same time I became aware that the aspect of the firmament was undergoing a subtle change, the clear, brilliant blue of the sky gradually fading to a colourless pallor, as though a succession of veils ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... should be: "or Vice Rewarded," "since the rascal Mr. B. it is who gets the prize rather than Pamela," has its pertinency from our later and more enlightened view. But such was the eighteenth century. The exposure of an earlier time is one of the benefits of literature, always a sort of ethical barometer of an age—all the more trustworthy in reporting spiritual ideals because it has no intention of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... ought also to take delight in a landscape school which simply did not exist among the ancients. If sea and sky as GOD spreads them before our eyes are admirable, I can't think how one can be blind to delight in such pictures as 'The Fall of the Barometer,' 'The Incoming Tide,' or Leader's 'February Fill-dyke.' Things which no Florentine ever approached, as transcripts of Nature's mood ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... Now, in addition to observations of the clouds, the sea and the air at the surface, it helps—more, it is all-important—to check these observations by some scientific instrument which cannot lie. For this, we must use the barometer, which, as you probably know, is merely an instrument for weighing the air. When the air is heavier the barometer rises, when the air grows ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... cheerful tone of your letter proves to me that things are going well with you in Jena, and I congratulate you that such is the case. I cannot boast the same of myself; the state of the barometer, which is so favorable to you, brings on my spasms, and I do not sleep well. Owing to this state of things, it was very welcome news to me to hear from Koerner that he could not undertake the journey. I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... wicker basket; its cargo consisted of a few bags of sand for ballast, a barometer, and a couple of small kedges with lines to match. I had no idea a balloon could be brought up, all standing, by ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... grumbling down into the cabin, and I watched the ocean. The barometer was low, and out of the west a pack of fat black clouds swarmed up from the horizon, stacking themselves one upon another till they resembled a huge pile of rounded boulders which a sudden puff of wind might bring toppling down upon us. The faint scouting puffs of air—"the devil's breath" of the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... error, and this error can be readily corrected by frequent observations to determine latitude and longitude. A series of barometrical observations was kept going whether we were on the move or not. That is, a mercurial barometer was read three times a day, regularly, at seven, at one, and at nine. We had aneroid barometers for work away from the river and these were constantly compared with and adjusted to the mercurials. The tubes of mercury sometimes got broken, ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... you imagine, Miss Deane," he said. "When we took our observations yesterday there was a very weird-looking halo around the sun. This morning you may have noticed several light squalls and a smooth sea marked occasionally by strong ripples. The barometer is falling rapidly, and I expect that, as the day wears, we will encounter a heavy swell. If the sky looks wild tonight, and especially if we observe a heavy bank of cloud approaching from the north-west, you ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... daylight, then you realize suddenly that the most wonderful part of a deer's education shows itself, not in keen eyes or trumpet ears, or in his finely trained nose, more sensitive a hundred times than any barometer, but in his forgotten feet, which seem to have eyes and nerves and brains packed into their hard shells instead of the senseless matter you ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long |
