"Solvent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of dealing with unhealthy conditions is unfortunately not one that compels us to conduct a solvent hygiene on a cash basis. She demoralizes us with long credits and reckless overdrafts, and then pulls us up cruelly with catastrophic bankruptcies. Take, for example, common domestic sanitation. A whole city generation may neglect it utterly and scandalously, if not with ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... was unusual; the receiving teller's window was neglected. James King of William, who, since the closing of his own bank, had been Adams & Company's manager, came forward and drew Sherman aside. "What do you think of the prospect?" he asked. "Few of us can stand a run. We're perfectly solvent, but if this excitement spreads it means ruin for the house—for ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... only one living principle? Does organized existence, and perhaps all material existence, consist of one Proteus principle of life capable of gradual circumstance-suited modifications and aggregations without bound, under the solvent or motion-giving principle of heat or light? There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to those dispositions of nature that are manifest to us, than in total destruction and new creation. It is improbable that much ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... that moment he faced an acknowledged regret that he had not lived the normal life of marriage at the start, the quieting of foolish fevers, the witness of children. We are not, he reflected, quite solvent unless we pay tribute before we go. He mused off into the vista of life as it accomplishes itself not in great triumphal sweeps, but fitful music hushed at intervals by the crash of brutal mischance, and only, at the end, a solution of broken chords. Meantime Dick watched him, and Raven at last, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... light. If tested by the hand you are absolutely safe, since water can he used twenty degrees hotter internally than externally, but in its passage from the body it would he painful to the external parts. Hot water is the best solvent for impacted faecal matter, and, on the other hand, water below the temperature of the body is likely to cause pain. If the hands are impervious to heat, an excellent plan is to test the water ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... when this munificent grant of land and loan of credit was made it would create a great public highway across the continent for the use of the Government and the people, in war and peace, which should be a strong, solvent corporation, ready for every emergency, and as secure for the public use as New York Harbor, or ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... product, the law. The prophets declared the revelation of God, which had authority for all, but along with this they had their own personal experience, and the subjective truth of which they thus became aware proved a more powerful solvent and emancipator than the objective one which formed the subject of their revelation. They preached the law to deaf ears, and laboured in vain to convert the people. But if their labour had produced no outward result, it had an inner result for them. Rejected ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... of the body. We cannot taste, much less assimilate, a solid until it becomes a liquid; and your great idea, your sermon or moral, lies upon your poem a dead, cumbrous mass unless there is adequate heat and solvent, emotional power. Herein I think Wordsworth's "Excursion" fails as a poem. It has too much solid matter. It is an over-freighted bark that does not ride the waves buoyantly and lifelike; far less so than Tennyson's ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... aggravated by the decisions of the court relating to proofs on bills of exchange, under which it was held that the holder of a current bill could prove on the bankrupt estate of an indorser, although the bill was not yet due, and the acceptor was perfectly solvent and able to meet it at maturity. Thus in large mercantile failures, bankers and other holders of first-class bills could prove and vote on the estates of their customers, for whom the bills had ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... been said contemplates the use of the solutions furnished by the Ordnance Department. However, the same result will be obtained with less labor by using Hoppe's Nitro Powder Solvent No. 9, which is sold by all post and camp exchanges, and which the Author, as the result ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... people pay for the failures of their Royal allies, and suffer for their sympathy with the success of their republican enemies. It is the opinion of a learned Jesuit that it was by aqua regia the Golden Calf of the Israelites was dissolved—and the cause of Kings was the Royal solvent, in which the wealth of Great Britain now melted irrecoverably away. While the successes, too, of the French had already lowered the tone of the Minister from projects of aggression to precautions of defence, the wounds which in the wantonness of alarm, he had inflicted on the liberties of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... The intellectual and moral world of mankind reforms itself at the outset of new civilizations, as Nature reforms itself at every new geological epoch. The first step toward a reform, as toward a crystallization, is a solution. There was a solvent period between the unknown Orient and the greatness of Greece, between the Classic and the Middle Ages,—and now humanity is again solvent, in the transition from the traditions which issued out of feudalism to the novelty of democratic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... of the gastric juice, unless given in very minute quantities, and kills and precipitates its pepsin. It also coagulates both albumen and fibrine, converting them into a solid substance, thus rendering them unfit for the action of the solvent principles of the gastric juice. Hence, any considerable quantity of alcohol taken into the stomach must for the time ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... not entered from without; it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time, will possess itself of everything. The Judge's face, indeed, rigid and singularly white, refuses to melt into this universal solvent. Fainter and fainter grows the light. It is as if another double-handful of darkness had been scattered through the air. Now it is no longer gray, but sable. There is still a faint appearance at the window; neither a glow, nor a gleam, nor a glimmer,—any phrase of light would express something ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... organic-ferment or decomposing substance, containing nitrogen—something of the nature of yeast—termed pepsine, which is easily soluble in the acid just named. That gastric juice acts as a simple chemical solvent, is proved by the fact that, after death, it has been known ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... gave him three daughters who all married titles; but she was their ladyships' "dear Mamma" throughout; and Coutts himself saw to it that where he dined she dined also. There's nothing in caste in our country, given the essential solvent. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... defiance and discontent with everything; contemptuously ignoring, (either from constitutional inaptitude, ignorance itself, or more likely because he demanded a definite cure-all here and now,) the only solace and solvent to be had. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... him for the first time.] We shall have you finding Faith the only solvent of all problems ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... wholly alters the result. I put the leg to soak for a quarter of an hour in disulphide of carbon, the best solvent of fatty matters. I wash it carefully with a brush dipped in the same fluid. When this washing is finished, the leg sticks to the snaring-thread quite easily and adheres to it just as well as anything else would, the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... seems never to have entered his head. He could easily have done all this: there was not a Power in Europe that would not have lent him a helping hand in development and reform, in the establishment of a solvent state, in aiding the condition of the peoples over whom he ruled. In whatever he did, provided that it furthered the welfare of his subjects, whether Turk, Armenian, or Arab, the whole Concert of Europe would have provided ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... toddy-mixer, Bardolphian in hue, and stern of aspect, as all grog-dispensers must be, accustomed as they are to dive through the features of men to the bottom of their souls and pockets to see whether they are solvent to the amount of sixpence, answered my question by a wave of one hand, the other being engaged in carrying a dram to his lips. His superb indifference gratified my artistic feeling more than it wounded my personal ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the best solvent for disaffection. When the resources of Hungary are properly developed, and wealth results to the many, bringing education and general enlightenment in its train, there will be a common ground of interest, even amongst those who differ in race, religion, and language. It was a saying of the patriotic ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... What hast thou done for Me?' Ah, that is the true beginning. You cannot frighten men into penitence, you may frighten them into remorse; and the remorse may or may not lead on to repentance. But bring to bear upon a man's heart the thought of the infinite and perfect love of God, and that is the solvent of all his obstinate impenitence, and melts him to cry, 'I have sinned.' And along with that element there is the other, the plain striking away of all disguises from the ugly fact of the sin. The prophet gives it its hideous name, and that is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and overflowing. It was the simple vapor of water that the clouds borrowed of the earth; now they pay back more than water: the drops are charged with electricity and with the gases of the air, and have new solvent powers. Then, how the slate is sponged off, and left all clean ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... it's possible that he would have approved of what on the surface looks like folly. He stated that he hoped the bequest would help you to confound your enemies. But you must act as a business man. You say that, if you go deeper, your firm might still wind up just solvent; then why not abandon the apparently hopeless project, and withdraw? Follow your profession if you must work, or live upon your income. This drainage scheme looks tolerably desperate on your own showing, and if, selling at a sacrifice you sink all ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... is, he taught, that brings order out of chaos, that becomes the solvent of the riddle of life, and however cynical, skeptical, or practical we may think at times we may be, a little quiet clear-cut thought will bring us each time back to the truth that it is the essential force that leads away from the tooth and the claw of the jungle, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... interesting. In one place (f. 12) Vaughan announces the discovery of the "Extract of Oil of Halcaly," which he had previously found in his wife's days and had lost again. This he calls "the greatest joy I can ever have in this world after her death." He seems to have regarded it as the key to an universal solvent. Nearly every receipt is followed by his and his wife's initials in the form T. R. V. or T. ^V. R., and by some expression of devotion to her or of ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... not to liquefy, at the temperature of boiling water. This substance is readily soluble in hot solution of potash or soda, producing a deep brown liquid, from which it is again deposited in flocks on acidifying. I have not yet found any solvent for it. The action of nitric acid with linseed oil is more similar to this than that with any other oil I have tried, but the nitro products of the two, if I may so call them, are quite different from one another. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... which is the solvent of the iodine, is perfectly transparent to the luminous, and almost perfectly transparent to the dark, rays of the electric lamp. Supposing the total radiation of the lamp to pass through the transparent bisulphide, while through the solution of iodine only the dark ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... picturesque cattle-stealers and Jacobite chiefs were things of the past; but he loves with his whole heart the institutions rooted in the past and rich in historical associations. He transferred to poetry and fiction the political doctrine of Burke. To him, the revolutionary movement was simply a solvent, corroding all the old ties because it sapped the old traditions, and tended to substitute a mob for a nation. The continuity of national life seemed to him the essential condition; and a nation was not a mere aggregate of separate individuals, but an ancient organism, developing on an orderly ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... said, too, that the pearl was dissolved in wine. By a simple practical test and at the sacrifice of a small quantity of baroque, proof was obtained that ordinary culinary vinegar is a solvent of pearls. The experiment also yielded these notable conclusions—that either the wine of Cleopatra's age was much more corrosive than the vinegar of ours, or that the costly beverage was prepared beforehand, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... workingmen and small tradesmen, nine-tenths of the former weavers,—mostly short, thin, shallow-chested, pale-faced figures, with whom worry and want looked out at every pore. One set represented the full-stomached virtue and solvent morality of bourgeois society; the other set, the working bees and beasts of burden, on the product of whose labor the gentlemen made so fine an appearance. Let both be placed for one generation under equally favorable ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... the poetry of the previous generation. But while he clearly shared the uplifted aspiring spirit of Shelley, it assumed in him a totally different character. Shelley abhors limits, everything grows evanescent and ethereal before his solvent imagination, the infinity he aspires after unveils itself at his bidding, impalpable, undefined, "intense," "inane." Whereas Browning's restlessly aspiring temperament worked under the control of an eye and ear that fastened with peculiar emphasis and eagerness upon all the limits, the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... definitely. When it comes to groups, races, nations, the outlook is wholly different. There is a conflict of so many and diverse habits and interests, beliefs and prejudices, that hope for some common merely intellectual solvent for all of them is rather forlorn. If at all, the resolution of the conflict will come by a pooling of actual powers and interests, in which the religion of science will play the great part of the Liberator ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... any spare capital; in fact, we haven't got any capital worth mentioning. But the business is entirely sound and solvent." ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... and a tin cup, which Jim let fall when he first tasted the water, discovered its secret. It's just the same principle as those lime springs that incrust things with lime. This one must percolate through a bed of ore. There's some quality in the water which acts as a solvent of the silver, you know, so that the ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... be remembered that heresy was the solvent antisocial force of the age and was regarded with the same feelings of abhorrence as anarchist doctrines and propaganda are regarded ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... extending them. In response to the pressure for loans, some New York banks over-extended their credit. In October the inability of a few prominent banks to pay in cash all of the demands made upon them started a series of bank "runs." Even solvent institutions were unable to meet their obligations promptly and many failures occurred. A large number of banks were technically insolvent, that is to say, their assets were invested in forms which prevented their immediate conversion into cash, so that for the time being demands for cash could ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... contracting debt as a desperate resource, without any fair prospect of ability to repay: debt and famine run together in the mind of the poet Hesiod. The borrower is, in this unhappy state, rather a distressed man soliciting aid than a solvent man capable of making and fulfilling a contract. If he cannot find a friend to make him a free gift in the former character, he will not, under the latter character, obtain a loan from a stranger, except by the promise of exorbitant interest, and by the fullest eventual power over his person ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... human destiny,' solve for me a problem of the human mind? Will he tell me whether, in his after life, when he was the owner of broad acres, fine houses, piles of stocks in paying corporations, and huge deposits in solvent banks, he ever felt richer or prouder when counting his gains, and contemplating the aggregate of his wealth, than he did when he pulled on his first pair of boots?) So, as I said, we rolled up our pants, and waded in for the trout. We caught a beautiful string of twenty or more, took them home, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... pass. "The Peace Treaty," wrote Italy's most influential journal, "and its correlate forbode for the near future the Continental hegemony of France countersigned by the Anglo-American alliance."[233] Another widely circulated and respected organ described the policy of the Entente as a solvent of the social fabric, constructive in words, corrosive in acts, "mischievous if ever there was a mischievous policy. For while raising hopes and whetting appetites, it does nothing to satisfy them; on the contrary, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... dodging of the question, instead of an attempt to solve it. Divine ordination—"[Greek: Doz d' etelevto Bonlae]"—is a maxim which settles all difficulties. But it also precludes all inquiry. Why speculate at all, with this universal solvent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... throw no light upon this subject three hundred years ago. We must therefore turn to Shakespeare—human nature's universal solvent—for light on this as we would on any other question of his time. Was he troubled with insomnia, then, is the ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... decompound; analyze, disembody, dissolve; resolve into its elements, separate into its elements; electrolyze [Chem]; dissect, decentralize, break up; disperse &c 73; unravel &c (unroll) 313; crumble into dust. Adj. decomposed &c v.; catalytic, analytical; resolvent, separative, solvent. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... works of Averroes, translated by Michael Scott, "wizard of dreaded fame," Hermann the German, and others, acted at once like a mighty solvent. Heresy followed in their track, and shook the Church to her very foundations. Recognizing that her existence was at stake, she put forth all her power to crush the intruder. The Order of Preachers, initiated by St. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... you wot it is,' said Mr. Weller, after a short meditation, 'this is a case for that 'ere confidential pal o' the Chancellorship's. Pell must look into this, Sammy. He's the man for a difficult question at law. Ve'll have this here brought afore the Solvent ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... should be demanded till all other debts were paid and all shareholders in receipt of six per cent. interest. But the three millions were clogged with conditions which, though they have been of service to the country, have been so expensive to the company that it is hardly more solvent with it than it would have been without it. As it is, the whole property seems to be involved in ruin; and yet the line is one of the grandest commercial conceptions that was ever carried out on the face of the globe, and in the process of a few years will do more to make bread cheap in England ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... of Anastase was recalled to me. Then, amidst long ringing notes of the wild horns, and intermittent sighs of the milder wood, swept from the violins a torrent of coruscant arpeggi, and above them all I heard his tone, keen but solvent, as his bow seemed to divide the very strings with fire, and I felt as if some spark had fallen upon my fingers to kindle mine. As soon as it was over, I looked up and laughed in his face ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... were discussing. It was very short, and in Henry Haight's handwriting, pretty much in these terms: "We, the undersigned property-holders of San Francisco, having personally examined the books, papers, etc., of Page, Bacon & Co., do hereby certify that the house is solvent and able to pay all its debts," etc. Height had drawn up and asked them to sign this paper, with the intention to publish it in the next morning's papers, for effect. While I was talking with Captain Folsom, Height came into the room to ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... has run over the surface of the earth contains both ammonia and mineral matter, while that which has arisen out of the earth, contains usually only mineral matter. The direct use of the water of irrigation as a solvent for the mineral ingredients of the soil, is one ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... put into metal saucepans or kettles, as it is a very powerful solvent. A small enamelled kettle or saucepan should be used for heating it, and it should be stored in glass or earthenware vessels only. It should not be kept for more than a month, and should always be ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel
... greatest in extent,—the "avenues," or tunnels, which present conclusive evidence of having once been the channels of a subterranean stream, whose waters, having some peculiar solvent property, wore their bed lower and lower in the rock, until they cut through into some lower opening, through which they were drawn off, leaving the old channels dry. Imagine one of the narrow, crooked streets in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... a moment some conscientious scruples about accepting so splendid a post. And when Lady Hilda in her emphatic fashion promptly over-ruled these nascent scruples by the application of the very simple solvent formula, 'Bosh!' he felt bound at least to stipulate that he should be at perfect liberty to say whatever he liked in the new paper, without interference or supervision from the capitalist proprietor. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... she had seen, at a chemical lecture, a supersaturated solution, translucent and spotless, suddenly fill with innumerable ramifications from one tiny crystal dropped into it. Might not this shred of memory chance to be a crystal of the right salt in the solvent of his mind, and set going a swift arborescence to penetrate the whole? Might not one branch of that tree be a terrible branch—one whose leaves and fruit were poisoned and whose stem was clothed with ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... keeping the metal liquid. The account of this thrilling experience, told in his matchless autobiography, is too long to quote at this point; an interesting item, however, should be noted. Cellini used pewter as a solvent in the bronze which had hardened in the furnace. "Apprehending that the cause of it was, that the fusibility of the metal was impaired, by the violence of the fire," he says, "I ordered all my dishes and porringers, which were in number about two ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... possibly with a flute or horn.] That music must be heard, is not essential—what it sounds like may not be what it is. Perhaps the day is coming when music—believers will learn "that silence is a solvent ... that gives us leave to be universal" ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... general solvent. It can take into its substance several similar bulks of other substances without greatly increasing its own, some actually diminishing it. Hot alkaline water will dissolve even silica rock. When water is saturated with sugar, ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... vehicle of terror, a solvent of dramatic difficulties, and a source of pleasurable excitement to theatrical audiences, seems to have become quite an extinct creature. As Bob Acres said of "damns," ghosts "have had their day;" or perhaps it would be more correct to say, their night. It may be some consolation ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... KOH, have a most deleterious action on wool. Even when very dilute and used in the cold they act destructively, and leave the fibre with a harsh feel and very tender, they cannot therefore be used for scouring or cleansing wool. Hot solutions, even if weak, have a solvent action on the wool fibre, producing a liquid of a soapy character from which the wool is ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... attempting to imitate the most perfect banknote, the first process would be to place it with the printed side downwards upon a stone or other substance, on which, by passing it through a rolling-press, it might be firmly fixed. The next object would be to discover some solvent which should dissolve the paper, but neither affect the printing-ink, nor injure the stone or substance to which it is attached. Water does not seem to do this effectually, and perhaps weak alkaline or acid solutions would be ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... estimate of the situation would be true so far as it went; yet it would omit to take account of a third factor, a solvent far less obvious in its workings, but far more disintegrating in its effects. The factor to which we are referring is philosophy; while science and criticism have overthrown certain traditional ramparts, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... concede to him? He was temperate in his meals and diversions, but always kept a little on this side of abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry—as the friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... to Hope Mills or the Eastmans. The money had gone in that direction. On the other hand, it was proven by the income of Hope Mills, and the amount paid out for labor, that there was no reason why they should not be solvent to-day. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... generations to lay claim on him. Like everything in nature this change or rather this transformation should be imperceptible. Mutual toleration is the factor of a healthy assimilation. This has given to the United States a greater solvent power than has been shown by any other nation, ancient or modern. Coercive assimilation arouses national feelings, alien elements, and racial self-assertion. The worst enemy of Canada is the political power which, to please a blatant, ultra-loyal faction, pursues ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... it in a solution of sulphuric acid," pursued my uncle, "I should be able to clear it from all the earthy particles and the shells which are incrusted about it. But I do not possess that valuable solvent. Yet, such as it is, the body shall tell us its own ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... proportion. The spirit of Hegelian criticism should be applied to his own system, and the terms Being, Not-being, existence, essence, notion, and the like challenged and defined. For if Hegel introduces a great many distinctions, he obliterates a great many others by the help of the universal solvent 'is not,' which appears to be the simplest of negations, and yet admits of several meanings. Neither are we able to follow him in the play of metaphysical fancy which conducts him from one determination of thought to another. ...
— Sophist • Plato
... the pressure of the tool might flaw the enamel, or even crack the portrait, for the make of this thing is peculiar. Now first I submit the rim or verge, without touching the brilliants, mind you, to the action of a little preparation of my own—a gentle but penetrative solvent. You are welcome to watch me; you will be none the wiser; you are not in the trade, though the young lady looks as if she would make a good polisher. Very well: if this were an ordinary closure, with two flat surfaces meeting, the solvent would ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... necessary to anticipate would, if ignored, leave room for a wrong impression as to much of the work which is being done both on the self-help and on the State-aid sides of the new movement. Education, it will be said, is the only real solvent to the range of problems discussed in this book, most other agencies of social and economic reform being of doubtful efficacy and, if they tend to postpone educational effort, positively harmful. There ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... commonly yielded to her lover—dared hardly in her presence evoke the thrill of that thought. Instinctively he knew, through the restraints that parted them, that Laura was pure woman, a creature ripe for the subtleties and poetries of passion. Would not all difficulties find their solvent—melt in a golden air—when once they had passed into the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pirates' fortress when two very weary, very ragged Englishmen arrived in Tien-tsin; and so bronzed and disreputable did they appear that they could obtain accommodation nowhere until they had proved, by the exhibition of some of their gold, that they were not up-country robbers, but solvent citizens, of ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... life must always resolve itself into love," said Khalid, as he stood on the rock holding out his hand to his friend. "Love is the divine solvent. Love ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... leading "trusts" are nationalized, public utilities municipalized, and the national and local governments busily engaged on canals, roads, forests, deserts, and swamps. Here are occupations employing, let us say, a fourth or a fifth of the working population; and solvent landowning farmers, their numbers kept up by land reforms and scientific farming encouraged by government, may continue as now to constitute another fifth. We can estimate that these classes together with those among the shopkeepers, professional elements, etc., who are directly ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... vainglorious, assertive male of common experience—and it is not to be denied that it has been fruitful, nor again that by some freak of fate or fortune the house has kept a decent front to the world at large. It is still solvent, still favourably regarded by the police. It is not, it never will be, a mere cage of demons; its walls have not been fretted to transparency; no passing eye can detect revelry behind its decent stucco; no passing ear thrill to cries out of the dark. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... not strength to disengage them, and he remained in the saddle. Not being able to be a great man, he abandoned himself to his fate, which condemned him to be only a knave. At the expiration of his term of freedom, he declared himself solvent, and the princess ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... father's consent and support, threw the bulk of his own fortune into the assets of Hawarden. By this, and the wise realisation of everything convertible to advantage, including, in 1865, the reversion after the lives of Sir Stephen Glynne and his brother, he succeeded in making what was left of Hawarden solvent. His own expenditure from first to last upon the Hawarden estate as now existing, he noted at L267,000. 'It has been for thirty-five years,' he wrote to W. H. Gladstone in 1882, 'i.e., since the breakdown in 1847, a great object of my ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... be made by this process and although improvements have been made from time to time, this method has been employed ever since its invention. In these later years cotton is dissolved in a suitable solvent such as a solution of zinc chloride and this material is forced through a small diamond die. This thread when hardened appears similar to cat-gut. It is cut into proper lengths and bent upon a form. It is then immersed in plumbago ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... would happen? You would leave debts, for, although you are solvent, you are only solvent because you have the knack of always putting your hand on money, and death would automatically make you insolvent. You are one of those brave, jolly fellows who live up to their income. It is true that, in deference to fashion, you are now insured, ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... he said, "you're a good guesser, but you don't guess all. More than a million dollars worth of material that I supplied was burned or looted at Bristoe Station. But it had all been paid for by a perfectly solvent Union government. So, if I were to consider it from the purely material standpoint, which you imagine to be the only one I have, I should rejoice over the raids of the rebels because they make trade for contractors. I'm a ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... races who like the Gurkhas and the Soudanese, may be expected to fight for us and to hate our enemies without asking for political rights. In any case we, like Bismarck, must extirpate, as the most fatal solvent of empire, that humanitarianism which concerns itself with the interests of our future opponents as well as ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... well-tested and established, are not the backbone of the Christian religion. It may well be that to minds inured from infancy to the worship of the letter; to believers in "the Bible and the Bible only" as the ground of their religion; Arnold's solvent methods and free handling of the sacred text were alarming and revolutionary. But they fell harmless on the minds which had long schooled themselves in the Christian tradition; which took the Bible from the Church, not the Church from the Bible; and ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... of persecution, broken for a moment, goes on and becomes even more foreboding, for it speaks of dearest ones turned to foes, and the sweet sanctities of family ties dissolved by the solvent of the new Faith. There is no enemy like a brother estranged, and it is tragically significant that it is in connection with the rupture of family bonds that death is first mentioned as the price that Christ's messengers would have to pay for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... That the captured insects were in some way "made subservient to the nourishment of the plant" had been conjectured from the first. Dr. Curtis "at times (and he might have always at the proper time) found them enveloped in a fluid of mucilaginous consistence, which seems to act as a solvent, the insects being more or less consumed in it." This was verified and the digestive character of the liquid well-nigh demonstrated six or seven years ago by Mr. Canby, of Wilmington, Delaware, who, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... cosmos ran a silver thread of quiet chuckle that added light to his life and endeared him to thousands. Laughter is the solvent for most of our ills! All of his own personal religion—and he had a deal of it—was never saved up for Sunday; he used it in his business. But James Oliver was a Scotchman, and this being so, the fires of his theological nature ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... asphalt material has a tar-like consistency. Be sure all the ash is out of the turpentine portion; now, after distilling the turpentine off, act on the residue with all the solvents that were used on the residue, using for the first the solvent which is least likely to dissolve a great part of it. By thus manipulating the various solvents you will be enabled probably to separate the crude asphalt into several distinct hydrocarbons. Put each in a ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... believe you," Orsino answered softly. Women's tears are a great solvent of man's ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... which it so little deserved are evident, and consist, in the general necessity of a fluid condition (394.); in its being the only one of this class of bodies existing in the fluid state at common temperatures; its abundant supply as the great natural solvent; and its constant use in that character in philosophical investigations, because of its having a smaller interfering, injurious, or complicating action upon the bodies, either dissolved or evolved, than any ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... glaring, and ruinous. Social and political anarchy, utter insecurity of life and property, incessant revolution and murderous war, have been its only fruits. The happy accident of hereditary princes, exceptionally wise, able, and forbearing, has barely saved Brazil. The one prosperous, solvent, orderly State between the Rio Grande and Cape Horn is the aristocratic republic of Chili. So large, striking, and impressive a fact can hardly have escaped a thinker like Tocqueville, whose French birth and experience protected him in great measure from the insular ignorance, rather ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... his encounter with the secret foes, symbolized by the Twelfth House and Pisces. The idols, false ideas, and vampires of his own creation, are to be cleansed and washed away by the Waters of Love, the universal solvent that is ever seeking to bring about change and new forms; born again of water to make the round of the astral Zodiac, until, having again reached the equator of the ascending are, where he is reunited to the missing half of his soul, the true friend of the Edenic state; the highest point ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... the gaining of Christ, and the attaining the resurrection from the dead, the perfect transformation of body, soul, and spirit, into the perfect likeness of the perfect Lord? Does the other balance-sheet show the man as equally solvent who enters on one side the gain of a world, and on the other a Christless life, to be followed by a resurrection in which is no joy, no advance, no life, but which is a resurrection of judgment? May we all be found in Him, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... possible to recover the substance dissolved? Set out solutions on the table to evaporate, or evaporate them rapidly over a stove or spirit-lamp. Try to dissolve sand, sulphur, charcoal, in water. Obtain crystals of iodine and show how much better, in some cases, alcohol is as a solvent than is water. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... white Anglo-Saxon teeth, the slow, slack, Western American carriage, the guarded and amused expression of the golden eyes. Here was a bundle of racial contradictions, not yet welded, not yet attuned. Perhaps the one consistent, the one solvent, expression was that of alert restlessness. Cosme Hilliard was not happy, was not content, but he was eternally entertained. He was not uplifted by the hopeful illusions proper to his age, but he loved adventure. It was a bitter face, bitter and impatient and unschooled. It seemed ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... or third year, and replace it with virgin loam. Others grow the Tomatoes alternately in the bed and in pots, but this is only a partial remedy. Constant dressings of farmyard or stable manure result in the formation of humus, which, as it becomes sour, has to be sweetened by the solvent influence of lime. The chief objection to the use of stable manure, however, even when well rotted, is that it induces a free growth of foliage instead of promoting an early development of fruit. The most enduring method is that which is based on chemical knowledge ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... was combatively proud. At last he came to the point where his merger was practically accomplished, and a problem arising out of it had to be solved. It was a problem which taxed every quality of an able mind. The situation had at last become acute, and Time, the solvent of most complications, had not quite eased the strain. Indeed, on the day that Fleda Druse had made her journey down the Carillon Rapids, Time's influence had not availed. So he had gone fishing, with millions at stake—to the despair of those who were risking all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... spoilers we regard, No dun so harsh, no creditor so hard. A second kind are they, who truly strive To keep their sinking credit long alive; Success, nay prudence, they may want, but yet They would be solvent, and deplore a debt; All means they use, to all expedients run, And are by slow, sad steps, at last undone: Justly, perhaps, you blame their want of skill, But mourn their feelings and absolve their will. There is a Debtor, who his trifling ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... as a solvent; in fact, this constitutes one of its most important industrial applications. It dissolves most organic compounds, resins, hydrocarbons, fatty acids and many metallic salts, sometimes forming, in the latter ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Probably, as San Giacinto had foretold, he would pay everything and remain a very poor man indeed. But, although many persons knew this, confidence was not restored. Del Ferice declared that he believed Montevarchi solvent, as he believed every one with whom his bank dealt to be solvent to the uttermost centime, but that he could lend no more money to any one on any condition whatsoever, because neither he nor the bank had any to lend. Every one, he said, had ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... finish the church. At the same time the vestry was put out of court. However, there was a fresh appeal to the Council of State, which quashed this judgment, and condemned the vestry, and, in default, the heir-at-law, to pay the contractor. Neither party being solvent, matters remained in this position. The lawsuits had lasted fifteen years. The town had now resignedly paid over the hundred thousand francs, and only two hundred thousand remained owing to the contractor. However, the costs and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... connection, that, in all these innumerable and multifarious forms of it, in all the stupendous interchanges of Mine and Thine, the ultimate reference is to one sole standard of value, which is the value of the precious metals. The civilized world has adopted these as the universal solvent of its vast masses of obligation. It is assumed that some standard is indispensable; it is asserted to be the imperative duty of governments, if they would not make their exactions of taxes arbitrary, unequal, and oppressive,—if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... preserved, there was no practical result likely to follow which required me to retire from your Administration. That necessity is created by what I feel it my duty to do; and the responsibility of the act, therefore, rests alone upon myself." Ignoring the fact that the Treasury was prosperous and solvent when he took charge of it, and that at the moment of his leaving it could not pay its drafts, Mr. Cobb, five days later, published a long and inflammatory address to the people of Georgia, concluding with this exhortation: "I entertain no doubt either ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... atmosphere is cleaner than that of a country village. As the air of a contracted space may grow poisonous by respiration, while pure air rests over the entire surface of the earth in virtue of being the final solvent to all terrestrial decompositions, so it is possible that a few good, but narrow people may get alone together in the country, and hatch a social organism far more morbid than the metropolitan. In the latter instance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... helpless thankfulness, looking up in John's face, while his own quivered like a frightened child's—the banker obeyed. It seemed that great as was his loss by W——'s failure, it was not absolute ruin to him. In effect, he was at this moment perfectly solvent, and by calling in mortgages, etc., could meet both the accounts of the gentry who banked with him, together with all his own notes now afloat in the country, principally among the humbler ranks, petty tradespeople, and such like, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... duplicity becomes inevitable. The real intention of the Aeneid, and the real intention of Paradise Lost, are not easily brought into vivid apprehension. The natural thing to do, then, would be to use the familiar substance of early epic, but to use it as a convenient and pleasant solvent for the novel intention. It is what has been done in all the great "literary" epics. But hasty criticism, finding that where they resembled Homer they seemed not so close to their matter, has taken this as a pervading and unfortunate characteristic. It has not ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... into Endeavor Societies, and their men and women into prayer-meetings, where in many different tongues they yet speak and pray in the language of Canaan. The immigration problem is not the same menace that it was. A mighty solvent ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... The greatest solvent for political heresies, for doctrines which are antagonistic to popular government, is education. To the educated mind there comes a conception of duty which is not possible ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... when in later years they once more appeared under their original organization, they have been recognised as "The invisible brothers." Their name is not, as generally supposed, derived from rosa and crux: but it is from ros (dew), the then supposed solvent of gold, and crux (the cross). To see, perhaps, a badge of this order, mark the arms of Luther! a cross placed upon a rose. True, a mistake as to the definition, yet does it not indicate the reason of its ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... for this reason more readily softened. But violent boiling occasions an enormous waste of fuel, and by driving away in the steam the volatile and savory elements of the food, renders it much less palatable, if not altogether tasteless. The solvent properties of water are so increased by heat that it permeates the food, rendering its hard and tough constituents soft and easy ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... us. At the beginning of railway transportation in the United States, the people had to be taught its use, just as they had to be taught the use of the telephone. Also, the new railroads had to make business in order to keep themselves solvent. And because railway financing began in one of the rottenest periods of our business history, a number of practices were established as precedents which have influenced railway work ever since. One of the first things the railways ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... been hardly earned money. I understand from him that my share of our American earnings are in the New Orleans banks, which, though they pay no dividends, and have not done so for some time past, are still, I believe, supposed to be safe and solvent.... ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Art," he concluded, "such Art as it was given to Rome to achieve—rise and fall with the virtues of the Roman people. From the lips of the most seeing of its sons we know the solvent in which those virtues perished: that solvent was the greed, the insatiate greed, of gold—'auri sacra fames'—the rot of luxury. 'More deadly than arms,' Juvenal magnificently exclaims, 'luxury has swept down upon us, and avenges ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... many parts of the country. Its pith lay in the proposition that money requires in its material no intrinsic value, its worth and purchasing power coming entirely from the "fiat" of the government issuing it, so that paper money put forth by authority of a solvent and powerful government will be the peer of gold. This idea was the rallying point of the National Labor Greenback Party, organized at its Indianapolis convention, May 17, 1876, when Peter Cooper was put in nomination for President. At the subsequent presidential election in November, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... probably not solvent when he conceived the scheme, and he borrowed a thousand dollars of his old friend, James Coggeshall, with which to buy the indispensable material. He began with six hundred subscribers, printed five thousand of the first number, and found it difficult to give them all away. The Tribune appeared ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... in any man's league, there is just a little more reason why the military officer should adopt a system of accounting whereby he can keep his record straight, his affairs solvent and his situation mobile than if he had ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... element Water, Basil Valentine says:—"Outwardly it is volatile, inwardly it is fixed, cold, and humid.... It is the solvent of the world, and exists in three degrees of excellence: the pure, the purer, and the purest. Of its purest substance the heavens were created; of that which is less pure the atmospheric air was formed; that which is simply pure remains in its proper sphere ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... already got rid of their week's earnings, or of that portion they had reserved for their own pleasures, but were not yet prepared to go home, and so miss the chance of a last half-pint of beer from some passing still solvent acquaintance. There were other larger groups and little crowds gathered round the street auctioneers, minstrels, quacks, and jugglers, whose presence in the busier thoroughfare was not tolerated by ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... group of American intellectuals who at present are ardent champions of bolshevism we shall find that, with exceptions so few as to be almost negligible, they have embraced nearly every "ism" as it arose, seeing in each one the magic solvent of humanity's ills. Those of an older generation thus regarded bimetallism, for instance. What else could be required to make the desert bloom like a garden and to usher in the earthly Paradise? The younger ones, in their turn, took up anarchist-communism, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... produce. It could earnestly be desired that every bank not possessing the means of resumption should follow the example of the late United States Bank of Pennsylvania and go into liquidation rather than by refusing to do so to continue embarrassments in the way of solvent institutions, thereby augmenting the difficulties incident to the present condition of things. Whether this Government, with due regard to the rights of the States, has any power to constrain the banks either to resume specie payments or to force them into liquidation, is an inquiry ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... gas-meter. How little he could have guessed that the alternative he was presenting to me was either to pay away more than half my capital, or to give up cooking my food! I at last appeased him by a promise that I should look into the matter, and so escaped for the moment, badly shaken but still solvent. He gave me a good deal of information about the state of his tubes (his own, not the gas company's) before he departed; but I had rather lost interest in the subject since I had learned that he was being treated by ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... and perceived quickly enough that no company could undertake to do what this one pretended to and remain solvent. The booklet served him for an editorial, and before one o'clock the next day agents from every life company in Boston were collected in his office. They supposed at first that it was an attempt at blackmail, but soon discovered that Elizur Wright knew more about ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... that these principles are free from difficulty in application. At many points they suggest difficulties both in theory and in practice, with some of which I shall try to deal later on. Nor, again, am I contending that freedom is the universal solvent, or the idea of liberty the sole foundation on which a true social philosophy can be based. On the contrary, freedom is only one side of social life. Mutual aid is not less important than mutual forbearance, the theory of collective action no less ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... more alive than the same molecules in inorganic matter. Nearly nine tenths of a living body is water; is not this water the same as the water we get at the spring or the brook? is it any more alive? does water undergo any chemical change in the body? is it anything more than a solvent, than a current that carries the other elements to all parts of the body? There are any number of chemical changes or reactions in a living body, but are the atoms and molecules that are involved in such changes radically ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... the French army and civil officials. The Emperor, a true Italian in his love of dress, had overlaid the coats of all his servants with silver and gold, and the Empire included a hundred and thirty-three Departments. These ornaments, usually supplied to tailors who were solvent and wealthy paymasters, were a very secure ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... eye and understanding mind, when they were eighteen years of age, discovered and published the Solvent of Caoutchouc, for which a patent was taken out afterwards by the famous Mackintosh. If the young discoverer had secured the patent, he might have made a fortune as large as his present reputation—I don't suppose he much ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... misbehavior had led her to conclude; then she began to think better things of him in a general way, but unfortunately it did not occur to her that he might possibly have conceived a liking to herself. Love, that best solvent of difficulties, was astray between them ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... creches as the one he now entered. It was reached by a lift, and by a glass bridge that flung across the dining hall and traversed the ways at a slight upward angle. To enter the first section of the place necessitated the use of his solvent signature under Asano's direction. They were immediately attended to by a man in a violet robe and gold clasp, the insignia of practising medical men. He perceived from this man's manner that his identity was known, ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... reaction to acute crisis abroad the National Credit Association was set up by the banks with resources of $500,000,000 to support sound banks against the frightened withdrawals and hoarding. It is giving aid to reopen solvent banks which have been closed. Federal officials have brought about many beneficial unions of banks and have employed other means which have prevented many bank closings. As a result of these measures the hoarding withdrawals which had risen to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... but I venture to suggest that the better course would be for us, as the injured parties, to join forces against Messrs. Jervase & Jervoyce, and discuss the partition of the spoils when we have secured them. They are thoroughly solvent; I know that, for I have made inquiries; and they are well worth powder and shot. Until the case is heard, or until they themselves come to heel of their own free will, I cannot in honesty ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... manifest. Gold may be dissolved by a compound acid, and for a time may cease to be observed, but not beyond the power of re-appearing. The gold cannot be decomposed: let a test be added, and the indestructible ore will re-appear. By a powerful solvent the noble principle in the National Church became nearly all invisible, though some of it could not be dissolved. A test has been added, and the whole has been precipitated, and nearly all of it has come out.[796] The sound principle and ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... as to the condition of the Powell family before the Civil War was (Vol. II. p. 499) that they were then "an Oxfordshire family of good standing, keeping up appearances with the neighbour- gentry, and probably more than solvent if all their property had been put against their debts, but still rather deeply in debt, and their property heavily mortgaged." During the war, we have now to record, on the faith of a statement afterwards made by Mr. Powell himself, the losses ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... liable to appear and become seated during this period. In short, the previous selfhood is broken up like the regulation copy handwriting of early school years, and a new individual is in process of crystallization. All is solvent, plastic, peculiarly susceptible to ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... suspended oar For the low rote of waves upon a shore Changeless as heaven, where never fog-cloud drifts Over its windless wood, nor mirage lifts The steadfast hills; where never birds of doubt Sing to mislead, and every dream dies out, And the dark riddles which perplex us here In the sharp solvent of its light are clear? Thou knowest how vain our quest; how, soon or late, The baffling tides and circles of debate Swept back our bark unto its starting-place, Where, looking forth upon the blank, gray space, And round ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... difference in price is fixed which exists between the date of contract, and the time when payment was suspended. These differences in price are put to account between the parties concerned. It can thus easily happen, that the solvent concern has to pay a considerable amount to the other party, through whose fault the contract was not carried out, and yet, this constitutes no loss to the paying party, as they can at once cover themselves at the existing prices. The advantage of this procedure ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... merchant and shopkeeper kept on his table what was called a "bank-note detector,'' which, when any money was tendered him, he was obliged to consult in order to know, first, whether the bill was a counterfeit, as it frequently was; secondly, whether it was on a solvent bank; and thirdly, if good, what discount should be deducted from the face of it. Under this system bank-notes varied in value from week to week, and even from day to day, with the result that all buying and selling became a ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... it must have been an extremely inconvenient and cramped sort of home, but at the time I took it, as I was taking everything, as being there and in the nature of things. I did not see the oddness of solvent decent people living in a habitation so clearly neither designed nor adapted for their needs, so wasteful of labour and so devoid of beauty as this was, and it is only now as I describe this that I find myself thinking of the essential absurdity of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... seen,) that much of the ethereal part of the new formed, or, rather, the scarcely-formed spirit, is carried off with it in a gaseous state. This is much assisted by the agency of the atmosphere, which is the solvent and receptacle of ethereal products, whose affinity for them must be as great as it is perfect and immediate—which demonstrates the necessity of having air-tight vats. When we consider the composition of the atmosphere, and that it owes its formation and existence to this cause, and, thereby ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... to resume the simile, carries in solution more reading as well as more wit, more knowledge of life and nature, more gifts of almost all kinds than would suffice for twenty men of letters, yet the very power of its solvent force, as well as the vigour of its current, makes ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... is essentially able. The work which that wonderful left hand of hers finds to do, it does with a certainty that makes most other work look tentative beside hers. The gestures and poses she chooses in her models show how little she fears drawing, while the gistness of her criticism has a most solvent effect in dissolving the doubts that hover ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... character and opinion; a farce that you could laugh at without a loss of self-respect. But it is rather by his comedies than by his farces that Mr. Shaw should be judged. If they are not popular, it is for a very good reason: Mr. Shaw's humour is too serious. His humour is a strong solvent, and one of the many things about which this humorist is in deadly earnest is the fetish worship of tradition. To that he persists in applying—in Candida as in half a dozen other plays—the ordeal by laughter—an ordeal ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... spot; if they listen to another syllable they are lost; if they let the innocent interlocutor say so much as that a piece of well-nourished healthy brain is more living than the end of a finger-nail that wants cutting, or than the calcareous parts of a bone, the solvent will have been applied which will soon make an end of common sense ways of looking at the matter. Once even admit the use of the participle "dying," which involves degrees of death, and hence an entry of death in part into a living body, and common sense must either ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... not merely the product of a moment of passion or of a passing emotion; the strings of his lyre were not set vibrating by every breeze that blew. The personal emotion from which the lyric springs was with him subjected to the action of an intellectual solvent, was generalized and made almost impersonal before it was given form and expression. For this reason partly the bulk of his poetry is small, not exceeding the limits of one small volume. But there are few poems that one would be ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... first in infinitesimal doses, but in ever increasing quantities, of arsenic, strychnine, opium, and prussic acid? That at last having attained the flower of youth, she drank habitually from vessels of gold, for her favourite beverages were so corrosive that no other substance could resist their solvent properties? ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... screwed themselves down by their unreasoning demands for conformity. A good deal of this spirit has survived throughout history and far more of it, naturally, was found four centuries ago than at present, when reason has proved a solvent for so many social institutions. There are a good many laws of the period under survey—such as that of Nuremberg against citizens parting their hair—for which no discoverable basis can be found save the idea that new-fangled fashions ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... very honourable and highly creditable manner, Mr. Hawkehurst," exclaimed the lawyer, with sudden cordiality; "and I beg distinctly to withdraw any offensive observations I may have made just now. Your own affairs are, I conclude, in a sufficiently solvent state?" ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... He believed in Roman force and authority, and thought that such harmless visionaries as Paul and his company might be allowed to go their own way, and he did not know that they carried with them a solvent and constructive power before which the solid-seeming structure of the Empire was destined to crumble, as surely as thick-ribbed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... landlord, instead of carrying on his business profitably, would have been carried off peremptorily, by a catarrh, his wife's nursing, and a doctor; but, fortunately, it struck one of the post-boys that rain was not necessary to a conversation, and sleet but a bad solvent of a mystery; so the posse adjourned into the tap, in order that the subject might be discussed more at the ease of the gentlemen who fancied themselves ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard |
