"Combustible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Charleston, known as the "Hint Club." Its purpose was to hint to such people that they had better look out. If they did not mend their ways, it was unnecessary to inform them more explicitly what they might expect. Houses were combustible then as now, and the use of firearms was well understood. In Georgia the legislature itself attempted coercion. Paper money was made a legal tender in spite of strong opposition, and a law was passed prohibiting any planter or merchant from exporting any produce without taking ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Cassius is but a step. Panic takes the place of confidence among the conspirators—they slink away. The spirit of the mob is uppermost—the only honor left to Caesar is the funeral-pyre. Benches are torn up, windows pulled from their fastenings, every available combustible is added to the pile, and the body of Caesar—he alone calm and untroubled amid all this mad mob—is placed upon this improvised throne of death. Torches flare and the pile ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... epidemical disorders. During July and August, extensive fires raged in different parts of Nova Scotia, especially in the eastern division of the peninsular. The protracted drought of the summer, acting upon the aridity of the forests, had rendered them more than naturally combustible; and this, facilitating both the dispersion and the progress of the fires that appeared in the early part of the season, produced an unusual warmth. On the 6th of October, the fire was evidently approaching New Castle; ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... gospel and preacher of genuine regeneration, said of Jesus that "he should baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire," thus using a most powerful symbol to characterize the nature of the work of the Holy Ghost. Everyone is familiar with the action of fire; it burns everything combustible with which it comes ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... night, perhaps owing to a gust of wind, it set fire to the drapery or loose hangings of the pavilion, which was instantly in a blaze. The flame communicated with fearful rapidity to the neighboring tents, made of light, combustible materials, and the camp was menaced with general conflagration. This occurred at the dead of night, when all but the sentinels were buried in sleep. The queen and her children, whose apartments were near hers, were in great peril, and escaped with difficulty, though ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... put us out of danger, the fire caught hold of the forecastle of the carak, where I think there was great store of benzoin, or some such combustible matter, for it flamed and flowed over the carak, which was almost in an instant all over in flames. The Portuguese now leapt over-board in great numbers, and I sent captain Grant with the boat, bidding him use his discretion in saving them. He brought me on board two gentlemen. One of them was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... obtained, at least during sufficient time to enable the chief defences to be blown up and the harbour fleet to be destroyed. If you will so far favour me, I should be gratified by having an opportunity of demonstrating to your strong mind, free from professional bias, the fact that combustible ships may be not only placed on a parity with stone forts fitted to fire red-hot shot, but secured from injury more effectually than ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... or to barrels of petroleum ready to be staved in! The wild demons of the Commune are capable of everything; an invention of incendiary firemen is quoted as an example of the diabolical genius which presided over the work of destruction; individuals wearing the fireman's uniform were seen to throw combustible liquids by means of pumps and pails on the burning houses, instead of aiding to ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... public buildings. Two or three casemates still remain, appearing like the mouths of huge ovens, surmounted by a great mass of earth and stone. These caverns, originally the safeguards of powder and other combustible munitions of war, now serve to shelter the flocks of sheep that graze upon the grass that conceals them. The floors are rendered nearly impassable by the ordure of these animals, but the vaulted ceilings are adorned ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... when thousands of barrels of petroleum had been stored up in vats, and when the combustible fluid was spouting from the wells at the rate of many hundred barrels per day. Before the present deep wells were bored, oil was not produced in sufficient quantities to cause such a conflagration, and there was never seen upon the creek a stratum of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... illustrations of this number are lanterns and torch-bearers. The lanterns were in reality torch-bearers, as they were made for holding masses of combustible material which were held in place by the ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 7, - July, 1895 • Various
... Flanderkin and forthwith sent to Newgate, and there were other arrests, which did but inflame the smouldering rage of the mob. Some of the wealthier foreigners, taking warning by the signs of danger, left the City, for there could be no doubt that the whole of London and the suburbs were in a combustible condition of discontent, needing only a spark to set ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Arabs, enlisted in Singapore and taken to the scene of action by Mr. Fontaine. The "enemy" was seldom obvious, but during the war it inflicted a loss upon us of eight killed and twenty-three wounded. We took various stockades, shot from sixty to eighty Malays, burned a good deal of what was combustible, and gave stability to the shaky rule of the Datu Klana, Syed Abdulrahman. Of this prince, who owed his firm seat on the throne to British intervention, the Resident wrote in 1880:—"Loyal to his engagements, he had gained the good will of the British Government. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... being very high, the flame soon spread itself over the roof of the palace, and catching at every combustible in its way, the invaders became so terrified at the quick progress of fire which threatened to consume themselves as well as their plunder, that they quitted the spot with precipitation. Decrying the count and his soldiers at a short distance, they directed their motions to that point. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... and rendered more combustible by wax and oil, besides the arts they had used, took fire at once. The flames roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison wall, and twining up its lofty front like burning serpents. At first they crowded round the blaze, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... spoke an Aureole of Virtue seemed to curdle above him, while his Countenance bore an Expression of Placid Triumph, which meant that he was the real Asbestos Paragon who had been tried in the Furnace and declared Non-Combustible. ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... encased in gauze wire which, while it admits oxygen to feed the flame, prevents communication between the flame and any combustible or explosive gas outside. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... wide circle was traced by a small rod, tipped apparently with sponge saturated with some combustible naphtha-like fluid, so that a pale lambent flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided it, burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely native fable-talk, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... most other bodies; and seems to have been the cause, which prevented the ingenious Dr. Franklin, and others since his time, from ascribing the powerful effects of the electric battery, and of lightning in bursting trees, inflaming combustible materials, and fusing metals, to chemical explosion; which it resembles in every other circumstance, but in the manner of the previous condensation of the materials, so as violently to attract each other, and suddenly ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... until a blaze comes; but where was I to get the punk from? I had also heard that fire had been made with lenses of glass, which, being held up to the sun, concentrate the rays and make a great heat, sufficient to set wood and like combustible things on fire; but I had no lens. Of course, I have no need to tell you that I had no matches, such as ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... engaging that Kitty answered it—kindred spirits, subconsciously recognizing each other. Fire; but neither of them knew that; or that two lonely human beings of opposite sex, in touch, constitute a first-rate combustible. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... this curiously-constituted party laboured in their efforts to get the upper hand of the fire; but it had been allowed to obtain too firm a hold upon the ship before the alarm was given; much of the cargo was of a highly combustible nature, and though, by the zeal and energy with which all hands worked, they succeeded to some extent in retarding the progress of the flames, when day at length broke, it became apparent to all ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... dead and their bodies horribly mutilated. After their successful raid, the savages destroyed everything they found in the wagons, tearing the covers into shreds, throwing the flour on the trail, and winding up by burning everything that was combustible. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... beings to which the plant belongs. We are thus driven to conclude that in most {292} cases the conditions of life play a subordinate part in causing any particular modification; like that which a spark plays, when a mass of combustibles bursts into flame—the nature of the flame depending on the combustible matter, and not on ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... that of six. That is accounted the best which is nearest the surface. It appears to be a mass of black earth held together by vegetable fibres. I know not whether the earth be bituminous, or whether the fibres be not the only combustible part; which, by heating the interposed earth red hot, make a burning mass. The heat is not very strong nor lasting. The ashes are yellowish, and in a large quantity. When they dig peat, they cut it into square pieces, and pile it up to dry beside the house. ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... this stone has not been used in Toronto, instead of wood. Brick-clay is also plentiful, and excellent white and red bricks are made; but, such is the rage for building, that the largest portion of this embryo city is of combustible pine-wood. ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... some risk of dying of hunger.' In point of fact, there seemed no possibility of making a fire. There was not a tree, not a shrub, not a root to be seen. As to argols, the rain had long since reduced that combustible of the desert to a liquid pulp. The pilgrims were about to partake of the primitive fare of meal steeped in cold water—a cheerless beverage to three men drenched to the skin—when at the critical ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... contests; but we all stay up all night to hear the results, and when we win, which we do once every other college generation, we try to make the celebration bigger than the stories of other celebrations that have been handed down. We'd been planning this celebration all winter and had everything combustible in Jonesville spotted. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... the rapid chemical combination of oxygen with carbon, hydrogen and sulphur, accompanied by the diffusion of heat and light. That portion of the substance thus combined with the oxygen is called combustible. As used in steam engineering practice, however, the term combustible is applied to that portion of the fuel which is dry and free from ash, thus including both oxygen and nitrogen which may be constituents of the fuel, ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... do what in him lies towards relief of this poor blockhead-quack, and of a world that groans under him. Run swiftly; relieve him,—were it even by extinguishing him! For all things have grown so old, tinder-dry, combustible; and he is more ruinous than conflagration. Sweep him down, at least; keep him strictly within the hearth: he will then cease to be conflagration; he will then become useful, more or less, as culinary fire. Fire is the best of servants; but what a master! This poor blockhead ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... flamed up, was it not a natural supposition that it had become inwrapped in burning hydrogen, which in consequence of some great convulsion had been liberated in prodigious quantities, and then combining with other elements, had set this hapless world on fire? In such a fierce conflagration, the combustible gas would soon be consumed, and the glow would therefore begin to decline, subject, as in this case, to a second eruption, which occasioned the renewed outburst of light on the ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... "with the fecundity of their own rattlesnakes." Of the fathers of our Revolution he speaks in no more flattering terms:—"Probably in America, as in other places, the chiefs are incendiaries, that hope to rob in the tumults of a conflagration, and toss brands among a rabble passively combustible." All these atrocities and follies amuse and interest us now; they are the coprolites of a literary megatherium, once hateful to gods and men, now inoffensive and curious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... without, perhaps, being so rash as to claim a knowledge of what this substantial form is. Still we do not know what its capacities of physical action and passion may be. We shall find them out by observing it in relation to different 'natures'. It turns out to be combustible by fire, resistant to water, tractable to the carpenter's tools, intractable to his digestive organs, harmless to ostriches, nourishing to wood-beetles. Each of these capacities of the wood is distinct; we cannot relate them intelligibly to ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... French Revolution by this monster and the Montagnards of the Convention were in their eyes, in accordance with their moral system, heroic actions ennobled and sanctified by their aim." The same document goes on to explain why so many combustible elements had failed to produce an explosion ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... third of its weight of carbon, is converted into an elastic state, under the form of fixed air, that separates from the decomposing mass; a circumstance attending also on the combustion of coal and other combustible substances during their decomposition by that process, which supported in them by the external air of the atmosphere, where heat and light are both visible from the intensity and velocity of the combustion; and wholly invisible in the ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... smelt, scorify^; reduce to ashes; burn to a cinder; commit to the flames, consign to the flames. boil, digest, stew, cook, seethe, scald, parboil, simmer; do to rags. take fire, catch fire; blaze &c (flame) 382. Adj. heated &c v.; molten, sodden; rechauffe; heating &c v.; adust^. inflammable, combustible; diathermal^, diathermanous^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... burning the town, took up a position upon a hill opposite to the citadel, and there he had engines constructed to throw enormous arrows, on which tow that had been dipped in pitch was wound. This combustible envelopment of the arrows was set on fire before the weapon was discharged, and a shower of the burning missiles thus formed was directed toward the palisade. The wooden walls were soon set on fire by them, and totally consumed. ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... you have established, and all the fine things you have ever done. Up in that tower you feel you are safe. But hear you not the tramp of your unpardoned sins all around the tower? They each have a match. They are kindling the combustible material. You feel the heat and the suffocation. Oh, may you leap in time, the Gospel declaring: "By the deeds of the law shall no ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... down, leaning his back against one of the bales. A short pipe was in his mouth, and he seemed to be enjoying his smoke. This was contrary to orders, for the cotton being combustible might easily catch fire; but this man, supposing that he would not be detected, indulged himself in the ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... readily combustible wood was prepared. The body was taken charge of by persons chosen to perform the last sacred rites, and firmly bound in skins or blankets, and then placed upon the funeral pyre, with all the personal effects of the deceased, together with numerous votive offerings ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... as medicine. In England it was sold as "American Natural Oil," and used for a liniment. The Indians had used it, and the world has a way of looking to aborigines for medicine, even if not for health. Spiritualistic mediums and doctors bank heavily on Indians. This natural oil was known to be combustible. Out of doors it helped the campfire. But if burned indoors it made a horrible smoke and a smell to conjure with. Up to that time whale-oil mostly had been used for illuminating and lubricating purposes. But whale-oil was getting too high ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... loyal ones, it was because they were afraid of some few arquebuses with which those of the inside threatened them. But they endeavored to set fire to the convent and church three times without being able to succeed, notwithstanding that the material of the building was but little less combustible than tinder, for it was all constructed of wood, bamboo, and nipa. Those who tried to burn that edifice, regarded that as a miracle. Moreover, one can well understand the necessity that they suffered for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... closely shut-up houses, and, ere long, the whole of the immense city became a sea of fire and was reduced, before Napoleon's eyes, to ashes. Every attempt to extinguish the flames proved unavailing. Rostopchin, the commandant of Moscow, had, previously to his retreat, put combustible materials, which were ignited on the entrance of the French by men secreted for that purpose, into the houses.[15] A violent wind aided the work of destruction. The patriotic sacrifice was performed, nor failed in its object. Napoleon, instead of peace and plenty, merely ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... of twenty Thousand Barrels of Gun-powder, in that they call the White-Tower, when all at once the middle Flooring did not only give way, or shrink, but fell flat down upon other Barrels of Powder, together with many of the same combustible Matter which had been placed upon it. It was a Providence strangely neglected at that Time, and hardly thought of since; But let any considerate Man consult the Consequences, if it had taken fire; perhaps to the Destruction of the ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... years ago, where he mentions, 'those impure tales which will be the eternal opprobrium of their ingenious authour.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, Lord Hailes has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hailes thinks there is, he must be more combustible than ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... horses and cows. The latter, with his principal wagon, had been removed that morning, when the settler started with his family on their hasty flight northward to the settlement of Barwell; but the timber was dry, and enough hay was stored in the loft to render the building very combustible. ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... and the rest seized their arms and rushed out to defend the fortress. Their assailants were, however, too well acquainted with its construction, and were now seen rushing on, each man with a torch in his hand. These they threw among the prickly-pear hedge, which, dried by the hot sun, was as combustible as tinder. In an instant the whole was in a blaze. Stanley had collected his party, each one being loaded with as much property as could be carried. Then, sallying forth, they fired a volley, which drove the blacks to a distance. They were thus able to secure several of their animals, and ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... studies, the current belief was, that atmospheric air, freed from accidental impurities, is a simple elementary substance, indestructible and unalterable, as water was supposed to be. When a combustible burned, or when an animal breathed in air, it was supposed that a substance, "phlogiston," the matter of heat and light, passed from the burning or breathing body into it, and destroyed its powers of supporting ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... of ornate treatment. All exterior doors and trim are of metal and all interior carpenter work is done with Kalomein iron protection, so that the building, in its strictest sense, will contain no combustible material. ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... Maiesties prescription) he tooke forthwith eight of his woorst and basest ships which came next to hand, and disburthening them of all things which seemed to be of any value, filled them with gun-powder, pitch, brimstone, and with other combustible and firy matter; and charging all their ordinance with powder, bullets, and stones, he sent the sayd ships vpon the 28 of Iuly being Sunday, about two of the clocke after midnight, with the winde and tide against the Spanish fleet: which when they had proceeded a good space, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... heart bleed to see him. Thrice did he go round the earth in every parallel of latitude; and at last, wearied and jaded out, back came he to Hecla in despair, and would have thrown himself into the volcano, if he had been made of combustible materials. Luckily at that time our sisters were engaged in settling the balance of Europe; and whilst they were looking over projects, and counter-projects, and ultimatums, and post ultimatums, the poor Devil, unable to assist them was groaning in a corner and ruminating ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... when they burst, they make a great noise. They consist of a large shell of cast iron, which is round and hollow. A hole is made through the shell to receive a fusee, as it is called; this is a small pipe, or hollow piece of wood, which is filled with some combustible matter. When a bomb is about to be fired, it is filled with powder, after which the fusee is driven into the vent, or hole of ...
— Whig Against Tory - The Military Adventures of a Shoemaker, A Tale Of The Revolution • Unknown
... dark and rainy day. Like ocean tides, the frantic mob rolled in from every direction. Their shouts and revels swelled upon the night air. The rain began to fall in torrents. They broke into the houses for shelter; insulted maids and matrons; tore down every thing combustible for their watch fires; massacred a few of the body-guard of the queen, and, with bacchanalian songs, roasted their horses for food. And thus passed the hours of this long and dreary night, in hideous outrages for which one can hardly find a parallel in the annals of New Zealand cannibalism. The immense ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... rather over Torre del Greco, a town almost totally destroyed by the eruption in 1794. The whole surface of the country for some distance is laid waste by the river of lava, which flowed in a stream or body, of twenty feet in depth, destroyed in its course vineyards, cottages, and everything combustible, consumed and nearly overwhelmed the town, and at last poured into the sea, where as it cooled, it formed a rugged termination or promontory of considerable height. The surface of this mass presented a rocky and sterile aspect, strongly opposed to the exuberance of vegetation in the more fortunate ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Banyan flew to the rescue, and made a most enthusiastic attempt to check the fire; but the raging element was now past control. The flames spread through the combustible material which had been stored on the deck; and they were compelled to abandon the ill-starred steamer with the utmost precipitation, in order to save their ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... month, continues, with little interruption, throughout the full season. The immense mass of vegetation with which the fertile soil loads itself during the summer is suddenly withered, and the whole earth is covered with combustible materials. A single spark of fire falling anywhere upon these plains at such a time, instantly kindles a blaze that spreads on every side, and continues its destructive course as long as it finds fuel, these fires sweeping on with a rapidity which renders it hazardous ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Animal bodies, full of moisture, glowed awhile and then remained charred wrecks. Wood and other easily combustible things burned to ashes. On the ground lay the bodies, amidst heaps of hot mud, heaps of gleaming ashes and piles of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... fine sand. Thick layers of seaweed that have been swept through the tunnel by the tide and thrown up around the lake have been piled into heaps, some of which are dry and some still wet, but all of which exhale the strong odor of the briny ocean. This, however, is not the only combustible employed by the inhabitants of Back Cup, for I see an enormous store of coal that must have been brought by the schooner and the tug. But it is the incineration of masses of dried seaweed that causes the smoke vomited forth by the ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... often observed on the surface of our open fire-places is due to the combustion of carbonic oxide, which has been formed in the way we have just described. Carbonic oxide is a colorless, tasteless gas, which differs from carbonic acid by being combustible, and by not having any action ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... whether natural or violent, by conquerors' hands, whether through exposure to fire or to stress of weather, the upper part would be the first to suffer, but it would not disappear, from the nature of the material, which is not combustible. The crude bricks all through the enormous thickness of the walls, once thoroughly loosened, dislodged, dried up or soaked through, would lose their consistency and tumble down into the courts and halls, choking them up with the soft rubbish into which they ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... allowance. The captain spoke pretty sharply to them.' It is true: I have the remark in my old note-book; I got it of the third mate in the hospital at Honolulu. But there is not room for it here, and it is too combustible, anyway. Besides, the third mate admired it, and what he admired he was likely ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... however, I saw that we had little to hope for. While the masts and rigging were all enveloped in flame, a dense smoke was rising from the hold, indicating that the electric fluid, in its descent through the ship, had come in contact with something in the cargo that was highly combustible. Passengers and crew stood looking on with pale, horror-stricken faces. But the captain, a man of self-possession, aroused all from their lethargy by ordering, in a loud, clear voice, the masts and rigging ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... substances were heaped over them to a considerable height, and then Ghee, or melted preserved butter, poured on the top. Two bamboos were then put over them and held fast down, and fire put to the pile, which immediately blazed very fiercely, owing to the dry and combustible materials of which it was composed. No sooner was the fire kindled than all the people set up a great shout—Hurree-Bol, Hurree-Bol, which is a common shout of joy, and an invocation of Hurree, or Seeb. It was impossible to have heard the woman ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... flames arrived. And after groping some distance along the trench, he found the depth diminished, but the fire was not three hundred paces distant. His heart sank within him. But when on the eve of returning to his former position, with a resolution to remove as much of the combustible matter as possible, a gleam of joy spread over his features, as, casting a glance in a contrary direction from that they had recently pursued, he beheld the identical mound he had ascended before dark, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... to have the secret of a mysterious combustible known as "Greek Fire" which was unquenchable by water. I think that "Greek Fire" was nothing more or less than ordinary petroleum, which was practically unknown in Europe in 1866, though from personal experience I can say ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... city had to face a combined attack by a Moslem navy and army. The eastern emperor, Leo the Isaurian, conducted a heroic defense, using with much effectiveness the celebrated mixture known as "Greek fire." This combustible, probably composed of sulphur, naphtha, and quicklime, was poured or hurled on the enemy's ships in order to burn them. "Greek fire," the rigors of an uncommonly severe winter, and timely aid from the Bulgarians at length compelled the Arabs to beat a retreat. Their failure to take Constantinople ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... better unlocking of the Mineral, yet if you have not the leasure to make so long a Digestion, you may by incorporating with powder'd Antimony a convenient Quantity of Oyl of Vitriol, and committing them immediately to Distillation, obtain a little Sulphur like unto the common one, and more combustible than perhaps you will at first take notice of. For I have observ'd, that though (after its being first kindled) the Flame would sometimes go out too soon of its self, if the same Lump of Sulphur were held again to the Flame of a Candle, it would be rekindled and burn ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... friends of canals bitterly opposed railroads as impractical. Snow, it was said, would block them for weeks. If locomotives were used, the sparks would make it impossible to carry hay or other things combustible. The boilers would blow up as they did on steamboats. Canals were therefore safer and cheaper. Read McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. VI, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... made him forget his wine and his cigar. He emptied the glass at a single draught, but it proved far more difficult to light the cigar. "Zounds! this is a non-combustible," he growled. "When I arrive at smoking ten sous cigars, I sha'n't come here ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... control the election of delegates and the formal action of conventions, and in all cases except that of Texas the question was conclusively passed upon by conventions. By every means they "fired the Southern heart," which was notoriously combustible; they stirred up a great tumult of sentiment; they made thunderous speeches; they kept distinguished emissaries moving to and fro; they celebrated each success with an uproar of cannonading, with bonfires, illuminations, and processions; they appealed to those chivalrous virtues supposed to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... the night was warm, for I happened to know that a good deal of the cargo which we were carrying was of a highly combustible character, such as furniture, pianos, Manchester goods, and the like, to say nothing of several cases of sporting ammunition. I knew that if once the fire happened to get a good hold upon such material as that the chances were all against ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... the Indians lay concealed, while three or four who made the attack attempted thereby to decoy the whites outside of the defenses. Failing in this, they set fire to an old fence and corn-crib, and two stables, both long enough built to be thoroughly combustible. These had previously protected their approach in that direction. Captain Asa Reese was in command of our little fort. 'Boys,' said he, 'some of you must run over to Hinkston's or Harrison's.' These were one and a half and two miles off, but in different directions. Every man declined. ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... there fell, in the fields of Kourianof, Russia, a combustible yellowish substance, covering, at least two inches thick, an area of 600 or 700 square feet. It was resinous and yellowish: so one inclines to the conventional explanation that it was pollen from pine trees—but, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... heat, and, if the heat be preserved, a high temperature may be thus attained. The destruction of the first Atlantic cable was probably due to heat developed in this way. Other metals are still more combustible than iron. You may ignite strips of zinc in a candle flame, and cause them to burn almost like strips of paper. But we must now expand our definition of combustion, and include under this term, not only combustion in ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... hundred families. Far be it from me, also, to hint, my respectable friends, at the show of dirty faces which you would present without my pains to keep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when the midnight bells make you tremble for your combustible town, you have fled to the town-pump and found me always at my post firm amid the confusion and ready to drain my vital current in your behalf. Neither is it worth while to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma as the physician whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ranges, both in summer and winter, from 70 degrees to 80 degrees. They are lighted at night by a pine stick stuck into the wall. As the interstices between the logs are filled up with hemp and other combustible materials, fires are very common, and whole villages are frequently burnt down. In order to extinguish these conflagrations, each serf is bound to bring some particular implement—a ladder, a pail, or an axe; and, that ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... and air again restored the luminosity of the flame. This experiment clearly shows that temperature is a most important factor in the illuminating value of a flame, and this is still further shown by a study of the action of the diluents present in coal gas, the non-combustible ones being far more deleterious than the combustible, as they not only ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... blocks away to the westward they could see flames shooting from the windows of a warehouse. Its contents must have been highly combustible, for they were burning like chaff in a furnace draught. As they stood and watched the conflagration a second explosion occurred, and so close at hand that the ground seemed to rock beneath their feet. And with that Nanna's heart grew faint within her, for now she knew ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... combustible matter.] Whenever an entry or air-way becomes so dry that the air becomes charged with dust, the owner, lessee or agent shall cause such entry or air-way to be sprinkled, and all accumulated matter, ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... league from the town, which he observed, almost in a moment, to flash from one end of the dorf to the other, consuming all in its way,—and thus it was said to have been in these suburbs. The reason thereof is the combustible matter whereof their houses are built, being of fir timber and boards, which, especially being old, do suddenly take fire, and violently burn, hard to be quenched, few houses escaping, especially in the dorfs, where one is on fire; ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... couch. A piece of wood, a broken chair, an old chest for a table, more he needs not; a tea-kettle, a few pots and dishes, equip his kitchen, which is also his sleeping and living room. When he is in want of fuel, everything combustible within his reach, chairs, door-posts, mouldings, flooring, finds its way up the chimney. Moreover, why should he need much room? At home in his mud-cabin there was only one room for all domestic purposes; more than one room his family does not need in England. So the custom of crowding many persons ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... fix our attention for a moment on the gunpowder which urges the cannon-ball. This is composed of combustible matter, which if burnt in the open air would yield a certain amount of heat. It will not yield this amount if it perform the work of urging a ball. The heat then generated by the gunpowder will fall short of that produced in the open air, by an amount ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the inestimable blessings of being free and easy: we quote these words, vulgar as they are; for, of all words in our vernacular tongue, to express comfort and security from ill, commend us to the expletive of free and easy. We had rather not meddle with civil or religious liberty: they are as combustible as the Cotopaxi, or the new governments, of South America; and our attempts at reformation do not extend beyond paper and print, which the unamused reader may burn or not, as he pleases without searing his own conscience or exciting our revenge. To be sure, a few of our examples ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... was burnt to the ground, by which accident Sheridan and his son lost the few remaining shillings they were worth, what doth my friend D—— do? Why, before the fire was out, he writes a note to Tom Sheridan, the manager of this combustible concern, to enquire whether this farce was not converted into fuel, with about two thousand other unactable manuscripts, which of course were in great peril, if not actually consumed. Now was not this characteristic?—the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... alcohol is, after all, a substance capable of rendering great service to humanity. The injury which it causes is the result of its misuse. Though unfit for introduction into the human body, except in the most guarded manner, it is adapted to a great variety of uses outside of the body. A combustible substance which is readily convertible into a gas, it may be substituted for gasoline in the cooking of food, lighting of dwellings, and the running of machinery. As a solvent for gums, resins, essential oils, etc., it is used in the preparation of varnishes, extracts, ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... closely pressed, some fears. The governor saw plainly that there was no other way left to save the city, but by firing the engines of the besiegers. Having therefore prepared his forces for this enterprise, he sent them out at daybreak with torches in their hands, tow, and all kind of combustible matters; and at the same time attacked all the engines. The Romans exerted their utmost efforts to repel them, and the engagement was very bloody. Every man, assailant as well as defendant, stood to his post, and chose to die rather than quit it. At last, after a long resistance and dreadful ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... part the besiegers constructed great engines, such as were used in those days, in the absence of cannon, for throwing rocks and heavy beams of wood, to batter the walls. These machines also threw a certain extraordinary combustible substance called Greek fire. It was this Greek fire that, in the end, turned the scale of victory, for it caught in the lower court of the castle, where it burned so furiously that it baffled all the efforts of the besieged to extinguish it, and at length they were compelled ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... must be inferior, because nothing can be so hot, so tormenting, so intolerably insupportable, as the quickest apprehensions of, and the immediate sinking under, that guilt and indignation that is proportional to the offence. Should all the wood, and brimstone, and combustible matter on earth be gathered together for the tormenting of one body, yet that cannot yield that torment to that which the sense of guilt and burning-hot application of the indignation of God will do to the soul; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... once," said the squire—for his Majesty's postmaster was the person who had the privilege of dealing in the aforesaid combustible. "Go, then, to the post-office, and ask for a letter for me. Remember, not gunpowder, but ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... object lessons be limited to the lower grades. They contain the combustible material upon which an abiding interest in any subject is to be kindled. There are indeed other and perhaps higher sources of interest, but they are largely dependent upon these original springs that ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... receives from the vegetable world and from the earth the food and drink it requires for its sustenance and motion. It receives colloidal food for its muscles: combustible food for its motion; water for the solution of its various parts; salt for constructive and other physical purposes. These have all to be arranged in the body; and they are arranged by means of the membranous envelopes. ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Aetna, whose combustible And fuell'd entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singed bottom, all involved With stench and smoke; such resting found ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... which carry in them a greater Measure of Probability, and are such as might possibly have happened. Of this kind is his first mounting in the Smoke that rises from the Infernal Pit, his falling into a Cloud of Nitre, and the like combustible Materials, that by their Explosion still hurried him forward in his Voyage; his springing upward like a Pyramid of Fire, with his laborious Passage through that Confusion of Elements which ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... devotions of James and had been embellished by the pencil of Verrio and the chisel of Gibbons. Meanwhile a great extent of building had been blown up; and it was hoped that by this expedient a stop had been put to the conflagration. But early in the morning a new fire broke out of the heaps of combustible matter which the gunpowder had scattered to right and left. The guard room was consumed. No trace was left of that celebrated gallery which had witnessed so many balls and pageants, in which so many maids of honour had listened too easily to the vows and flatteries of gallants, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Parliament, and by calling their attention to a problem which may entertain them less, but which concerns them a great deal more,—that is, whether, with this Gallic Jacobin fraternity, which they are desired by some writers to court, all the parts of the government, about whose combustible or incombustible qualities they are contending, may "not be cast into the fire" together. He is a strange visionary (but he is nothing worse) who fancies that any one part of our Constitution, whatever right of primogeniture ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his. The son of Pandu burnt the body of his uncle together with those four wives of his, using diverse kinds of scents and perfumed wood. As the funeral pyre blazed up, a loud sound was heard of the burning wood and other combustible materials, along with the clear chant of Samans and the wailing of the citizens and others who witnessed the rite. After it was all over, the boys of the Vrishni and Andhaka races, headed by Vajra, as also the ladies, offered oblations of water to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... which the ebullition of party spirit is, although temporary, subsiding after the cause that produced it has passed away, and leaving the kind peasant to the natural, affectionate, and generous impulses of his character. But poor Paddy, unfortunately, is as combustible a material in politics or religion as in fighting—thinking it his duty to take the weak side*, without any other consideration than because ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... minute, at the distance of sixty miles above the surface, and was observed at different extremities of the kingdom. The sound of an explosion was heard through Devon and Cornwall, and along the opposite coast of Bretagne. Halley conjectured this and similar displays to proceed from combustible vapors aggregated on the outskirts of the atmosphere, and suddenly set on fire by some unknown cause. But since his time, the fact has been established, of the actual fall of heavy bodies to the earth from surrounding space, which requires another hypothesis. To these bodies the term aerolites ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... of the apparatus partly represented in Fig. 1 (opposite), which is a drawing one-third the natural size of the calorimeter employed. It consisted essentially of a combustion chamber formed of thin copper, gilt internally. The upper part of the chamber was fitted with a cover through which the combustible could be introduced, with a pipe for a gas jet, with a peep hole closed by adiathermanous but transparent substances, alum and glass, and with a branch leading to a thin copper coil surrounding the lower part of the chamber and descending below it. The whole of this portion of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... into action, and laid her alongside L'Orient. One particular only I shall add to the known account of the memorable engagement between these ships, and this I received from Sir Alexander Ball himself. He had previously made a combustible preparation, but which, from the nature of the engagement to be expected, he had purposed to reserve for the last emergency. But just at the time when, from several symptoms, he had every reason to believe that ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... all the lines from the circumference of which meeting in a center, by holding it in the light of the sun they can collect and concentrate all its rays at this one point of convergence; where the air will now become rarefied, and any light, dry, combustible matter will kindle as soon as applied, under the effect of the rays, which here acquire the substance and active force of fire. Some are of opinion that these vestals had no other business than the preservation of this ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... build large but low hearths on the ground of small wood, sticks, and other inflammable rubbish and refuse, on which they place the newly formed articles, and then set the floor on fire, until the whole is thoroughly burnt. Fragments of broken objects, etc., are not removed. The combustible material is thus reduced to ashes, and the broken pieces remain within them; their convex surfaces, of course, falling outwards, and thus resting on the floor. In this manner a thick layer of ashes and charcoal, with pottery, is easily formed. These "hogueras" ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... scarcity to give them value in exchange, are either movable, and exhaustible in a given place, or firmly connected with the land. The first category embraces, for instance, such wild animals and plants as serve some useful purpose, minerals, above all, fossil combustible matter(205)—the "black diamonds," coal, of which, with its canals, Franklin said that it had made England what it is. The economical effect of their moveable character is best seen, when the use made of an ordinary stratum of coal is compared ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... it with combustibles of every kind. They loaded it first with light dry wood, and they poured pitch, and tar, and oil over all this wood to make it burn with fiercer flames. They saturated the sails and the cordage in the same manner, and laid trains of combustible materials through all parts of the vessel, so that when fire should be set in one part it would immediately spread every where, and set the whole mass in flames at once. They towed this ship, on a windy day, near to the ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... quantity of the seared grass, and heaped a dry couch upon which Ben laid his charge within the genial heat that came from the cedar tree. Then they gathered up all the combustible matter within reach, and began to kindle a fire so near to the place where she lay that its heat must help to drive back the chill of death if there was a spark of life ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... use of fire-balls, which they threw with their hands, designing to burn the doors of the castles. But the Spaniards from the walls let fall great quantities of stones, and earthen pots full of powder, and other combustible matter, which forced them to desist. Captain Morgan seeing this desperate defence made by the Spaniards, began to despair of success. Hereupon, many faint and calm meditations came into his mind; neither could he determine which way to turn himself ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... a likely sort of place to catch fire, it would seem, either," Hewitt commented. "Old ploughs and such lumber are not very combustible." ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... of danger Hutter had made ample provision, and the building itself, the bark roof excepted, was not very combustible. The floor was scuttled in several places, and buckets provided with ropes were in daily use, in readiness for any such emergency. One of the girls could easily extinguish any fire that might be lighted, provided it had not time to ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... small lantern, not for illumination but for safety. When the visitors have arrived on the lower platform, which is near the middle of the eastern side against the wall, the guide, who has not descended the steps, lights a basket of shavings or other quick combustible on the platform above. The effect is instantaneous and magical. Suddenly from an obscurity so profound that only the outline of the nearest columns can be faintly discerned by the flicker of a candle, the entire maze of columns flashes into being resplendent and white. The roof ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... had even taken the Lower Town by escalade, we would not have been further advanced. The English, in half an hour afterwards, by burning it, by throwing down from the Upper Town upon the roofs of the houses fire pots, shells and other combustible matter, could have soon chased us out of it, or buried us under its ruins. This project, after having furnished for a long time matter for the daily conversations of Montrealers, was at last considered by M. de Levis, and ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... torture, which their ingenuity can devise, too severe to be inflicted. To those who have excited a spirit of resentment in the bosom of an Indian, the tomahawk and scalping knife are instruments of mercy. Death by the faggot—by splinters of the most combustible wood, stuck in the flesh and fired—maiming and disemboweling, tortures on which the soul sickens but to reflect, are frequently practiced. To an enemy of their own color, they are perhaps more cruel ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... by community, instead of serving for mutual defence, serves only to increase the danger. Such a system is like a city, where trades that require constant fires are much exercised, where the houses are built of combustible materials, and where they ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a whirlwind, hath blown the withering leaves off the tree, hath driven us out of our own land, and scattered us among strangers. Sin and uncleanness and the filthiness of our righteousness prepared us for the storm, made us light matter that could resist no judgment, made us matter combustible, and then iniquities, and sin rising up to iniquities, coming to such a degree, hath accomplished the judgment, put fire among us, made us as ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... murmurs, as if to gather strength for the new and more furious outburst that the next moment followed, it kept on its terrific march till it reached the central elevation, which embraced the most tangled, densely covered, and combustible part of the slash, and on which had been left standing an enormous dry pine, that towered so up high above the surrounding forest as to have long served as a landmark for the hunters and fishermen, in setting their courses through the woods or over the lake. Here the fiery billow, as if ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... twenty feet—perhaps higher. A bonfire is premeditated. You shall see anon, how the flames will rise. The preparations are completed; the fire is applied. Hear how it crackles and hisses! Slowly but spitefully it mounts from limb to limb, and from one combustible to another, until the whole welkin is a-blaze, and shaking as with thunder! It is a beautiful sight. The gush of unwonted radiance rolls in effulgent surges adown the vale. How the owl hoots with surprise ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... gathered together a goodly portion of combustible wood, and there was plenty more at hand, so that a roaring fire was soon casting its light away from the wood, which somewhat sheltered them behind; and as soon as some of the good-sized pieces ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... be generally known even to our own citizens that there is in the town of Riga, N.Y., one mile east of Churchville, on the farm of Linus Pierson, a Mineral Spring, the gases from which are sufficiently combustible to burn as clear and brightly as a lamp, at all times of the day and night, and which is never exhausted. The spring is located near the bathing-house on the farm, and a tube has been constructed, leading from ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... carnage, Saint-Menges was appalling. For a moment it appeared possible to cut a way out by Carignan towards Montmedy, and then this outlet reclosed. This refuge only remained, Sedan; Sedan encumbered with carts, with wagons, with carriages, with hospital huts; a heap of combustible matter. This dying agony of heroes lasted ten hours. They refused to surrender, they grew indignant, they wished to complete their death, so bravely begun. They ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... and if you were to smell it you would say it has a somewhat pleasant odor; if you were to taste it, that it has a hot, biting taste, i.e., is pungent. If you put a lighted match to it you would notice that it burns easily, and with a flame, and may therefore be said to be combustible and inflammable. ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... all, but did not therefore draw back; and looking fearlessly at the pile heaped with all these combustible materials intended for his martyrdom, he did not any the more cease from his work. He resisted, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... name of Cana de Otahiti, recognised at a distance by a fresher green, has the advantage of furnishing, on the same extent of soil, one-fourth more juice, and a stem more woody, thicker, and consequently richer in combustible matter. The refiners (maestros de azucar), pretend that the vezou (guarapo) of the Cana de Otahiti is more easily worked, and yields more crystallized sugar by adding less lime or potass to the vezou. The South Sea sugar-cane furnishes, no doubt, after five or six years' cultivation, the thinnest ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... department are located at 127 Mercer street, in a handsome building known as Fireman's Hall. Here are the offices of the Commissioners, the Chief Engineer, Secretary, Medical officer, Telegraph Bureau, Bureau of Combustible materials, and Fireman's Lyceum. The Lyceum contains a library of over 4000 volumes, and a collection of engravings, documents, and relics relating to the old Fire Department. All fines exacted of firemen, and those imposed on citizens for violating the ordinances relating ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... genuinely suffuse the whole mind. Such mercurial fire will indeed require a certain imaginative temperament; and there are many persons who, short of a life-long domestic attachment, can conceive of nothing but sordid vice. But even an inconstant flame may burn brightly, if the soul is naturally combustible. Indeed these sparks and glints of passion, just because they come and vary so quickly, offer admirable illustrations of it, in which it may be viewed, so to speak, under the microscope ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... idolatrous worship, they pillaged and ransacked every church and monastery: they broke the painted windows and organs, destroyed the images, stole the ecclesiastical ornaments, sold the shrines, committed pulpits, chests, books, and whatever was combustible, to the fire; and finally, after having wreaked their vengeance upon eyery thing that could be made the object of it, they went boldly to the town-hall to demand the wages for their labors.—In the course ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... this combustible is still so precious, that when gathered up, ground anew with paper and sawdust, and at length amalgamated with a mucilaginous water composed of soaked flax-seed, one finally obtains a kind of pulp that one tries vainly to make ignite, ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... puts his foot in. The man with the combustible whiskers. Tad overhears an exciting conversation. His duty not clear to him. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... French, with the admiral's galley at their head, will try to force a passage. Make your line long enough, and from all your boats let the men throw grappling-irons; and then, having made fast the enemy's ships, set fire to all your own boats, having previously filled them with combustible materials, and let your men escape in one ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... great agency in establishing the present temperature of the earth. The substances which burn are but a small portion of the crust of the earth, and their combustion, if all fired at a time, would cause no perceptible effect on the sensible heat of the surface of our globe. Were combustible bodies even infinitely more abundant, the supporters are insufficient to keep up their combustion for any length of time, without sensible diminution, and this would be the case, even were the whole of the oxygen that ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... defile which offered any egress, and this, too, Fabius had strongly guarded. Hannibal resorted to his usual resource, cunning and stratagem, for means of escape. He collected a herd of oxen. He tied fagots across their horns, filling the fagots with pitch, so as to make them highly combustible. In the night on which he was going to attempt to pass the defile, he ordered his army to be ready to march through, and then had the oxen driven up the hills around on the further side of the Roman detachment which was ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... knowledge; and their optics extend not beyond the making of convex and concave lenses of rock crystal to assist the sight in magnifying, or throwing more rays upon, small objects and, by collecting to a focus the rays of the sun, to set fire to combustible substances. These lenses are cut with a saw and afterwards polished, the powder of crystal being used in both operations. To polish diamonds they make use of the powder of adamantine spar, or the corundum stone. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... one is a building up or integrating process, and the other is a pulling down or disintegrating process. More than that, we can evoke fire any time, by both mechanical and chemical means, from the combustible matter about us; but we cannot evoke life. The equivalents of life do not slumber in our tools as do the equivalents of fire. Hence life is the deeper mystery. The ancients thought of a spirit of fire as they did of a spirit ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... his startled hearers listened in silence; but soon the passions of that adventurous age rose responsive to his words. The combustible French nature burst into flame. The enthusiasm of the soldiers rose to such a pitch that Gourgues had much ado to make them wait till the moon was full before tempting the perils of the Bahama Channel. His time came at length. The moon rode high above the lonely sea, and, silvered ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... with a din to which a civilized patient would promptly have succumbed. Sometimes the doctor wrought himself into a prophetic fury, raving through the length and breadth of the dwelling, snatching firebrands and flinging them about him, to the terror of the squaws, with whom, in their combustible tenements, fire was a ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... in coal, and in all combustible bodies, is vital energy latent in carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and so forth, needing only the right conditions to bring it out? Mechanical energy is convertible into electrical energy, and vice versa. Indeed, the circle of the ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... the Confederates. By a detour we came into a valley flanked to the east by Raccoon Mountain, and we visited a large saltpetre works at Nick-a-Jack Cave. These works we destroyed by breaking the large iron kettles and by burning all combustible structures. A portion of the detachment was sent under cover of the thick woods to the railroad east of Shellmound, a station near the river, where we expected to cut off a train of cars engaged in loading, for removal, supplies of provisions. The engineer, a few moments before ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... the heat or calorific power of the coal, in other words, its fuel value. However, some bituminous coals have a higher calorific power than some anthracites, because a large part of their volatile matter is combustible and yields more heat than the corresponding weight of fixed carbon in the anthracite. The fuel ratio pretty well discriminates coals of the higher ranks, and gives a classification corresponding roughly with their commercial ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... wires are extended so as to traverse practically all the streets of every city, the fire-insurance companies will find it to their advantage to promote a simple plan, depending on the use of a combustible thread passing round little pulleys in the corners of all the rooms and finally out to the front, where an electrical "contact-maker" is fixed, so that on the thread being burnt and broken at any point in its circuit, ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... ourselves. This we did in a large barn, where we made good stowage until morning. In the night, we caught the owner coming about with a lantern to set fire to the barn, and we carried him down to a boat, and lashed him there until morning, letting the rain wash all the combustible matter out of him. That day we reached Oswego Falls, where a party of us were stationed some time, running boats over, and carrying ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... The bare chance that prompt assistance might arrive, and that the books might, by the remotest possibility, be saved, would have been enough, on a moment's consideration, to dismiss any idea of this sort from his mind. Remembering the quantity of combustible objects in the vestry—the straw, the papers, the packing-cases, the dry wood, the old worm-eaten presses—all the probabilities, in my estimation, point to the fire as the result of an accident with his matches ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... fire wall wherever it is practicable to do so. Such walls should project at least three feet above the roof, and should be capped by stone, terra cotta, or sheet metal. They must form a complete cut-off of all combustible material, especially at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... as sulphur, nitre, etc., and those which do not. The metals were considered to be composed of sulphur and mercury. These substances are themselves compounds, but they act as elements in the composition of metals. Sulphur represented their combustible aspect, and also that which gave them their solid form; while mercury was that to which their weight and powers of becoming ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... yard fiercely; and the flame soon reached the loftier sails and running rigging; the fire below was raging between decks, and rising in successive bursts of flame from the hatchways. The vessel had been filled with combustible material, and the doomed brig, in a short space of time, was one ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... mud, and part of the head only visible.... Upon the dry weather setting in ... the mud becomes hard and crusted, and the rhinoceros cannot effect his escape without considerable difficulty and exertion. The Semangs prepare themselves with large quantities of combustible materials, with which they quietly approach the animal, who is aroused from his reverie by an immense fire over him, which being kept well supplied by the Semangs with fresh fuel, soon completes his destruction, and renders ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... doubt before; as a moralist, he has taught, that virtue may disgrace; and, as a patriot, he has gratified the mean by insults on the high. Finding sedition ascendant, he has been able to advance it; finding the nation combustible, he has been able to inflame it. Let us abstract from his wit the vivacity of insolence, and withdraw from his efficacy the sympathetick favour of plebeian malignity; I do not say that we shall leave him nothing; the cause that I defend, scorns the help of falsehood; but if ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... had been left to continue, Barrent would have been burned to death, for the Arena was nearly filled with the highly combustible vines. But the flames were endangering the wooden walls of the Arena. The Tetrahyde guard detachment put the fire out in time to save ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... serve for lights in the night-time. Nero offered his gardens for this spectacle, and exhibited the games of the Circus by this dreadful illumination. Sometimes they were covered with wax and other combustible materials, after which a sharp stake was put under their chin, to make them stand upright, and they were burnt alive, to give ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... experiments I was making at Redruth in Cornwall, upon the quantities and qualities of the gases produced by distillation from different mineral and vegetable substances, I was induced by some observation I had previously made upon the burning of coal, to try the combustible property of the gases ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... backward from the hardships of their march, had been thought so necessary a measure by all the chieftains, that even Oubacha himself was the first to authorize the act by his own example. He seized a torch previously prepared with materials the most durable as well as combustible, and steadily applied it to the timbers of his own palace. Nothing was saved from the general wreck except the portable part of the domestic utensils, and that part of the woodwork which could be applied to the manufacture of the long Tartar lances. This chapter in their memorable day's work ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... with a smile of patronising pity on his face. It was the smile that touched to life the mass of combustible material that had been accumulating for the last hour in Cameron's soul. Instead of following the boy, he turned with a swift movement back to the manager's desk, laid his sheaf of letters down on ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... the fields. General McCall responded to my salute; he rode in the advance. The Quartermaster's party was loading the tents and utensils. The rain fell smartly as dusk deepened into night, and the brush tents now deserted by the soldiers, were set on fire. Being composed of dry combustible material, they burned rapidly and with an intense flame. The fields in every direction were revealed, swarming with men, horses, batteries, and wagons. Some of the regiments began the march in silence; others sang familiar ballads ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Nevertheless, for many years the inquisitorial powers were vested in the bishops sent over to Mexico and Peru, and when the Inquisition was established in both countries in 1570 it probably meant no increase of severity. The natives were exempt from its jurisdiction and it found little combustible material save in captured Protestant Europeans. A Fleming was burned at Lima in 1548, and at the first auto held at Mexico in 1574 thirty-six Lutherans were punished, all English captives, two by burning and the rest by scourging ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith |
