"Contraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plane are applied at right angles to the axis of a bar so as to cause it to bend, they occasion a shortening of the longitudinal fibres on the concave side and an elongation of those on the convex side. Within the elastic limit the relative stretching and contraction of the fibres is directly[9] proportional to their distances from a plane intermediate between them—the neutral plane. (N{1} P in Fig. 15.) Thus the fibres half-way between the neutral plane ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... demoralized the whole system. It is easy, gentlemen, to recognize in the symptoms of the face and body generally intense irritation of the stomach, an affection of the great sympathetic nerve, acute sensibility of the epigastric region, and contraction of the right and left hypochondriac. You have noticed, too, the large size and prominence of the liver. M. Bianchon has, besides, constantly watched the patient, and he tells us that digestion is ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... moved? It could be only the effect of the wavering shadows. And yet I could not convince myself that it did not move. It did move. It came forward. One side of it did certainly come forward. A kind of universal cramp seized me—a contraction of every fibre of my body. The patch opened like a door—wider and wider; and from behind came a great helmet peeping. I was all one terror, but my nerves held out so far that I lay like a watching dog—watching for what horror would come next. The door opened ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... in old cracks on the opposite slope, where ignition has ceased, shows that this fire has continued for a very considerable time, or that the same thing had occurred at a much earlier period. In the form of the adjacent hills I observed nothing peculiar, unless it be a contraction not very common of the lower parts of ravines. The geological structure is, as might be expected, more remarkable. Other summits of the range are porphyritic,** but the hills of Wingen present a variety of rocks, within ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... joint must be perfectly made with fireclay cement or paste. The fireclay bricks, &c., must be selected with regard to the amount of indestructible silica in the clay, consistent with hardness and toughness. Homogeneity of material must be obtained, having regard to expansion and contraction. The same material used for the bricks, &c., worked into a paste, must be ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... technical work, namely, their relations to the impressions of the senses. The so-called dynamogenic experiments of the psychological laboratory have demonstrated what a manifold influence flows from the sense-impressions to the will-impulses. If the muscle contraction of a man's fist is measured, the experiment shows that the strongest possible pressure may be very different when the visual field appears in different colors, or tones of different pitch or different noises ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... means, and at first represented by the boldest symbols, might afterwards be set forth with solemn and studied expression, and that the power might know no weariness in clothing which had known no restraint in creating. But dilation and contraction are for molluscs, not for men; we are not ringed into flexibility like worms, nor gifted with opposite sight and mutable color like chameleons. The mind which molds and summons cannot at will transmute itself into that which clings and contemplates; nor is it given to us at once to have the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and last house in the row, on the west side of which is Walnut-tree Walk, leading to Earl's Court and Kensington, is distinguished by the name of Burleigh House, which, some one humorously observed, {121} might possibly be a contraction of "hurley burley," the house being a ladies' school, and the unceasing work of education, on the main Fulham Road, appearing here for the first time to terminate. [Picture: Burleigh House (1844)] The following entry, however, in the parish register of Kensington, respecting the birth ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... or elsewhere, is a disordered life, out of adjustment with the universal will of God; it is concentration upon self and self-ends; the contraction of love; the shrinking of inward resources; the formation of a spirit of hate, the creation of an inward nature that hates what God loves. Hell is the inner condition inherently attaching to the kind of life that displays ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... mechanism of the circulation of the blood had evidently taken a great hold of his mind, as he describes it several times, at much length. After giving a full account of it in the "Discourse," and erroneously describing the motion of the blood, not to the contraction of the walls of the heart, but to the heat which he supposes to be generated there, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... more clearly by lamplight, my recollections became more exact; when I raised the lamp-shade the light struck you full in the face, and then your eyes, so characteristic, and at the same time a violent contraction of your features, made me recall the name. This physiognomy, these eyes, this face, belonged to the man whom from this place" she pointed to the window—"I saw ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... imagination, in the grimy ballad of Fat Peg (Grosse Margot). I am not able to follow these gentlemen to this polite extreme. Out of all Villon's works that ballad stands forth in flaring reality, gross and ghastly, as a thing written in a contraction of disgust. M. Longnon shows us more and more clearly at every page that we are to read our poet literally, that his names are the names of real persons, and the events he chronicles were actual events. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are not of galvanized iron, iron coated with zinc? This is the material most commonly used for that purpose at the present time. Zinc has been found to be too brittle for the strain to which it is subjected, in such cases, by the expansion and contraction induced by changes of temperature. A slight oxidation will adhere to the surface, but an acid deposit from the atmosphere will penetrate the coating in ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... commencement of our total ruin." The spirit of all his communications was to infuse the distrust which he honestly felt, and which he certainly took no pains to disguise; to impress upon his countrymen the importance of improving the present emergency by the enlargement, instead of the threatened contraction of their liberties, and to enforce with all his energy the necessity of a firm union. He assured the estates that Don John had been sent, in this simple manner, to the country, because the King and cabinet had begun to despair of carrying their point by force. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. She was pale all over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three grey hairs on her temples, she talked ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... upon the European high-road, where he has travelled with many acquaintances. With whom is he making the tour now?—Mr. Hirsch is acting as courier to Mr. and Mrs. Horace Milliken. They have not been married many months, and they are travelling, Hirsch says, with a contraction of his bushy eyebrows, with miladi, Mrs. Milliken's mamma. "And who is her ladyship?" Hirsch's brow contracts into deeper furrows. "It is Miladi Gigglebury," he says, "Mr. Didmarsh. Berhabs you know her." He scowls ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of this speech was not in itself of a nature calculated to convey much; but the tone of the old trader's voice, the contraction of his eyebrows, and above all the overwhelming flow of cloudlets that followed, imparted to it a significance that induced the belief that Charley's taking his own way would be productive of more terrific ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... her," rejoined the earl, the contraction on his brow standing out more plainly. "That comes of your thoughtless runaway marriages. I fell in love with General Conway's daughter, and she ran away with me, like a fool; that is, we were both fools together for our ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of the pendulum to vary in length. Brass is very sensitive to changes of temperature, steel much less so; and hence it is not difficult to arrange the pendulum so that the long exterior bars of steel shall very nearly curb the expansion and contraction ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... giving echoes of the same living triplicity in animal, plant, and mineral, every stone and material atom owing its being to the synthesis or "embrace" of the two opposed forces of expansion and contraction. Nothing whatever exists in a single entity but in virtue of its being thesis, antithesis, and synthesis and in humanity and natural life this takes the form of sex, the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter, or third, forgotten sex spoken of by Plato, which is not the absence of the life ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... surprise. Compare “Zounds,” (supposed to be a contraction of “God’s wounds.”) Blowns probably a contraction of “blood ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Deschamps, and an Oriental, member of some mission to the West. Meeting so, they stopped short. Their nostrils dilated, there seemed to come a stirring over their bodies. Inwardly they felt a painful constriction, a contraction to something hard, intent, and fanged. This was the more strongly felt by Alexander, but Ian felt it, too. Did Glenfernie mean to dog him through life—think that he would be let to do so? Alone in a forest, very far back, they might, at this ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... injunction of Vyasa, and moved equally by the desire of winning the hand of Draupadi on learning the tidings of the Swayamvara from the lips of a Brahmana; victory of Arjuna over a Gandharva, called Angaraparna, on the banks of the Bhagirathi, his contraction of friendship with his adversary, and his hearing from the Gandharva the history of Tapati, Vasishtha and Aurva. This parva treats of the journey of the Pandavas towards Panchala, the acquisition of Draupadi in the midst of all the Rajas, by Arjuna, after having successfully pierced ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... every antiquary knows that the formula of prayer 'bono statu' always refers to the living. I suspect this singular Christian name has been mistaken by the stone-cutter for Austet, a contraction of Eustatius, but the word Tod, which has been mis-read for the Arabic figures 600, is perfectly fair and legible. On the presumption of this foolish claim to antiquity, the people would needs set up for independence, and contest the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the corridors, passages and vestibules, but for comfort having a covering of wood in the audience room. The roof was of iron and masonry, the outer covering of slate being secured to masonry blocks. The iron roof beams of over one hundred feet span, were mounted on rollers to allow for contraction and expansion. The ceiling of the audience room was of iron. The ornamental work of the proscenium, the tier balustrades, and the frames of the partitions between the boxes were all of metal. The stage was supported by a complex iron system of about ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... text "Ayoh" which is here, I hold, a corruption of "I (or Ayy) h""yes indeed he." [I take "aywah" (as I would read the word) to be a different spelling for "aywa"yes indeed, which according to Spitta Bey, Gr. p. 168 is a contraction of "Ay (I) wa'llhi," yes by Allah. "What? thy lover?" asks the husband, and she emphatically affirms the fact, to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... who belong to the four classes should observe, in conformity with the Sastras, the rules in regard to the contraction of impurity through births and deaths, according to the degree ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... and preparing us to enter one that in comparison is literally dark. From the age of Justinian, and from the rise of Islam in the early years of the seventh century, the geographical knowledge of Christendom is on a par with its practical contraction and apparent decline. There are travellers; but for the next five hundred years there are no more theorists, cosmographers, or map-makers of the Universe ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... are the result of a perversion of civilization, and the cause of much contraction and ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... they must take in a reef or two. Mr. Gladstone doubted whether the budget could live in that House, whatever form it might assume; but even with such perils he should look upon the whole budget as less unsafe than a partial contraction. Graham took the same view of the disposition of parliament: keen opposition; lukewarm support; the necessity of a greater party sympathy and connection to enable them to surmount the difficulties of a most unusual and hazardous operation. But he did not appear to ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... no animal is ever instantly killed, for there is always a gradual collapse, or more or less of a movement caused by the contraction of its muscles, before death actually comes; but when an animal feigns death, it is always in too much of a hurry about it, and drops instantly without a final struggle, or any hard breathing—that is the time when one ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... she spoke them of something else. The wine-merchant, still looking at her inquiringly, observed that her eyes wandered towards the chimney-piece once more. They fixed on the portrait of his mother, which hung there, and looked at it with that slight contraction of the brow which accompanies a scarcely conscious effort of memory. Mr. ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... the Walkers of Rotherham, the founders, and the masonry by the contractors, Jolliffe and Banks, that, when the work was finished, scarcely any sinking was discernible in the arches. From experiments made to ascertain the expansion and contraction between the extreme range of winter and summer temperature, it was found that the arch rose in the summer about one inch to one and a half inch. The works were commenced in 1813, and the bridge was opened by lamp-light, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the heart is caused by its alternate expansion and contraction, as it receives and expels the blood. With one throb, the blood is sent from the right ventricle into the lungs, and from the ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... handed to Barre, who read it. An individual who was present on the occasion described to me the impression which the reading of the letter produced on Napoleon. His countenance exhibited that violent contraction of the features which I have often remarked when his mind was disturbed. However, he did not lose his self-command, which indeed never forsook him when policy or vanity required that he should retain it; and when the reading of Beurnonville's letter was ended he affected to persist in his intention ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... is inflected by adding the personal endings to the present stem, and its first person uses -o and not -m. The form /amo: is for /ama-o:, the two vowels /a-o: contracting to /o:. In /moneo: there is no contraction. Nearly all regular verbs ending in -eo belong to the ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... OF ST. PETERSBURG (1703).—After chastising the Czar [Footnote: Czar is probably a contraction of Caesar. The title was adopted by the rulers of Russia because they regarded themselves as the successors and heirs of the Caesars of Rome and Constantinople.] at Narva, the Swedish king turned south and marched into Poland to punish Augustus for the part he had taken in the conspiracy ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... The boy was inscribed on the jockey board "Al Mayne;" the permit to ride must be under that name. If it were really Alan Porter, why had he been called Mayne? But the boy had retained the name "Al"—that was a contraction ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... scarcely fair to read the lust of him and the utter abandonment to the hazard of the game. Pitiless he looked, with clenched teeth just showing between the loose lips drawn back in a grin that was half-snarl, half-involuntary contraction of muscles ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... else to do, as the ould song says. Ye see, Losh," (Bryan had invented a contraction for his friend's name, which he said was "convanient")—"ye see, Losh, there may be more nor wan raison for a gintleman lavin' his native land in order to thravel in furrin parts. It's thrue I had nothin' in the univarse to do, for I could niver git work nohow, an' whin I got ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... obviously derived from Epiphania. In Naples the little old woman who fills children's stockings is called "Pasqua Epiphania,"[117] the northern contraction not ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... but the bright colour faded from her cheek, and the contraction of care returned to her brow. She occupied herself with taking off her baby's walking things. Hester lingered, anxious to soothe and make peace; she was looking sorrowfully at Sylvia, when she saw tears dropping on ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... day, there is a silently working but determined tendency for the sphere of woman's domestic labours to contract itself; and the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex condition which we term "modern civilisation" ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... and dexterity displayed by Mr. Sponge, Mr. Buckram stood meditating a further trial of his equestrian ability, as he watched him bucketing 'Ercles' about. Hercules had 'spang-hewed' so many triers, and the hideous contraction of his resolute back had deterred so many from mounting, that Buckram had begun to fear he would have to place him in the only remaining school for incurables, the 'bus. Hack-horse riders are seldom great horsemen. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... examined with a powerful lens the species we brought. He discovered that each crystal of pyroxene, enveloped in the earthy mass, is separated from it by fissures parallel to the sides of the crystal. These fissures seem to be the effect of a contraction which the mass or basis of the mandelstein has undergone. I sometimes saw these balls of mandelstein arranged in strata, and separated from each other by beds of grunstein of ten or fourteen inches thick; sometimes (and this situation is most common) the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... drawn out beyond the nose, and gives them a very ugly appearance. As Sekwebu remarked: "These women want to make their mouths like those of ducks." The commonest of these rings are made of bamboo, but others are of ivory or metal. When the wearer tries to smile, the contraction of the muscles turns the ring upwards, so that its upper edge comes in front of the eyes, the nose appearing through the middle, while the whole front teeth are exposed by the motion, exhibiting the way in which they have been clipped to resemble the fangs ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... companions to his house, and soon after received himself the grace of holy baptism. Dicho was St. Patrick's first convert, and the first who erected a Christian church under his direction. The memory of this event is still preserved in the name Saull, the modern contraction of Sabhall Padruic, or Patrick's Barn. The saint was especially attached to the scene of his first missionary success, and frequently retired to the monastery which was ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... had changed its error considerably, and that the glasses had lost their parallelism from the contraction of the brass. In measuring the error he perceived that the diameter of the sun's image was considerably short of twice the semi-diameter; a proof of the uncertainty of celestial observations made during these intense frosts. The results of ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... conversational pronunciation. Latin, as it was pronounced, was very different from Latin as it is written; this difference consisted in abbreviation, either by the omission of sounds altogether, or by the contraction of two sounds into one, and in this respect the conversational language of the Romans resembled that of modern nations; with them, as with us, the mark of good taste was ease and the absence of pedantry and affectation. In the comic writers we have a complete representation ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... classification, inasmuch as to every one but the subject of them, they are known only as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the long run, resolvable into muscular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a transitory change in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But the scheme which is large enough to embrace the activities of the highest form of life, covers all those of the lower creatures. The ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... both parts: may it seeme good vnto your discretion, as it seemeth expedient vnto vs, that some messengers of yours sufficiently authorised to parle, agree, and conclude with our deputy, about the mutuall contraction of a perpetuall league and confimation of friendship, may with all conuenient speede be sent vnto our presence. At whose arriuall, not onely in this busines so profitable and behoouefull, but also in certaine other affaires concerning the former treaties and conclusions, they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... just as Mr. Simlins had left him,—it seemed as if he had not once taken his eyes from the calm face before him. For very calm it was—reposeful; with not a line disturbed except where a slight contraction of the brow told of some physical discomfort. But he was not asleep, for he looked at them the moment they entered; and Reuben rose then, and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... however, we felt the air becoming fresher, and the strange contraction in our breasts was gradually relieved as our pace became less rapid, and distant lights showed before us. Then suddenly we emerged from the curious shaft down which we had travelled to such enormous depth, gliding slowly out into a place of immeasurable ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... Yes," she said quickly, as he started, "not a sham name like yours, but really and truly SMITH—that was her husband's name! I'm not lying, Jim," she went on, evidently mistaking the cause of the sudden contraction of the man's face. "I didn't invent her nor her name; there IS such a woman, and Duffy loves her—and HER only, and he never, NEVER was anything more than a friend to me. I ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... French Canadians often contract "bonne" and "bon" in this way. "Bo Tantibba" is contraction for "Bonne ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... working as an individual, and with little specie or capital, his interests were with the debtor class. At each stage of its advance, the West has favored an expansion of the currency. The pioneer had boundless confidence in the future of his own community, and when seasons of financial contraction and depression occurred, he, who had staked his all on confidence in Western development, and had fought the savage for his home, was inclined to reproach the conservative sections and classes. To explain this antagonism ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... before long. We urged him to take some nourishment. He peremptorily refused. He felt the contraction of the stomach which is so common in those parts, and was almost ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... the nebular hypothesis, and Helmholtz's contraction theory, accounting for the regular supply of heat from the sun, the sun itself is not likely more than 20,000,000 years old, and, of course, the earth is much younger. Both of these theories are quite generally accepted by scientists, and have much to support them. Prof. Young, of Princeton, in ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... also. Therefore due allowance must be made for this expansion. The long risers should have an expansion loop as shown in Figs. 73, 74 and 75. There are installed on some jobs what is known as an expansion joint. This will allow for the expansion and contraction of the pipe. The writer's experience with these joints has not been very satisfactory. After a while these joints begin to leak and they must have attention which in some cases is rather expensive. An expansion loop as shown in the sketch, made with elbows, will prove satisfactory. ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... meditations on the sufferings of Jesus filled Sister Emmerich with such feelings of compassion that she begged of God to allow her to suffer as he had done. She instantly became feverish and parched with thirst, and, by morning, was speechless from the contraction of her tongue and of her lips. She was in this state when her friend came to her in the morning, and she looked like a victim which had just been sacrificed. Those around succeeded, with some difficulty, in moistening her mouth with a little water, but it was long before she could give any ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... orang kaya punia suka, what is his honour's pleasure for what is your, or your honour's pleasure? When criminals or other ignominious persons are spoken to use is made of the pronoun personal kau (a contraction of angkau) particularly expressive of contempt. The idea of disrespect annexed to the use of the second person in discourse, though difficult to be accounted for, seems pretty general in the world. The Europeans, to avoid ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... subjected to a slight shock of galvanism, became almost black: a similar effect, but in a less degree, was produced by scratching the skin with a needle. These clouds, or blushes as they may be called, are said to be produced by the alternate expansion and contraction of minute vesicles containing variously coloured fluids. (1/5. See "Encyclopedia of Anatomy ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... thrilled with passion as he spoke—and Helmsley felt a strange contraction at his heart—a pang of sharp memory, desire and regret all in one, which moved him to a sense of yearning for this love which he had never known—this divine and wonderful emotion whose power could so transform a man as to make him seem a very king among men. For so ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... 1: Nenna mia or Nenna bella is the pet phrase used by the Neapolitan young man in addressing his sweetheart. Nenna has nothing to do with Nina, which is a contraction of Antonia.] ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... informed by Dr. FRANK, that a surgeon of St. Petersburg succeeded by passing the worm through a canula, and the canula through the sphincter ani muscle, so as to obviate the resistance caused by its contraction. In this manner, he easily succeeded in withdrawing the taenia ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... Blaisdell,[1724] remarked in 1934: "It is manifest from this review of our decisions that there has been a growing appreciation of public needs and of the necessity of finding ground for a rational compromise between individual rights and public welfare. The settlement and consequent contraction of the public domain, the pressure of a constantly increasing density of population, the interrelation of the activities of our people and the complexity of our economic interests, have inevitably led to an increased ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... had looked after that. But the recoil had not exerted itself against an office-cramped brain, a dusty ledger-filled life that suddenly felt itself crying out for the free, open country, without hardly knowing what the term meant. Old Beamish caught the light in the eyes, the quick contraction of the ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... an effort would then be nothing else than to receive all these centripetal sensations; and what proves this is, that the consciousness of effort when most clearly manifested is accompanied by some muscular energy, some strong contraction, or some respiratory trouble, and yields if we render the respiration again regular and put the muscles back ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... might do with Mahommed fallen into his hands under circumstances so peculiar, there was never a Caesar not the slave of policy. In the audience to Manuel the sailor, we have seen how keenly sensitive he was to the contraction the empire had suffered. Since that day, to be sure, he had managed to keep the territory he came to; none the less, he felt the Turk to whom the stolen provinces invariably fell was his enemy, and that truce or treaty ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... of the tree were other persons. A woman with an albino type of countenance was sponging the suppurating glands of her neck; a little girl's face half disappeared under her blue glasses; an old man, whose spine was deformed by a contraction, with his involuntary movements knocked against Marcel, a sort of idiot clad in a tattered blouse and a patched pair of trousers. His hare-lip, badly stitched, allowed his incisors to be seen, and his jaw, which was swollen by an enormous inflammation, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.' This order, then, is in symmetrical opposition to that of the previous part. There is a rhythmical correspondence in inverted movement, like the expansion and contraction of the heart, or the rise and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of an actual hero may have furnished the first suggestions for the songs, which were finally elaborated into Beowulf, as we now have it. The poem was probably a long time in process of evolution, and many different scops doubtless added new episodes to the song, altering it by expansion and contraction under the inspiration of different times and places. Finally, it seems probable that some one English poet gave the work its present form, making it a more unified whole, and incorporating in ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... was an Irishman who was known by the name of Barny, a contraction, I believe, for Barnaby. As to his surname he could not undertake to spell it; but he assured me there was no better. This man, with many of his relatives, had come to England, according to their custom, during harvest-time, to assist in reaping, because they gain higher wages than ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... cold. She looked entreatingly from the detective to the lawyer, as if seeking some explanation of this new and entirely unexpected blow. Britz, noting the helpless bewilderment of the woman, experienced a painful contraction of heart, as if it were ordained that he must share the suffering which he had inflicted on her. Presently she lifted her face to his in a look of silent protest, and he felt a stinging sense of shame at the shabby part he was compelled to play. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... word "fun" I felt a sudden and violent contraction of all my muscles. I had an almost irresistible impulse to stand up and strike him across the face. But I was in a public restaurant and I controlled myself. He did not seem ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... density, the scientist has employed as a unit the least particle, physically indivisible and qualitatively homogeneous. Look for the atom in the body of science, and you will find it in physical laws governing expansion and contraction, and in chemical formulas. There the real responsibility of science ends. But whether through the need of popular exposition, or the undisciplined imagination of the investigator himself, atoms have ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... was being formed in accordance with what was developing in his soul, in a way which would appear incredible and fabulous to contemporary ideas. Depraved passions, impulses, and instincts brought in their train a colossal increase of matter. Man's present physical form has come about through a contraction, thickening, and consolidation of the Atlantean human form. And whereas man, before the Atlantean period, had been an exact image of his soul-nature the events of the Atlantean evolution bore within them the causes which lead to the ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... Breath and spungy Gums, livid Spots and fungous Ulcers[113] on his Legs, with Pains and Weakness all over. The fourth had also spungy Gums and a foetid Breath, Pains of the Legs and Arms, livid Blotches on his Legs, great Hardness and Contraction of the right Ham, and a livid hard Swelling on the Outside of the left ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... grasped the doctor and forced him into the chair and Slavatsky started the generator. The violet light bathed Dr. Bird's head and he felt a stiffness and contraction of his neck muscles, and as he tried to shout out his knowledge of Slavatsky's treachery, he found that his vocal chords were paralyzed. Through a gathering haze he could see Carson approaching with an anesthesia cone and the sweet smell of lethane assailed his nostrils. He fought with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... appetite; and thus they can nowise be together, since they are altogether contrary to one another, either on the part of the object (as when they have the same object), or at least on the part of the movement, for joy is with expansion [*Cf. I-II, Q. 33, A. 1] of the heart, whereas sorrow is with contraction; and it is in this sense that the Philosopher speaks in Ethic. ix. Secondly, we may speak of joy and sorrow as being simple acts of the will, to which something is pleasing or displeasing. Accordingly, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... head. The head of what animal did it resemble from the point of view of passional analogy? The head of a bull; but a bull with an intelligent face. Eyes which at the least opposition would glow like coals of fire; and above them a permanent contraction of the superciliary muscle, an invariable sign of extreme energy. Short hair, slightly woolly, with metallic reflections; large chest rising and falling like a smith's bellows; arms, hands, legs, feet, all worthy of the trunk. No mustaches, ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... which changes the course of the Suttor to the N.E. Just before the junction, the large bed of the Suttor contracts into one deep channel, filled in its whole extent by a fine sheet of water, on which Charley shot a pelican. I mention this singular contraction, because a similar peculiarity was observed to occur at almost every junction of considerable channels, as that of the Suttor and Burdekin, and of the Lynd and the Mitchell. I named the river, which here joins the Suttor, after Mr. Cape, the obliging commander of the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... reading, by the creaking of his chair as he moved, and by the little fidgeting grunts and half-exclamations which from time to time broke from him. His wife's hand shook at every unintelligible mutter from him, and the slight habitual contraction between ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... which are always situated on a rising ground. The word has evidently originated from the German hoch, from which is derived our English high. A hougue, therefore, means a mound or hillock, and in the present instance, the addition of bye is obviously a contraction of Hambye; and, in accordance with the foregoing tradition, means literally the barrow or tomb of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... or expansion, Drawing nearer, or contraction, Falling, rising, Slanting, crossing, Convex, concave, curved lines, Convex, concave, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... may be due to obstruction of the air-passages from foreign bodies in the larynx, drowning, suffocation, strangling, and hanging; from injury to the cervical cord; effusion into the pleurae, with consequent pressure on the lungs; embolism of the pulmonary artery; and from spasmodic contraction of the thoracic and ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... rope, had become stiffened and rigid to an intolerable degree; and although, when I first came on deck, I had by a strong exertion brought my caput to its proper bearings, yet the moment I was dismissed by my superior officer, I for my own comfort was glad to conform to the contraction of the muscle, whereby I once more staved along the deck, glowering up into the heavens, as if I had seen ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... griesly hair, made irreverend by her wickedness (her clouted head-dress being half off, spread about her fat ears and brawny neck;) her livid lips parched, and working violently; her broad chin in convulsive motion; her wide mouth, by reason of the contraction of her forehead (which seemed to be half-lost in its own frightful furrows) splitting her face, as it were, into two parts; and her huge tongue hideously rolling in it; heaving, puffing as if four breath; her bellows-shaped and various-coloured breasts ascending by turns to ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... after being either compressed or expanded when released, returns to its original shape and size, so when the bankers want money expanded in volume according to the need of their business, they would expand it, and whenever their business ends are best accomplished by contraction; then, of course, contraction is the program with them. While the government is completely separated from the banking business so they can furnish no relief, we might compare that system with an ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... old Mr. Bates, anybody—"suspects my secret. He guessed it a long while ago. Or he has just discovered the proofs of guilt." Nevertheless he went on talking in exactly the same tone of voice, without a contraction of a single facial muscle, with nothing at all shown unless perhaps a bead of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Round, v. trans., contraction of the verb to round-up, to bring a scattered herd together; used in all grazing districts, and common ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... to the waist; the ball struck him in the left nipple, the blood spirted out of the wound, his bow and arrows and lariat, with himself, rolled off the pony, falling heavily on the ground, and with one convulsive contraction of his legs and an "Ugh!" he was as ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... been thought a sufficient contraction of those privileges which your ancestors transmitted to you, and the commons needed to have desired no farther concessions from this assembly, since this was a publick confession of a subordinate state, and admitted either that part of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... involuntarily with a nervous contraction of her whole body. For that moment she was ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... replied the other. "I am endowed with the acutest hearing, and I can swear that not a mouse has rustled." Yet the pallor and contraction of his features were in total discord with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... paralysis when the cold air enters, and in proportion as such obstruction from this cause is decisive, the blood that should be brought to the air vesicles is impeded, and the process of oxidation is mechanically as well as chemically suppressed. The same contraction is also exerted on the vessels of the skin, driving the blood into the interior and better protected organs. Hence the reason why on leaving a warm room to enter a cold frosty air there is an immediate action of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... This contraction for Dorothy must have been the favourite name with the little ladies of the time for the plaything on which ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the morning, with the library hard by, that he might have his books at hand. But Sir Philip was not reading now; on the contrary, he was in a fit of thought; and, if one might judge by the contraction of his brow, and the drawing down of the corners of his lips, it was ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... person; while now as respects the earth, those only are 'weeds' which are noxious, or at least self-sown; as regards the person, we speak of no other 'weeds' but the widow's{211}. In each of these cases, the same contraction of meaning, the separating off and assigning to other words of large portions of this, has found place. 'To starve' (the German 'sterben', and generally spelt 'sterve' up to the middle of the seventeenth century), meant once to die any manner of death; thus Chaucer says, Christ ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... usual. The orphaned children, growing up and well schooled, calling him uncle, clamoured for his blessing. He gave that, too; and in the doorway paused for a moment to look at the flat face of the San Tome mountain with a faint frown. This slight contraction of his bronzed brow casting a marked tinge of severity upon his usual unbending expression, was observed at the Lodge which he attended—but went away before the banquet. He wore it at the meeting ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... insular and very English. National traits are, as a matter of fact, as enduring as the mountain-tops. They survive all change of policies, all shifting of boundary lines, all expansion and contraction of dominion. When Froissart tranquilly observed, "The English are affable to no other nation than themselves," he spoke for the centuries to come. Sorbieres, who visited England in 1663, who loved the English turf, hated and feared the English cooking, and ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... rock. Where the minerals are heterogeneous in this regard, differential stresses are more likely to be set up than where the minerals are homogeneous. Likewise a coarse-textured rock is in general less durable than a fine-textured one. Expansion and contraction of a stone under ordinary temperature changes, and also under fire and freezing, must necessarily be known for ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... expiratory muscles may be very violently contracted, and still no air will escape; indeed, the greater the strength exerted the tighter is the closure of the glottis. Obviously, this closure of the glottis cannot be effected by the contraction of the glottis-closing muscles, strictly speaking, for these muscles are too small and weak to withstand the powerful air pressure exerted against the vocal cords.[4] The point of resistance is located just above the vocal cords. The sudden air pressure ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... edged up cautiously, but there was no further movement from the Indian. He had been dead when he fell. The white man gave a short laugh when he realized that the raising of the leg had been only a muscular contraction. To save the blanket from the blood which was soiling it, he tore it from the limp, unresisting shoulders, and rubbed it in the dirt to obliterate the stain. He cursed when he saw that a bullet had torn in it two jagged, ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... through the key-hole, that they might turn into ridicule his tumultuous and awkward fondness for Mrs. Johnson, whom he used to name by the familiar appellation of Tetty or Tetsey, which, like Betty or Betsey, is provincially used as a contraction for Elisabeth, her Christian name, but which to us seems ludicrous, when applied to a woman of her age and appearance. Mr. Garrick described her to me as very fat, with a bosom of more than ordinary protuberance, with swelled cheeks of a florid red, produced by thick painting, and increased ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... I had been called sooner," said he, with a slight contraction of the brows, "but we will do all we can to ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... pains so far to curb her language for the sake of her husband's feelings. But as she gave vent to the last acid phrase she felt a sudden compunction. For David was looking straight before him into vacancy, with a painful intensity in the eyes, and a curious droop and contraction of the mouth. Why did he so often worry himself about Louie? He had done all ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... free in thought as the winds that sweep them, he is idiosyncratically opposed to loose and wasteful methods, to plans of empire that neglect the poor at the gate. Everything he has done has been aimed at the conservation of energy, the contraction of space, the intensification of culture. Burbank and his tribe represent in the vegetable world, Edison in the mechanical. Not only has he developed distinctly new species, but he has elucidated the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... estimated that the sphere on this account contracts on the average to the amount of some inches each thousand years. For the reason that almost all this heat goes from the depths of the earth, the cool outer portion losing no considerable part of it, the contraction that is brought about affects the interior portions of the sphere alone. The inner mass constantly shrinking as it loses heat, the outer, cold part is by its weight forced to settle down, and can only ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... as could no longer be purchased for gold, even if its members had been in a condition to exchange bullion for thread. This cap was another of the young girl's achievements, and she could not help smiling with pleasure when she saw its picturesque effect. The countess, in spite of the anxious contraction of her dark brows, looked imposingly handsome. Hers was an old age of positive beauty,—a decadence which had all the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Eyne, a contraction of eyen, is the plural number of eye. It is not more probable that an ancient writer should have used the expressions here quoted, than that any one now should say—In every ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... occurrence, he replaced the frog, took it down again, put it back, took it down, until he discovered that, as often as the damp frog (still hanging upon its copper hook) touched the iron nail, the contraction of the muscles took place, as if the frog had been touched by a conductor connected with an electrical machine. This experiment was repeated hundreds of times, and varied in as many ways as mortal ingenuity could devise. Galvani at length settled down upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... existence,—the Tae-keih, or Grand Extreme. This is absolutely immaterial, and the basis of the order of the universe. From this ultimate principle, operating from all eternity, come all animate and inanimate nature. It operates in a twofold way, by expansion and contraction, or by ceaseless active and passive pulsations. The active expansive pulsation is called Yang, the passive intensive pulsation is Yin, and the two may be called the Positive and Negative Essences of all things. When the active expansive phase ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... air, and there was a strange sense of contraction and confinement, so to speak, which had at first an unpleasant effect on Oliver. The silence, when both men paused at a ladder-foot to trim candles or to rest a minute, was most profound, and there came over the young doctor a sensation of being buried alive, and of having bid a final ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... little more marked, than in the year 1813. The eyelids were thinned, the lips pinched, the corners of the mouth drawn down, the cheek bones too prominent, and the neck visibly shrunken, which exaggerated the prominence of the chin and larynx. But the eyelids were closed without contraction, and the sockets much less hollow than one could have expected; the mouth was not at all distorted, like the mouth of a corpse; the skin was slightly wrinkled, but had not changed color,—it had only become a little ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... accomplished by the ball from Sir Everard Valletort's rifle. It appeared, however, the ill-fated officer had struggled much in the agonies of death; for the left leg was drawn Up into an unnatural state of contraction, and the right hand, closely compressed, grasped a quantity of grass and soil, which had evidently been torn up in a paroxysm ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... a little, his red-rimmed eyes going from face to face, his tongue moving back and forth between his lips. For an instant his eyes dropped to the gun at his feet, and a little spasmodic contraction of his body showed that he was tempted to take up the weapon. But he hesitated, and again ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... with their tentacles bowed backwards, which, as we shall see in a future chapter, is probably due to their outer surfaces retaining their elasticity for a longer period than their inner surfaces retain the power of contraction. The purple fluid within the cells of the pedicels is rendered finely granular, but there is no true aggregation; nor does this follow [page 68] when the leaves are subsequently placed in a solution of carbonate ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... use the knowledge that we have. Sometimes our ideas are locked away in air-tight compartments with no interaction between them. The psychologists tell us that suggestion is greatly favored by a narrowing of the attention, a "contraction of the field of consciousness," a dissociation of other ideas through concentration. This all simply means that we forget to let our common sense bring to bear counter ideas that might challenge a false one; or that worry—a veritable "spasm of the attention"—has fixed upon an idea ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... that there remained room for no more, he would turn the key upon his possessions and migrate elsewhere to repeat the performance later on. It is known that as many as four separate rents were at one and the same time being paid by this odd, shy little man, rather than allow the disturbance or contraction of his domain. Sometimes an anxious journey in search of a manuscript had to be made by author and publisher in conjunction before the missing paper could be located. The home life of this eccentric yet lovable man of genius seems to have been always ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... belong to any order) boarded the Virginia Lake at Battle Harbour and went ashore with me in the ship's boat, when I landed with the baggage. Hubbard and George went ashore in our canoe. A line of Newfoundlanders and "livyeres" stood ready to greet us upon our arrival. "Livyeres" is a contraction of live-heres, and is applied to the people who live permanently on the coast. The coast people who occasionally trade in a small way are known as "planters." In Hamilton Inlet, west of Rigolet, all of the trappers and fishermen are called planters. There the word livyere is never ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... resemble in shape the scuta of the Conchoderma aurita. The orifice in A. tubulosa projects so much as to be almost tubular. In A. parasita and A. minuta it does not project, and is either moderately large, or very small in proportion to the length of the capitulum; from contraction it is much wrinkled. The membrane forming the capitulum is smooth and very transparent; it contains very few tubuli, except under certain irregular projections ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... bellows, because they are expanded," but Harvey thought that the action of spurting blood from a severed vessel disproved this. For the spurting was remittant, "now with greater, now with less impetus," and its greater force always corresponded to the expansion (diastole), not the contraction (systole) of the vessel. Furthermore, it was evident that contraction of the heart and the arteries was not simultaneous, as was commonly taught, because in that case there would be no marked propulsion of the blood in any direction; ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the Secretary's views in respect to the likelihood of a serious contraction of this circulation, and to the modes by which that result may, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... carried up to a center in the spinal cord. These impressions may now overflow into other centers, from which spasmodic discharges of nerve energy may be liberated, which passing to the muscles, throw them into violent and spasmodic contraction. In other words, the child has a fit, or convulsion. All this disturbance being the result of reflex action (the spasmodic motions being quite involuntary, as the brain takes no part in them), the child meanwhile ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... in a ship's hull or in any part of her that had not behaved well in the shop tests, in the various machines that put the metal under bending stress, cross-breaking, hammering, drifting, shearing, elongation, contraction, compression, deflection, tension, and torsion stresses. The best of the steels had their elastic limits; there was none ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... and exclusive societies.—The fitness of social attraction diffused through the whole. The mischiefs of too partial love of our country. Contraction of moral duties. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... is probably a contraction of "raparee," and was the name given to the tokens that passed current in Ireland for copper coins of small value. Generally it referred to debased coins; hence it may be allied to "raparee," who might be considered as a ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... seen that the first mission of the twelve was the theme of verses 5-15, and was there pursued to its ultimate consequences of final judgment on rejecters, whilst the wider horizon of a future mission opens out from verse 16 onwards. A renewed contraction of the horizon is extremely unlikely. It would be as if 'a flower should shut and be a bud again.' The recurrence in verse 23 of 'Verily I say unto you,' which has already occurred in verse 15, closing the first section of the charge, makes it probable that here too a section is completed, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... which continued after the process had been accomplished; as if an anticipatory preparation for the liquid state were going on previous to the completion of the change. Performing the experiment again at 32 deg. C. (90 deg. Fahr.), the anticipatory preparation and the after-continuation of the contraction were more marked, and, instead of a separate and distinct liquid, wavy and mobile striae were perceived on the sides of the vessel as the only signs of a change of state which had not yet been effected. At temperatures above 32 deg. C. (90 deg. Fahr.), ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... the mantel-piece and dropped his head upon them. He felt a queer contraction in his throat, a stinging beneath his eyelids, such as he had not experienced since the days of childish mortifications and sorrows. But the instinctive manliness of him, held back the actual tears. He was debarred, even in solitude, from that form ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... full of nails, with the wheels of broken carts, and with strings, ropes and clothes lines of various lengths; yet to a new-comer it was always an El Dorado of enjoyment. Into this now sprang, tumbled, the cronies, Dick, Jack, Phil and Shel, which latter name was a contraction ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... down that impulse and then he became conscious of the silence. He mentioned this to me. A silence of the sea, of the sky, merged into one indefinite immensity still as death around these saved, palpitating lives. "You might have heard a pin drop in the boat," he said with a queer contraction of his lips, like a man trying to master his sensibilities while relating some extremely moving fact. A silence! God alone, who had willed him as he was, knows what he made of it in his heart. "I didn't think any spot on earth could be so still," ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... while only those who by repeated and repeated observation have gained complete assurance can also value the significance of the observations. For what I observed is like the tiny spark from the rubbed piece of amber, like the contraction of the muscles of the dead frog that Galvani observed - a small phenomenon that the unbelieving ridicules, but in which the wise sees the germ of new, never-guessed-at ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... to a woman who has rejected you has a peculiar effect. The coquetry faded from her smile, and there was a perceptible contraction of the brows. Her eyes, which were looking into mine, shifted to the back of the groom. No, I shall never understand a woman. She should have been the most sympathetic woman in the world, yet she appeared to ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... comfortable existence is at an end, for such inflammation will bring on constipation and constipation nervous misery. It is inevitable that inflammation should determine this outcome since it induces spasmodic contraction of the muscular walls of the tube, lessening the bore or closing the portion of the canal invaded. Plastic infiltration takes place in the walls of the gut, thickening and binding them together; or, if the inflammation be of a simple catarrhal or atrophic nature, ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... as yet, for it is not said to be like five, but ten virgins. It is worthy of our careful thought that it is to be made perfect by contraction, not expansion. The King is to say "Depart!" ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... exclaimed the old gentleman, his alarming contraction of brow and rigidity of feature instantaneously dissolving into a smile of extreme benignity. 'That alters the case. Certainly, between brothers in arms those little services may be offered and accepted. Although, really, it is encroaching on Monsieur's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... coast-towns with other lower marine animals under the name of "sea-fruit" (frutti di mare). There is nothing about them to show that they are animals. When they are taken out of the water with the net the most one can perceive is a slight contraction of the body that causes water to spout out in two places. The bulk of the Ascidiae are very small, at the most a few inches long. A few species are a foot or more in length. There are many species of them, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... removed from their fellow creatures, poor exiles relegated to this land of ice, poor creatures who should have been Esquimaux, since nature had condemned them to live only just outside the arctic circle! In vain did I try to detect a smile upon their lips; sometimes by a spasmodic and involuntary contraction of the muscles they seemed to laugh, but ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne |
