"Flexible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glance how dependent is their intelligence upon these grasping organs. All human arts base themselves ultimately upon the human hand; and even the apes approach nearest to humanity in virtue of their ever-active and busy little fingers. The elephant, again, has his flexible trunk, which, as we have all heard over and over again, usque ad nauseam, is equally well adapted to pick up a pin or to break the great boughs of tropical forest trees. (That pin, in particular, is now a well-worn classic.) The squirrel, once more, celebrated for his ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Properties.—Ph is very flexible and soft, and is much used for water pipes. In moist air it is soon coated with suboxide, Pb20, as may be seen by exposing a fresh surface. Some portion of this is liable to dissolve in water, and, as all soluble salts of Pb are poisonous, water that ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... had a crimson carpet. Mr. Blunt appeared from somewhere in the hall. He was in riding breeches and a black coat with ample square skirts. This get-up suited him but it also changed him extremely by doing away with the effect of flexible slimness he produced in his evening clothes. He looked to me not at all himself but rather like a brother of the man who had been talking to us the night before. He carried about him a delicate perfume of scented soap. He gave us a flash of ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... flexible shoulders airily and this time her color did not flow. "How is one to tell...a girl in her first season...when all men look so much alike? It is fun to flirt with them, when you have been shut up in boarding-school and hardly had a glimpse of life even in vacation. My New York ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... beautiful, but in a woman so fortunately situated a little beauty is made much of. Her figure, tall and slender, had the flexible grace of ribbon-grass; her little head, regally poised, was almost overweighted with thick braids of satiny hair of pale gold; small features, delicate, if irregular, a colourless, fair skin, and pale-blue eyes, completed ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... procured a long, thin plank, on which my tubs could be fixed, and the two ends of this I bent upward so as to form a keel. Other two planks were nailed along the sides of the tubs; they also being flexible, were brought to a point at each end, and all firmly secured and nailed together. I felt satisfied that in smooth water this craft would be perfectly trustworthy. But when we thought all was ready for the launch, we found, to our ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... under them, and the twinkling lights far up the avenue come nearer and nearer with lightning speed. The slide is lined on both sides with a joyous throng of their elders, who laugh and applaud equally the poor sled and the flexible flyer of prouder pedigree, urging on the returning horde that toils panting up the steep to take its place in the line once more. Till far into the young day does the avenue resound with the merriment ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... This rubber, whose lower extremity is bent back like the bell of a trumpet, forms a washer against which there is applied a galvanized iron ring that is fixed to the mouth of the outlet pipe by means of six small screws. This ring is provided with two studs which engage with two flexible thimbles, K and L, that are affixed to the siphon by four rivets. These studs and thimbles, as well as the screws, are likewise galvanized. Between the branches, A B D E, of the pipe there is soldered a sheet of galvanized iron, which forms isolatedly a receptacle or air-chamber, F, that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... years earlier in date than the elegies of Mimnermus, the first of which we have certain knowledge: and in Theognis, a hundred years later than Mimnermus, elegiac verse becomes a vehicle for the utmost diversity of subject, and a vehicle so facile and flexible that it never seems unsuitable or inadequate. For at least eighteen hundred years it remained a living metre, through all that time never undergoing any serious modification.[3] Almost up to the end of the Greek Empire of the East it continued to be ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... wagon has, years ago, given place to more showy and flexible vehicles; but long before such were invented the Jersey wagon was an established institution, and was handed down, with the family name, from father to son. It was the great original of the modern emigrant wagon of the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... together. He made connections with flexible cables and tucked the cable out of sight. He plugged in for power and began to ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... this case the apparatus is fitted up in a slightly different manner; the fluid to be filtered is contained in an open cylinder into which the candle is plunged, while its delivery nozzle is connected with the filter flask by means of a piece of flexible pressure tubing (previously sterilised by ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... House; it allowed him to abandon himself to the poetic ecstasy, which in him was almost of the same nature as philosophy, without translating it downward into the terms of popular apprehension; it gave him a choice, formal, yet flexible means of expression for his uninterrupted contemplation ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the desire we have that it should succeed as we wish, we very often get a dressing; but, in truth, the dressing over, and the affair fallen through, the King, content with having showed that we can do nothing, and pained by having vexed us, becomes afterwards supple and flexible, so that then is the time at which we can do all ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... depends almost entirely on the proportions and arrangement of that skeleton, which again is strictly adapted to the functions necessary for the well-being of the animal. The form cannot therefore be rapidly modified by variation, and the thin and flexible integument will not admit of the development of such strange protuberances as occur continually in insects. The number of species of each group in the same country is also comparatively small, and thus the chances of that first accidental resemblance which is necessary for natural ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... spirit of the opera. She sang also the moon song from "Der Freischutz" simply and exquisitely, also in a trio of Mozart's and a Barcarolle, all of which showed the same genius. I do not see that she lacks anything, for although not beautiful, her face is flexible and really grand when she is excited. Cranch thought her voice not quite sweet in some parts. The "Miserere" was exquisitely beautiful, but not entirely what I expected to hear. In Naples I have heard the "Barber of Seville" and an opera of Mercadanti's. The last ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... Sonata, without prelude, begins with a soaring, lyric melody in which the customary eight measure formation is expanded to twelve measures. This expansion is brought about by an imitative treatment of the fifth measure and is a convincing example of the flexible phraseology so prominent a feature in Mozart's style. A balancing sentence of eight measures, with an extended cadence, brings us to the transition which is to introduce the second theme. Observe the increasing animation of the rhythm ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... character promptly. "Some kind of glass. Bless my windshield-wiper, what was it? Oh, yes! Flexible ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... of development in all these institutions is, however, identical and one clearly perceived. It is the tendency from status to contract, from fixed order to flexible adjustment, from static to dynamic condition, already noted in ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... of the country also should be reformed. Dru and his advisers saw the difficulties of attacking this most intricate question, but with the advice and assistance of a commission appointed for that purpose, they began the formulation of a new banking law, affording a flexible currency, bottomed largely upon commercial assets, the real wealth of the nation, instead of upon debt, ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... in Africa agree, that the inhabitants, particularly of the interior, have a good deal of mechanical skill. They tan and dye leather, sometimes thinning it in such a manner that it is as flexible as paper. In Houssa, leather is dressed in the same soft, rich style as in Morocco; they manufacture cordage, handsome cloths, and fine tissue. Though ignorant of the turning machine, they make good pottery ware, and some of their jars are really tasteful. They prepare indigo, and ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... come here as a man, as an American, to pay his tribute to another man, a long-time friend, whom he thought to stand somewhat aside and above mere party strife, to represent values not merely political.... So accommodating and flexible is the human mind, so "practical" may it become through dealing with men and affairs, that in listening to Judge Bering I was able to ignore the little anomalies such a situation might have suggested to the theorist, to the mere student of the institutions of democracy. The friendly glasses of rye ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... him till a feeble daylight through an uncurtained window warned her to switch off the electricity. Coming back to her place, she continued to fan him, quietly and deftly, with no more than a motion of the wrist. She had the nurse's wrist, slender, flexible; the nurse's hand, strong, shapely, with practical spatulated finger-tips. After all, he was in some degree the drowning unconscious prince, and she ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... called, whether of cloth or fur, were evidently the invention of some out-of-door people; but then they were not the brimless pyramidal canisters of the present fashion, but were either caps with dependent brims, or else broad and flexible Spanish sombreros. The very idea of a hat is that of utility—something to keep off the sun and the rain—any thing will do for warmth that will aid the hair in keeping in the natural caloric of a man's head; and hence we much doubt whether the Irish, that hot-headed nation, ever wore hats in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Dr. Weber, he was a tall, lean man, invariably dressed in a sky-blue coat with codfish tails and deerskin breeches. He wore a hat of flexible straw and boots with bright yellow tops, on the front of which hung two silver tassels. He talked little; his laugh was like a nervous attack, and his gray eyes, usually calm and meditative, shone with singular brilliance at the least sign of contradiction. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... in her eyes, which were usually dark as a dark church, but could flame with light like a conflagration. Her face scarcely ever altered from its look of brooding. She might have been one of the women who went with Mary when Jesus was dead. Her body was not flexible and living. She walked with a swing, rather heavily, her head bowed forward, pondering. She was not clumsy, and yet none of her movements seemed quite THE movement. Often, when wiping the dishes, she would stand in bewilderment and ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... yet enter'd; Bliss had newly Alighted, and shut close his rainbow wings, To rest at ease, nor dread intruding ill. Plants of superior growth now sprang apace, With moon-like blossoms crown'd, or starry glories; Light flexible shrubs among the greenwood play'd Fantastic freaks,—they crept, they climb'd, they budded, And hung their flowers and berries in the sun; As the breeze taught, they danced, they sung, they twined Their sprays in bowers, or spread the ground with net-work. Through the slow lapse of undivided ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... The 5-stress line, both rimed and unrimed, is the most flexible and best adapted to all kinds of subjects that English versification possesses. Its powers range through the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare, the dignity of the sonnet, and the grandeur of Milton, to the satire of Pope ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... in rapture at the aria which Garat sang with his flexible tenor voice in so enchanting a manner—"Oh, Richard! oh, mon roi!"—an aria which had once procured him a triumph in the very theatre. For when Garat began this air with his full voice, and every countenance was directed to the box where ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... possessed a full, flexible, dramatic voice, and the strong passages were delivered with great fervor, while the sad or sentimental ones were tinged with a tone ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... and the burden of his duty is to make himself a pleasant nobody, yet natural to the position. Like the apprentice of the armorer, it is my task only to hold the hot iron on the anvil while the skilled craftsmen strike out the flexible sword-blade. There is no need for me to praise or analyze the character or fame of the great poet whose centennial we celebrate. This will be done presently by abler hands, in eloquent verse and prose. Tom Moore was a poet of all lands, and it is fitting that his centenary should ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... is the least of the three, and of a dark brown colour; the abdomen is conical, and composed of six distinct segments, and armed with a straight sting; it possesses a long flexible trunk, known by the name of a proboscis, and has on its two hinder legs a hollow or basket, to receive the propolis and farina which it collects as ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... so goot" merits particular notice. It is an expression that seems to me capable of extension and distension. It is a flexible, comfortable, jovial, rollicking expression. To give a perfect translation of it is not easy; but I cannot think of a better way of conveying its meaning, than by saying that it is a compound of the phrases—"be so ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... took sanctuary in the temple of Minerva of the Brazen House; but, being soon after undeceived, and having taken an oath of them that they had no designs against him, he quitted his refuge, and himself also entered into the confederacy with them; of so gentle and flexible a disposition he was, to which Archelaus, his brother-king, alluded, when, hearing him extolled for his goodness, he said, "Who can say he is anything but good? he is so even ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... preach this to adults, it is still more important to teach it to children: for children are more easily molded than adults. Our hold on these still flexible minds is complete, and, through national education "we seize the coming generations."[2199] Naught is more essential and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... who affirm, that, while her double charge was carried about in this situation, her keg was furnished with a long and slender flexible tube, which, when the child began to be clamorous, she conveyed into his mouth, and straight he stilled himself with sucking; but this we consider as an extravagant assertion of those who mix the marvellous in all their ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... quite white—so white, that under the brilliant electric light she was almost green and scarcely looked lovely at all. She made a sign to the man on the staircase and slipped through the crowd like an eel. She was a slim flexible creature and never was a disappearance more wonderful in its rapidity. Between stout matrons and their thin or stout escorts and families she made her way and lost herself—but always making toward the exit. In two minutes there was no sight of her ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... apply throughout the whole range of the personnel: so that, no matter how large the organization of any navy may be, there is—there must be, if good work is to be done—a network of invisible wires, uniting all together, by a strong yet flexible bond ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... How they originated, who can tell? Nevertheless we can imagine a stage of human society in which the circle of men's minds was narrower and their sympathies and instincts stronger; in which their organs of speech were more flexible, and the sense of hearing finer and more discerning; in which they lived more in company, and after the manner of children were more given to express their feelings; in which 'they moved all together,' like a herd of wild animals, 'when they moved ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... shall return again to the relations of pragmatism with religion. But you see already how democratic she is. Her manners are as various and flexible, her resources as rich and endless, and her conclusions as friendly as ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... faithful manner he had preserved for himself and his congregation, both in doctrine and practise, a staunch Lutheran character, which banished the very thought of fraternizing with the heterodox. At the same time, though a German theologian and commanding an easy, flexible, and forceful Latin, he was a genial Dutchman among his Dutch parishioners, perfectly adapting himself to their manners." (186.) He was firm and consistent, but not fanatical, bigoted, or narrow. "In 1746, when the Reformed pastor Freylinghausen lay ill with ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... connected by three lines of double waling bolted to the verticals at three different heights. This frame was lowered to the bottom so as to enclose the bearing piles. The posts or verticals were then driven, one by one, into the bottom, the frame being flexible enough to permit this. The spaces between the posts or verticals were then filled by sheet-piling and the frame was bolted to the curbing piles. This curbing afterward supported the traveler used in laying the ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... large, his lips thin, the lower one protruding. Later, Moscheles said that he looked like his music. Delicacy and a certain aristrocratic bearing, a harmonious ensemble, produced a most agreeable sensation. "He was of slim frame, middle height; fragile but wonderfully flexible limbs, delicately formed hands, very small feet, an oval, softly outlined head, a pale transparent complexion, long silken hair of a light chestnut color, parted on one side, tender brown eyes, intelligent rather than dreamy, a finely-curved aquiline nose, a sweet subtle ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... not abused the flexible interpretation given to the "reasonable standard of service" condition, but have appreciated the fact that the Country Library Service always took into consideration any local difficulties that existed. Libraries generously supported by their local authorities without exception have made full ...
— Report of the National Library Service for the Year Ended 31 March 1958 • G. T. Alley and National Library Service (New Zealand)
... Optic." No genuine boy ever tires of this famous author who knew just what boys wanted and was always able to supply his wants. Books are attractively bound in art shades of English vellum cloth, three designs stamped in three colors. Printed from large type on an extra quality of clean flexible paper. Each book in ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... enough; the effect was instantaneous. Without a word and without hesitation, the tall negro struck a violent blow at Alexander with the light bamboo he carried. Paul, who was immediately behind his brother, saw the action and caught the man's hand in the air, but the end of the flexible cane flew down and knocked Alexander's ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... gate of heaven was opened, and an angel took the old woman in. She dropped a straw; it was one of the pieces of straw which had stuffed the bed to which she had set fire to save the lives of many, and it had turned to pure gold, but gold that was flexible, and ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... eliminate the rivalry between the large and the small, the strong and the weak. It wouldn't be difficult because there's plenty for all. There'd be no trouble as there was in the old days. We've learned to be psychologically flexible." ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... and his wife was attired in bright silks and wore a profusion of massive gold jewellery. The Yakutes are expert goldsmiths, but chiefly excel in the manufacture of arms, especially a kind of yataghan, or huge dagger, which is stuck into the waistband. Yakute steel is much more flexible than Russian, although I have seen a knife made out of the former sever a copper coin as neatly as though it ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... a sheet of paper, snow-white in color. I put aside my pencil and notebook to examine it. As I took it in my hand it was obvious that it was something unusual. It was softer than a cleansing tissue, and probably even more flexible. I rubbed it between my fingers, and it had the most remarkable feel of any paper I had ever felt—soft and clinging and cool, and exceedingly pleasant. I knew the paper chemists called this property ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... other respects she was artlessness itself, could never understand what falsehood meant, and, as to truth, her unspotted mind was transparent as a sunbeam. Our readers are not to understand, however, that though apparently flexible and ductile, she possessed no power of moral resistance. So very far from that, her disposition, wherever she thought herself right, was not only firm and unbending, but sometimes rose almost to obstinacy. This, however, never appeared, unless she ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... flexible, but iron is not flexible. Not every plant is edible. Glass is breakable and transparent. Your speech is quite incomprehensible, and your letters are always written quite illegibly. The darkness is impenetrable. He related to me a story altogether incredible. Perhaps ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... Hill House was, we must be convinced, a very happy one. It was a house of a flexible and versatile personality, a beautiful home, an important headquarters of many state affairs, a brilliant social nucleus. Washington and his wife often went there to call in their beloved post-chaise, and there was certainly no dignitary of the time and the place ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... trousers tight around the ankles, a sort of apron falling over the front of the body, one arm in the air, with the hand thrown backward, and in the other hand, enormous in a large fencing-glove, the thin, flexible foil, extended and recovered with the agile ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... who are not in society never walk in this long promenade, which is open to all the world. You shall see there, any pleasant day before the Carnival, the aristocracy of the kingdom, the fast young hopes of the nobility, the diplomatic body resident, and the flexible figures and graceful bearing of the high-born ladies of Castile. Here they take the air as free from snobbish competition as the good society of Olympus, while a hundred paces farther south, just beyond the Mint, the world at large takes its plebeian ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... rear, and at one time it seemed as if he would fall over backward, and his master sprang lightly to the ground. But the horse was scarcely on all fours before Graham was on his back again. The brute had the bit in his teeth, and paid no attention to it. Graham now drew a flexible rawhide from his pocket, and gave his steed a severe cut across the flanks. The result was another bound into the air, such as experts present declared was never seen before; and then the enraged animal sped away ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... epic three-hour combat of the Brunswick, next astern of Howe, and the Vengeur, both 74's. With the British vessel's anchors hooked in her opponent's port forechannels, the two drifted away to leeward, the Brunswick by virtue of flexible rammers alone able to use her lower deck guns, which were given alternately extreme elevation and depression and sent shot tearing through the Vengeur's deck and hull; whereas the Vengeur, with a superior fire of carronades and musketry, swept the enemy's upper deck. When the antagonists ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... introduction by the author and special prefaces to each volume, with illustrations from bas reliefs made by the novelist's father. Doubleday, Page & Co. are issuing a pocket edition of Kipling, on thin paper with flexible leather binding, which is very convenient. Any additional books will be added to each of these editions. Kipling has told of his early life in India and of his precocious literary activity in My First Book (1894). Richard Le Gallienne made a study of the novelist in Rudyard ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... true sadness was rather in seeing those who, not having the spectacles, thought that the iron rod was flexible, and the ice statue warm. I saw many a gallant heart, which seemed to me brave and loyal as the crusaders, pursuing, through days and nights, and a long life of devotion, the hope of lighting at least a smile in the cold eyes, if not a fire in the icy heart. I watched the earnest, enthusiastic ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... is destitute of experience, and cannot take care of itself, its bones are all soft and yielding, and more particularly of the skull which incloses and protects the brain, and those of the limbs are made flexible, so that if it falls they ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... of the ship's ports. They wore the double, transparent sag-suits Calhoun had suggested, which had been painstakingly tested, and which were perfect protection against contagion. They were double garments of plastic, with air tanks inside the inner flexible envelope. ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... did not turn on the day of going to the guillotine. A lawyer, and of a lawyer's family, he was in lucrative practice when the Revolution broke out, a fine advocate, not overscrupulous in method, flexible, but large in view, generous in heart, irresistible in courage, strong in political instincts, a man of the greatest possibilities. He espoused the popular cause, and the popular cause in the democratic sense. He stood for the ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... look at this," he said, selecting a little flexible enamel fish, and trying to lure back this small wild bird. "See this little gold and green fish, it moves its ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... orchestra. Berlioz's orchestration, too, is of a more delicate temper, and has a freer life than Wagner's, flowing in an impetuous stream, and sweeping away everything in its course; it is also less united and solid, but more flexible; its nature is undulating and varied, and the thousand imperceptible impulses of the spirit and of action are reflected there. It is a marvel of spontaneity ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... it has been said, were sometimes vanquished in battle, but they were always victorious in war. With the short swords of her disciplined soldiers, her flexible legion, and her fortified camps, Rome won dominion in Italy and began ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... that there are only bare white sands at the bottom; oh no! the most wonderful trees and plants grow there, with such flexible stalks and leaves, that at the slightest motion of the water they move just as if they were alive. All the fish, big and little, glide among the branches just as, up here, birds glide through the air. The palace of the Merman King lies in the very ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... and sallow brethren: that of a big English gentleman, who hunted, shot, or fished, or walked after his whistling ploughman every morning, and on occasions daringly dashed in amongst the poachers by the palings of his park or paddock on summer evenings; yet whose hands were reasonably white and flexible, as if they handled other things than guns and fishing-rods, and whose eyes, at once clear and meditative, had studied more than the spire of his brother's church and the village street, more than quiet country towns, and loud watering-places, and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... relieve your overwrought nerves and cultivate power through repose, watch the exquisite languor of a drowsy cat, and despair of imitating such perfect and restful grace. There is a gradual yielding of every muscle to the soft persuasiveness of slumber: the flexible frame is curved into tender lines, the head nestles lower, the paws are tucked out of sight: no convulsive throb or start betrays a rebellious alertness: only a faint quiver of unconscious satisfaction, a faint heaving of the tawny sides, a faint gleam ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... which seemed to be the only language understood or cared for by the rest of the company; indeed, who would be so unreasonable as to expect Spanish females to speak any language but their own, which, flexible and harmonious as it is, (far more so I think than any other,) seemed at times quite inadequate to express the wild sallies of their luxuriant imagination. Two hours fled rapidly away in discourse, interrupted occasionally by music and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... confessedly at the head by virtue of remarkable native gifts, which, had they been assisted by greater industry and ambition, might easily have won him a very eminent rank in Europe as well as in his own country. An easy, pleasure-loving, tropical nature, flexible, facile, and disposed to sacrifice the future to the present, was the only obstacle to the attainment to a place level with the ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... entirely) got rid of is Fortin's Barometer. Fig. 3 shows how this is effected. The upper part of the cistern is formed of a glass cylinder, through which the level of the mercury may be seen. The bottom is made like a bag, of flexible leather, against which a screw works. At the top of the interior of the cistern is a small piece of ivory, the point of which coincides with the zero of the scale. By means of the screw, which acts on the flexible cistern bottom, the level of the mercury can be raised or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... is tall, without being of a too heavy frame, flexible of movement, and decidedly graceful. By remembering that he is king, and the lineal chief of the ancient and powerful family of the Bourbons, by deferring properly to history and the illusions of the past, and by feeling tant soit peu more respect for ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... for our time a great debate over the role of government. Today we can declare: Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution. We—the American people—we are the solution. Our founders understood that well and gave us a democracy strong enough to endure for centuries, flexible enough to face our common challenges and advance our common dreams in each ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... like such "jokes." Mrs. Castleton's hauteur was of a more flexible kind. To spoil a match she was willing to spoil ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... different families, and even in the Phocidae themselves. The stomach is simple, but the intestines are considerably longer than in the Felidae, averaging about fifteen times the length of the body; the digestion is rapid. The bones are light and spongy, and the spine particularly flexible, from the amount of cartilage between the bones. They have a large venous cavity in the liver, and the lungs are capacious, the two combining to assist them in keeping under water; the blood is dark and abundant. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... statesman, comes this word of praise, with many of detraction: "Nature had combined in Sir Robert Peel many admirable parts. In him a physical frame incapable of fatigue was united with an understanding equally vigorous and flexible. He was gifted with the faculty of method in the highest degree, and with great powers of application, which were sustained by a prodigious memory, while he could communicate his acquisitions with clear and ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... dark olive complexions, no beards, and more or less oblique eyes. They do not resemble a Chukchi or a Korak any more than a Chinaman resembles a Comanche or a Sioux. Their dress is very peculiar. It consists of a fur hood, tight fur trousers, short deerskin boots, a Masonic apron, made of soft flexible buckskin and elaborately ornamented with beads and pieces of metal, and a singular-looking frock-coat cut in very civilised style out of deerskin, and ornamented with long strings of coloured reindeer ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... of the speaker so lightly as not to impede its movements. The position of the hand is as easy to feel as it is to see. I do not feel each letter any more than you see each letter separately when you read. Constant practice makes the fingers very flexible, and some of my friends spell rapidly—about as fast as an expert writes on a typewriter. The mere spelling is, of course, no more a conscious act ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... tubes about 5 feet long and 10 inches in diameter, standing side by side. Each tube has a piston or plunger, called "dot-dot';" the packing ring of the piston is of wood covered with chicken feathers, making it slightly flexible at the rim, so it fits snugly in the tube. The lower end of the bellows tubes rests in the earth, 4 inches above which a small bamboo tube leads the compressed air to the fireplace from each bellows tube. These small tubes, called "to-bong'," end near an opening through a brick ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... to whistle, like Jones, the farm-servant, or like his elder brothers; that was now the goal of all his wishes, the object of incessant practice. But however much he might point his lips, however much he might moisten them to make them flexible, no sound came forth. If he drew in the air, then accidentally he would do it. Once he had even succeeded in producing the first notes of "IST in J.D. im Washer gefallen" (A Jew Tumbled into the Water); but each professional whistler knows ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... apple-trees, and now and then in the midst of all this graceful artificial work you suddenly come upon what looks like a real bit of the country planted there. The intervening space is beautified on both sides with dwarf plane-trees; beyond these is the acanthus-tree that is supple and flexible to the hand, and there are more boxwood ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... can sometimes be removed by careful manipulations with the hand; but, where this can not be accomplished, the flexible probang should be employed. This is a long India-rubber tube, with a whalebone stillet running through it, so as to stiffen it when in use. This instrument is passed down the animal's throat, and the offending substance is thus pushed ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... something, now off he starts again; he is evidently hunting, and probably is on the scent of a young rabbit, rat, or field-mouse. Ah! see he has caught something on the grass near the hedge; what has he got in his mouth? it is a small rat, I think; now he throws his flexible body over it and gives it one or two bites. Now, Jack, run up and catch him. Ah! he is off like a shot; you must not think to "catch a weasel asleep." I often see these little animals in my rambles, and always stop to witness their extraordinary activity. Weasels will sometimes ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... joined by a cross strip at the back of the neck and under the throat. The dog's forelegs pass through the loops, and the ends are joined over the small of the back, where the trace is attached. This harness is very simple and flexible, and it allows the dog to exert his whole strength. The objection to sealskin as a harness material is a gastronomic one. When the dogs are on short rations they eat their harnesses at night in camp. To ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... cloudy evening with wind—which indeed was very seldom absent in this elevated place. How permanently it was imprinted upon his vision; that look of her as she glided into the parlour to tea; a slim flexible figure; a face, strained from its roundness, and marked by the pallors of restless days and nights, suggesting tragic possibilities quite at variance with her times of buoyancy; a trying of this morsel and that, and an inability to eat either. Her nervous manner, begotten of a fear lest he ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... belonged, was the most terrible burden of all. If the Indians had news they told him none. He seemed to have vanished completely. But, however numerous may have been his moments of despondency, he was not made of the stuff that yields. The flexible steel always rebounded. He took thorough care of his health and strength. In his close little tepee he flexed and tensed his muscles and went through physical exercises every night and morning, but it was on the lake in the fishing, where the ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... quite a plume, of complex rays more or less beautifully coloured. A worm which occasionally swims like a water snake, and again reposes inertly on the sand, as does the beche-de-mer, sets off its brown naked body with a red nimbus—a flexible ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... smiling. Her flexible smile was as charming as a child's. It dawned on the gravity of her face with an effect of spring moonlight. In it there was some of ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... their food. In June last I procured a litter of four or five young hedgehogs, which appeared to be about five or six days old: they, I find, like puppies, are born blind, and could not see when they came to my hands. No doubt their spines are soft and flexible at the time of their birth, or else the poor dam would have but a bad time of it in the critical moment of parturition, but it is plain they soon harden; for these little pigs had such stiff prickles on their backs and sides as would easily have fetched blood, had they not been handled with caution. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... the democratic; this is true, and it strongly supports the view under consideration. Nothing is more startling than the contrast between the heavy, formal, lifeless slang of the man-about-town and the light, living, and flexible slang of the coster. The talk of the upper strata of the educated classes is about the most shapeless, aimless, and hopeless literary product that the world has ever seen. Clearly in this, again, the upper classes have degenerated. We have ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... savage plunder from Choctaw and Feejee and Eskimo. Harris explained that he intruded these hostile verbs and nouns to adorn his page, and justified himself by saying that 'they all do it. Everybody that writes elegantly'. Whereupon Mark Twain, whose own English was as pure as it was rich and flexible, promptly read Harris a needed lesson: 'A man who writes a book for the general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated foreign expressions. It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... atmosphere in which I was existing, with the intention of introducing within this barricade, by means of my condenser, a quantity of this same atmosphere sufficiently condensed for the purposes of respiration. With this object in view I had prepared a very strong perfectly air-tight, but flexible gum-elastic bag. In this bag, which was of sufficient dimensions, the entire car was in a manner placed. That is to say, it (the bag) was drawn over the whole bottom of the car, up its sides, and so on, along the outside of the ropes, to the upper rim or hoop where the net-work is attached. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... shall have a go at the work together," he continued, after Nekhludoff had answered in the affirmative. "My name is Baklasheff, merchant of the Second Guild," he said, putting out his broad, soft, flexible hand. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... completely eclipse all previous achievements in diving. The great difficulty that I had to contend with was the enormous water-pressure of which I had spoken. Could I but contrive to encase our bodies in some garment that would receive and successfully resist this terrible pressure, and yet be flexible enough to permit of free movement to the wearer, the problem would be solved. And these diving-suits are the outcome of my efforts; they sustain and resist to perfection, without permitting them to be transmitted to the body, the most severe ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... faithful, and in the silence of foreign countries she spoke to me very low in the language of my people. No one saw her; no one heard her; she was mine only! In daylight she moved with a swaying walk before me upon the weary paths; her figure was straight and flexible like the stem of a slender tree; the heels of her feet were round and polished like shells of eggs; with her round arm she made signs. At night she looked into my face. And she was sad! Her eyes were tender and frightened; her voice soft and pleading. Once I murmured ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... I ever saw. And he was full of life. There was not a sluggish atom in his whole body, nor a slow-going faculty in his whole soul. He had eyes like fire; and his face was the most expressive I ever looked upon. And his voice was loud as the fall of mighty waters. And it was wonderfully flexible, and full of music. And he always spoke in natural tones. There was nothing like cant or monotony in his utterance. Yet he would raise his voice to such a pitch at times that you could hear him half ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... orchards and would notify the owners when it seemed the moment for spraying had come. It worked out that those favored orchardists had magnificent yields of A-1 fruit; others in the same sections, following the rather flexible spraying calendars, didn't ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... still, it resembled an immense barrel extended at both ends to a point, and resting on its side. This shape was given it, according to Mr. Bonflon, that it might offer the least possible resistance to the element in which it was intended to move. In structure it was composed of a strong flexible frame of whalebone and steel, covered with silk, strengthened and rendered air-tight and water-proof by a coating of India-rubber. Its size, of course, would depend on the proposed tonnage of a particular ship. That of the working-model, as nearly as I remember, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... indicated his southern blood, and an indescribable expression and manner told of one accustomed to command. His face bore the traces of scars, doubtless honourably gained; seen beneath a scarlet cap, lined with steel, but trimmed with fur. A flexible coat of mail, so cunningly wrought as to offer no more opposition to the movements of the wearer than a greatcoat might nowadays, was covered with a thick cloak or mantle, in deference to the severity ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... belittled Lorenzo de Medici Randall, thought ridiculous and good-for-naught by his associates, because he resembled them in nothing! If Riverboro could have been suddenly emptied into a larger community, with different and more flexible opinions, he was, perhaps, the only personage in the entire population who would have attracted the smallest attention. It was fortunate for his daughter that she had been dowered with a little practical ability from her mother's family, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... unfledged, A monkey with his tail abridged; A thing that walks on spindle legs, With bones as brittle, sir, as eggs; His body, flexible and limber, And headed with a knob of timber; A being frantic and unquiet, And very fond of beef and riot; Rapacious, lustful, rough, and martial, To lies and lying scoundrels partial! By nature form'd with splendid parts To rise in science—shine in arts; Yet so confounded ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... English displays it in finer shades and nobler proportions. The present volume is his crowning work, and he has coined his life-blood into it. But as honest critics we have some grounds of quarrel with him. A man has no right to be obscure who can make words so flexible and luminous as he can. In the present volume, his readers who here make his first acquaintance will inevitably misconstrue him, simply because he alters the fundamental nomenclature of religion and chiefly Ritualism, and we find only by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with little alteration, his companions through life. They brought him at one period into prosperity, and when they suited not the times, he suffered for having held them. They have become not only a part, but the very dearest part, of his existence. If he shows them not to you at first, in the flexible strength which they have acquired over his mind, do not believe that they are the less powerful. He who desires to make converts, must begin by degrees. But that he should sacrifice to an inexperienced young man, whose ruling motive he will term a childish passion, any part ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... to this travelling messenger; something that may be rapidly wound round both, so as to bind them together. The article used is called a selvagee. And what could be better adapted to the purpose? It is a slender, tapering, unstranded piece of rope prepared with much solicitude; peculiarly flexible; and wreathes and serpentines round the cable and messenger like an elegantly-modeled garter-snake round the twisted stalks of a vine. Indeed, Selvagee is the exact type and symbol of a tall, genteel, limber, spiralising exquisite. So much for the derivation of the name which the sailors ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the whole thing had taken my breath away, and I must have stood there many seconds in confused thought, in which a flexible form and arched foot ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... shave down the skin enough to be molded to the surface of the form when dampened. Do not, however, cut away the bunch of muscles on each side of the cheeks in which the whisker roots are embedded, or these distinguished ornaments will drop out. By criss-crossing these with cuts they are made as flexible as the rest of the skin. After the shaving process get a suitable needle and stout thread and sew up any cuts or tears that have been made. If proper care has been used there will be little of this to do, always remembering that a cut is not irreparable but always makes extra work. Bullet ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... Sentinel. "... inside knowledge of Mayfair ... redolent of humanity at its best ... fluid and flexible style ... suitable for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... country. It was a point of honour that no boy should show distress; but even veterans bit their lips as the cane fell first on the right hand and then on the left, and right across the palm, and sometimes doubling on the back of the hand, if the cane was young and flexible. Speug, though a man of war and able to endure anything, used to warm his hands at the fire, if the weather was cold, before going in to the inquisition, and after he had received a switching of the first order he would go down to the lade and cool his hands in ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... conventional course of instruction, he kept a place in his memory for the various charms of Virgil and Horace, of Tacitus and Ovid; but the master whose page by night and by day he turned with devout hand, was the copious, energetic, flexible, diversified and brilliant genius of the declamations for Archias the poet and for Milo, against Catiline and against Antony, the author of the disputations at Tusculum and the orations against Verres. Cicero was ever to him ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... I cannot do; never have been able to do. Be it a matter of virtue or of vice, I cannot forget. Emilia, then still half child and only half woman, was made flexible in time. But that my mother did not do everything in her power to prevent this gruesome deed, and that it caused her to sink deeper and deeper into the coils of domestic anguish by reason of her innate and gnawing weakness—that was the bitterest experience ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Virginia were skillful with the pen. William Strachey's "True Reportory of the Wrack of Sir Thomas Gates, Kt., vpon and from the islands of the Bermudas" may or may not have given a hint to Shakespeare for the storm-scene in "The Tempest." In either case it is admirable writing, flexible, sensitive, shrewdly observant. Whitaker, the apostle of Virginia, mingles, like many a missionary of the present day, the style of an exhorter with a keen discernment of the traits of the savage mind. George Percy, fresh from Northumberland, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... but to excel in these things feet are as necessary as hands. It was difficult to avoid smiling at his boasting and self-glorification. In the water a fin is better than a foot, and in that element he did well; he was built for floating,—with a flexible body, open chest, broad beam, and round limbs. If the sea was smooth and warm, he would stay in it for hours; but as he seldom indulged in this sport, and when he did, over-exerted himself, he suffered severely; which observing, and knowing how deeply ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... side, or in other words, towards the middle line of the branch. In this genus, in all those species in which the second avicularium occurs, each individual cell is provided with one. This additional avicularium appears to be composed of a flexible material, and it is very easily broken off, so that in many instances, perhaps throughout an entire specimen the organ itself may be wanting, although its position is clearly evidenced by the existence of a rounded ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... of the Musee des Religions she found the soil disturbed by workmen. There were paving-stones crossed by a bridge made of a narrow flexible plank. She had stepped on it, when she saw at the other end, in front of her, a man who was waiting for her. He recognized her and bowed. It was Dechartre. She saw that he was happy to meet her; she thanked him with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... corruption. It had been the practice of the Post-Office to classify the mail routes according to their method of transportation, and to mark those running by stage or rider by a star on the general list. These had come to be known as the "star routes." The contracts for the star routes were flexible in order to meet the shifting needs of the Western population that lived away from railways and depended upon the stage-coach. When the business of any route justified a better service than it was receiving, the Department ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... being that those of the camaradas, the poorer men or laborers, were in tatters. In the canoes no man wore anything save a shirt, trousers, and hat, the feet being bare. On horseback they wore long leather leggings which were really simply high, rather flexible boots with the soles off; their spurs were on their tough bare feet. There was every gradation between and among the nearly pure whites, negroes, and Indians. On the whole, there was the most white blood in the upper ranks, and most Indian and negro blood among the camaradas; ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... while differing from that of the full measure in direction and degree, in dependence on the whole form of their structure, maintain similar fixed relations to the primary type. The changes which these flexible quantities undergo will here only be indicated. If the substitutionary groups be of different figures, that which comprises the larger number of elements will occupy the greater time, that which contains ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... were British English. Of these I did not encounter half a dozen during the whole time of my attendance at the seminary; their characteristics were clean but careless dress, ill-arranged hair (compared with the tight and trim foreigners), erect carriage, flexible figures, white and taper hands, features more irregular, but also more intellectual than those of the Belgians, grave and modest countenances, a general air of native propriety and decency; by this ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... out her arm, and old Herman saw the gleam of something gold on her wrist. He caught her hand in his iron grip and shoved up her sleeve. There was a tiny gold wrist-watch there, on a flexible chain. His amazement and rage gave her a moment to think, although ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... by venturing into the depths of these reveries, beneath which we deplorable common mortals are buried, and she will be mistaken. In fact she is much superior to this extravagance, this vagueness, this presumptuous balderdash. At the same time that a person endowed with a rare but too flexible faculty, should be guarded against follies of the higher order, he ought also to be warned that fantastic compositions, subjective or intimate, painting (so runs the jargon) are restricted; that their course is in youth; that its springs are drying ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... paper by the shopkeepers in the bazaars, and for lining the roofs of houses in order to make them water-tight. It is also exported to India, where in many places it is likewise used for wrapping up parcels, and plays an important part in the manufacture of the flexible pipe-stems used by huka smokers. To give an idea of the quantities which are brought into Srinagar, I may mention that on one single day I counted fourteen large barges with birch bark on the river.... The use of birch ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... mollification; softening &c.v. V. render -soft &c. adj.; soften, mollify, mellow, relax, temper; mash, knead, squash. bend, yield, relent, relax, give. plasticize'. Adj. soft, tender, supple; pliant, pliable; flexible, flexile; lithe, lithesome; lissom, limber, plastic; ductile; tractile[obs3], tractable; malleable, extensile, sequacious[obs3], inelastic; aluminous[obs3]; remollient[obs3]. yielding &c. v.; flabby, limp, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... period. But what a language was that! In its capacity for the varied and exact expression of all moods of mind, all forms of thought, all kinds of emotion, a tongue unequaled by any other known to literature! A language of exhaustless variety; strong without ruggedness, and flexible without effeminacy. A manly tongue; yet bending itself gracefully and lovingly to the tenderest and the daintiest needs of woman, and capable of giving utterance to the most awful and impressive thoughts, in homely words that come from the lips, and go to the heart, of childhood. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the war may be regarded as a contest between the metallic, half-mechanical Kultur of Prussianized Germany and the more flexible civilizations of States that have inherited culture or aspire to it. Germany herself has rejected the humane and somewhat hazardous ideal of culture, so she cannot wonder or complain when she sees that the culture of the world is almost unanimously hostile to her. There is no ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... which his story takes for granted, but he has probably been wiser not to. Sticking to familiar territory, he writes with the confident touch of a man unconfused by speculation. His style is still swift, still easy, still flexible, still accurate in its conformity to the vernacular. He attempts no sentimental detours and permits himself no popular superfluities. He has retained all his tried qualities of observation and dexterity while admitting to his work the element of a sterner conscience than it has heretofore ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... the wind being favorable and the sea smooth, the Roman galleys were to sail. Caesar wished to be present at the embarkment. He had Albinik brought to him. Beside the general was a soldier of great height and savage mien. A flexible armor, made of interwoven iron links, covered him from head to foot. He stood motionless, a statue of iron, one might say. In his hand he held a short, heavy, two-edged axe. Pointing out this man, the ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... shipment. Trays may be of several sizes and shapes, but are usually shallow flats holding from twenty-five to thirty-five pounds. The picked fruit is taken from the vineyard to the packing-shed in a wagon with flexible springs to prevent jarring and jolting. Large growers usually have specially built one-horse platform wagons, the front wheels of which pass ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... with a long, graceful neck, a restless head, and a flexible mouth—discontent lurked about the corners of it. Her shoulders were pretty, but her neck and arms were too thin. Roma was always struggling to keep within a certain weight—her chin and upper arms grew ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... light, perfectly flexible when deflated," Nelsen added. "Cut out and cement your bubb together in any shape you choose. Fold it up firmly, like a parachute—it makes a small package that can be carried up into orbit in a blastoff ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... bear (Ursus Malayensis) has a long tongue, short smooth fur, very extensible, flexible lips, and large claws. Sir Stamford Raffles had one which was brought up in the nursery with his children, and when he joined the party at table, would only eat the choicest fruit, and drink champagne, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... in diving suits rather than in caissons; these suits are made of rubber except for the head piece, which is of metal provided with transparent eyepieces. Air is supplied through a flexible tube by a compression pump. The diver sometimes carries on his back a tank of compressed air, from which the air escapes through a tube to the space between the body and the suit. When the air has become foul, the diver opens a valve in his suit and allows it ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... of the simplest methods of swimming on the back, the forearms and hands alone being in motion during the performance. The swimmer turns on the back with the legs straight out and together, or crossed, the arms being flexible and near the body. The hands, with palms downward, must be in line with the thighs, with the fingers slightly raised. The hands are worked from the wrists, from right to left, in addition to a slight movement (right to left) of the forearm. This ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... imperfectly applied, to strengthen and develop the teaching of scientific theory as the foundation of technical and practical scientific work, and above all to equip with the largest measure of knowledge and by the most stimulating training those on whom nature has bestowed the most vigorous and flexible minds. To-day e see that the heads of great businesses, industrial and financial, are looking out for men of university distinction to be placed in responsible posts—a thing which did not happen fifty years ago—because the conditions of modern business have grown too intricate to be handled by ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... given up much and felt it deeply; but he had outlived the pain and the blessing of sacrifice had come to him. His voice was very melodious and beautiful, and the brown hand he held out to me was peculiarly long and shapely and flexible. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... protege of the Collector's, had a streak of genius as an architect and several lesser gifts, among them a propensity for borrowing and a flexible tenor voice. He trolled ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... shall go into the house of the Lord. He died on the 23d of March, repeating those other words of the same prophet: Into thy hands I commend my spirit. His body being translated the year after to Lima, was found incorrupt, the joints flexible, and the skin soft. His historian, and the acts of the canonization, mention many sick restored to their health, and a girl raised to life by him while he was living: also many miracles wrought through his intercession ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Negro and the Indian, is a Liantasse. {129c} You see that at once by the form of its cable—six or eight inches across in one direction, and three or four in another, furbelowed all down the middle into regular knots, and looking like a chain cable between two flexible iron bars. At another of the loops, about as thick as your arm, your companion, if you have a forester with you, will spring joyfully. With a few blows of his cutlass he will sever it as high up as he can reach, and again below, some three feet down, and, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... hardly to belong to any sex, an indefinite being, condemned, as it were, to childishness? How tall, and slender, and graceful she looked in that long gown, the folds of which fell from her waist in flowing lines, a waist as round and flexible as the branch of a willow; what elegance there was in her modest corsage, which displayed for the first time her lovely arms and neck, half afraid of their own exposure. She still was not robust, but the leanness that she herself had owned to ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... all the openings from it save one had been tied up, the women filled at the stream with a spoon made of buffalo horn or with a larger ladle of the horn of the wild sheep. Because this water-skin was soft and flexible, it could not stand on the ground, and they hung it up, sometimes on the limb of a tree, more often on one of the poles of the lodge, or sometimes on a tripod—three sticks coming together at the top and standing spread out at ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... with noble feeling; every gesture of hip hand, every movement and posture of his commanding form, grew eloquent with meaning. Unmasked of its habitual cast of reserve, his handsome face, clear, strong, and firm in its lines, yet flexible in its play of muscle and feature, reflected with mirror-like distinctness the passing emotions of his heart. His eye, eagle-like in its unflinching brightness, flashed forth the lightnings of the fiery and haughty spirit within. Language, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... man of great good sense, and of strong, but not obvious or flexible feeling; this is to say, on strong occasions he felt accordingly, but exhibited no remarkable symptoms of emotion. In matters of a less important character, he was either deficient in sensibility altogether, or it affected him so slightly ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... And the very next day she insisted upon meeting him on the ridge beyond Toll-Gate basin and climbing with him to the cave. As soon as she had breath enough to talk, she agreed with him as emphatically as her vocabulary and her flexible voice would permit. Made to order? She should say it was! Why, it was perfect, and she was just as jealous of him as she could be. Why, look at the view! And the campfire smoke wouldn't show but would drift away through all those caves; or if it did show, people would simply think that a ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... of coasting with toboggan sleds and bobsleds are all well known to boys who live where there are snow and hills. A sled can be steered either by dragging the foot or by shifting the sled with the hands. Sleds with flexible runners have recently been introduced and are a great ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... Miss Briskett told herself with a sniff. A respectably brought-up English girl could never have possessed such a head! Underneath this glorious mass of hair was a pale, little face, lighted up by a pair of golden-brown eyes. The eyebrows were well- marked and remarkably flexible; the nose was thin and pointed, a youthful replica of Miss Briskett's own. The only really good feature was the mouth, and that was adorable, with coral red lips curling up at the corners; tempting, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the same complexion, and almost the same features. In her frame she is as well formed, and as flexible as the Gitano. Condemned to suffer the same privations and wants, her countenance, when her interest does not oblige her to dissemble her feelings, presents the same aspect of melancholy, and shows besides, with more energy, the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... girls went to their hut, we examined the water-turtle, which Timbo and Jack at once prepared for cooking. Opening it, we found that it had upwards of thirty eggs in its body. The shells were flexible, and the same size at both ends, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston |
