"Tonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... call spice-berry, she showed them was good to eat; and she would crush the leaves, draw forth their fine aromatic flavour in her hands, and then inhale their fragrance with delight. She made an infusion of the leaves, and drank it as a tonic. The inner bark of the wild black cherry she said was good to cure ague and fever. The root of the bitter-sweet she scraped down and boiled in the deer-fat, or the fat of any other animal, and made an ointment that possessed very healing qualities, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Plagal-cadence: a closing progression of chords in which the sub-dominant or chord on the fourth degree of the scale precedes the tonic or chord on the first degree of the scale. The name arises from the modes used in early church music called Plagal Modes, which were a transposition of the authentic modes beginning on the fourth degree of the ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... air was ineffably sweet and keen—penetrant, tonic, with moist, racy smells, the smell of the good brown earth, the smell of green things and growing things. The dew was spread over the grass like a veil of silver gossamer, spangled with crystals. The friendly country westward, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... the wet and the fact that I was getting devilish hungry, my spirits somehow began to rise. Good luck always acts on me as a sort of tonic, and so far I had certainly been amazingly lucky. I felt that if only the rain would clear up now and give me a chance of getting dry, Fate would have treated me as handsomely as an escaped murderer had any ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... you pass along the hedges, and catching at the wild rose and honeysuckle; and when you get into the meadows there is stir enough in the air to lighten the dead weight of the sun. The Roman air, however, is not a tonic medicine, and it seldom suffers exercise to be all exhilarating. It has always seemed to me indeed part of the charm of the latter that your keenest consciousness is haunted with a vague languor. Occasionally when the sirocco blows that sensation becomes ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... that's as may be.—She consulted the family doctor who attended to the household of Bluebeard's Castle; suggested that Sir Grimthorpe (they had just knighted him) might be the better for a strychnine tonic; she had read somewhere that strychnine did wonders for middle-aged men who had led rather a rackety life in their ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... I always found in America that a shower of brickbats had a remarkably tonic effect, materially strengthening to the back-bone. (Laughter.) But, sir, the shower of compliments and applause, which has greeted me on this occasion would assuredly cause my heart to fail me, were it not that this generous reception ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... does a man take up some piece of work hopelessly unremunerative, foredoomed to failure as far as money or fame go, some dealing with the classics of the world, Homer or Aristotle, Lucian or Moliere. It is like a bath after a day's toil, it is tonic and clean; and such studies, if not necessary to success, are, at least, conducive to mental health and ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... looking remarkably fresh, but appearances are not invariably to be depended on, and it's advisable to keep the system up to par," he said with a smile. "I suppose you don't want a tonic of ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... evening, and a week later a good gruff old doctor came over from the mainland and chaffed Danny about his pup and told him to play in the sun and drink plenty of milk and not to fret about school this year. I waylaid him privately and asked if there was anything I could get or do—a tonic, a change. He patted my shoulder and said, "Land t'goodness, no! That youngun's been a-dying ever since I borned him, fourteen years ago. He warn't ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... that all would be well. He would have been the last person to deny that his position was a little complicated—he had to use a pencil and a sheet of paper to show himself just where he stood—but what of that? A few complications in life are an excellent tonic for the brain. It was with a sunny geniality which startled that unaccustomed stripling considerably—and indeed caused him to swallow his chewing gum—that he handed in his card to Mr. Pett's ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... herself from the reverie which was creeping over her. She was glad to see Ethel, unfeignedly glad. The bright, animated presence of her cousin, during the next few days, could not fail to be a tonic. And, as Ethel had said, she herself had been the one to suggest the first idea of the winter visit. Chance and Captain Frazer had decreed that it should take place now, when Alice's hands were immoderately full of work. But then, so much the better. Ethel could make herself invaluable ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... greater I'll dare. This very outburst proves in thee Passions unsanctified, and carnal leanings Upon the creatures thou would'st fain transcend. Thou badest me cure thy weakness. Lo, God brings thee The tonic cup I feared to mix:—be brave— Drink it to the lees, and thou shalt find ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... about yourself; walk for an hour every day before breakfast, eat only two meals a day, morning and evening, take at least eight hours' rest every night, give up lounging about in your club, occupy yourself—with work for others, if possible. I believe that to be the most tonic work there is—and I see no reason why you ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... had the satisfaction of noting that he looked quite a little foolish. Too well he knew I could not be deceived, and even now I could surmise that the lobster had been supported by sherry. How many times have I not explained to him that sherry has double the tonic vinosity of any other wine and may not be tampered with by the sensitive. But he chose at present to make light of it, almost as if he were chaffing above ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... ken has been made up as this has been. We have sought far and wide, through many libraries, carefully conning hundreds of books and glancing through hundreds more, to find just those lines which would have the most tonic and stimulating effect in the direction of holier, nobler living. We have coveted verses whose influence would be directly on daily life and would help to form the very best habits of thought and conduct, which would have intrinsic spiritual value and elevating power; ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... in the light of his own experience and prejudices. For facts, whatever their origin (and God only knows where they come from), can be only tested by our own particular suspicions. Ricardo was suspicious all round. Schomberg, such is the tonic of recovered self-esteem, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... said they were paste, but that wasn't quite accurate. They're a stuff called white jargoon. It's a stuff that's very easily faked. You work it with the flame of a blow-pipe. You don't want a full description, I suppose? Anyway, what happens is that the blow-pipe sets it up like a tonic. Gives it increased specific gravity and a healthy complexion and all sorts of great things of that kind. Two minutes in the flame of a blow-pipe is like a week at the seashore to a bit of white jargoon. Are you satisfied? If it comes to that, I guess you can hardly be expected ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... repay your kindness," he said. "I am, as you see, a traveling peddler of hair tonic. May I present you with a bottle?" and he ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... intimate contact with the public, and which proved an important factor in the aesthetic and moral cultivation of our people. No lecturer could have had a more auspicious influence than Emerson, with his quiet dignity, his serene spiritual presence, his tonic and often electrifying force. But if he gave his audiences precious gifts, he also learned much from them. For thirty years his lecturing trips to the West brought him, more widely than any New England man of letters, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... over till he reached a foot-note, wherein the learned author discoursed of the nature of the dermis and epidermis. The writer showed conclusively that such and such an unguent or soap often produced an effect exactly opposite to that intended, and the ointment, or the soap, acted as a tonic upon a skin that required a lenitive ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... last until the end; for if Dr. Gray were long, Mr. McCraw was not only longer but more incoherent, and the matter of his sermon (which was a direct attack, apparently, on all the Churches of the world, my own among the number), where it had not the tonic quality of personal insult, rather inclined me to slumber. But I braced myself for my life, kept up Rowley with the end of a pin, and came through it awake, but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hen has got a lot of little chickens and the jonquils are in bloom. The sun is as warm as June, but I'm shivering all the time, and Miss Katherine says she don't understand me. She gave me a tonic to make me eat more. I don't want to eat. ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... about sketching. My way was to draw very carefully and accurately, and then fill in the color and detail in the most painstaking fashion from nature. I went by line and detail, nobody having ever taught me anything about mass and tonic values, still less about the difference between art and nature, and the necessity for transposing nature into the keys of art. The consequence was a great waste of time, and of only too earnest efforts with hardly anything to ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... a moment. I want to have a little talk with you. It is a doctor's duty to see that a nurse does not overtax her strength, and you are looking very ill these last few days. I am going to prescribe a tonic which I want you to take regularly, and you must contrive to have a walk each day, and, if possible, a rest in the afternoon. You might lie down on the sofa ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and suppositions that of fact. Then, the vision of a beautiful woman with a strange rose-scarlet dress, in whose eyes sorrow struggled with mocking laughter, once again assailed him. Who she might be, and what her history, he most emphatically knew not; yet that she breathed a keener and more tonic air than that to which he was habituated, that feelings in her case did not stand for actions, or suppositions for fact, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... scattered villages warned us that we were approaching a city. Far to the left rose the blue peaks of Taif, and the mountain road, a white thread upon the nearer heights, was pointed out to me. Here I first saw the tree, or rather shrub, which bears the balm of Gilead, erst so celebrated for its tonic and stomachic properties. I told Shaykh to break off a twig, which he did heedlessly. The act was witnessed by our party with a roar of laughter, and the astounded Shaykh was warned that he had become subject to an atoning ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... you like, but tonic. This view will suit our mood. For we shall be making and the makers of history will become more real to us. Instead of urging that issues are inevitable, instead of being swamped by problems that are unavoidable, we may stand up and affirm the issues we propose ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... quality of voice (voix sombre). Such phenomena are physiological. The vocal organs are the most sensitive of any in the human economy: they betray at once the mental condition of the individual. Joy is a great tonic, and acts on the vocal cords and mucous membrane as does an astringent; a brilliant and clear quality of voice is the result. Grief or Fear, on the other hand, being depressing emotions, lower the vitality, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... rhythm comes to peripheral expression, there are two opposing sets of muscles involved. If a rhythmic movement be attempted with but a single set of muscles at work, it is very unsatisfactory and soon ends in the tonic contraction of the muscle set. One may assume that in all cases of rhythm perception there is a cycle of movement sensations involved, and that the simplest possible case of a peripheral rhythmic movement ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... the Tonic Sol-fa College I carefully tested the breathing capacity of ten students, and found that there was an average excess of midriff and rib breathing over collar-bone breathing to the extent of 25 cubic inches: the least amount of their increased power ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... symptoms that I can discover," the doctor answered. "Yet, as I told you before, there are certain things about his condition which I do not understand. I should like to see him again in the morning! I am giving him a tonic, more as a matter of form. I scarcely think his system will ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hold Judith's creed to be the best of all imaginable creeds—that if we do nothing very wrong, all human imbroglios, in some irrational and quite incomprehensible fashion, will be straightened to our satisfaction. Meanwhile, you also voice a tonic truth—this universe of ours, and, reverently speaking, the Maker of this universe as well, is under no actual bond to be intelligible in dealing with us." He laughed at this season and fell into a lighter tone. "Do I preach like a little conventicle-attending tradesman? Faith, you must remember ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... would vanish out of her life, it might be for ever; or, if by chance encountered on the street, pass by with a casual greeting and a touch of the cheap Panama. Emigration Jane was no heroine, only a daughter of Eve. Arithmetic and what was termed the "tonic sofa" had been more sternly inculcated than the moral virtues at the Board School in Kentish Town. And she was not long in making up her mind that she would not ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... to drink water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wine agreeable to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; every other kind of wine would be bad for her. Never allow her to drink water alone; if you do, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... in the Irish annals. Mead was made from honey, and beer from malt; and these were, probably, the principal liquors at the early period[260] of which we are now writing. As to the heath beer of Scandinavian fame, it is probable that the heather was merely used as a tonic or aromatic ingredient, although the author of a work, published in London in 1596, entitled Sundrie Newe and Artificial Remedies against Famine, does suggest the use of heath tops to make a "pleasing and cheape drink for Poor Men, when Malt ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... others, as the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it. This merry, pleasant mood is brought on by the blood tonic. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who had been all day silent, abstracted, and unlike his usual self, this joyous influence acted like a tonic. As entertainer, he was bound to exert himself, and the exertion did him good. He threw off his melancholy; and with the help, possibly, of somewhat more than his usual quantity of wine, entered thoroughly into the passing joyousness ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... to Mamie, and hope she is better. I am, of course, tired (the pull of "Marigold" upon one's energy, in the Free Trade Hall, was great); but I stick to my tonic, and feel, all things considered, in very good tone. The room here (I mean the hall) being my special favourite and extraordinarily easy, is ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... and a heroic foreigner to the rescue! What a god-send that I invited him! And I really believe he enjoyed it. I never before saw him so gay, so charming! There are men, you know, to whom danger is a tonic, and my friend's son is like that, surely. Did he ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... tonic there was, however, which never deserted her. Strictly as Girdlestone guarded her, and jealously as he fenced her off from the outer world, he was unable to prevent this one little ray of light penetrating her prison. With an eye to the future he had so placed her that it seemed to him ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stand. My head was on fire, and I do not think I have ever been so sick before. I got around to a drug-store—the man said he would give me some powders; he said they were forty cents, but I dared not pay it. He gave them to me for a quarter. He said I should have a tonic, but I ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... than you think, just a normal precipitate and not a deadly poison. However," and the doctor's face twinkled with humorous sympathy; "it's just about as well to keep it in solution for the present. Therefore, both as your medical adviser and as your senior warden, I'm going to give you a tonic to that end. Moreover, I want you to eat lots of underdone beef, to drink lots of good beer, and spend a good half your time out-doors. Then, if the doubts hang on, come back to me and I'll take another whack at them. They're harmless enough now, like ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are steeped like tea; but from the chafing of resiny branches against each other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles, the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the fragrance from these local sources, there were traces of scents brought from afar. For this wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny waves, then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny gulches, and spreading ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... wiped the mouth of the bottle on the palm of her hand, then, kneeling once more on the stones, she lifted the stranger's head in her supporting arm, and pressed the flask to his lips. After that, she chafed the wrist which was not hurt, and once more administered the tonic. Finally, the man's lids fluttered, and his lips moved. Then, he opened his eyes. He opened them waveringly, and seemed on the point of closing them again, when he became conscious of a curved cheek, suddenly coloring to a deep flush, a few inches from his own. He saw in the same glance ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Fawcett and Leslie Stephen. Both were profound believers in hard tonic discipline of mind and body, inculcating their belief by doctrine and example; and both, with great diversity of gifts, had the rough strong directness of intellectual attack which Cambridge, then perhaps more than at any other time, set ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... fresh-air lovers, or try in every way to bring over the poor, misguided mortals to my views; but it is of no use. Fresh air is the fashion, and is run to extremes, as all fashions must be. I call in a physician; lo! fresh air is recommended as a tonic. I give a party; of course my windows are all thrown open, and foolish young girls, in the thinnest of white muslins, are standing in the draught; and such a whirlwind is raised by the flirting ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... for virtue. We used to think it was. We half believed the German war party when they told us about the disciplinary value of their gigantic establishment, and when Lord Roberts assured us that war was tonic for the souls of peoples we were inclined to think that he was right. When, in answer to our nation's call, our men went out to fight and all our people were bound up in a fellowship of devotion to a common cause, so stimulated were we that we almost were ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... I could do to make myself look completely a Greek virtuoso and as un-Roman-looking as possible. I patronized every complexion-specialist, friseur, perukier, manicurist and fashionable barber in that part of the world. I bought every hair tonic for sale in the colony. Between lotions and expert manipulation I succeeded in growing a thick curly beard, covering my chest as far as the lower end of my breast-bone and a thick head of hair so long that, even when elaborately frizzed and curled, my oiled and scented ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... open air was sufficiently tonic to help him through the details of ticket-buying and embarkation; and afterward sleep came so quickly that he did not know when the Pullman porter drew the curtains to adjust the screen in the window at his ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... system is not very great. All, or nearly all, the chords used by Wagner are to be found in the works of Bach. The suggestion to explain Wagner's harmonies by assuming a "chromatic scale" rests upon a misapprehension of the nature of a scale. Every scale implies a tonality, i.e. a tonic note, to which all the other notes bear some definite numerical relation. There cannot be a chromatic scale in the scientific sense in music; what we call by that name in a keyed instrument is merely a diatonic scale with the intervals ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... it's a fair deal, doctor. I've had value. You've been a tonic to me. When I got up I never thought to see the "Moonraker's" again, but I'm ready for my early morning draught ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... escape from outward sorrow—namely, an amulet which will turn the outward sorrow into joy. The bitter water will still be given me to drink, but it will be filtered water, out of which God will strain all the poison, though He leaves plenty of the bitterness in it; for bitterness is a tonic. The evil that is in the evil will be taken out of it, in the measure in which we make God our Refuge, and 'all will be right that seems most wrong' when we recognise it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the table in the morning perchance. I am not abnormally partial to the pleasures of the table, but I have found a good dinner in combination with first-rate port, rationally dealt with, an excellent tonic for the brain. ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... with paralysis from overwork; further, in cases of impeded circulation occasioned by cholera or severe diarrhea, particularly in the so-called hydrocephaloid (false hydrocephalus) of children. It is worthy of trial in tetanic and eclamptic seizures, and in tonic angiospasms such as occur during the chill of malarial fevers, although in the last-mentioned condition pilocarpine is perhaps more suitable, provided the energy of the heart ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... billets by the battalions who were in reserve. In Ploegsteert Wood, "Woodcote Farm," and "Red Lodge," were also used for the same purpose. The wood in those days was a very pleasant place to wander through. Anything that reminded us of the free life of nature acted as a tonic to the nerves, and the little paths among the trees which whispered overhead in the summer breezes made one imagine that one was wandering through the forests in Canada. In the wood were several cemeteries kept by different units, very neatly laid ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... no comment, but proceeded to undergo the labours of the toilet. A cold bath is an excellent tonic; and when Leroy entered the dining-room his calm face bore no traces of his comparatively sleepless night. He sat down to breakfast, waited on by the attentive Norgate, and turned over the heap of letters which lay beside his plate. During his leisured meal he opened them. They were ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... has a church-like character, almost "sacred." This is due to the first harmonic step from tonic to subdominant and back again, in the manner of the "Amen" cadence so well known in anthems. In the second period there is an intense and almost strained expression due to the chord of 4-2, the seventh ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... petticoats and had made prize of an English man-of-war by storm; all the profit, however, being his. This he proved with a courteous clasp of the girl and a show of the salute on her cheek, which he presumed to take at the night's farewell. 'She's my tonic,' he proclaimed heartily. She seemed to Livia somewhat unstrung and toneless. The separation from her brother in the morning might account for it. And a man of the admiral's age could be excused if he exalted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... example." So it is to history that our last appeal must be made, for, says Bolingbroke, "History is philosophy, teaching by example." Every decree of her stern tribunal is impartial and irrevocable. War the tonic or war the poison? She is the final judge. She will take you back, if you will, to her childhood days and point you out vast empires, owning the known world, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Medes, and Persians, fearful fighters ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... was Dr. Dibble. My Sammie, he a mammy child. He never stop till he send de doctor here to see could he find out de ailment dat seem like was eatin me way. Dr. Dibble come here en set down in dat chair en ax me a heap of questions. Den he test my blood en give me a tonic dat he say would hope me. Yes, mam, dat my Sammie doctor en he goes to see him often, he does have such a misery in his head. Dat de first time Dr. Dibble ever been here, but I likes he manner mighty well. Dr. Zack was a good doctor too. Cose dat what dey tell ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... throughout life, is absent from the Southern system of education, both of the past and as proposed for the future. Education is in a broad sense a remedy for all social ills; but the disease we have to deal with now is not only constitutional but acute. A wise physician does not simply give a tonic for a diseased limb, or a high fever; the patient might be dead before the constitutional remedy could become effective. The evils of slavery, its injury to whites and blacks, and to the body politic, were clearly perceived and acknowledged by the educated leaders of the South ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... every item in readiness for the start at dawn. This done, the British predilection for "letting off steam" resulted in a night of uproarious hilarity, incomprehensible to those ignorant of the conditions which gave it birth, and unable to realise its tonic effect on men who are setting out to face danger, hardship, and possibly a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... spicy fragrance from the sunburnt bayberry flung in thick ruglike masses upon bare gray rock, and azure veinings of the sea, stray among the marshes, made strong-growing water plants give out a tang that was tonic to our nostrils. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... in the way of rain, that year was breaking the records of a century and a half. Thirty yards in front of each boat an unhappy skeleton of a horse floundered its best in the quagmire. The honest endeavour of one of the animals received a frequent tonic from a bare-legged girl of seven who heartily curled a whip about its crooked large-jointed legs. The ragged and filthy child danced in the rich mud round the horse's flanks with the simple joy of one who had been rewarded for good behaviour by the unrestricted use of a ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Professor, his calm, dry voice acting like a tonic in that moment of fear. "If we try to go up, the cable would probably break. If we try to outlast the patience of this thing we might run out of air, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... statement of the manner of practice which he has successfully adopted, illustrating his views with very good wood-cuts derived from the atlases of Wilson, Neligan, and Dendy. In many cases he believes constitutional debility to be the primary difficulty, and recommends a tonic regimen as the best preliminary to a course of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and practical words were perhaps the best possible tonic for Flower at this moment. She had been on the verge of a fit of hysterics, which might have been as terrible in its consequences as either her passion or her despair. Now trembling slightly, she ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... wonder in my eyes was the nature of his courage. There was never a braver man: he went out to welcome danger; an emergency (came it never so sudden) strung him like a tonic. And yet, upon the other hand, I have known none so nervous, so oppressed with possibilities, looking upon the world at large, and the life of a sailor in particular, with so constant and haggard a consideration ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... held in the chapel morning and evening every Sunday, and the business of religious edification is very peacefully conducted. There is a moderate choir in the chapel, and a small harmonium: The singing is conducted on the tonic sol fa principle, and it seems to suit Mr. William Toulmin, brother of the owner of the chapel, preaches every Sunday, and has done so, more or less, from its opening. He gets nothing for the job, contributes ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... remember that the brain craves thought, as the stomach does food; and where it is not properly supplied it will feed on garbage. Where a Latin, geometry, or history lesson would be a healthy tonic, or nourishing food, the trashy, exciting story, the gossiping book of travels, the sentimental poem, or, still worse, the coarse humor or thin-veiled vice of the low romance, fills up the hour—and is at best but tea or slops, if not as dangerous as opium ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Its Influence.—Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound is a great tonic in itself, bracing up the whole nervous system, aiding digestion, and causing all the forces of the body to act more in accord ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... field. Certainly the fellow was provincial, curt, even brutal in his despisal of diplomacy. Certainly he exaggerated the importance of cigarettes in the great secular scheme of evolution. But he was a man; he was a very tonic dose. I thought it would be safer to assume that he knew everything, and that the British Museum knew very little. Yet at the British Museum he had been quite different, quite deferential and rather timid. Still, I liked him. I ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... tear of mind that I fear will be fatal to you. You have brain-tire written large over every feature. I think you ought to see a doctor and get a nerve tonic. This fear of dying a pauper is rapidly killing you, and who then will ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... the matter with your blood," diagnosed Miss Sallie. "What you need is a tonic. I shall prescribe boneset tea ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... that nothing better remained for him to do than to carry the casual thought into action.... Here he passed a fruitless, enervating life, slothful, restless and humiliating; at home there awaited him light, useful work, dreamless sleep, and the tonic sense ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... he had a five-inch expansion and was as tough as a knot. The first rose-tints of the sun were creeping over the mountain-tops; the air was filled with the sweetness of flowers, and dew, and growing things, and his lungs drew in deep breaths of oxygen laden with the tonic ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... meal was finished, I don't know why, but instead of sleeping a decent siesta of two hours, the Spanish tonic to digest a dinner, I never awoke before sunset; and only then, because I began to feel a motion that was far from being pleasant. In fact, the waves were beginning to rise in sharp ridges, covered with foam; ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... held it daintily between him and the sun for a smiling moment, and then said, as if our wine must needs be as ungenuine as our Italian,—was perhaps some expression from the surrounding currant-bushes, harsh as that from the Northern tongues which could never give his language the true life and tonic charm,—"But I suppose this wine is not made of grapes, signor?" Yet he was a very courteous old man, elaborate in greeting and leave-taking, and with a quicker sense than usual. It was accounted delicacy in him, that, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Ernest; "but in my experience that doesn't make it any better. In fact, the most disagreeable sort of depression is that which we know we are responsible for ourselves. When other people annoy us, we have the tonic effect of righteous indignation; but not when we annoy ourselves and know ourselves ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... myself, 'Bill,' I sez, 'put out to sea; you're amongst Kaffirs, Bill.' It occurred to me as old Kwen Lung might wonder 'ow much I knew. So I beat it. But when I got in the open air I felt I'd never make my lodgin's without a tonic. That's 'ow I ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... I said: "What poisoned me is that beer you recommended Bro. —— to take as a tonic." I resorted to this stratagem, to show the effect that beer has upon the system. This Doctor was a kind man and meant well, but it must have been ignorance that made him say beer could ever be ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... reassures depressed hope. It imparts a healthy stimulus to the body, and regulates the system. It in- creases or diminishes the action, as the case may require, 420:21 better than any drug, alterative, or tonic. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... hummed and ha'd a little, prescribed a new tonic; and finding, after a week or two, that this produced no result, and that the pulse was weaker and more fitful, recommended change of air and scene,—a remedy which common-sense might have suggested in the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... as much since the first time I went to the circus, and if there's anything better for the insides than laughing, I've never took it. Seems to me it clears out low-downness and sour spirits better than any tonic you can buy, and for plum wore-outness a good laugh's more resting than sleep. When you're ready to have the hot things brought up, let me know, Miss Dandridge. Martha's down-stairs and everything's ready and just waiting ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... had chafed under the taciturnity surrounding him: had passionately longed to cry out his humiliation, his rebellion, his despair. Then he began to feel the tonic effect of silence; and the next stage was reached when it became clear to him that there was nothing to say. There were thoughts and thoughts: they bubbled up perpetually from the black springs of his ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... returned home to Dunore, having gained nothing by his London trip but a little of that bitter though salutary tonic called experience. His resolve did not waver—nay, it became his day-dream; but manifold obstacles occurred in the attempt to realize it. Family pride was one of the most stubborn; and not until all hope from home resources was at an end, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... all of you," he said. "It will be the best tonic I can offer your mother. Her greatest trial is this very necessity, which she foresaw the instant the plan was formed—so much sacrifice on the part of her children. Yet she agreed with me that the experience might not be wholly bad for you, and she said"—he paused, smiling at his elder ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... garlic with as much relish as we do a sugar-plum. After this none can maintain it to be a poison, though the only medicinal virtue it possesses is to excite the appetite, because it acts like a tonic upon a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Grimbal lifted him slowly but steadily from the ashes of disappointment; even his natural humility helped him, and he told himself he had no more than his desert. Presently, with efforts the very vigour of which served as tonic to character, he began to wrestle at the granite again and resume his archaeologic studies. Speaking in general terms, his mind was notably sweetened and widened by his experience; and, resulting from his own failure to reach happiness, there awoke in him a charity and sympathy for ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... fire had died out completely, there was frost on the stones. To build up another fire and to bathe my face in the ice-water of the brook were my first tasks. The air was sweet; it seemed to freeze as I breathed, and was a bracing tonic. I was tingling all over, and as hungry as a ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... said he, shaking the drops of water from his face. "On a walk, food is a hindrance, a delay. But this tiny taste of bitter gum is a tonic; it spurs the courage and doubles the strength—if you are used to it. Otherwise I should not recommend you to try it. Faugh! ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... to the dark heaven, the deep guttural note of the sea in her ears, chanted low, "Some pain is tonic.... Though to-night we are together, one and undivided—for the last time, the last time," she whispered, "yet ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... consist of troughs in the cement floor, on the edge of which the children sit in a row while they receive a shower bath over their heads and bodies. The feet get well washed in the trough, and the smart douche of water on head and shoulders acts as an admirable tonic. ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... my project, and make my suggestion. From the look of this lightsome feast, I conclude that what you need is a tonic. Send for 'The Master of Palmyra.' You are trying to make yourself believe that life is a comedy, that its sole business is fun, that there is nothing serious in it. You are ignoring the skeleton in your closet. Send for 'The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... want is to administer a tonic to the Conference in Milan," he said airily. "Its deliberations upon international action for the suppression of political crime don't seem to get anywhere. England lags. This country is absurd with its ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... in person to be even more wonderful than her photograph suggested. Obviously she had brains; it was apparent, too that she had breeding. Her cheerful view of the world was like a tonic for tired nerves; and withal, she had a gentle sort of courtesy in her manner that may have been old-fashioned, but it was almost too much for Phil. Before the dinner was over, he would have laid his heart at her feet. It ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... is probably no more graphic and poignant study of the way in which man loses his grip on life, lets his pride, his courage, his self-respect slip from him, and, finally, even ceases to struggle in the mire that has engulfed him. * * * There is more tonic value in Sister Carrie than in a ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... not live two months, and, to be brutally frank, you will have killed her. I understand that the young man is well-born on his father's side, and possessed of great wealth. I see no reason why she should not marry him. I shall leave her a tonic, but you can throw it out of the window unless you send for the young man," and he walked down the stair and ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Cassiopeia seated majestic in her golden chair. Northward, above the walled gardens, the Bear pointing to the diamond flashing of the Pole star. While across all high heaven, dusty with incalculable myriads of worlds, stretched the awful and mysterious highroad of the Milky-Way. The air was keen and tonic though so still. An immense and fearless quiet seemed to hold all things—a quiet not of sleep, but of conscious and perfect equilibrium, a harmony so sustained and complete that to human ears it issued, of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... had acted like a tonic and the boys followed him eagerly. They soon heard voices and in a moment more they saw Mr. Waterman and Bill sitting on a big log by the shore of the lake right near where the stream ran from the lake. Bill kidded Bob and ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... her chair and opened several envelopes. Priscilla ate her chicken and ham, drank her coffee and felt the benefit of the double tonic which had been administered in so timely a fashion. It was one of Miss Oliphant's peculiarities to inspire in those she wanted to fascinate absolute and almost unreasoning faith for the time being. Doubts would and might return in her absence, but in the sunshine of her particularly ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... food for my 2 poetic sole. I went below to breakfast, but vittles had lost their charms. "Take sum of this," said the Capting, shovin a bottle tords my plate. "It's whisky. A few quarts allers sets me right when my stummick gits out of order. It's a excellent tonic!" ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... apple-sauce they serve over there is execrable? I rather like that mulberry-leaf tunic effect, dear; but, of course, the real fig goods are not to be had over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while the gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar-holes have made your dress open a little in ...
— Options • O. Henry
... hours after exposure to them the victim experiences violent pains in the eyes and headache. Sight may be seriously impaired, and it may take years to recover. Often prolonged exposure results in blindness, though a moderate exposure acts like a tonic. The rays may be compared in this double effect to drugs, such as strychnine. Too much of them may be destructive ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... revolutionary naivete, its unscientific innocence, there is in Godwin's democratic anarchism a stimulus peculiarly tonic to the modern mind. No man has developed more firmly the ideal of universal enlightenment, which has escaped feudalism, only to be threatened by the sociological expert. No writer is better fitted to remind us that society and government ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... of full realisation, and that cannot then be averted or lessened by any possible action. It is only when a man has time to understand and appreciate the impending catastrophe, and can do absolutely nothing to avert it, that he fully realises the possibility of death. Action of any kind is tonic, and when a man can fight danger with his muscles or his brain, he is roused and excited by the struggle; but when he can do nothing except wait, watch the suspended sword of Damocles, and wonder how soon the stroke will come, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... comforted her. He tried to do so, I think; but the more he comforted the more Mrs. Bremmil grieved, and, consequently, the more uncomfortable Bremmil grew. The fact was that they both needed a tonic. And they got it. Mrs. Bremmil can afford to laugh now, but it was no laughing matter to her ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... package of sea salt, and a special wash rag are the requisites for a morning eye bath. Sea salt and warm water are recommended by oculists as the best tonic for ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... and the sound of his even, matter-of-fact tone, seemed to act like a tonic upon his late partner. He made no ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stirred the sacred flag which my own heart saluted. Lingering thus until the first rays of the sun came to glorify its waving folds, I drank in deep draughts of patriotism and love for the holy cause, sweet, inspiring, elevating; a tonic powerful and lasting in its effects, bracing mind and soul to persevere in the course I had marked out for myself, to tread unfalteringly a path beset by difficulties then undreamed of. Not long afterward the capitol square became forever sacred to Southern hearts; for here, standing ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... tonic to hear Clark in the House. Like Carlyle he breathed a certain inexorable vitality into public affairs. To meet Clark in the corridors was to get a breeze that swept like a chinook across the frozen waste of old-line politics. In the gloom of the lobby this ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... tones seemed to have a tonic effect on Sarah, for she ate the pudding when it came, without further discussion. But the moment her aunt rose from the table, she made a bee-line for ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... which governs the chromatics of the sunset and thunderstorm, and that which the science of man has established, empirically, for harmonies, is remarkable, and we shall try to make it patent. They are both scales of seven: the tonic, mediant, and dominant, find their types in red, yellow, and blue, while the modifications on which the diatonic scale is constructed, resemble, numerically and esthetically, the well-known ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to have been based chiefly upon their noisiness at night. Charles Reade had a habit of hitting the nail on the head, and never showed it more pithily than when he answered "Ouida's" application for a name for her new pet poodle: "Call it Tonic, for it is sure to be a mixture of bark, steal, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... energies have range Beyond their seeming scope, How tonic were the words, how strange, Cheer up! Use ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... family, Our do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do correspond with the Hindoo sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa, and the intervals are the same—two semi-tones, of which the Malaysian is destitute. The Hindoos have also terms in their language for the tonic, mediant and dominant, so that they know something of harmony, of which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... intimacy with the house. The physician was a thickly-built man with an abrupt manner continually employed in sallies of a vigorous but not unkindly humor. Lee gathered that his practice was large and select; and he quickly saw the reason, the explanation, of this: Dr. Davencott had carried the tonic impatience of earlier years among inconsequential people into a sphere where bullying was a novelty with a direct traceable salutary effect. But whatever harshness was visible in him was tempered by his wife, who was New England, Boston itself, at its best. She had a grave charm, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of which I lingered at leisure, were tonic, bracing, inspiring, and made me ashamed because I was not young. I saw geography being taught with the aid of a stereoscopic magic-lantern. After a view of the high street of a village in North Russia ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... that he would be as out of place as his name itself in such a clime and climate, and was in daily expectation of an order home. Billy Gray, mending only slowly, had been sent to Corregidor, where the bracing breezes of the China Sea drove their tonic forces through his lungs and veins, and the faintly rising hue of coming health back into his hollow cheeks. The boy had been harder hit than seemed the case at first, said the fellows of the —teenth; but the wise young surgeon of the "Second Reserve" and a grave-faced colonel of infantry could ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... some days, copious expectoration. On the 4th of June, Dr. Darwin,[4] was called to her. I have not heard what was then done for her, but, between the 15th of June, and 25th of July, the Doctor, at his different visits, gave her various medicines of the deobstruent, tonic, antispasmodic, diuretic, ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering |
