"Elastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prediction for their own protection—systems definite enough to give the astrologer a groundwork for a prediction which he could claim was dependent simply upon the heavenly bodies, and hence for which the astrologer could not be held personally responsible, and at the same time elastic enough to enable him to shape his prediction to fit in with his patron's wishes. The astrology of to-day shows the same ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... a use could doubtless be found, although there were neither umbrellas nor stays used at Granite House. The upper part of the mouth of the cetacean was, indeed, provided on both sides with eight hundred horny blades, very elastic, of a fibrous texture, and fringed at the edge like great combs, at which the teeth, six feet long, served to retain the thousands of animalculae, little fish, and molluscs, on which ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... be construed strictly, as he was a monopolist. On this occasion the law officers took a more liberal view. The fact is that the questions referred to the law officers for opinions by the Foreign Office have very often much more connection with policy than with law, and their opinions are elastic. There never were such law officers as James and Herschell. They did their work with extraordinary promptitude and decision, and with the highest possible skill. They never differed, and they always gave us exactly ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... second horse with me. Select your own rendezvous, and while you are waiting there, you can practice some of the best passes, so as to get your limbs as elastic ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... highly ornate, the metaphors are original. Of course, the idea is eminently oriental. Eastern rhetoric being fond of spinning out metaphors and similes, which, in the hands of Eastern poets, become highly elastic. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... right eye helped a little to put the finishing touch of repulsiveness upon a countenance already most unpleasant. The celluloid eye-patch, once flesh-colored, was now so dirty and smeared that its original color was discernible only in spots, and the once white elastic cord that circled his head and kept the patch in place was in equal disrepute. A battered slouch hat came to the level of the eye-patch in a forbidding sort of tilt. His left eyelid drooped until it was scarcely open at all, and fluttered continually. One nostril of his ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... this discovery was the fact that the left hand was perfect, and did not hold a bow, but some soft, elastic substance which Stephani believes to be the aegis, or shield, of Jupiter, on which was the head of Medusa. The sight of this shield paralyzed those who saw it; and though it belonged to Jupiter and Minerva, Jupiter sometimes lent it to his son Apollo to aid him in his warfare; such instances ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... Balsam Consumers Company Corsets Coupons Crane's Lotion Crown Headache Powders Daisy Fly Killer "Dead Stuck" for Bugs Delatone Dennos Food Digesto Dissolvene Rubber Garments Downs' Obesity Reducer Drosis Duponts Hair Restorative Dyspepsia Remedy, Graham's Elastic Stockings El Perfecto Veda Rose Rouge Empress Hair Color Restorer Empress Shampoo Soap Euca-Scentol Femaform Cones Golden Remedy for Epilepsy Golden Rule Hair Restorative Goodwin's Corn Salve Goodwin's Foot Powder Gowans Pneumonia Preparation Graves' (Dr.) Tooth Powder Gray's Ointment ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... appeared, we get the first hint of a forthcoming Second Part. "You shall see shortly," he says, "the further exploits of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza." His idea of "shortly" was a somewhat elastic one, for, as we know by the date to Sancho's letter, he had barely one-half of the book completed that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... wore a suit of well-brushed, "shiny" black broadcloth, and for comfort old-fashioned soft kid "gaiters," with elastic in the sides. He was a man with whom one did not easily become acquainted, having very decided opinions on most subjects. He possessed exquisite taste, a passionate love of music, flowers and all things beautiful; rather visionary, ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... tons as though there were no weight above them, no bite upon the rails. There is an enormous concentration of force somewhere; of a force which perhaps no man can fairly estimate; and it is under the thin shell we call a boiler. Were it not elastic it could not be so imprisoned, and when it rebels, when this thin shell is torn like paper, there is a havoc by which we may at last inadequately measure ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... world—his interest in them as diversified and fresh, his impressions as sharp and distinct, his rendering of them as free and true and forcible, as little weakened or confused by imitation or by conventional words, his language as elastic and as completely under his command, his choice of poetic materials as unrestricted and original, as if he had been born in days which claim as their own such freedom and such keen discriminative sense of what is real in feeling and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... remaining in the dwelling-room of the house a sufficient time, is ready for baling. The bales average in weight about forty oques (110 English pounds). The covering of the bales is a sort of netting made by the peasants from goat's hair; it is elastic and of great strength. Vamberry says of packing tobacco in ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Senegambia and along the coast of Western Africa. It is to be regretted that the above authors did not go further and explain the manner in which they suppose the Mound-Builders became acquainted with an animal inhabiting the West African coast. Elastic as has proved to be the thread upon which hangs the migration theory, it would seem to be hardly capable of bearing the strain required for it to reach from the Mississippi Valley ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... is a subject of much uncertainty and debate. In ancient Vedic times, caste was unknown. Society, in those days, was more elastic and free, and resembled that of other lands. And yet it showed a tendency toward a mechanical division which later grew into the caste system. It was not until the time of the great lawgiver, Manu, about twenty-five centuries ago, that the system ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the corset hung two elastic suspenders as yet awaiting their prey. But first must be drawn on the silk or stockinette knickerbockers which in the 1910 woman replaced the piteously laughable drawers of the Victorian period. Then the suspenders clutched the rims of the stockings with an arrangement of nickel and ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... it for him. He grumbled, of course, because others did. But life had never seemed so tempting as it did here and now. He could come up from heavy work in the hospital, or from poor Fanning and his everlasting eggs, and forget all that in ten minutes. Something inside him, as elastic as the grey ridges over which they were tipping, kept bounding up and saying: "I am all here. I've left everything behind me. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... matchless beans allowed themselves to become seductively crisp upon our tin plates. That supper seemed to me then the quintessence of gastronomy, and I am sure Cotter and I must have said some very good after-dinner things, though I long ago forgot them all. Within the ring of warmth, on elastic beds of pine-needles, we curled up, and fell swiftly into ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... there is worthy Doctor Guillotin, Bailly likewise, time-honored historian of astronomy, and the Abbe Sieyes, cold, but elastic, wiry, instinct with the pride of logic, passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. This is the Sieyes who shall be system-builder, constitutional-builder-general, and build constitutions ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... nearly fifteen, a tall long-armed girl, full grown, elastic of tread; with a slight figure that looked queenly in her best dresses, but loose and boyish when she slouched over the moors, whistling to her dogs, and taking long strides over the rough earth. A tall, thin, loose-jointed girl—not ugly, but with ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... what he liked in the good lady, that she didn't repeat, and also that she gave him a delicate sense of her shyly wishing him to know it. That was in itself a hint of possibilities between them, of a relation, beneficent and elastic for him, which wouldn't engage him further than he could see. Yet even as he afresh made this out he felt how strange it all was. She wanted, Susan Shepherd then, as appeared, the same thing Kate wanted, only wanted it, as still further appeared, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... in amassing wealth untold, yet they two must be as far apart as ever. Well, that need not follow, he told himself. With wealth one can do anything—anything; without it nothing, was at this time the primary article of Laurence Stanninghame's creed; and at the thought his step grew more elastic, and all unconsciously his head threw itself back in a gesture of ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... dearest pleasure that mankind may know, is contributing to the happiness of those we love. The less selfish our devotion to friends, the more sacrificing our self-denial in their behalf, the greater is the reward; so Mary's step was more elastic than ever, and her bright eyes shone with a steady, cheerful light, as she went about ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... champions, vigorous though they were, grew fatigued with such violent exertions; the sweat streamed from their temples, their breasts heaved like the bellows of a forge, their feet were heavier on the ground, their movements less elastic. Juancho felt the point of Andres' knife pierce his sleeve, and his rage redoubled; with a desperate bound, and at risk of his life, he sprang, like a panther, upon his enemy. Andres fell backwards, and, in his fall, burst open the imperfectly-fastened door of Militona's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... are elastic, and even in their predicament Peggy found her heart almost singing within her at the beauty of the green little valley after their long, dusty journey over ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... explain the 'Odyssey.' The temple of the sea-god could not have been more fitly placed, upon a grassy platform of the most elastic turf, on the brow of a crag commanding harbor, and channel, and ocean. Just at the entrance of the inner harbor there is a picturesque rock with a small convent perched upon it, which by one legend is ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... an older-fashioned. His voice, to be sure, had a latent tone of command. But the patient face, with its drooping moustache and long gray side-whiskers; the short yet attenuated figure, in a tweed suit of no particular cut; the round felt hat, cheap tie, and elastic-sided boots—all these failed very signally to impress the conductor, who flung the carpet-bag inside the omnibus with small ceremony, and ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... fainting fit, had to be smuggled out of Miss Carlyle's, as she had been smuggled in. She was of an elastic nature, and the shock, or the surprise, or the heat, whatever it may have been, being ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the present occasion, he piqued himself upon leaving on the minds of his companions a favourable impression of one who, under such disastrous circumstances, could sustain his misfortunes with ease and gaiety. His spirits, though not unyielding, were abundantly elastic, and soon seconded his efforts. The trio were engaged in very lively discourse, apparently delighted with each other, and the kind host was pressing a third bottle of Burgundy, when the sound of a drum was heard at some distance. The Major, who, in the glee of an old soldier, had forgot the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... down its center, making two semi-circular pieces, each with a moon shaped appearance, much like a wing. I based my idea in part on the observation that the Canitaurs and Zards had apparently lost, or disregarded, the springs of my time and instead used a hammock of springy, elastic cords that spread across the face of the furniture. Simply put, they stretched elastic ropes across an empty frame, almost like a trampoline made of individual cords. This created a very comfortable springing feel, for they gave enough bounce to render ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... of young Sidney's dejection restored all its first fresh piquancy to her engagement. At Tavistock Place he more than justified his existence. True, he did not remain depressed for very long, and there was something not altogether flattering in the high rebound of his elastic youth; but, as Miss Bishop was careful to point out, his joyous presence would have a most salutary effect in disturbing that prosaic sense of security in which gentlemen's affections have been ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... voice was that of a girl. The song was barely at an end, when he soon espied in the opposite direction, a beautiful girl advancing with majestic and elastic step; a girl quite unlike any ordinary mortal being. There is this poem, which gives ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... To think of the pure wells bubbling and flashing, by day and by night, in the hot summer weather, when the smell of the wood lies warm in the sun; on cold winter nights under moon and stars, for ever casting up the bright elastic jewel, that men call water, and feeding the flowing stream that wanders to the sea. I was very full of gratitude to the pure maiden saint that lent her name to the well and I am sure she never had a ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... an elastic surface, they proceeded to model the forms and make lights and shadows by pressing the work into hollows, with small heated metal balls, the work being probably damped as a preparation for this process. ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... in the jingle, also felt the contrast. Why could not Mary wear her straw hat straight, and why must she have elastic under her chin? Why did she look so cross and so stupid? Why did she bother him so with her worries? Charlotte would never worry him. She would just sit there, looking beautiful, with her golden hair, and blue eyes and pink cheeks. Next week was to be Miss Jones's birthday, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... caleche to the door. It was a substantial, two-wheeled vehicle, with a curious arrangement of springs, made out of the elastic wood of the hickory. The horse, a stout Norman pony, well harnessed, sleek and glossy, was lightly held by the hand of the goodman, who patted it kindly as an old friend; and the pony, in some sort, after an equine fashion, returned ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... or tame, walk upon their toes with a firm, elastic gait, and their toes are not retractile. Their other external characters are so varied, that it is impossible to give a general summary of their colour or form; the largest on record (a Suliot, belonging to the king of Naples), measured ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... are handy to have around the house, and all that; but a man must attend to his stomach, if he has to walk about on the small of his back. Now, I'm going to make you an offer. That leg is Fairchild's patent; steel-springs, india-rubber joints, elastic toes and everything, and it's in better order now than it was when I bought it. It'd be a comfort to any man. It's the most luxurious leg I ever came across. If bliss ever kin be reached by a man this side of the tomb, it belongs to the person that gets that leg on and feels ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... dear; vapour is, indeed, an elastic fluid, and bears a strong resemblance to a gas; there are, however, several points in which they essentially differ, and by which you may always distinguish them. Steam, or vapour, owes its elasticity merely to a high temperature, which is equal to that of boiling water. And it differs from boiling ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... a sort of berline hung on five pieces of rather elastic wood between wheels placed rather wide apart and of moderate height; that this carriage is driven by a "yemtchik," on the front seat, who has three horses, to whom is added a postilion, the "faletre," when it is necessary to hire a fourth horse ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... lying on the chair the parasol Yulia Sergeyevna had forgotten; he snatched it up and kissed it greedily. The parasol was a silk one, no longer new, tied round with old elastic. The handle was a cheap one, of white bone. Laptev opened it over him, and he felt as though there were the fragrance of happiness ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Henriet, Laurence looked at the round pellet in his hand. It was white, soft like ripe fruit, of an elastic consistency, and of the largeness ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Town Hall. On Sunday the air is alive with the clanging of bells, and in orderly procession every family proceeds to church, the fathers in all the gravity of umbrellas and prayer-books, the matrons in silk mantles and clumsy ready-made elastic sides; the girls in all the gaiety of their summer dresses with lively bustles bobbing, the young men in frock-coats which show off their broad shoulders—from time to time they pull their tawny moustaches. Each house keeps a cook and housemaid, and on Sunday afternoons, when the skies are flushed ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... for a better view, and discovered a strange object lying on the path. It was a false nose, a large, red, boosy nose, with, a length of elastic to hold it in its place. One of the guests had dropped it. Nickie put it on in a waggish humour, and stood moralising as three pretty Spanish dancers, in charge of a toreador, ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... of the wittiest stories in the Bible and must be read with some sense of humor. The tenant farmers of a great estate paid their rent in shares of the produce. This elastic system offered the steward a chance to make something on the side. He was found out and discharged, but while he was closing up his accounts he still had a short spell of authority. Things looked dark. He did not care to blister his white hands with a hoe-handle, nor his social ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... never could succeed in making them take any other when in a situation of constraint. The skin of the cameleon is of a very soft and delicate texture, and appears to the observer similar to a shagreen skin, elastic and pliable; and it may be owing to this extraordinary construction that it changes its colours and size with that facility which astonishes us; but what may be considered as a more wonderful faculty is, its expanding and contracting itself at pleasure, and, as it were, retaining the fluid ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... ear; these complete a picture which seems to belong to another clime and another age, and lives hardly but on the canvas of Titian. We are almost sorry to enter the room and break the spell. Mary Anderson's manner as she starts up from the organ with a light elastic spring to greet her visitors is singularly gracious and winning. There is a frank fearlessness in the beautiful speaking eyes so full of poetry and soul, a mingled tenderness and decision in the mouth, with an utter absence of that self-consciousness ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... flies remote beneath the flood in vain— So with resistless haste the wounded ship Scuds from pursuing waves along the deep; While, dash'd apart by her dividing prow, Like burning adamant the waters glow; Her joints forget their firm elastic tone, Her long keel trembles, and her timbers groan: 90 Upheaved behind her in tremendous height The billows frown, with fearful radiance bright; Now quivering o'er the topmost waves she rides, While deep beneath the enormous gulf divides; Now launching ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... by the adults, for the purposes of hunting. The rifle serves them much better. It seems to be customary for every male in the tribe over twelve years of age to provide himself with a rifle. The bow, as now made, is a single piece of mulberry or other elastic wood and is from four to six feet in length; the bowstring is made of twisted deer rawhide; the arrows are of cane and of hard wood and vary in length from two to four feet; they are, as a rule, tipped with a sharp conical ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... of all but absolute certainty that his immense energies, his elastic temperament, and his splendid constitution had all of them, long before this, been cruelly overtaxed and overweighted. Unsuspected by any of us at the time, he had, there can be little doubt of it, received the deadliest ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... footstep; but he could not persuade himself that the slow and lingering tread of the person approaching him was that of Susan, so much did it differ from the buoyant and elastic step with which she used to trip along. On looking through the branches, however, he perceived her coming towards him, carrying the pitcher as usual in her hand. The blood was already careering at full speed through his ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... of piles and pier and wharf, the Pacific tides still asserted themselves in mud and ooze as far as Sansome Street; the wooden sidewalks of Clay and Montgomery streets were mere floating bridges or buoyant pontoons superposed on elastic bogs; Battery Street was the Silurian beach of that early period on which tin cans, packing-boxes, freight, household furniture, and even the runaway crews of deserted ships had been cast away. There were dangerous and unknown ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... yard we pressed on, watchful ever; but though the track was plain enough, the elastic water grasses had sprung back so as to thoroughly impede our view, and we knew that at any moment we might be ready to plant our feet upon the wounded ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... he lay beside her to slip the pack straps over his shoulders. Then she drew toward her the little osier cage in which their only remaining carrier-pigeon rested secured by elastic bands, grasped the smaller sack with the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... joy to straighten out one's limbs, And leap elastic from the level counter, Leaving the petty grievances of earth, The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears, And all the needles that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... he pushed it with his hand before he had grasped it, and it fell upon the floor. Groping about to find it, his hand came suddenly upon something which felt soft and cool—an object apparently about the size and shape of a hen's egg, yet not hard like an egg-shell, but elastic and yielding readily to the pressure of the fingers. What it was the sense of touch did not enable him to guess, and as yet the light was insufficient to permit him to distinguish anything clearly. And, marvellous to relate, as the light increased, although all the objects around him became visible, ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... Margaret's elastic temper rose with the encouragement thus received, and Edward's heart beat high with hope. The party began their westward march, and through the bright days of April and May they rode through the smiling land, receiving welcome and adulation from all, and reinforcements ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... easy-chair is a chair so all over bejointed, behinged, and bepadded, everyway so elastic, springy, and docile to the airiest touch, that in some one of its endlessly-changeable accommodations of back, seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the body most racked, nay, I had almost added the most tormented conscience must, somehow and somewhere, find rest. Believing ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Euphrasia's windows, like the polar bears in their cage at the Jardin des Plantes, with his right hand thrust beneath his waistcoat in the region of the heart, which he was fit to tear from his bosom, but as yet he had only wrenched at the elastic of his braces. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... hardly decently composed the stiffened figure upon its soft elastic couch before it uttered a ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... superior neighbours from the chances of support. But I can see no reason for supposing such a consequence to be probable or even possible. The struggle for existence, as I have suggested, rests upon the unalterable facts that the world is limited and population elastic. Under all conceivable circumstances we shall still have in some way or other to proportion our numbers to our supplies; and under all circumstances those who are fittest by reason of intellectual or moral or physical qualities will have ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Cutts's regiment of dragoons; he was of age about fifty-seven (even that point has never been ascertained); in height about five feet six inches; in weight, nearly thirteen stone; with a chest that the celebrated Leitch himself might envy; an arm that was like an opera-dancer's leg; a stomach so elastic that it would accommodate itself to any given or stolen quantity of food; a great aptitude for strong liquors; a considerable skill in singing chansons de table of not the most delicate kind; he was ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sight. Thus we are enslaved by our own consent. Our will is suborned against our interests. We wear no chains to remind us of our servitude, but our liberty is restrained by the subtle web of superstition, which is so fine as to be imperceptible except to keen and well-practised eyes, and elastic enough to cheat us with a ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... excitement. He was moving in quick little charges, but with a certain grim system in all of them, between desk and bookcases, letter files, cabinets, and back to his desk again. He drew a document here, tucked one away there, slipped an elastic about others assembled on his desk, and clapped a sheaf ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... before Will set foot in Good Luck Row, and he tramped up it with a sounding pace. There was fire in his eyes, the blood ran hard in all his veins, his rubber boots had elastic springs in their soles. Yet he carried an extra weight with him. There was something in his pocket in a buckskin bag that burned his hand as if it had been red-hot iron when he touched it. As he came to No. 14 and saw the windows dark ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... long years with me, after the manner of my kind, to settle all hard questions by a few elastic phrases, which, once learned, are curiously pliable to the intellectual touch. "Phenomena," for instance,—how plastic to cover whatever one does not understand! "Law,"—how ready to explain away the inexplicable! Up to this ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... hating the long days That will not bring me either Rest or Thee, This health I hack and ravage as with knives, These nerves I fain would shatter, and this heart I fain would break—this heart that, traitor-like, Beats on with foolish and elastic beat: If, after all, this life I waste and kill Should still be thine, may still be lived for thee! And this the dreadful trial of my love, This silence and this blank that makes me mad, That I be man to-day of all the days ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... the days and affrightful nights of my disease, when my limbs were swollen, and my stomach refused to retain the food—taken in in sorrow, then I looked with pleasure on the scheme: but as soon as dry frosty weather came, or the rains and damps passed off, and I was filled with elastic health, from crown to sole, then the thought of the weight of pecuniary obligation from so many people reconciled me; but I ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... thenceforth from the field of competition! March Marston meanwhile kindled the spark and nursed the infant flame. The others busied themselves in the various occupations of the camp. Some cut down pine-branches, and strewed them a foot deep in front of the fire, and trod them down until a soft elastic couch was formed on which to spread their blankets. Others cut steaks of venison and portions of the grisly bear, and set them up on the end of sticks before the fire to roast, and others made fast and secured the ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... and elastic. It saved him much, but Barrington lingered until the period of suspense was at an end. Kenny drove ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... distinguished this female from the others of her tribe, were not confined alone to the indelible marks of nature. Her step was more elastic; her gait more erect and graceful; her foot less inwardly inclined, and her whole movements freer and more decided than those of a race doomed from infancy to subjection and labor. Though ornamented by some of the prized ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... And as she came out of the shut-in portion of the road to a stretch of open country, where the warm light lay on the hillsides, and the air was sweetened by the breath of pines, her depression gave way to a keen sense of elation. She turned aside and, crossing a bit of elastic, dry grass, climbed to the top of the stone wall and looked about her. Her heart throbbed with confidence, doubly grateful for the previous distrust. Her own lines came back to her; it was this that somehow, imperfectly, but somehow, she had put into words. It was still spring, a late New England ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... the first few days in sleep, pain, and trying to accept the hard fact that school and play were done with for months perhaps. But young spirits are wonderfully elastic and soon cheer up, and healthy young bodies heal fast, or easily adapt themselves to new conditions. So our invalids began to mend on the fourth day, and to drive their nurses distracted with efforts to amuse them, before the ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... the ignorant masses should be governed by a strong hand," the doctor resumed, after a brief pause, "I should desire at the same time that the framework of the social system should be sufficiently yielding and elastic to allow those who have the will and are conscious of their ability to emerge from the crowd, to rise and take their place among the privileged classes. The aim of power of every kind is its own preservation. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... of Jack Penny's face with its imploring eyes I was for the moment paralysed. He had tight hold of the tree, which was only about half the thickness of his own thin wrists, and he was swaying up and down, the weight of his body still playing upon the elastic sapling. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... business. You know he was eighteen months on a destroyer in the war, even if he was only a kid. You know," and Amy giggled, "he says that if women's ages are always elastic, it was no crime for him to stretch his age when he enlisted. Anyhow, he knows all about the 'listening boxes' down in the hold. And that is ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... holding out her hand. A little later, when Menard looked up, he saw her sitting beneath a gnarled oak, a boy on either side eagerly watching her. She was talking and laughing with them, and teaching them to make a screeching pipe with grass-blades held between the thumbs. He envied her her elastic spirits. ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... right," he said, "to make Miss Tresilyan and others aware of the real state of the case; but he did not conceive that farther interference lay within the sphere of his duty." It was odd how that same once arbitrarily elastic sphere had contracted since the prophet met the lion in the pathway! Dick Tresilyan—the only other person much interested in the progress of affairs—did not seem to trouble himself much about them. He was perpetually absent on shooting expeditions; but, when at home, it was observed ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... running his finger along the red corded edge of the elastic. He took up the tie and ran his nail along the red stripe that formed the selvedge on the back, and said: "See this?" He pointed to the red laces of the low shoes and asked, "See this?" And so ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... impressionable and are little influenced by the workings of pure reason. They are prepared to take their philosophies ready-made, and not disinclined to accept from others certain rigid standards by which they measure their own elastic temperaments. ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... present appears to be, to chain him to the spot on which he happens to stand, by making him the possessor of some small house, or some small plot of ground. If the labour-market were permanent in its demand, exactly proportioned to the existing numbers, and yet elastic enough to meet the movement of population, this would be an excellent plan; but as it is, it may be doubted whether there is not in a system which restricts the locomotion of the workman, the germ of a great evil, both to the class to which he belongs ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... examined the Royal Pianofortes manufactured by MESSRS. D'ALMAINE & CO., have great pleasure in bearing testimony to their merits and capabilities. It appears to us impossible to produce instruments of the same size possessing a richer and finer tone, more elastic touch, or more equal temperament, while the elegance of their construction renders them a handsome ornament for the library, boudoir, or drawing-room. (Signed) J. L. Abel, F. Benedict, H. R. Bishop, J. Blewitt, J. Brizzi, T. P. Chipp, P. Delavanti, C. H. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... not more so. Nor can we ourselves deny, having had frequent occasion to note the fact, that our hero was a boy of uncommon sprightliness of mind and liveliness of imagination, while Ben was somewhat heavy and slow in all his ways, except when all agog in the chase, and then he was as light and elastic as an Indian bow; as quick and keen as an Indian arrow. Such being the difference between them, the two cronies chimed as smoothly together as a pair of well agreeing fiddles, each, in turn, taking the lead of the other—Ben, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... which even her acknowledged talents had in her native country failed to procure. She quitted London in July, 1792, accompanied by her mother and daughter. The susceptible and energetic mind, fortunately for its possessor, is endowed with an elastic power, that enables it to rise again from the benumbing effects of those adverse strokes of fortune to which it is but too vulnerable. If a lively imagination add poignancy to disappointment, it also has in itself resources unknown to more equal ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... of them were brown, but some light grey, and one, who bore the heaviest load of all, a snowy white. His master called him "Aleppo," and chided him gently for his weariness. Phil made himself known to him as he knelt to be unloaded, throwing the weight of his body on the thick elastic pads that Nature had given him on his broad chest and on each elbow and knee of his fore-limbs. These elastic cushions, Phil saw, were on the front of his hind knees too, and ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... artist must dream the picture to come from the brilliant unmeaning of his palette, as the musician dreams a song, so he who writes must have a vision of his finished work before he touches, to begin it, a medium more elastic, more vivid, more powerful than any other—words—prismatic bits of humanity, old as the Pharaohs, new as the Arabs of the street, broken, sparkling, alive, from the age-long life of the race. Abraham Lincoln, with the clear thought in his mind ...
— The Perfect Tribute • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... ether sends him flying; with the second, third rebounding Touches he the vaulted roof. Anxiously the mother calleth: Spring amain, and at thy pleasure; But beware, think not of flying, unto thee is flight denied. And so warns the faithful father: In the earth the force elastic Lies, aloft that sends thee bounding; let thy toe but touch the surface, Like the son of earth, Antaeus, straightway is thy strength renewed. And so o'er these rocky masses, on from dizzy ledge to ledge, Leaps he ever, hither, thither, springing like a stricken ball. But in cleft of rugged ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... somewhere in the universe! It was strange to see his small body appear again for a moment: a little boy in a grey belted suit. His hands were in his side-pockets and his trousers were tucked in at the knees by elastic bands. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... and combinations that are formed during the process of the vinous and acetous stages of fermentation, are interesting, beyond comparison, to the brewer, malt and molasses distillers, vintager, cider and vinegar maker, &c. The elastic fluids and volatile principles that are extricated and escape, formerly so little attended to, are now better understood. The method of commodiously saving, and advantageously applying them, and other volatile products, to the improvement ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... with a stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and 46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste. It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal movement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing machine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and got five years' good service out of him; in which time he turned out upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which was ten a day. I worked him Sundays ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... very theatrical air, and the extraordinary mouthpiece made him look like a demon in, or out of, a pantomime. In taking this ornament off his neck he broke the string, and I supplied him with a piece of elastic band, so that he could put it on and off without undoing it, whenever he pleased; but the extraordinary phenomenon to him of the extension of a solid was more than he was prepared for, and he scarcely liked to allow it to touch his person again. I put it over my head first, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... smile. His sense of humor was suffering from temporary exhaustion and his strongest consciousness was a feeling of relief that neither Benis nor anyone else appeared to notice their arrival. Even the unique spectacle of a middle-aged lady in elastic-sided boots proceeding on tiptoe, and with all the tactics of a scouting party, toward the evidently deserted tents ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Landing to connect with their summer's job, and the absolute certainty of regular meals just now appeals. They get three meals a day going with the current, and four while tracking back, with meals thrown in when anything unusual happens or a moose is killed. One cannot help wondering how that elastic term "the law of heredity" works out with these people, cut off from the lives their fathers led and from the free woods-life of the ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... said, secretly well pleased with himself. And as for Athalie, she admired his elastic and eloquent imagination ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... perpetual industry, intelligence and provision of nature must be apparent to all who see, feel or think. I mean to distinguish this active, intelligent and designing principle, inherent as much in matter as the properties of gravity or any elastic, attractive or repulsive power, from any extraneous foreign force and design in an invisible agent, supreme though hidden lord and maker over all effects and appearances that present themselves to us in the course of nature. ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... they are of excellent temper. The Arabs are extremely proud of a good sword, and a blade of great value is carefully handed down through many generations. The sheiks and principal people wear silver-hilted swords. The scabbards are usually formed of two thin strips of elastic but soft wood, covered with leather. No Arab would accept a metal scabbard, as it would destroy the keen edge of his weapon. The greatest care is taken in sharpening the swords. While on the march, the Arab carries his weapon slung on the pommel of his saddle, from which it passes beneath his ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... and "the flowing and watery vein," which the scholars of his time affected, it is strange that he should not have seen that the new ideas and widening thoughts of which he was the herald would want a much more elastic and more freely-working instrument than Latin could ever become. It is wonderful indeed what can be done with Latin. It was long after his day to be the language of the exact sciences. In his History of the Winds, which is full of his irrepressible fancy and picturesqueness, Bacon describes ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... hesitated about addressing himself to the narrow work of getting it. He never walked Broadway, a part of its tide of abundant shifting life, without feeling something of the flush of wealth, and unconsciously taking the elastic step of one well-to-do in this ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... their pulse is owing solely to the sudden distension of their walls by the blood thrown into them at each contraction of the ventricles. But the remission which succeeds the pulse was regarded by him as caused simply by collapse of the walls of the arteries due to elastic reaction. Knowing nothing of the muscular coat of the arteries, he was unaware of the fact that the elastic reaction of the arteries, after their distension, is aided by the tonic contractility of their walls; the two forces, ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... dinner—that the bed was softer than his ordinary bed—that the coffee he had just drunk possessed an aroma which the mixture of chicory took away from his, and he could not conceal from himself that the elastic couches and stuffed chairs which he had sat upon for the last twenty-four hours were much preferable to the hair sofa and cane chairs of his own establishment. The only thing, then, which remained to trouble him, was the uneasiness ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... is—well, you all know Box A, ladies and gentlemen, so I will simply say that it is the best box in the house. It will hold all the friends any man breathing has any use for. It would hold the largest family who ever received the Queen's bounty. Box A is one of those elastic boxes, ladies and gentlemen, which have no limit. You can fill it chock full, and if the right person knocks at the door there will still be room for another. Who will start the bidding ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... exception of the acceleration neutralizers. But I'm having some heavily-cushioned and elastic supports made that will, I believe, save us from injury. And I guess we can ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... an elastic gas consisting of imponderable atoms, which, as we are told by works on molecular physics, are, in proportion to their size, as far apart as the celestial bodies are from each other in space. This distance is less than ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... dreary surroundings. On the whole, she impressed one like those fragile wild-flowers which in April cast their fluttering shadows from the mossy crevices of the old New England granite,—an existence in which colorless delicacy is united to a sort of elastic hardihood of life, fit for the rocky soil and harsh winds it is born ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to see him, though many of the boys tried to do so, and many were the earnest inquiries for him day by day. It then became more fully apparent than ever, that, although Edwin was among them without being of them, no boy in the school was more deeply honored and fondly loved than he. Even the elastic spirits of boyhood could not quite throw off the shadow of gloom which his illness ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... this far-distant day I can close my eyes and see the gaunt, leather-clad figure of Ephraim Yeates, striding on always in the lead and ever pressing forward, tough, wiry and iron to endure, and yet withal so elastic that the shrewdest discouragement served only to make him rebound and strike the harder. Good stuff and true there was in that old man; and had Richard or I been less determined, his fine and noble heroism in a cause which was not his own would have ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... reminiscence), Sort me, O tongue and lips for Nature's sake, souvenirs of earliest summer, Gather the welcome signs (as children with pebbles or stringing shells), Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air, Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes, Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his golden wings, The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor, Shimmer of waters with fish in them, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... ordered (p. 100) the arrest of the possadnik, Marfa's son, and a number of boyards who believed in a republic, had them put in chains and carried to Moscow. This was in violation of the charter, but Ivan had an elastic conscience. Next he tempted a scribe to mention him as Sovereign instead of "lord," in an official document; and when, in a last effort to save the republic, Marfa's partisans killed a number of Ivan's friends, it was evidently his duty ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... of blows per minute (and therefore the velocity), and light blows by diminishing it—a plan which was quite contrary to the true requirements of the case. To prevent the shock of the hammer head being communicated to the driving gear, an elastic connection was usually formed between them, consisting of a steel spring or a cushion of compressed air. With the steel spring, the variation which could be given in the thickness of the work under ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... sir, to stop here; London's the place to divert your mind," said Pedgift, cheerfully. "All business is more or less elastic in its nature, Mr. Armadale; I'll spin my business out, and keep you company with the greatest pleasure. We are both of us on the right side of thirty, sir; let's enjoy ourselves. What do you say to dining early, and going ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the regions of the phrenological organs of firmness, conscientiousness, self-esteem, indicating a stern will, unswerving integrity, and marvellous self-possession. He walked rapidly with a firm and elastic tread. He was somewhat like John Baptist, taciturn in habits, usually wrapped in meditation. He was rather meteoric in his movements, appearing suddenly and unexpectedly at this place, and then disappearing ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... gentlemen, I don't mind saying that as far as I am concerned the joke's at an end; and, in spite of your kind offer, I must start for England to-morrow' under the good Herr Bhme's wing. And in case my elastic conscience troubles you (for I see you think me a weather-cock) here are the letters received this morning, establishing my identity as a humble but respectable clerk in the British Civil Service, summoned away from his holiday by a tyrannical ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of General Taylor upon those who favored the abolition of slavery. In a speech at Cleveland, Ohio, in October of that year, he said: "Freedom insists on the emancipation and development of labor; slavery demands a soil moistened with tears and blood—freedom a soil that exults under the elastic tread of man in his native majesty. These elements divide and classify the American people into two parties," and he proceeded to argue as if the Whigs and Democrats were thus divided, when he knew that both were in the absolute control of the ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... long festoons, rested a huge black snake; a bird two thirds grown was slowly disappearing between his expanded jaws. As he seemed unconscious of my presence, I quietly observed the proceedings. By slow degrees he compassed the bird about with his elastic mouth; his head flattened, his neck writhed and swelled, and two or three undulatory movements of his glistening body finished the work. Then he cautiously raised himself up, his tongue flaming from his mouth the while, curved over the nest, and with wavy subtle motions, explored the interior. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs |
