"Mercury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Christ-worshipers assert that their saints had the power of raising the dead, and that they had Divine revelations, the Pagans had said before them that Athalide, son of Mercury, had obtained from his father the gift of living, dying, and coming to life whenever he wished, and that he had also the knowledge of all that transpired in this world as well as in the other; and that Esculapius, son of Apollo, had raised the dead, and, among others, he brought to life Hyppolites, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... require as warm quarters in winter as do other fowls. They will rest on a cherry tree when the mercury is frozen solid in the thermometer bulb, and then fly down in the morning and wade through the snow to cool off. This is a hint to the turkey raiser. Do not confine the turkeys in quarters too warm and close, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... surprised at his fund of anecdote and wealth of wit. Among other playful jests he declared he could define the exact condition of heart in each individual who crossed over, as accurately as we note the mercury in the barometer for atmospheric probabilities, even going so far as to say that he could guess the "Yes" or "No," and consequently the engagement or non-engagement of ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... attention to the mining industry, promoted the introduction of the use of mercury in the extraction of silver, and founded the town of Huancavelica near the quick-silver mine. His personality pervaded every department of the state, and his tasas or ordinances fill a large volume. He was a prolific ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... the stupid goddess who dares not behold herself, had taken possession of the young man. He had fallen ill; he would nurse himself; misjudged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skill of a practitioner well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed to the effects of an overdose of mercury. His corpse was as black as a mole's back. A devil had left unmistakable traces of its passage there; could it have ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the same tube or one similar to that in 2 above, but fill with mercury and allow the pupils to notice the great weight of the mercury. Holding the mercury in with your finger, invert the tube over mercury. This time the fluid falls some distance in the tube as soon as the finger is removed. A tube of this size requires ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... written in clear, forcible language, and bring abundant illustration from science, the facts of life and history and Scripture. All through they manifest a true philosophical spirit, and a deep knowledge of human nature. None can read them without profit."—Leeds Mercury. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... about exposed cannot explode, even if you drop a coal of fire into it; if the liquid is confined, or is under pressure, then an explosion will ensue; if paper be moistened with it and put on an anvil and a smart blow given with a hammer, a sharp detonation ensues; if gunpowder or the fulminates of mercury, silver or gun-cotton be ignited in a vacuum by a galvanic battery, none of them will explode; if any gas be introduced so as to produce a gentle pressure during the decomposition, then a rapid evolution of gases will result; the results of decomposition in a vacuum ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... evaporation will then cease. The pressure of the vapor in a space saturated with water vapor increases rapidly with increase of temperature. At a so-called vacuum of 28 inches, which is about the limit in commercial operations, and in reality signifies an actual pressure of 2 inches of mercury column, the space will be saturated with vapor at 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Consequently, no evaporation will take place in such a vacuum unless the water be warmer than 101 degrees Fahrenheit, provided there is no ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... are closed, to-day, in honor of Washington's birth-day. But it is a fast day; meal selling for $40 per bushel. Money will not be so abundant a month hence! All my turnip-greens were killed by the frost. The mercury was, on Friday, 5 deg. above zero; to-day it is 40 deg.. Sowed a small bed of curled Savoy cabbage; and saved the early York in my half barrel hot-bed by bringing it into the parlor, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Mercury—which has, we believe, the largest circulation of any provincial paper—was founded, and carried on for a long life, by the late Mr. Edward Baines, who represented his native town in the first reformed parliament, and for some years afterwards—a very extraordinary man, who, from a humble station, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... Pan, the god of the shepherds, and inventor of the flute, was said to be the son of Mercury and Penelope. He was worshipped chiefly in Arcadia, and represented with the horns and feet of a goat. The Nymphs, as well as the Graces, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the ambition of the board generally, who, with the expectation of Mr. R—making a like acknowledgment to them as a body, (not excepting their honorable head,) made a demand in joint-officio. This being duly signalized through the columns of the Courier and Mercury, Mr. R—met it with a response worthy of a gentleman. He referred them to the strongest evidence of his assertions, in the countenance which they gave to a class of officials too well known to the community for the honor of its name ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Think of Mercury in its wild rush through the solar heat, or Venus gleaming in the western sky, or ruddy Mars with its tantalising problems, or of mighty Jupiter 1,230 times the size of our own planet, or of Saturn with its wondrous rings, or of Uranus and ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... before nine o'clock in the morning the mercury stood at ninety degrees in the shade. The cook overslept herself, and breakfast was so late that William Henry missed the train into the city, which didn't make it pleasanter for any of us. I had made an especially delicate cake to take with me as my share of the feast, and while we were at breakfast ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... silted in imperceptibly from twenty streets. As fast as the crowd grew, regiments appeared, and taking up positions, lay at ease. There was something terrible about the quiet way in which both crowd and troops increased. The mercury was not high, but it promised to be a hot morning in New York. All the car lines took off their cars. Trucks disappeared from the streets. The exchanges and the banks closed their doors, and many hundred shops followed their example. New York almost came to a standstill ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... sure, the hitch never has occurred, but what if it should? Conscious that I have about reached the limit of my own endurance, the thought of the bare contingency is unpleasant enough to cause a feeling of relief, not altogether physical, when the rising or falling mercury begins to turn. The consciousness how wholly by sufferance it is that man exists at all on the earth is rather forcibly borne in upon the mind at such times. The spaces above and below zero ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... rooms trembling; they seized a napkin and stuffed into it whatever they laid hands upon: a copper clock, a white metal candlestick, a broken electric bell, a mercury barometer, a magnet and ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... sufficiently prominent. It was the work of J.G. Bubb, and was erected in 1812, at a cost of L4,078 17s. 3d.; and a pretty mixture of the Greek Pantheon and the English House of Commons it is! Pitt stands on a rock, dressed as Chancellor of the Exchequer; below him are Apollo and Mercury, to represent Eloquence and Learning; and a woman on a dolphin, who stands for—what does our reader think?—National Energy. In the foreground is what guide-books call "a majestic figure" of Britannia, calmly holding a hot thunderbolt and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... kingdoms. To the conduct of these divine ministers he delegated the temporal government of this lower world; but their imperfect administration is not exempt from discord or error. The earth and its inhabitants are divided among them, and the characters of Mars or Minerva, of Mercury or Venus, may be distinctly traced in the laws and manners of their peculiar votaries. As long as our immortal souls are confined in a mortal prison, it is our interest, as well as our duty, to solicit the favor, and to deprecate the wrath, of the powers of heaven; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... always said that love was the greatest thing in the world," Saxon argued. "She wrote poems about it, too. Some of them were published in the San Jose Mercury." ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... of Honolulu, representing many different nationalities, is exceptionally intelligent and cultivated. The climate is simply perfect, the mercury ranging from 60 deg. to 80 deg. the year round; delicious fruits, lovely flowers and spice bearing shrubs abound. The soil is very fertile and favorable to the production of the best of sugar cane, a high grade of coffee and excellent rice, which are the staple productions and a source ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... as to the instruments used up to this time for determining altitudes. These were, in general, ordinary mercurial barometers, protected in various ways. Green encased his instrument in a simple metal tube, which admitted of the column of mercury being easily read. This instrument, which is generally to be seen held in his hand in Green's old portraits, might be mistaken for a mariner's telescope. It is now in the possession of the family of Spencers, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... restricted, that we can hardly conclude that he could have been so great an enterpriser in this way. No one can have lost their character by this sort of exercise in a confined circle, and be allowed to prosper! A light-fingered Mercury would hardly haunt the same spot: however, this is as it may be! It is probable that we owe to this species of accumulation many precious manuscripts in the Cottonian collection. It appears by the manuscript note-book of Sir Nicholas Hyde, chief justice of the King's Bench from the second to the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the pope Of tavern-councils held by imbeciles? No, grammercy! Toil to gain reputation By one small sonnet, 'stead of making many? No, grammercy! Or flatter sorry bunglers? Be terrorized by every prating paper? Say ceaselessly, 'Oh, had I but the chance Of a fair notice in the "Mercury"!' Grammercy, no! Grow pale, fear, calculate? Prefer to make a visit to a rhyme? Seek introductions, draw petitions up? No, grammercy! and no! and no again! But—sing? Dream, laugh, go lightly, solitary, free, With eyes that look straight forward—fearless ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... parallel of latitude 45 degrees. Whether this singular climatic phenomenon extended further eastward, into Asia, I was not able to ascertain. I was actually less sensitive to the cold in Lapland, during the previous winter, with the mercury frozen, than in Attica, within the belt of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... penetrate the interior wall. Now, since the stuff can leak through any material, what kind of a pump shall we use? It won't be pushed by a piston, for it will leak through either the cylinder walls or the piston. A centrifugal pump would be equally ineffective. A mercury vapor pump will take it out, of course, and keep a high vacuum, but ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... no otherwise to use his name, than Mercurius Gallobelgicus, Mercurius Britannicus, use the name of Mercury, [13]Democritus Christianus, &c.; although there be some other circumstances for which I have masked myself under this vizard, and some peculiar respect which I cannot so well express, until I have set down a brief character of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... between the two former, but which does not so far project. Two columns of the corinthian order support the pediment, on which the armorial bearings of the town are sculptured; they are supported on one side by Mercury and the attributes of Commerce, and on the other by Industry in the likeness of Minerva. On the first floor of the southern wing, there is a very fine room, which is used for the meetings of the municipal ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... at the north pole and perpetual night at the south pole. The whole northern hemisphere will be bathed in a continuous flood of sunlight while the southern hemisphere will be a region of cold and dark. The condition of the earth will resemble that of Mercury where the same face of the planet is continually ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... over his premises. That little incident, and things like it, which are meeting you at every turn, show the state of things here to be in pleasing contrast to the horrors with which the imaginations of many of us Northerners are peopled. I find, in the "Charleston Mercury," a good cut of this "negro and golden mortar," and I send it to you as an appropriate answer ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... packet Mercury, of seventy tons, under Captain Simeon Sampson, one of America's ablest naval commanders. She had been built for rapid sailing and when, the second day out, they saw a British frigate bearing down upon her they wore ship and easily ran away from their enemy. Their first landing was at St. Martin ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... howlings the wolves were still a long distance from the camp. The hearing of the Indians is very acute, and when the temperature is down so low that the mercury is frozen, sounds are heard very much more distinctly, and from a greater distance, than under ordinary atmospheric conditions. Thus there was fortunately a little time for preparation ere they would have to ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... received three gun-shot wounds, two in the breast and one on the left hand or arm." In consequence of his wound "he was seven months in hospital before he was discharged. He came out with his left hand permanently disabled; he had lost the use of it, as Mercury told him in the 'Viaje del Parnase,' for the greater glory of the right."—Don Quixote, A Translation by John Ormsby, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... into disorder. And he said, between jest and earnest, that he believed it was with such meats as those that Circe changed men into swine, and that Ulysses avoided that transformation by the counsel of Mercury, and because he had temperance enough to abstain ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... had our mansion cottage in the suburbs of this city, hard by the temple of Mercury. And by the common soldiers of the Shitens, the Scithians— what do you call them?—with all the suburbs were burnt to the ground, and the ashes are left there, for the country wives ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... better able to describe the political and social eddies of contemporary society in the greatest city in the world than Mr. McCarthy; and this novel abounds in vivid and picturesque sidelights, drawn with a strong and simple touch.'—Leeds Mercury. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... remarkably cold, when dropped upon the Hand, and it affects the thermometer in an extraordinary Manner; for if the Ball of either a Mercurial or Spirituous Thermometer be immersed in it, the Spirit or Mercury immediately sinks considerably, tho' both the AETHER and the Thermometer have stood a sufficient Time together to be brought to the temperature of the Room, before the Experiment was made. The Thermometers dipt into Water, or Spirit of Wine, in the ...
— An Account of the Extraordinary Medicinal Fluid, called Aether. • Matthew Turner
... we had heard the last of them. On a day following a sudden fall of the mercury, a gale from the north set in at noon, with thunder and lightning, hail, and torrents of rain. The river was quickly lashed into foam, and the gale drove the ocean into it through the inlet, till the shrubbery of the rails' island barely showed above the breakers. The street was deep under ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... genius Haff is!" exclaimed my frend. "I remember when he traveled for Howard & Sanger; good-natured, voluble, energetic, and uneasy as a lump of mercury. Suddenly he blossomed out as an inventor, and he's kept on inventing ever since. I've been surprised that the man who is father of so many children has not invented a better nursing-bottle or colic exterminator. What's ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... This enabled me to secure an observation of the eclipse of Jupiter's (I) satellite, as well as some latitude observations. The night was so calm that I used the water as an horizon; but I find it much more satisfactory to take the mercury for several reasons. ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... loaded sledges, and even then our tired dogs could hardly struggle through the soft powdery drifts. The weather, too, was so intensely cold that my mercurial thermometer, which indicated only -23 deg., was almost useless. For several days the mercury never rose out of the bulb, and I could only estimate the temperature by the rapidity with which my supper froze after being taken from the fire. More than once soup turned from a liquid to a solid in my hands, and green ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... by instinct, except Sam, who was as inevitable as the tides. Our cook was too good-looking and too athletic to last. He had the reputation of being the fastest sprinter in Guiana, with a record, so we were solemnly told, of 9-1/5 seconds for the hundred—a veritable Mercury, as the last world's record of which I knew was 9-3/5. His stay with us was like the orbit of some comets, which make a single lap around the sun never to return, and his successor Edward, with unbelievably large and graceful hands and feet, was a better cook, with the softest voice ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... one chance in—let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. "And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-up on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... trouble us, for with Ushant out of sight astern, the ship heading South-West by compass, and the wind two points free, we had nothing to fear beyond such discomfort as was inseparable from the heavy sea that was now fast getting up. As the day wore on, however, the mercury began to drop rather rapidly; the thickness to windward increased, and it began to rain; the wind freshened steadily, a high, steep sea got up, and everything appeared to threaten a particularly dirty and unpleasant night. By the end of the first dog-watch the wind had increased ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... deceive, but it gives pleasure in deceiving. When a person is sagging beneath the heat of an August midday, it is a distinct source of comfort and pride to have the thermometer register 98 degrees. Even when we are fully aware that the mercury is too high by three or four degrees, it is easy enough to make one's self believe for the moment in the higher figure. If it were not for this spiritual stimulus, I should be inclined to regard all thermometers as a nuisance. Translating ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... of these comedies,(195) not only the priest of Jupiter determines to quit his service, because no more sacrifices are offered to the god; but Mercury himself comes, in a starving condition, to seek his fortune amongst mankind, and offers to serve as a porter, sutler, bailiff, guide, door-keeper; in short, in any capacity, rather than return to heaven. In another,(196) the same gods, reduced to the extremity of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... mercury, arsenic, and the host of mineral poisons which are found in so many remedies. When taken into the system they disturb every function, interfere with the most vital processes, and produce the most ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... Naples has in it something of romance. He was sitting in his chamber, humming one of his own operatic airs, when the ugliest Mercury he had ever seen entered and gave him a note, then instantly withdrew. This, of course, was a tender invitation, and an assignation at a romantic spot in the suburb. On arriving Rossini sang his aria for a signal, and from the gate of a charming park surrounding a small villa appeared ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... hast never desired to drink of the pool engendered by the hoof of the feathered horse,[248] and as the lyric harmony of the learned murderer of Python has never inflated thy speech, try if in merchandise Mercury will lend thee his Caduceus. So may the turbulent AEolus be as affable to thee as to the peaceful nests of halcyons. In short, Charlot, thou must go." Sidney kept entirely to these ineffectual attempts, and had no desire to go further ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... THOTH, the Egyptian Mercury, inventor of arts and sciences; represented as having the body of a man and the head of a lamb ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... are equally certain that some of the planets possess that attribute. Still there are other circumstances that render the notion of their being inhabited by beings like ourselves exceedingly improbable. Mercury, for example, is so embarrassed by the solar rays, that lead must always be in a state of fusion, and water, if not reduced to a state of vapor, will be hot enough to boil the fish that are in it. Uranus, at the other extremity of the system, receives four hundred times less heat and ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... trading on the ideas of others, and in the windows of many booksellers of the commoner class, envelopes in the shape of padlocks were offered for sale, the motto on them running "Not to be Grahamed." Punch itself followed up the scent, and gave drawings of "Mercury giving Sir James Graham an insight into Letters" (with the aid of a steam-kettle), of "The Post Office Peep-Show, a Penny a Peep," in which foreign sovereigns, on paying their money to Showman Graham, are permitted ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... more dignity of demeanour than the King; but his corpulence rendered his gait inelegant. He was fond of pageantry and magnificence. He cultivated the belles lettres, and under assumed names often contributed verses to the Mercury and other papers. ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... and the blame in human acts, Perchance he doth not wholly miss the truth. This principle, not understood aright, Erewhile perverted well nigh all the world; So that it fell to fabled names of Jove, And Mercury, and Mars. That other doubt, Which moves thee, is less harmful; for it brings No peril of removing thee from me. "That, to the eye of man, our justice seems Unjust, is argument for faith, and not ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... on we observed the temperature daily with great interest, for as long as the mercury remained below -50 deg. a start was not to be thought of. In the first days of September all signs indicated that the mercury would rise. We therefore resolved to start as soon as possible. On September 8th the temperature was -30 deg.. We started immediately, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... exercises of the Athenian virtuosi in the Coffee-academy, instituted by Apollo for the advancement of Gazette Philosophy, Mercury's, Diurnalli, etc., this day was wholly taken up in the examination of the 'Conquest of Granada.' A gentleman on the reading of the First Part, and there in the description of the bull-baiting, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... lifted his skates, but seemed to send them forward by a kind of secret pressure. He was a very cool player, as quick as mercury and as light as thistledown. Winn set himself against him with the dogged fury of ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... whether indicatives or participles, have been printed with "ed" rather than "t", participial adjectives and substantives, such as 'past,' alone excepted. In the case of 'leap,' which has two preterite-forms, both employed by Shelley (See for an example of the longer form, the "Hymn to Mercury", 18 5, where 'leaped' rhymes with 'heaped' (line 1). The shorter form, rhyming to 'wept,' 'adapt,' etc., occurs more frequently.)—one with the long vowel of the present-form, the other with a vowel-change (Of course, wherever this vowel-shortening ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Cooke the administrative talent. The deed of partnership was dated November 19, 1837. A joint patent was taken out for their inventions, including the five-needle telegraph of Wheatstone, and an alarm worked by a relay, in which the current, by dipping a needle into mercury, completed a local circuit, and released the ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... had come to rest with Pluto near one end of a lavender spiral and Mercury touching the inner end, but no one had had the insanity to bet that way. Meadows began to play inner planet combinations that occasionally paid, though at short odds. He made a bit on some near misses, and I decided to have a drink while ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... was similar to that employed by Madame Curie in obtaining metallic radium—electrolyzing a radium chloride solution with mercury as a cathode, then driving off the mercury by heat in a current of hydrogen—only he had used the new element ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... ordered by the Queen's Government, might there be perfected. Now, unfortunately, the post-boy had taken his departure before Mary reached the shop, and it was not, therefore, dispatched till Saturday. Sunday was always a dies non with the Greshamsbury Mercury, and, consequently, Frank's letter was not delivered at the house till Monday morning; at which time Mary had for two long days been waiting with weary ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... within, the fire was quite too much for us. The weather remained pretty open till the latter part of the month, when the cold set in severely enough, and continued so during February. The 1st of March was the coldest day and night I ever experienced in my life; the mercury was down to twenty five degrees in the house; abroad it was much lower. The sensation of cold early in the morning was very painful, producing an involuntary shuddering, and an almost convulsive feeling ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... giant garlands of white wild cherry above in spring, and equally white anemone below; by and by an acre of primroses growing close together, not large, but wonderfully thick, a golden river of king- cup between banks of dog's mercury, later on whole glades of wild hyacinth, producing a curious effect of blue beneath the budding yellow green of the young birches with silver stems. Sheets of the scarlet sorrel by and by appear, and foxgloves of all sizes troop in the woods, and are succeeded by the rose ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... where several charges are required, a copper cap in which is a minute quantity of fulminate of mercury, and which is exploded by a spark, is attached to fine electric wires and sealed by sulphur. This cap is placed in holes in the sticks of dynamite, and then securely tied by drawing string tightly around the paper which is ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... of the intermixture of Oriental elements, but assigns a northern origin to one portion of the story. Crimm had argued for a Hebrew souice, thinking Marcolf a name of scorn in Hebrew. But the Hebrew Marcolis (or however one may spell it) is simply Mercury. In the Latin version, however, Marcolf is distinctly represented as coming from the East. William of Tyre (12th cent.) suggests the identity of Marcolf with Abdemon, whom Josephus ("Antiquities," VIII, v, 3) names as Hiram's Riddle-Guesser. A useful English edition is E. Gordon Duff's "Dialogue ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... pilot-house, turned on the electric light once more, and glanced at the barometer. It registered a height of nearly six thousand feet above the sea-level. This seemed to satisfy the professor; for he opened a valve which admitted air into the hull, leaving it open until the mercury ceased to fall in the tube. Then he drew from his pocket a paper which he had obtained from Mildmay a few hours before, carefully studied for a few moments the instructions written thereon, and, refolding the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... zones unloosed; The nymphs, with beauties all exposed From every spring, and every plain; Thy powerful, hot, and winged boy; And youth, that's dull without thy joy; And Mercury, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... performed the journey to Ione's house, now saw himself condemned to a third excursion (whither the gods only knew), hastened after her, deploring his fate, and solemnly assuring Castor and Pollux that he believed the blind girl had the talaria of Mercury as well as the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... command them back into their proper shapes, and call them out by their single individuals. Then shall appear the fertility of Adam, and the magick of that sperm that hath dilated into so many millions. I have often beheld, as a miracle, that artificial resur- rection and revivification of mercury, how being morti- fied into a thousand shapes, it assumes again its own, and returns into its numerical self. Let us speak naturally, and like philosophers. The forms of alter- able bodies in these sensible corruptions perish not; nor, as we imagine, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... is the Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania, inspired and partly written by Franklin. It is hotly partisan, and sometimes sophistical and unfair. Articles on the quarrel will also be found in the provincial newspapers, especially the New York Mercury, and in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1755 and 1756. But it is impossible to get any clear and just view of it without wading through the interminable documents concerning it in the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... portion of attention, especially if you were just thinking of a dip. A rather fine collection of bronzes has been made from excavations in the neighbourhood, which, indeed, must always promise to reward research. A figure of Mercury, two and a half feet high, and so exactly similar to that of John of Bologna, that his one seemed an absolute plagiarism, particularly attracted our attention on that account. The great Italian artist, however, had been dead one hundred and fifty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... mines, but the working of these is not encouraged by the present ruler. Gold also, I was told, is to be found in the streams about Chitral; this statement proved correct, as I was able to work up some with the aid of mercury, and on having the ore tested by a goldsmith's firm in India, it was pronounced by them to be 21 carat; but this washing is seldom permitted, the reason assigned by the chief being that if once it were known that Chitral produced gold, his ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... and in every ornament discovers great invention. It is hung with a figured lemon satin. The window-curtains, sofas, and chairs are of the same colour. The ceiling is ornamented with emblematical paintings, representing the Graces and Muses, together with Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, and Paris. Two ormolu chandeliers are placed here. It is impossible by expression to do justice to the extraordinary workmanship, as well as design, of the ornaments. They each consist of a palm, branching out in five directions for the reception of lights. A beautiful ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Staunton in winter quarters, posting his cavalry in that neighborhood also, except a detachment at New Market, and another small one at the signal-station on Three Top Mountain. The winter was a most severe one, snow falling frequently to the depth of several inches, and the mercury often sinking below zero. The rigor of the season was very much against the success of any mounted operations, but General Grant being very desirous to have the railroads broken up about Gordonsville and Charlottesville, on the 19th of December I started the cavalry ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... is Friday the 18th of the moon Suffir, in the year 653, from the retreat of our great prophet from Mecca to Medina, and in the year 7320 of the epocha of the great Iskender with two horns; and that the conjunction of Mars and Mercury signifies you cannot choose a better time than this very day and hour for being shaved. But, on the other hand, the same conjunction is a bad presage to you. I learn from it, that this day you run a great risk, not indeed of losing your life, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... like a loose bag of cement and her hands clutched at my shoulder blades like a pair of C-clamps. A big juicy tear dropped from her cheek to land on my chest, and I was actually surprised to find that a teardrop from a Mekstrom did not land like a drop of mercury. It just splashed like any other drop of water, spread out, ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... so good effect it came, And every member had his grace, There wanted nothing but a name: By hap was Mercury then in place, That said, 'I pray you all agree, Pandora grant ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... painful and harassing march of twenty-five days. The heats during the passage of the desert between El-Arish and Belbeis exceeded thirty-three degrees. On placing the bulb of the thermometer in the sand the mercury rose to forty-five degrees. The deceitful mirage was even more vexatious than in the plains of Bohahire'h. In spite of our experience an excessive thirst, added to a perfect illusion, made us goad on our wearied horses towards lakes which vanished at our approach; and left behind nothing but ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... herself at a table, a smile lurked around the corners of her mouth and flickered faintly upon the waiter who forthwith became a Mercury for expedition and a prodigal for variety. Her quarrel on the road with her companion had in nowise interfered with that appetite which the fresh air and the lateness of the hour had provoked, nor were her thoughts of a character to deter from the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the Earth is a member. These bodies are called planets, or wanderers. There are eight of them, including the Earth, and they all circle round the sun. Their names, in the order of their distance from the sun, are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and of these Mercury, the nearest to the sun, is rarely seen by the naked eye. Uranus is practically invisible, and Neptune quite so. These eight planets, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... relativity which are accessible to experience, when these are compared with the consequences of the Newtonian theory, we first of all find a deviation which shows itself in close proximity to gravitating mass, and has been confirmed in the case of the planet Mercury. But if the universe is spatially finite there is a second deviation from the Newtonian theory, which, in the language of the Newtonian theory, may be expressed thus:—The gravitational field is in its nature such as if it were produced, not only by the ponderable masses, but also by ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein
... got the fellows of the West Bromwich to entrust the card to me, and have undertaken to see it duly delivered. I hope you'll approve of my Mercury. Hunter says he doesn't care how often he's ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... McGregore and Sweetland, two Bachelors, spoke a dialogue of Lord Lyttleton's between Apicius and Darteneuf, upon good eating and drinking. The Mercury (who comes in at the close of the piece) performed his part but clumsily; but the two epicures did well, and the President laughed as heartily as the rest of the audience; though considering the circumstances, it might admit of some doubt, whether the dialogue were really ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... weeks were filled with busy and arduous toil. A winter in that latitude, where the mercury often falls to 20 degrees and even 30 degrees below zero, can only be successfully encountered after elaborate preparation, and the little company who now found themselves stranded on the verge of that vast northern forest, had everything to do, with ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... be formed of: sulphur—reddish-brown drops, cooling to a yellow to brown solid, from sulphides or mixtures; iodine—violet vapour, black sublimate, from iodides, iodic acid, or mixtures; mercury and its compounds—metallic mercury forms minute globules, mercuric sulphide is black and becomes red on rubbing, mercuric chloride fuses before subliming, mercurous chloride does not fuse, mercuric iodide gives a yellow sublimate; arsenic and its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... was dispelled, and the wind blew stronger. They were now within sight of land, and, not long after, the pilot observed to Scipio, that "Africa was not more than five miles off; that he could discern the promontory of Mercury, and that if he gave orders to direct their course thither, the whole fleet would presently be in harbour." Scipio, when the land was in sight, after praying that his seeing Africa might be for the good of the state and himself, gave orders ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... elsewhere, was dug up in this parish when the railway was being constructed. The only public notice in connection with Thornton of an unusual character, in modern times, is the following, which appeared as an advertisement in the “Stamford Mercury” of January 5th, 1810:—SACRILEGE.—Whereas the Parish Church of Thornton, near Horncastle, has been lately broken open and a thin silver half-pint cup stolen out of the chest, any person giving information of the offender or offenders, shall, on conviction, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... MINERALS. These include things most of us would think of if we were asked to name some minerals. Familiar examples are copper, silver, mercury, iron, nickel and cobalt. Most of them are found in combination with other things—as ores. We get lead from galena, or lead sulfide. Tin comes from the ore cassiterite; zinc from sphalerite and zincblende, or blackjack. Chromium that makes the family car flashy comes from chromite. ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... Ephialtes fast, Sons of Aloeeus, and full thirteen moons In brazen thraldom held him. There, at length, 450 The fierce blood-nourished Mars had pined away, But that Eeriboea, loveliest nymph, His step-mother, in happy hour disclosed To Mercury the story of his wrongs; He stole the prisoner forth, but with his woes 455 Already worn, languid and fetter-gall'd. Nor Juno less endured, when erst the bold Son of Amphytrion with tridental shaft Her bosom pierced; she then the misery felt Of irremediable pain severe. ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Springs, Nevada, furnish examples of mineral veins in process of formation. The steaming water rises through fissures in volcanic rocks and is now depositing in the rifts a vein stone of quartz, with metallic ores of iron, mercury, lead, and other metals. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... more apparently veracious statement! All the doings of Martin Guerre seemed to be most faithfully described, and surely only himself could thus narrate his own actions. As the historian remarks, alluding to the story of Amphitryon, Mercury himself could not better reproduce all Sosia's actions, gestures, and words, than did the false Martin Guerre those of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... chances. If you are connected with the Ffrenches who manufacture the Mercury car, you should know something of automobile racing yourself. I noticed your limousine was of ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... "The mercury's got into your head!" he exclaimed, turning back to examine his young friend's countenance. "It IS a hot day! How do you feel? Got any pain? When did you begin ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... railroad, there was a hard siege ahead of them. The diary says: "January 8: Terribly cold and windy; only a dozen people in the hall; had a social chat with them and returned to our hotel. Lost more here at Dansville than we gained at Mount Morris. So goes the world.... January 9: Mercury 12 deg. below zero but we took a sleigh for Nunda. Trains all blocked by snow and no mail for several days, yet we had a full house and good meeting." Extracts from one or two letters written home will give some ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Monte Cristo, which being completely deserted, and having neither soldiers nor revenue officers, seemed to have been placed in the midst of the ocean since the time of the heathen Olympus by Mercury, the god of merchants and robbers, classes of mankind which we in modern times have separated if not made distinct, but which antiquity appears to have included in the same category. At the mention of Monte Cristo Dantes started ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... been quite shaken off even to this day—was deduced by the Assyrian astronomer from his observation of the seven planetary bodies—namely, Sin (the moon), Samas (the sun), Umunpawddu (Jupiter), Dilbat (Venus), Kaimanu (Saturn), Gudud (Mercury), Mustabarru-mutanu (Mars).(11) Twelve lunar periods, making up approximately the solar year, gave peculiar importance to the number twelve also. Thus the zodiac was divided into twelve signs which astronomers of all subsequent times ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... same entrance as she came in by. Apollo now appears with Orestes, who is in a traveller's garb, and carries a sword and olive-branch in his hands. He promises him his farther protection, enjoins him to flee to Athens, and commends him to the care of the present but invisible Mercury, to whose safeguard travellers, and especially those who were under the necessity of journeying by stealth, were ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of a ship is upon her keel, and was about fourteen feet high, two broad, and one inch and a half thick. They both consisted of boards of carved work, of which the design was much better than the execution. All their canoes, except a few at Opoorage or Mercury Bay, which were of one piece, and hollowed by fire, are built after this plan, and few are less than twenty feet long. Some of the smaller sort have outriggers; and sometimes two are joined together, but this ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... atoms desert in a body on the field of battle. Millions of them may be lying packed in a gun cartridge, as quiet as you please, but let a little disturbance start in the neighborhood—say a grain of mercury fulminate flares up—and all the nitrogen atoms get to trembling so violently that they cannot be restrained. The shock spreads rapidly through the whole mass. The hydrogen and carbon atoms catch up the oxygen and in an instant they are off on a stampede, crowding in every direction to find ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... mining-enterprises, thanks to the skill and pains of their scientific advisers, are fully awake to the importance of this vital point. Pyrites—the mineral mixture so universally found with the gold of this region—is well known to escape, or rather to resist, the attraction of the mercury used in the amalgamating process, and it has hitherto been allowed to pass away with the "tailings", or refuse from the mills. When we state that it has been repeatedly shown to be from ten to twelve per cent. of the components of the ore, and that by test of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... shows how fond of CECILIA I was. I reached the pond safely, and hid the chair in a dry ditch. Next day, when presumed to be engaged on literary labours, I sneaked back, sat down on my chair, and tried to put on the skates. It always seemed so easy when one saw an expert do it, like Mercury donning his winged shoon, and sailing over the ice. But my hands grew blue as I struggled with the key and the nuts, till I became certain that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... region, which, from time immemorial, had been sacred to that luminary: that there were two subordinate Deities, Monimus and Azizus, who were esteemed coadjutors, and assessors to the chief God. He supposes them to have been the same as Mars and Mercury: but herein this zealous emperor failed; and did not understand the theology which he was recommending. Monimus and Azizus were both names of the same God, the Deity of Edessa, and [101]Syria. The former is, undoubtedly, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... of this dreary drought, it was wonderful to see those tiny creatures, the ants, running about with their accustomed vivacity. I put the bulb of a thermometer three inches under the soil, in the sun, at midday, and found the mercury to stand at 132 Deg. to 134 Deg.; and if certain kinds of beetles were placed on the surface, they ran about a few seconds and expired. But this broiling heat only augmented the activity of the long-legged black ants: they never tire; their organs of motion seem endowed with the same power ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... sun, moon, and five planets known to the ancients, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. You easily recognize sun, moon, and Saturn, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday are from names given by some of the Northern tribes of Europe to Mars, Jupiter, and Venus. Mercury's day seems scarcely at all connected with his name, but comes from ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... The Man in the Moon The Man in the Moon Venus Orion with His Club The Great Bear in the Sky The Great Bear and the Little Bear Castor and Pollux Minerva Boreas, the God of the North Wind Tower of the Winds at Athens Orpheus Mercury Ulysses Cover of a Drinking Cup Iris The Head of Iris Neptune A Greek Coin Silenus Holding Bacchus Aurora, the Goddess of the Dawn Latona Jason Castor, the Horse-Tamer Pollux, the Master of the Art of Boxing Daedalus ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... Natur. v. 3. Cellarius, Geograph. Antiq. part iii. p. 96. Shaw's Travels, p. 90; and for the adjacent country, (which is terminated by Cape Bona, or the promontory of Mercury,) l'Afrique de Marmol. tom. ii. p. 494. There are the remains of an aqueduct near Curubis, or Curbis, at present altered into Gurbes; and Dr. Shaw read an inscription, which styles that city Colonia Fulvia. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and a queen with their two children, a boy and a girl. The holy alliance between the two royal members of the household becomes disrupted, and Nephele, the good mother, appeals to Mercury, the messenger of the gods, to assist her in secretly placing the children out of reach of their father, the king. Mercury provides a ram with a golden fleece, on which the boy and girl are placed. The shining creature springs into the air, bearing its precious burden across the sea. Unfortunately, ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... differences; it is not possible that the Kentucky Shaker, who hears the mocking-bird sing in his pines on every sunny day the winter through, and in whose woods the blue-jay is a constant resident, should be the same being as his brother in Maine or New Hampshire, who sees the mercury fall to twenty degrees below zero, and stores his winter's firewood in a house as big as an ordinary factory or as ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... chaste beauty of the feathery flakes, or the gorgeous sparkle of trees bereft of leaves and covered with crystals that flashed every hue of the rainbow. But even in this bright September day, with the mercury among the eighties, I get chilled through and through, and shake with the "shivers" when I imagine myself once more among the hard frosts of New Hampshire. Unlike the brave soldier of Christ whom I am about to introduce to the readers of the "Irish Monthly," ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... by an olive-brown ferruginous clay. The cement is sometimes of so bright a red that the people of the country take it for cinnabar. We met a Capuchin monk at Calabozo, who was in vain attempting to extract mercury from this red sandstone. In the Mesa de Paja this rock contains strata of another quartzose sandstone, very fine-grained; more to the south it contains masses of brown iron, and fragments of petrified ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... nearest end of the plate, over which the glass is slided till it lies upon the plate, having driven much of the quicksilver before it. It is then, I think, pressed upon cloths, and then set sloping to drop the superfluous mercury; the slope is daily heightened ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... dye, (cinnabar or red sulphate of mercury), and the insect dye; the first was probably used in mural painting. It is translated in our Bible as vermilion, in the account given by Jeremiah of a "house, ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion."[298] Also Ezekiel gives us another instance of house-painting in vermilion.[299] Homer, who ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... former master returning, his appointment was cancelled. His friends were not idle, and four days after this he was made master of the Garland; but on going to join her he found that she had already sailed for her destination. On the following day, May 15, he was appointed to the Mercury, on the point of sailing for the North American station to join the fleet under Sir Charles Saunders, which, in conjunction with the army under General Wolfe, was engaged in the siege of Quebec. The termination of that contest gained for Great Britain one of her ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... almost entirely dependent on Russian writers. The priest Hyacinth, honourably mentioned in connection with this branch, continues his useful activity. Chopin on the provinces of the Caucasus (1840); Nefedyef on the Wolga-Kalmuks (1835); several articles in the Siberian Mercury, a periodical; a History of the Mongols, from the Persian, by Grigoryef; the Kirgises of the inner Horde, by Khanikof; and several publications of the Geographical Society of St. Petersburg; deserve to be noticed here. The works of two foreigners, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... present in progress. We live at a time when many have been formed, and many are still forming. Our own solar system is to be regarded as completed, supposing its perfection to consist in the formation of a series of planets, for there are mathematical reasons for concluding that Mercury is the nearest planet to the sun, which can, according to the laws of the system, exist. But there are other solar systems within our astral systems, which are as yet in a less advanced state, and even some quantities ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... of the retina—for which no cause could be assigned; and that he would be cured in less than a month. That he was to have a seton let into the back of his neck, dry-cup himself on the chest and thighs night and morning, and take a preparation of mercury three times a day. Also that he must go to the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... nature of gravity, that is, the cause or principle in virtue of which bodies descend, and we must derive our knowledge of it from some other source. The same may be said of a vacuum and atoms, of heat and cold, of dryness and humidity, and of salt, sulphur, and mercury, and the other things of this sort which some have adopted as their principles. But no conclusion deduced from a principle which is not clear can be evident, even although the deduction be formally valid; and ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... the mixture—the stomach rejecting it as soon as swallowed—what then? Give the opium, mixed with small doses of mercury with chalk and sugar, in the form of powder, and put one of the powders dry on ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... of pure quicksand (if such there be) and other aqueous materials of Class C, such as water, oil, mercury, etc., it has already been shown that they are to be considered as liquids of their normal specific gravity; that is, in calculating the air pressure necessary to displace them, one should consider their specific gravity only, as a factor, and not the total weight per volume including any impurities ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... sacrifice the most illustrious of the Roman senators on the altars of those gods who were appeased by human blood. The public danger, which should have reconciled all domestic animosities, displayed the incurable madness of religious faction. The oppressed votaries of Jupiter and Mercury respected, in the implacable enemy of Rome, the character of a devout Pagan; loudly declared, that they were more apprehensive of the sacrifices, than of the arms, of Radagaisus; and secretly rejoiced in the calamities of their country, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... esteemed indeed, if you have great intrinsic merit; but you will never, please; and without pleasing you will rise but heavily. Venus, among the ancients, was synonymous with the Graces, who were always supposed to accompany her; and Horace tells us that even Youth and Mercury, the god of Arts and Eloquence, would not ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... various private families. At the outbreak of the war, in 1860, he warmly espoused the Southern cause, and wrote many stirring war lyrics. In 1863 he joined the Army of the West, as correspondent of the Charleston "Mercury," and in 1864 he became editor of the "South Carolinian," published first at Columbia and later at Charleston. He also served for a time as assistant secretary to Governor Orr. The advance of Sherman's ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... filling all our empty water-casks. This heavy rain at last brought on a dead calm, which continued twenty-four hours, when it was succeeded by a breeze from S.W. Betwixt this point and S. it continued for several days; and blew at times in squalls, attended with rain and hot sultry weather. The mercury in the thermometers at noon, kept generally from 79 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... was not nicknamed Mercury on account of the rapidity of his motions or the volatility of his spirits, replied, "I dunno; but I don't see why one letter shouldn't have done for the lot of yer. He's flush with his writing-paper if he isn't with ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... there be some who plunge into an unbroken forest with a feeling of fresh, free, invigorating delight, as they might dash into a crisp ocean surf on a hot day. These know that nature is stern, hard, immovable and terrible in unrelenting cruelty. When wintry winds are out and the mercury far below zero, she will allow her most ardent lover to freeze on her snowy breast without waving a leaf in pity, or offering him a match; and scores of her devotees may starve to death in as many different languages before she will offer a loaf of bread. She does not ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... is generally known, it has been the habit of the nation's space-flying merchantmen to visit the sunlit side of the planet Mercury to obtain certain rare woods and other materials not found ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... follows the body, and that this is nothing but privation. Such a thesis would clear this ancient author of the errors the Greeks imputed to him. His great learning caused the Orientals to compare him with the Mercury or Hermes of the Egyptians and Greeks; just as the northern peoples compared their Wodan or Odin to this same Mercury. That is why Mercredi (Wednesday), or the day of Mercury, was called Wodansdag by the northern peoples, but day of Zerdust by the Asiatics, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... and the MOON, Who stole a thimble or a spoon; And tho' they nothing will confess, Yet by their very looks can guess, And tell what guilty aspect bodes, 595 Who stole, and who receiv'd the goods. They'll question MARS, and, by his look, Detect who 'twas that nimm'd a cloke: Make MERCURY confess, and 'peach Those thieves which he himself did teach. 600 They'll find, i' th' physiognomies O' th' planets, all men's destinies.; Like him that took the doctor's bill, And swallow'd it instead o' th' pill Cast the nativity o' th' question, 605 And from positions to be guess'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... is much dispute as to who is meant here. Some say Cicero refers to Amphion, some to Orpheus, and some to Mercury; the Romans certainly did attribute the civilization of men to ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... giving—no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the Bee—its leaves blush deeper in the next spring—and who shall say between Man and Woman which is the most delighted? Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury—let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be aimed at; but let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive—budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... laggard light far behind. Since subspace distances do not coincide with normal space distances, the SOS was first picked up by a Fomalhautian freighter bound for Capella although it had been issued from a point in normal space midway between the orbit of Mercury and the sun's corona ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames
... orthodox? Who ever heard of a hero in orthodoxy nowadays? The thing is impossible. There may be, of course, thousands of orthodox heroes, but one never hears anything of them. The planets Jupiter and Saturn and Mercury and Mars and the rest of them come and go at their appointed seasons, and no one ever gives them a second thought, poor old respectable things! but the moment a comet appears in the sky everyone rushes out to gaze at it, and ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... refused in the shape of a manuscript or a statue. "In the name of our friendship," says Cicero, addressing Atticus, "suffer nothing to escape you of whatever you find curious or rare." When Atticus informed him that he should send him a fine statue, in which the heads of Mercury and Minerva were united together, Cicero, with the enthusiasm of a maniacal lover of the present day, finds every object which is uncommon the very thing for which he has a proper place. "Your discovery is admirable, and the statue you mention seems to have been made purposely for ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the acquaintance of M. Fortnoye contemporaneously with my departure, he had become more enthralled than he ever confessed to this radiant traveler—whom he called a packman, but regarded as a Mercury—and his pretty scheme of matrimony in motion. Even now, if I can believe my eyes, he goes up to the "vintner" and "peddler" of his objurgations, and meekly whispers into his ear with the air of a conspirator reporting a plot to his chief. Having engaged to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... of an amorphous substance of a light yellow colour, not unlike gum in appearance. It is soluble in boiling water, and the solution has a faint acid reaction. Acids and many metallic salts, such as mercury, chloride and lead acetate, precipitate pectic acid from its solutions. Alkalies combine with it, and these compounds form brown substances, are but sparingly soluble in water, and many of them can be precipitated out by addition of neutral ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... are spasmodic and fluctuating, and the slaves of ups and downs, like some barometer in stormy weather; now at 'set fair,' and then away down where 'much rain' is written? There is no need for it. Get Christ into your heart, and your mercury will always stand at one height. Why should it be that at one hour the flashing waters fill the harbour, and that six hours afterwards there is a waste of ooze and filth? It need not be. Our hearts may be like some landlocked ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thinks of it must see that it is the weather which makes all these poets, or rather the weathers, for there are so many. As Mr. Choate said: "Cold to-day, hot to-morrow; mercury at eighty in the morning, with wind at southeast; and in three hours more a sea-turn, wind at east, a thick fog from the bottom of the ocean, and a fall of forty degrees; now, so dry as to kill all the beans in New Hampshire; then, a flood, carrying ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the density of the air adjacent to the instrument will depend both on the weight of air above it, and on the heat of the air at that place. If, therefore, we can measure the density of the air, and its temperature, the height of a column of mercury which it would support in the barometer can be found by calculation. Now the thermometer gives information respecting the temperature of the air immediately; and its density might be ascertained by means of a watch and a ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... lay, through wet and dry, As empty as the last new sonnet, Till by and by came Mercury, And, having mused upon it, "Why, here," cried he, "the thing of things In shape, material, and dimension! Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings, A ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Fortescue so quaintly and so unjustly denounces in the French and Scottish temperaments, may it not be more justly attributed to the German temperament? Are not the Germans constitutionally incapable of accomplishing a revolution? They lack the red corpuscles in their veins. They have no phosphorus or mercury in their composition. They have no elan, no resilience or vitality. They are strong, but only when they act gregariously, not when they act as free and irresponsible individuals. They can fight, but only when they are driven, and only ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... natural gas, coal, and strategic minerals (except bauxite, alumina, tantalum, tin, tungsten, fluorspar, and molybdenum), timber, gold, manganese, lead, zinc, nickel, mercury, potash, phosphates; note—the USSR is the world's largest producer of oil and ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... masque of Coelum Britannicum, acted before the court at Whitehall, the 18th of February, 1633; Momus, arriving from Olympus immediately after Mercury, says to him— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... the middle, And Mercury's next to the Sun While Venus, so bright, Seen at morning or night, Comes Second, to join ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... hot, continuous wet, and still are growing most beautifully at the present time. They gave a very satisfactory crop of nuts this last fall, 1919, in spite of severe freezing weather on April 25th and 26th when the mercury dropped to 12 to 15 degrees, and all hazel bushes in full bloom. At the present time the prospect for a good crop of nuts next ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... crushed by heavy stamps, or hammers, and then mixed with water and quicksilver. This curious metal, quicksilver, or mercury, is fond of gold and hunts out every little bit, the two metals mixing together and making what is called an amalgam. This is heated in an iron vessel, and the quicksilver goes off in steam or vapor, leaving the gold free. The quicksilver, ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... coal, iron ore, petroleum, natural gas, mercury, tin, tungsten, antimony, manganese, molybdenum, vanadium, magnetite, aluminum, lead, zinc, uranium, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... introduce a rhythmical fall and kind of close at the end of every blank verse in trying to write that measure for the first time. Still, as we say, there is good verse in Surrey's translation. Take the following lines for a specimen, in which the fault just mentioned is scarcely perceptible. Mercury is ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... it presents to dentin an amalgam of tin and mercury which does not discolor the dentin like ordinary amalgam, and helps do away with local currents on the filling, which is one cause of amalgam shrinkage in the mouth." (Dr. S. ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... a succession of crops of vegetables throughout the year; peas are green in January, which is, indeed, said to be the most verdant month of the twelve, the fields in summer becoming parched and yellow. The mercury usually ranges from 50 deg. to 80 deg., winter and summer; but we were there during an unusually cool season, and it went down to 45 deg.. This was regarded as very severe by the thinly clad Fayalese, and I sometimes went into cottages and found the children lying in bed to keep warm. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Fielding himself deserves quotation, whether drawn by his own hand or that of another. The Champion for May 24, 1740, contains a vision of the Infernal Regions, where Charon, the ghostly boatman, is busy ferrying souls across the River Styx. The ferryman bids his attendant Mercury see that all his passengers embark carrying nothing with them; and the narrator describes how, after various Shades had qualified for their passage, "A tall Man came next, who stripp'd off an old Grey Coat with ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden |
