"Precious metal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nuggets, and, they gleamed upon him from overhead. He felt that he must be dreaming, or else his terrible experiences of late had turned his brain. Could it be possible that he had accidentally stumbled upon a vein of the precious metal, rich beyond the wildest bounds of imagination! He put his hand to his face, and even pinched himself to make sure that ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... dreamed a man; Then, having firmly shut Life like a precious metal in his fist Withdrew, His labour done. Thus did begin Our various divinity and sin. For some to ploughshares did the metal twist, And others—dreaming empires—straightway cut Crowns for their aching foreheads. Others beat Long nails and heavy hammers ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... you have the two metals, gold and silver, used for coinage, you have a little confusion in the value of the two in the market; but when you have three precious metals (for you may call platinum a precious metal) worked into coin, they will be sure to run counter to one another. Indeed, the case did happen, that the price of platinum coin fixed by the Government was such, that it was worth while to purchase platinum in other countries, and make coin of it, and then take it into that ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... of gold than of anything else in the world. He valued his royal crown chiefly because it was composed of that precious metal. If he loved anything better, or half so well, it was the one little maiden who played so merrily around her father's footstool. But the more Midas loved his daughter, the more did he desire and seek for wealth. He thought, foolish man! that the best thing he could possibly ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... messages. In one of the mining settlements of California, during the early years of that State, an epidemic fever broke out, and raged with great malignity among the miners. The settlement was more than two hundred miles from San Francisco, in a secluded mountain gorge, barren of all but the precious metal which had attracted thither a rough, and motley multitude. There was no doctor within a hundred miles, and not a single female to nurse and watch the forlorn ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... what I know now there was about as much chance of finding gold in the region to which he sent me as there was of being struck by lightning, and, more than that, I couldn't have distinguished the precious metal from iron pyrites; but I had to do something to pay for my outfit, and so I went, glad to get away by myself and brood over my great loss. For I had been pretty well off for a boy of fifteen, I want you to remember, and every ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... rose-water at my feet; and the fumes were certainly as agreeable as harmless. But this, my first experiment in smoking, cost my Parsee friend three hundred dollars, the estimated value of his gold-mounted hookah, with its complicated array of tubes and vessels of the same precious metal, none of which he durst ever ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... gold. There are many in which not a single speck of the precious metal can be found. Gold usually prefers the society of quartz to that of other substances, for minerals, like people, seem to have their likes and dislikes. Along the Mother Lode, however, gold is sometimes found in little bunches and "stringers" scattered through ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... was in progress, the carpenter who had nailed up the case, and the carpenter's son, accompanying him, joined us in front of the house. They followed Oscar in, and came out again, bearing the heavy burden of precious metal—more than one man could ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... size than usual, judging of it by comparison with the dimensions of modern volumes. The binding was of blue velvet, with clasps of silver worked in beautiful arabesque patterns, and with a lock of the same precious metal to protect the book from prying eyes. When I took it up, I found that the lock was ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... they meet, struggle, fix. We see them picking up lumps of gold from the surface, or digging them out of the earth, or collecting the glittering dust by sifting and washing; and then we hear of vast torrents of the precious metal finding their way into Europe, threatening to swamp us all with absolute wealth, and confound and travesty the whole monetary transactions of the world. What we don't see, is the gold itself. We should like, if it were only out of curiosity, to feel a handful ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... replied, haughtily. "I will not suffer my power to be thus doubted, nor that of the pure and precious metal through which I ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... a small branch of one of the great rivers of California, a colonist discovers gold carried as dust with the sand, and soon a great part of the country is found to be immensely rich in the precious metal. That first discovery is followed by others equally important, and after a few years gold is found in abundance on both sides of a long range of the Rocky Mountains; again in the north, nearly ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... seated on a throne of the most splendid workmanship; the precious metal had been oxydised to every shade of colour, and was wrought in beautiful Mosaic: the walls and ceiling were entirely covered with the same, in some parts burnished, to reflect as mirrors, in others elaborately carved ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wonderful gold finds that were being made. Nay, more than this! They now sometimes actually saw the gold and actually met the men who had found it, as they were returning to the comforts and pleasures of civilization, actually burdened down with the weight of the precious metal they were carrying! And, what if all this gold should all be dug up before they got to the mines! The thought was enough to put the fever of haste into ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... a magic wand, what was five years ago a little Indian village is now a large and flourishing city, which is increasing at a prodigious rate. From every nation and people and clime, emigrants have been pressing to it in pursuit of the precious metal. The golden sands of California, with their brilliant glitter, have attracted thousands upon thousands from every land—and there is now arising on the far distant shores of the Pacific a great Empire destined to exert a mighty ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... grave was ever disturbed; to this day there exists somewhere near Cosenza a treasure-house more alluring than any pictured in Arabian tale. It is not easy to conjecture what "spoils and trophies" the Goths buried with their king; if they sacrificed masses of precious metal, then perchance there still lies in the river-bed some portion of that golden statue of Virtus, which the Romans melted down to eke out the ransom claimed by Alaric. The year 410 A.D. was no unfitting moment to break into bullion the figure personifying Manly ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... clothed with hangings of sky-blue velvet and silver; the chairs were of ebony, richly carved, with cushions corresponding to the hangings; and the place of the silver sconces which enlightened the ante-chamber was supplied by a huge chandelier of the same precious metal. The floor was covered with a Spanish foot-cloth, or carpet, on which flowers and fruits were represented in such glowing and natural colours, that you hesitated to place the foot on such exquisite workmanship. The table, of old English oak, stood ready covered with the finest ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... simile) the only elective affinity in moral chemistry. Because ingots are not dug out of the earth, is it not equally unwise and ungrateful to ridicule and denounce the hopeful, patient, tireless laborers who handle the alloy and ultimately disintegrate the precious metal? Even if the world were bankrupt in morality and religion—which, thank God, it is not—one grand shining example, like Mr. Hammond, whose unswerving consistency, noble charity, and sublime unselfishness all concede and revere, ought ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... of history first falls on the nations of the Old World, we find them acquainted with iron, but such knowledge, at least on the part of the Mediterranean nations, does not long precede history, for at that early time, iron was still a most precious metal. It was not yet produced in sufficient quantities to take the place of bronze; hence the prehistoric Iron Age was there but of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... those who have access to the place. The entire roof is covered with a plating of gold, in the same manner as we cover houses, or more properly churches, with lead. The ceilings of the halls are of the same precious metal; many of the apartments have small tables of pure gold, of considerable thickness; and the windows have also golden ornaments. So vast, indeed, are the riches of the palace that it is impossible to convey ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... events of the week. Her husband's enthusiastic reports of the Island gold. His talks with the carefully non-committal trader and the thin-nosed, shifty-eye Silvertip; and finally his decision to spend the winter on the Island in search of the precious metal. Shane was sitting now at the table pouring some shining dust into a saucer and studying ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... right up against some other Property so rich that the Workmen engaged in lifting out the Precious Metal had to wear Goggles to keep from ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... his picked ore lay waiting for shipment. He had a big lot, much larger than he had thought, and it was just as it had been shot down from the breast. Some was silver-lead; and there was copper to boot, though that would hardly do to ship. Yet at thirty cents a pound copper was almost a precious metal, and a report from the smelter would be a check. He would know from that how the ore really ran and how much he would be penalized for the zinc. So he picked out the best of it and broke it up fine, for the rough chunks would not do to sack; and before he ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... it,—like those Dutch coins and the portugaises, the rupees of Mogul, and the genovines,—I'll give you some more on your fete-days, and in three years you'll have got back half your little treasure. What's that you say? Look up, now. Come, go and get it, the precious metal. You ought to kiss me on the eyelids for telling you the secrets and the mysteries of the life and death of money. Yes, silver and gold live and swarm like men; they come, and go, and sweat, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... coast from here on to Bering Straits is said to be rich in minerals; but although coal was frequently seen cropping out from the cliffs and mica is plentiful, we saw no gold, and only heard on one occasion of the precious metal. This was at Inchaun, about a day's journey from East Cape, where one Jim, an English-speaking Tchuktchi informed me that he knew of "a mountain of gold" about ten miles away. The lad offered to walk to the place ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... has eyes to see can assure himself that Axim is the threshold of the Gold-region. It abounds in diorite, a rock usually associated with the best paying lodes. After heavy showers the naked eye can note spangles of the precious metal in the street-roads. You can pan it out of the wall-swish. The little stream-beds, bone-dry throughout the hot season, roll down, during the rains, a quantity of dark arenaceous matter, like that of Taranaki, New Zealand, and the 'black sand' of Australia, which collects ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... these treasures that lay concealed in the bowels of the earth, at least of their use and value. The Phoenicians took advantage of this ignorance; and, by bartering some wares of little value for this precious metal, they amassed infinite wealth. When the Carthaginians had made themselves masters of the country, they dug much deeper into the earth than the old inhabitants of Spain had done, who probably were ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... gold in a lavish way, and on a superb scale. They were not content with chaste rings and necklets, or even with golden crowns. The royal thrones were of gold; their armour was decorated with the precious metal, and their chariots enriched in the same way. Even the houses of the rich people were more endowed with precious furnishings than most of the churches of other nations, and every family possessed a massive silver table, and solid vases ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... the church of St. John was mainly of silver, and, according to Quincarnon, at the time of a Huguenot outbreak at Lyons it was thrown to the ground by a Calvinist minister named Ruffy, who, after reducing it to fragments, carried all the precious metal away with him.—M. ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... showing that metal of some kind had been excavated, and that the smelting had been done on the spot. That the mine was worked for gold seems quite probable, inasmuch as a lump of mineral containing a considerable quantity of the precious metal was picked up near the entrance some years ago. Besides the scoriae, I found upon the hillside much broken pottery, and from the shape of several fragments it was easy to restore the form of earthenware pots which ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... kingdoms, and her ancient art-works are remarkable for their skilled and tasteful elaboration. Gold, too, appears to have been used more commonly there, and the museum of the Royal Irish Academy can show a more wonderful collection of personal ornaments in that precious metal, as once worn by the native nobles, than is to be seen in the national museums of any other country, with the exception of Denmark. The gold is of the purest kind and richest colour, and the manner of its working could not be excelled by a modern goldsmith. The ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... preached in reference to and thus conferred the Golden Rose; and the first foreign potentate recorded to have received it from the Holy See is Fulk, Count of Anjou, to whom it was presented by Urban II. in 1096. A homily of Innocent III. also contains all explanation of this beautiful symbol—the precious metal, the balsam and musk used in consecrating it, being taken in mystic sense as allusion to the triple substance in the person of the Incarnate Lord—divinity, soul, and body. It is not merely a single flower, but an entire rose-tree that is represented—the whole about a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... mind's eye—nothing so costly; and not one head-stall that was ornamented with gold. But in the end one was bought profusely decorated with heavy buckles and bosses of silver; the steel bit, too, had cheek pieces of the more precious metal, while to hang from beneath the neck of the steed that was to wear it, there was a large glistening ball of silver, from which streamed a great tuft of ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... you only anticipate my previously formed resolution. With a knavery on my conscience, and a giddy-pated girl on my hands, and the doors of the London world open to me, I should scarcely have been capable of serious work. The precious metal, which is Knowledge, sir, is only to be obtained by mining for it; and that excellent occupation necessarily sends a man out of sight for a number of years. In the meantime, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... because they possess imagination, but because they lack it. Their bank-books are the index of their folly. They waste their years in a vain pursuit, which they cannot resist. They exclude from their lives all that makes life worth living, that they may acquire innumerable specimens of a precious metal. Gold is their end, not the gratification it may bring. Mr Rockefeller will go out of the world as limited in intelligence, as uninstructed in mind, as he was when he entered it. The lessons of history and literature are lost ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... is the special gold-field of Australia, and has produced two-thirds of all the precious metal which statistics credit to the country at large. One of the localities which has proved to be the most prolific in gold is Ballarat, now a charming and populous city, next to Melbourne in importance. It lies nearly ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... for this woman was second-rate stuff. Her beauty was somehow shoddy, her purple gown the kind of garment that a clairvoyant might have worn, her movements had the used quality of photographers' poses. Publicity had not been able to change the substance of the precious metal of her soul, but it had tarnished it beyond all remedy. She alluded presently to her preposterously-named daughters, Brynhild, Melissa and Guendolen, and he was reminded of a French family of musicians with whom ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... under the same canopy, El Zagal on the left hand of Ferdinand. The cavaliers and courtiers admitted to the royal pavilion remained standing. The count de Tendilla served the viands to King Ferdinand in golden dishes, and the count Cifuentes gave him to drink out of cups of the same precious metal; Don Alvaro Bazan and Garcilasso de la Vega performed the same offices, in similar style and with vessels of equal richness, to the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... eventually reached the claim, he found Sandy sitting on an upturned bucket amidst the most deplorable surroundings in which a gold prospector in quest of the precious metal could ever ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... were naturally short became a fathom in length, and those that were long frightful to behold. The order was given to burn her and take out the seven Spaniards who composed her crew. On interrogating the patroon, or master, of her, he informed us that the vessel with the precious metal had sailed from Mexico two months before, and had arrived at the Havannah. The Yankee captain who had given us this false information, and made us for five weeks poissons d'Avril, was remembered in our ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... on his estate in Africa, there was a large cavern, in which was stored an immense treasure. This treasure consisted, he said, of vast heaps of golden ingots, rude and shapeless in form, but composed of pure and precious metal. The cavern, he said, which contained these stores, was very spacious, and the gold lay piled in it in heaps, and sometimes in solid columns, towering to a prodigious height. These treasures had been deposited there, he said, by Dido, the ancient Carthaginian queen, and they had remained there ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... mill. I showed the gold to him. Alexander Stephens, James Brown, Henry Bigler, and William Johnston were likewise working in front of the mill, framing the upper story. They were called up next, and, of course, saw the precious metal. P.L. Weimer and Charles Bennett were at the old double log cabin (where Hastings and Company afterward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... the clippers was laid upon it. I bent it and it curved, supple as a young snake. I shook it, and the ripples ran down the length of it like silver waves in a little lake. The strength of the ages was in its voice. It has gathered its power in the womb of the earth. It was smelted from the precious metal taken from the mines of the Peninsula of Malacca, and it will have its gleam when the sparkle of the diamond ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... not certain that sun-spots, or the want of them, may not influence human passions; it may be worth while to enquire into this possible solar influence as well as the other, which can be done by crossing the hands of the new fortune-tellers with a sufficient amount of that precious metal which astrologers have in all ages ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... The nineteenth century was an age of demonstrations, some of them very impressive demonstrations, of the powers that have come to mankind, but of permanent achievement, what will our descendants cherish? It is hard to estimate what grains of precious metal may not be found in a mud torrent of human production on so large a scale, but will any one, a hundred years from now, consent to live in the houses the Victorians built, travel by their roads or railways, value the furnishings they made to ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... return to my own country. In the Galu Du-seen and his warriors I saw something of the explanation of the term "golden race" which is applied to them, for their ornaments and weapons were either wholly of beaten gold or heavily decorated with the precious metal. They were a very imposing set of men—tall and straight and handsome. About their heads were bands of gold like that which Ajor wore, and from their left shoulders depended the leopard-tails of the Galus. In ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... afforded, but the number became so great and troublesome that the government at length refused to permit travelers to go in that way unless they paid the same premium on the gold that they carried as was paid by those who shipped the precious metal. Not infrequently the bushrangers attacked the government escort, and on ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... are vast vaults that will hold in trust for centuries to come untold supplies of precious metal for the American nations. This general fact did not concern Alfonso. He was ambitious to unlock for his own use only a single box of the huge vault. He was familiar with the wonderful story of Mackay, Fair, Flood, and O'Brien, Kings of the Comstock Lode, and owners of the Big Bonanza, who paid ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... other the larder was kept well supplied, and while Dr Lascelles on the one hand talked eagerly of the precious metal he hoped to discover, Joses was always ready with ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... identical with gold. Indeed, in all ages," he went on, dropping at once into the classroom tone and adopting the professional habit of jumping backwards twenty centuries in order to explain anything properly, "it has been readily mistaken for the precious metal. The ancients called it 'fool's gold.' Martin Frobisher brought back four shiploads of it from Baffin Land thinking that he had discovered an Eldorado. There are large deposits of it in the mines of Cornwall, and it is just possible," here the professor measured his words as if speaking ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... a melting-pot. Attracted by the prospect of the precious metal that was to be wrung from it, there had drifted into the Valley a flotsam and jetsam, representatives of all nations and of all callings. As was natural, Americans in the majority; but, with them, Englishmen and Frenchmen and Germans ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... announced, however, that a race was to be run, in which the reward was open to all competitors, without question as to their origin, or as to their ordinary occupations. An oar of gold, to which was attached a chain of the same precious metal, was exhibited as the boon of the Doge to him who showed most dexterity and strength in this new struggle; while a similar ornament of silver was to be the portion of him who showed the second-best dexterity and bottom. A mimic boat of less precious metal was the third ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of mines cannot explain it. This, I say, is the gold and silver from ornaments employed in temples of the idols of ancient races, who lived unthinkable thousands of years ago. The very stones of their temples have crumbled and been decomposed, but the precious metal has been formed into nuggets, according to the natural laws of molecular attraction, and under the impulse of gravity and in obedience to the laws ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... performed, and that it should be done over again, they at last came to terms, exhausted with wrangling, and then went their way fairly satisfied with one another.* It sometimes happened that a clever and unscrupulous dealer would alloy the rings, and mix with the precious metal as much of a baser sort as would be possible without danger of detection. The honest merchant who thought he was receiving in payment for some article, say eight tabnu of fine gold, and who had handed to him eight tabnu of some alloy resembling gold, but containing one-third of silver, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... he is yet somewhat cautious in his communications; and not until Uraga repeats the question does he make answer to it. Then comes the response, slowly and reluctantly, as if from one of his long-suffering race, who has discovered a mine of precious metal, and is being put to the ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... loaded with medals, some in massive silver, and one or two even in gold, the gifts of various Christian potentates during the long period of his life. He also wore armlets, and cinctures above the ankles, of the latter precious metal. His head, on the whole of which the hair had been permitted to grow, the pursuits of war having so long been abandoned, was encircled by a sort of plated diadem, which, in its turn, bore lesser and more glittering ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... pitchforks. The blaze that arose was awful to behold; and hissings and burstings and loud cracklings and strange noises were heard in the midst of the flame; and when the whole sank into ashes, a drinking-cup of some precious metal was found; and this cup, fashioned no doubt by elfin skill, but rendered harmless by the purification with fire, the sons and daughters of Sandie Macharg and his wife drink out of to this very day. Bless all bold men, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... characteristic of the Podsnap plate. Everything was made to look as heavy as it could, and to take up as much room as possible. Everything said boastfully, 'Here you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I were only lead; but I am so many ounces of precious metal worth so much an ounce;—wouldn't you like to melt me down?' A corpulent straddling epergne, blotched all over as if it had broken out in an eruption rather than been ornamented, delivered this address from an unsightly silver ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the port of Potosi, fifty-seven blocks of precious metal were added to the store; and from thence they made haste to Lima, where the largest booty was looked for. They found that they had just missed it. Twelve ships lay at anchor in the port without arms, without crews, and with their sails on shore. In all of these they discovered but a few chests ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... (Nos. 14, 15, and 19) from the same locality contain gold. The amount of gold, however, is small. I consider these indications of the presence of the precious metal not altogether unsatisfactory; and certainly to justify further exploration. My conviction is, that the ancients were adepts in the art of extracting gold, and that, owing to the small value of human labour, they could get out as much ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... necklace, the most highly valued of all Bagobo ornaments. One section is a gold or silver cord, several inches long. made of small over-lapping scales of the precious metal. The necklace is thought to be of Moro manufacture, and is valued by the Bagobo at from ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... stoodest thou, in deep Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal. Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills; of the greenest was their sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. To the unconscious Wayfarer thou wert also ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle |
