"Cistern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "It was a case of much ado about nothing, and yet you nearly ran into such great danger that it makes me shudder even to think about it. There certainly was a reason for visiting the attic, though not at all of the kind you imagined. It contains a large cistern, which supplies the water for the bath and the kitchen boiler. This is fed by a tank on the roof that catches the rain, and in dry weather it is apt to get out of order. If it is not working properly, it makes ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... were others made, far more magnificent and costly, for the temple itself. There was a silver cistern or tank, large enough to hold three thousand gallons of wine. This tank was to be used by the inhabitants of Delphi in their great festivals. There was also a smaller cistern, or immense goblet, as it might, perhaps, more properly be called, which was made of gold. ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... water. Nature has provided him with an extra stomach, in which he keeps a store of drink, and with a hump on his back, made of jelly-like fat, which, in time of need, is absorbed into the system and appropriated as food. Is it not strange to think of a creature with a cistern and a meat-safe inside him? A horse would be useless in the desert, where no oats or grass can be had; but the brave, patient camel goes steadily on without complaint till the oasis is reached: then ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... Besides this, they had more than twenty sheep (llamas) with their lambs, attended by shepherds, all made of gold." In a description of one lot of golden articles, sent to Spain in 1534 by Pizarro, there is mention of "four llamas, ten statues of women of full size, and a cistern of gold, so curious that it excited the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... well-preserved specimens distinctly resembles a lyre. These mosquitoes are essentially domestic insects, for they are very rarely found except in houses or in their immediate vicinity. Once they enter a room they will scarcely leave it except to lay their eggs in a near-by cistern, water-pot, or ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... they: Rabbi Eliezer, the son of Hyrcanus; Rabbi Joshua, the son of Hananiah (24); Rabbi Jose, the Priest; Rabbi Simeon, the son of Nataniel; and Rabbi Eleazar, the son of Arach. 11. He used thus to recount their praise: "Eliezer, the son of Hyrcanus, is a cemented cistern, which loses not a drop (25); Joshua, the son of Hananiah, happy is she that bare him (26); Jose, the Priest, is a pious man (27); Simeon, the son of Nataniel, is a fearer of sin; Eleazar, the son ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... considered rat and mouse destroyers. I dare say they are, though the two I once kept (I drowned them in the cistern) were more notorious as crockery destroyers than anything else. I thought, on the whole, that they exterminated more raw beef than rats and mice, so I consigned ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... is the listening-post, keeping watch over the cycles of time. Five or six captive sentinels are buried there in that cistern's dark, their faces grimacing through the vent-hole, their skull-caps barred with red as with gleams from hell, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... from his cloudy cistern, pours On the parch'd earth enriching showers; The grove, the garden, and the field A thousand joyful ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... brought him to a domed pavilion and said to him, "This is where the Lady Jamilah sitteth." So he examined it and found it of the rarest of pleasances, full of all manner paintings in gold and lapis lazuli. It had four doors, whereto man mounted by five steps, and in its centre was a cistern of water, to which led down steps of gold all set with precious stones. Amiddlewards the basin was a fountain of gold, with figures, large and small, and water jetting in gerbes from their mouths; and when, by reason of the issuing forth of the water, they attuned themselves to various tones, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Necklace, and, says she, "'Tis no sin, and not coveting one's neighbour's goods, for neither St. Ursula nor the Jesuits are any Neighbours of mine;" and as for my Master, he stared at a Great St. Christopher, mighty fine in Silver, and said that it would have looked very well as an Ornament for a Cistern ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... joke can be cleverly varied by taking the lid off your cistern and making the green line lead in that direction. Great care should be taken, however, to keep an exact account of the number of guests who succumb to this trick, for although an unexpected "ducking" is excruciatingly humorous, ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... first place, the oscillating bronze cylinder, A, is cast in one piece with the distribution cock, a, Fig. 3, and its seat, b, also of bronze, is adjusted and fastened by means of the screw, b, to the air reservoir, C', cast with its cistern, C, acting as foundation or bed plate for the motor. This cistern is held either on the base of the cast iron bearing frame, D, of the main shaft, d, d, Figs. 1 and 2, or directly on the sewing machine table, Figs. 3 and 4, by means of two pins, e and e', so that it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... going to tell you, sir; the plumber has been here, because the tap of your cistern came off in my hand. It wasn't my fault; there had been a heavy ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 36 inches in length, filled with the open end upwards with refined mercury—thus boiled and suddenly inverted into a cistern, which is furnished with a leathern bag, on which the atmosphere, acting by its varying weight, presses the fluid metal up to corresponding heights in the tube, easily read off by an external scale attached thereto. By attentive ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... swore on a stack of red chips that we would never own another dog. Six promising pups that had been presented to us, blooded setters and pointers, had gone the way of all dog flesh, with the distemper and dog buttons, and by falling in the cistern, and we had been bereaved via dog misfortunes as often as John R. Bennett, of Janesville, has been bereaved on the nomination for attorney general. We could not look a pup in the face but it would get sick, and so we concluded never ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... at breakfast nearly everybody had had similar experiences. Miss Strong confessed to a patent mattress with a broken spring jutting up in the center, round which she had been obliged to lie in a curve. Linda and Francie had slept near the water-cistern, which alarmed them with weird noises, and Bess and Kitty, trying to open their window wider, had found it lacked sash-cords, and descended like a guillotine, sending the prop that had upheld it, flying into the street. Though they groused at the time, the ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the pavement, and no half-picked bones, 150 To kindle fierce debate, or to disgust That nicer sense, on which the sportsman's hope, And all his future triumphs must depend. Soon as the growling pack with eager joy Have lapped their smoking viands, morn or eve, From the full cistern lead the ductile streams, To wash thy court well-paved, nor spare thy pains, For much to health will cleanliness avail. Seek'st thou for hounds to climb the rocky steep, And brush the entangled covert, whose nice scent 160 O'er greasy fallows, and frequented ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Then I asked the domestic to get some water while I should make the fire. The honest daughter of toil was absent for many moments, and when she returned, it was to report, with some excitement, that there was neither well nor cistern on ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... arrival! Never, surely, was such food heard of on earth,—at least, not by me. Well, the above-mentioned persons are nearly all that have entered into the hallowed shade of our avenue; except, indeed, a certain sinner who came to bargain for the grass in our orchard, and another who came with a new cistern. For it is one of the drawbacks upon our Eden that it contains no water fit either to drink or to bathe in; so that the showers have become, in good truth, a godsend. I wonder why Providence does not cause a clear, cold fountain to ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... did n't bite the pole," continued Susan; "he said as he wa'n't no cribber. I told him it wa'n't cribs as was the question, but clothes-poles, an' I might of spoken some stronger, but just then he stepped on the edge of the cistern cover 'n' I got such a turn as drove everythin' else clean out o' my mind. You know how easy it is to turn that cover, Mrs. Lathrop, 'n' I must say that if he and it had fell in together there'd ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... six feet high, which extend among the brier bushes. Archaeologists call them the aqueducts of Seranus, the Roman camp of Holderlock, or vestiges of Theodoric, according to their fantasy. The only thing about these ruins which could be considered remarkable is a stairway to a cistern cut in the rock. Inside of this spiral staircase, instead of concentric circles which twist around with each complete turn, the involutions become wider as they proceed, in such a way that the bottom of the pit is three times as large as the opening. Is ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... to the painter's studio and knocked on the door. As he did so, he heard a quick, light step upon the stairs, and a young and very dark man, dressed in a weaver's blouse and carrying a tin pail which he had evidently just filled with water from the cistern, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... thus, but I have not been either morbid or depressed. It has been an easy life, the life of the last few months, without effort or dissatisfaction, but without zest. It is a mental tiredness, I suppose. I have written myself out, and the cistern must fill again. Yet I have had no feeling of fatigue. It would have been almost better to have had something to bear; but I am richer than I need be, Maud and the children have been in perfect health and happiness, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... remuda to be sent on in advance—in order that the sleeping quarters for the night should be ready upon their arrival. The place where the travellers were to rest that night—as Cuchillo informed the domestic—was to be at the cistern ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Who comprehends all beauty and all science, Holding infinity, that, step by step, We may advance, and find, in what seems good To Him, our gladness and our being's crown? If this were not, then what a toy the world! And what a mockery these suns and systems! And how like pumping at an empty cistern Were it to live and study and aspire! Come, then, O Art! and warm me with thy smile! Flash on my inward sight thy radiant shapes! August interpreter of thoughts divine, Whether in sound, or word, or ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... tied up, getting under weigh at the coach office. But no small cabaret for a straitened traveller being within sight, he had to seek one round the dark corner, where the cabbage leaves lay thickest, trodden about the public cistern at which women had not yet left off drawing water. There, in the back street he found one, the Break of Day. The curtained windows clouded the Break of Day, but it seemed light and warm, and it announced in legible inscriptions with appropriate pictorial ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... ground floor, the firmament its ceiling, under which the Almighty hangs out the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the night. This ceiling is also the floor of the apartment above, and in this is a cistern, shaped, as one of the authorities says, "like a bathing-tank," and containing "the waters which are above the firmament." These waters are let down upon the earth by the Almighty and his angels through the "windows of heaven." As to the movement of the sun, there was a citation of various ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the teacher, "and now, Emily, we will ask you to take us in charge as we pursue a little further this interesting, if not very edifying theme. The economic system of production and distribution by which a nation lives may fitly be compared to a cistern with a supply pipe, representing production, by which water is pumped in; and an escape pipe, representing consumption, by which the product is disposed of. When the cistern is scientifically constructed ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... glazed tear-drops that o'erlay mine eyes, Know that the soul, that moment she betrays, As I did, yields her body to a fiend Who after moves and governs it at will, Till all its time be rounded; headlong she Falls to this cistern. And perchance above Doth yet appear the body of a ghost, Who here behind me winters. Him thou know'st, If thou but newly art arriv'd below. The years are many that have pass'd away, Since to this fastness Branca Doria came." "Now," answer'd I, "methinks ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... affords ample space for the display of much skill in artificial gardening. St. Cloud and Versailles have their fountains, and why not St. James's? "Fountains, (that sprinkle or spout water, or convey water, as it never stays in the bowls or the cistern,)" says Lord Bacon, are a great beauty and refreshment; "but pools mar all, and make the garden unwholesome, and full of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... wall of solid masonry, and in his dismay almost a minute elapsed before he discovered to the left an open archway which indicated that the tunnel here turned at an angle. But how should he cross to this doorway? The coping which separated the cistern from the canal in the centre of the tunnel was too narrow and the water poured over it noisily. He was about to attempt swimming when he noticed that he was standing upon a plank, evidently placed here to be used as a bridge. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... salzkorn, and in France, as selle de cuisine. In order to obtain a finer grained and better salt, it is necessary that the original salt-crystals should be dissolved, and for this purpose parallel galleries are run into the rock, and there is dug in each of them a dyke or cistern. These dykes are then flushed with water, which is allowed to remain in them undisturbed for the space of from five to twelve months, according to the richness of the soil; and, being then thoroughly saturated with the salt that ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... there and furtively rapped on the wall to catch the hollow echo within. Then again you opened a door, expecting to step into the wilderness of a garden, and found yourself in a set of little rooms running off on a tangent, one after the other, and ending in a windowless closet and an open cistern. But the Agency gloried in its irregularities, and defied criticism. The original idea of its architect—if there was any—had vanished; but his work remained a not unpleasing variety to summer visitors accustomed to city houses, ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... aerial foot willfully in the dust. Raindrops ticked from one to another of the broad, green leaves over the harbor master's head. Water might be heard frothing in a nearby cistern. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... opened, the air will expand and force the water out of the opening. This explains in a general way the operation of a pneumatic water-supply system. Water can be pumped into this air-tight tank from a well, cistern, river, lake, or from ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... that's all. I ask for a horsepond or a ditch, and you tell me the cistern's out. If it were full, there might be some hope for me," looking savagely at the baby, "I suppose ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... sometimes come and read you to sleep with the bits you wanted: "The Lord is my Shepherd," and "Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern," and "the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Muhammadan mosque consists of a stone gateway, bearing in verse the date of its building; this leads into a paved courtyard, which in a large mosque may be 40 or 50 yards long and about 20 wide. The courtyard often contains a small tank or cistern about 20 feet square, its sides lined with stone seats. Beyond this lies the building itself, open towards the courtyard, which is on its eastern side, and closed in on the other three sides, with a roof. The floor is raised about a foot above the level of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... destruction; Yea, its destruction shall be as when one dashes an earthen vessel in pieces, shattering it ruthlessly, So that not a potsherd is found among the pieces With which to take up fire from the hearth or to draw water from a cistern." ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... taken out, and a new one put in. The water-cock is something like a tap of a barrel; it is in the hold of a ship on the starboard side, and at that part of the ship called the well. By turning a handle which is inside the ship, the sea-water is let into a cistern in the hold, and it is from that pumped up to wash the decks. In some ships, the water is drawn up the side in buckets, and there is no water-cock. To get out the old water-cock, it was necessary to make the ship heel so much on her larboard side ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... receptacle just above the teats. This cavity is connected with the exterior through the milk duct in the teat, which is more or less tightly closed by the circular sphincter muscles, thus preventing the milk from flowing out. The mucous membranes of the milk duct and cistern are naturally moist. The habits of the animal render it impossible to prevent infection of the external opening at the end of the teat and there is no mechanical reason why bacteria cannot readily find their way along the moist lining membrane for some ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... goldfish, you perceive. I keep it supplied from a rain-water cistern at the top of the house, and feed 'em on bread-crumbs. Never tell me," said Mr. Basket, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... there was no sweet milk to be had in Rosebud, for it is kept in open pans, in these fetid rooms, and soon sours—and the cows had not yet come down from the hills. Water, too, was at a premium. There was none to be had, save what had fallen from the clouds, and been stored in a foul cistern, which seemed common property. I drew a pailful of it, not to displease the disheveled group which surrounded me, full of questions; but on the first turning in the lane, emptied the vessel upon the back of a pig, which was darting by ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... seem able to get on; and after he had worn out a gross of pens in the attempt to Make his Mark he felt that he would never obtain his degrees, and took a back cistern-cupboard under the roof in a poor street, and fell into a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... as well as we do. Their earlier aqueducts were conduits almost wholly underground; their later were all on arches. When they wished to carry water to a height within the city, up a watertower to a distributing cistern, or to the top storey of a building, they did so by pipes, just as we should; but when they brought water from forty miles away they preferred to bring it in channels lined with impermeable cement and carried upon arches, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... "Only the cistern pump fillin' up the rain water tank in the attic. That'll quit soon. Automatic ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... more willingly scrape the glassy tears from my face, know that soon as the soul betrays, as I did, its body is taken from it by a demon, who thereafter governs it until its time be all revolved. The soul falls headlong into this cistern, and perchance the body of the shade that here behind me winters still appears above; thou oughtest to know him if thou comest down but now. He is Ser Branca d' Oria,[5] and many years have passed since he was thus shut up." "I think," said I to him, "that ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... we spend and spend, we labour and labour, but we buy no bread of contentment, and the waters of satisfaction are far away. The satisfying bread cannot be bought; it can only be begged. The water of life cannot be taken from a cistern; it must be ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... cliffs, and bounded on the west and south-west by great ranges of mountains from five to seven thousand feet above the level of its waters—thus it was the one great reservoir into which everything MUST drain; and from this vast rocky cistern the Nile made its exit, a giant in its birth. It was a grand arrangement of nature for the birth of so mighty and important a stream as the river Nile. The Victoria N'yanza of Speke formed a reservoir ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... 6,000 francs to finish it. As the case was urgent he sold six more licenses at 1,000 francs each, but he died too soon to see the completion of his favorite work (1698). The new chateau was not finished before 1700, and even then it had no cistern. In a pen sketch of Quebec, on a manuscript map of 1699, preserved in the Depot de Cartes de la Marine, the new chateau is distinctly represented. In front is a gallery or balcony resting on a wall and buttresses ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... one-half feet high, the gift of the Daimiyo of Chikuzen. To the left is a five-story pagoda, one hundred and four feet in height, which is especially graceful. Inside a red wooden wall are arranged a series of lacquered storehouses, a holy water cistern cut out of a solid block of granite, a finely decorated building in which rest a collection of Buddhist writings. A second court is reached by a flight of stairs. Here are gifts presented by the kings of Luchu, Holland and Korea, these three countries being regarded as vassal states ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... story short, without adding another chapter, Mr. Aveling, on looking into the dark chasm by the meagre light of the lowered candle, beheld, to his amazement, the reflection of his own face in the water of a large cistern underneath the staircase, the house having formerly been supplied from the "large brewery" a short distance off. The unearthly noise was no doubt caused by air in the pipes, through which the water rushed when suddenly turned on by the brewers, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... year, called cyree, is rich, very light, of a perfect violet colour, and swims in water. In the third year the herb is declining, and the indigo it then produces, called catteld, is blackish and heavy, being the worst of the three. When the herb is cut, it is thrown into a long cistern, where it is pressed down by many stones, and the water is then let in so as to cover it all over. It remains thus certain days, till all the substance of the herb is dissolved in the water. The water ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... in that behalf, but upon what occasion the general execution thereof is stayed or not called on, in good sooth, I cannot tell. This only I know, that every function and several vocation striveth with other, which of them should have all the water of commodity run into her own cistern. ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... I found a leaky wooden bucket which, by daubing it with mud from the brink of the stream, I contrived to make passably watertight. A score of times I must have travelled to and fro between the hut and the stream before I had the cistern filled. Then I fell-to upon the foul walls within, slushing and brooming them. Bats dropped from the roof and flew blundering against me: I drove them forth from the window. The mud floor became a quag: I seized a spade and shovelled it clean, mud and slime and worse filth ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... a cistern of huge stones beneath the floor of the cell of a friar of the order and the same size as his cell. The only aperture was in the floor of the cell above and closed by a heavy grating, the key to which, kept ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... of the living light eternal! Who underneath the shadow of Parnassus Has grown so pale, or drunk so at its cistern, ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... which, when put in motion by lowering the ends, crushed the grapes. The juice flowed out of the tree by five openings, and fell into a stone vat, from whence it flowed through a channel made of bark and coated with resin, into the species of cistern excavated in the rock where Jesus was confined before his Crucifixion. At the foot of the winepress, in the stone vat, there was a sort of sieve to stop the skins, which were put on one side. When they had made their winepress, they filled ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... pretended not to know her. They were most assiduous in their attentions to the landlord, bowing down before him, watching for his least words, and nodding their approval of them. Madame Boche suddenly ran out and dispersed a group of children who were paddling about in front of the cistern, the tap of which they had turned full on, causing the water to flow over the pavement; and when she returned, upright and severe in her skirts, crossing the courtyard and glancing slowly up at all the windows, as though to assure herself of the good behavior of the household, she ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... told you, he done his best. I was willin' to quit long 'fore he was. Fact was, he overdone it a little, an' he had to throw water in my face 'fore he got through; an' he done that as thorough as the other thing. I was somethin' like a chickin jest out o' the cistern. I crawled off to bed the best I could, but I didn't lay on my back fer a good ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... ditch, the little inclosure—uncultivated, it is true, but gay in its sterility; because the mosses there were high, because the wild heliotropes and ravenelles there mixed their perfumes, because beneath the tall chestnuts issued a large spring, a prisoner in a cistern of marble, and that upon the thyme all around alighted thousands of bees from the neighboring plains, while chaffinches and redthroats sang cheerfully among the flowers of the hedge. It was to this place the two coffins were brought, attended by a silent and ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... should be as near midships as possible, out of the reach of sunshine, but in a good light for reading, and in a situation in which it will be but little liable to sudden gusts of wind and changes of temperature. Great care should be taken to ascertain the exact height of its cistern above the water-line, and in order to facilitate night observations every possible arrangement should be made for placing behind it a ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... from those we leave behind. We will toil in our lot while God pleases, and when he summons us we will calmly depart. When the silver cord becomes untwined, and the golden bond broken,—when the wheel of action stands still in the exhausted cistern of our life,—may we lie down in the light of that faith which makes so beautiful the face of the dying Christian, and has converted death's ghastly silence to a peaceful sleep; may we rise to a holier and more visible communion, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... the hill that rises from the plateau, and found at its base a cistern, the sole token we had seen of the domain of man, except the dogs and cats that had returned to the primitive. It was a basin cut in the solid rock, and doubtless had been the water supply of the tribes that dwelt here hemmed in by enemies. There was about ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... cannot bear the slightest inconvenience, not even the weight of an insect, and "desire fails:" then is the "silver cord loosed, the golden bowl broken; the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel is broken at the cistern;" all the animal and vital functions at length cease, and every essential organ of life decays; "then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Jesus and his holy angels that I have seen and still see in that part of the desert which lies between Syria and the Saracens' country, monks of whom one was shut up for thirty years and lived on barley bread and muddy water, while another in an old cistern kept himself alive on five ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... roofs during heavy or protracted rains. In some localities where the supply of water is excessively hard or is so meager that it is not sufficient for all household purposes, pipes from the eaves are connected with an underground cistern, thus conserving the prized rain water. Otherwise, the common practice is simply to equip leaders or down-spouts with "quarter-bend" sections at the lower ends to keep water away from the foundation. This is a cheap and easy way; but if the land does not slope away from the house enough so that ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... supposed to dally with it myself, having been brought up on cistern water, but I find in traveling that I entertain a more kindly feeling for you strange foreign people when I carry a medium-sized headlight. Come along, now. Don't compel ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... took her to the cistern. As the water gushed from the pump I spelled "w-a-t-e-r." Instantly she tapped my hand for a repetition, and then made the word herself with a radiant face. Just then the nurse came into the cistern-house bringing her little sister. I put Helen's hand on the baby and formed ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... month was a busy one for us. We had a platform to lay at Morrisania, a chimney to build at Tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at White Plains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at Tuckahoe. Besides these, there were platforms to build at Van Cortlandt and Mount Kisco, water-towers at Highbridge and Ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at Caryl, a culvert and an ash-pit ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... and magnificently wrought; but the implements and vessels of the temple were of the yellow treasure. Huge vases stood upon the floor filled with the produce of their land—offerings to the sun; perfume-censers, water-cruses, cistern-pipes, reservoirs, all were of the rich, ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... your ventilating flues in the outer walls if you expect the air to rise through them in cold weather; for it will not, if they reach the moon, unless it is warmer than that lying at their base. You may as well expect water to rise from the cistern to the tank in the attic because the pipe runs there, as that air will rise simply because there is a passage for it. Sometimes holes are made into the chimney-flues, but this is robbing the stoves or the fireplaces. It is better to build an independent flue so close that it shall ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... holdings, varying in size from 4-1/2 acres to 7 acres. The cottages which stand upon the holdings have been built in pairs, at a cost of about L380 per pair, which price includes drainage, a drinking well, and, I think, a soft-water cistern. These are extremely good dwellings, and I was much struck with their substantial and practical character. They comprise three bedrooms, a large living-room, a parlour, and a scullery, containing a sink and a bath. Also there is a tool-house, a ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... the day of their occurrence. The poisoning of the cat, to be sure, was sad, though unavoidable, and so was the destruction by fire of the cook's hair; but the flooding of the house, after the repairs you executed on the great cistern, and the blowing out of the laundry window at the time the clothes-boiler was cracked, with other trifles ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Yes, the cistern is empty, on account of the drought we have had these two months, and the spring is a mile away. It is too far for me, and especially for the child who is not strong. I don't dare leave him alone in the house here; and I don't dare leave him ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... false, to explain it to her. She lived by the word proceeding out of the mouth of God. When life begins to speculate upon itself, I suspect it has begun to die. And seldom has there been a fitter soul, one clearer from evil, from folly, from human device—a purer cistern for such water of life as rose in the heart of Janet Grant to pour itself into, than the soul of Sir Gibbie. But I must not call any true soul a cistern: wherever the water of life is received, it sinks and softens and hollows, until it reaches, far down, the springs of life there also, that ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... uplifted above the lower lands, It lacks but little, truly, that with the heavenly sphere Around the earth revolving, its towers would interfere. And they who dwell within it must seek the Milky Way; There is no nearer cistern which win their thirst allay: Their horses there go browsing, and crop the stars that pass, As other beasts the blossoms that open in ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... took the house at what was then 57 Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, where he resided for the rest of his life. His name appears first in 1725 among the ratepayers of the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, but not long ago a lead cistern was found in the house, bearing his initials and the date 1721. On what terms he took the house is not known; it is not mentioned ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... comforted her. She was not merely of the same flesh and blood with them—not even of the same soul and spirit only, but of the same failing, sinning, blundering breed; and that not alone in the general way of sin, ever and again forsaking the fountain of living water, and betaking herself to some cistern, but in their individual sins was she not their near relative? Their shame was hers: the son of her mother, the son of her father was a thief! She was and would be more one with them than ever before! If they ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... obvious reasons impracticable, cisterns are made, and rain conducted to them through pipes leading from the roof. The water has thus taken up all the dust, soot, and other impurities found upon the roof, and, unless filtered, can not be considered desirable drink. The best cistern will include a filter of some sort, and this is accomplished in two ways. Either the cistern is divided into two parts, the water being received on one side, and allowed to slowly filter through a wall of porous brick, regarded by many as an ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... or I should rather say, can you believe - or (in the famous old Tichborne trial phrase) would you be surprised to learn, that all you have read of Vailima - or Subpriorsford, as I call it - is entirely false, and we have no ice-machine, and no electric light, and no water supply but the cistern of the heavens, and but one public room, and scarce a bedroom apiece? But, of course, it is well known that I have made enormous sums by my evanescent literature, and you will smile at my false humility. The point, however, is much on our ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rectangular, as far as it could be seen. Inside, it was built like a small circular cistern, smoothly cemented, and contracting above in a dome, that opened by a square hole to the well-shaft above. Like the stones in the outer chamber, the cement was coated with scales of dried mud. The shaft was now certainly closed at the top, for in the daytime ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... town. And there was no cistern in the middle of the town of Korkhah, and I said to all ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... spoon to stand upright in its thickness, when R—— and P——, tired with their angling, came in. After demolishing nearly a dozen eggs amongst us, and two capital salmon-trout, which our fast friend, the Anglo-Norwegian, had filched from a large cistern, where they are placed during the winter, for the benefit of his master's table; and after imbibing cauldrons of coffee—so delicious was its flavour—we showed and expressed great anxiety to pay Bruin the compliments of the season, and as strangers and Englishmen to testify to him, as loudly ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... But there, where I have garner'd up my heart; Where either I must live or bear no life,— The fountain from the which my current runs, Or else dries up; to be discarded thence! Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads To knot and gender in!—turn thy complexion there, Patience, thou young and rose-lipp'd cherubin,— Ay, there, look ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... of the Writing of a Young Taleb Manner of drawing Water from Wells Great Spring of Ghadames Bas-Relief Square of Fountains City of Ghadames Cistern of an Ancient Tower Negro's Head Ancient Ruins of Ghadames Region ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... eye, it seemed to me, he had subdued the horse and tied him to a ring in the wall which I, in my bewilderment, had failed to see; had seized me by the collar of my coat and driven me before him through a kind of tunnel to a second court in which there was a cistern and a pump. He worked that pump and held my head beneath it, cursing the servants for a pack ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... consecrate the meat; But hold it for a favour seldom known, If he be deign'd the honour to sit down. Soon as the tarts appear, Sir Crape withdraw, Those dainties are not for a spiritual maw. Observe your distance, and be sure to stand Hard by the cistern, with your cap in hand: There for diversion you may pick your teeth, Till the kind voider comes for your relief, For meer board wages, such their freedom sell, Slaves to an hour, and vassals to a bell: ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... a Sicilian version in Pitre's collection, called "The Peasant of Larcara," in which the bride's mother imagines that her daughter has a son who falls into the cistern. The groom—they are not yet married—is disgusted, and sets out on his travels with no fixed purpose of returning if he finds some fools greater than his mother-in-law, as in the Venetian tale. The first fool he meets is a mother, whose child, in playing the game called ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... details to give respecting the tragical death of Kleber. The house of Elfy Bey, which Bonaparte occupied at Cairo, and in which Kleber lived after his departure; had a terrace leading from a salon to an old ruined cistern, from which, down a few steps, there was an entrance into the garden. The terrace commanded a view of the grand square of El Beguyeh, which was to the right on coming out of the salon, while the garden was on the left. This terrace was Bonaparte's favourite promenade, especially in ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... thing in that house I always admired when I was a kid. And that was a big cistern. Most people has their cisterns outside their house, and they is a tin pipe takes all the rain water off the roof and scoots it into them. Ourn worked the same, but our cistern was right in under our kitchen floor, and they was a trap door with leather hinges opened ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... itself, here gliding along with a very slow current, is made muddy by the poles of the bargemen which are being continually thrust into its clayey bed. The consequence was that we were thirsty in the midst of the waves, since no wholesome water was brought to us by the aqueducts, no cistern was flowing, no ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... decided. It may have been due merely to the loose condition of the wet earth allowing unsupported portions to fall from the freshly exposed surface, but there was also the risk that the softer earth was sliding under the weight of that above. The workmen, two of whom were experienced well and cistern diggers, declared the risk too great and demanded to be ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... turn at the pumps, and worked vigorously; yet the water gained rapidly upon the vessel: this was partly attributable to her having struck amidships, and having a hole through her bottom, instead of her side, to supply the cistern. At about nine o'clock P.M., she began to heave, but as the tide made, the wind freshened, the sea rose, and she brought home the stream anchor, backed by the kedge, and forged on the sand. At half-past nine o'clock, a last effort ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... the shape I give the breach? A "lotus," "cistern," "crescent moon," or "sun"? "Oblong," or "cross," or "bulging pot"? for each The treatises permit. Which one? which one? And where shall I display my sovereign skill, That in the morning men may ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... example. Let two substances of equal size and form, the one made of lead, the other of cork, be put upon the surface of a cistern of water. The external circumstances are the same, but the effects are widely different—one sinks, the other floats. We must look for the cause of this difference, not in the opposite qualities ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... ushers, trumpeters, musicians, pipers, mace-bearers, court-servants, and heralds, with all the other apartments that are required in such a palace. On the upper part of the gallery, moreover, he made a stone cornice that went right round the courtyard, and beside it a water-cistern that was filled by the rains, to make some artificial fountains play at certain times. Michelozzo also directed the restoration of the chapel wherein Mass is heard, and beside it many rooms, with ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... house (whose brick foundations were discovered in 1955) appears to have been used for malting and brewing beer and ale, or carrying out some activity requiring distillation. A few pieces of lead were found which may have been part of a lead cistern for holding barley. The three brick ovens that were uncovered may have been used as drying kilns. A handle from a copper kettle was found near one of the ovens, and pieces of copper and lead pipes were unearthed not far from the building. The ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... first place, a pretty smart task, which is so far well, as we expect the Skenes to-morrow. Lockhart arrived from London. The news are that Canning is dangerously ill. This is the bowl being broken at the cistern with a vengeance. If he dies now, it will be pity it was not five months ago. The time has been enough to do much evil, but not ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... made for the education of her only legitimate son, Conrad, the other having perished by an accident on the day of his father's death. While Don John of Austria was, gathering laurels in Granada, his half-brother, Pyramus junior, had been ingloriously drowned in a cistern ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
