"Vapour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sea-winds, he walked to the small stone platform on which the Baron had issued his decree. From that point of outlook it was possible to see the towers of Castle Raincy looming over the grey sea of vapour, which filled all the lower ground and now and then flung out an arm that momentarily snatched at and submerged ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... slates of the roofs opposite emerged polished and dripping, and the cloud finally took its leave, some heavy flakes, like cotton wool, hanging on the hill-side, and every rock shining, every leaf glistening. Verdure and rosy cheeks both resulted from a perpetual vapour-bath. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and place the saucepan over the fire or gas, and after a few minutes watch it carefully to see when it begins to boil. This will be notified by the oil becoming quite still, and emitting a thin blue vapour. Directly this is observed, drop the articles to be fried gently into the basket, taking care not to overcrowd them, or their shape will be quite spoiled. When they have become a golden brown, lift out the basket, ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... the ground, or rather the snow—the dirty trodden, eternal snow, down to which no sunbeam reaches, which no summer warmth from above ever melts. A hollow sound was heard from within the dark, yawning cavern, and a thick vapour rolled out into the cold air. The stranger entered the dark halls; there seemed to be a crashing above him: the fire burned; the furnaces roared; the beating of hammers sounded; the watery damps dripped ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... boiler, delivering so and so many pounds of steam to its engines as long as the envelope can contain the pressure; but let a breach in its continuity arise—relieving the boiling water of all restraint—and in a moment the whole mass flashes into vapour, developing a power no work of man ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... a few weeks they will be unceremoniously pushed from their boxes by an inanimate thing of vapour and flywheels—by a meddling fellow in a clean white jacket and a face not ditto to match, who, mounted on the engine platform, has for some weeks been flourishing a red hot poker over their heads, in triumph at their discomfiture and downfall; and the ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... Lessingham's has received its quietus; in the morning I'll send it back to him, with my respectful compliments. He'll miss it if I don't.—Reflect! think of a huge bomb, filled with what we'll call Atherton's Magic Vapour, fired, say, from a hundred and twenty ton gun, bursting at a given elevation over the heads of an opposing force. Properly managed, in less than an instant of time, a hundred thousand men, —quite ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... do not think vapour whirling in a current of air is a conspiracy," answered Eve, laughing, "though it may be ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... need enforc'd to disarray. Tho when as vailed was her lofty crest, Her golden locks that were in trammels gay Upbounden, did themselves adown display, And raught unto her heels like sunny beams That in a cloud their light did long time stay; Their vapour faded, shew their golden gleams, And through the persant air shoot forth their ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the World give answer! They are whimpering to and fro— And what should they know of England who only England know?— The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Brawny youths with furious air Drag the Patriarch by the hair; Lewdness governs every one: Leaves her convent now the nun, And the monk abroad I see Practising iniquity. Now I'll tell how God, intent To avenge, a vapour sent, With full many a dreadful sign - Mighty, mighty fear is mine: As I hear the thunders roll, Seems to die my very soul; As I see the world o'erspread All with darkness thick and dread; I the pen can scarcely ply For the tears which dim my eye, And o'ercome with grievous wo, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... an unacceptable source of historical inquiry; and the writer who disdains to follow these glimmerings of truth will often find himself in the dark, with nothing but his own opinions—the smouldering vapour of his own imagination—to guide ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the sun. A man, therefore, according to this school, is really no more a person, one and indivisible, than is the coral with its million polypes, the tree with its million buds, or even the thunderstorm with its million vesicles of attracting and repelling vapour. ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... we passed the lonely rock of Redonda, toward a mighty mountain which lay under a sheet of clouds of corresponding vastness. That was Guadaloupe. The dark undersides of the rolling clouds mingled with the dark peaks and ridges, till we could not see where earth ended and vapour began; and the clouds from far to the eastward up the wind massed themselves on the island, and then ceased suddenly to leeward, leaving the sky clear ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... hiss very softly, as if he were a steam-engine with the vapour escaping from the safety-valve, as we heard, about fifty yards from us, the rustling of the pear-trees, the heavy shake of a bough, and then through the pitchy darkness whop! whop! whop! whop! as the pears fell on to the ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... of beauty closes, When the weary are at rest, When the shade the sunset throws is But a vapour in the west; When the moonlight tips the billow With a wreath of silver foam, And the whisper of the willow Breaks the slumber of the gnome,— Night may come, but sleep will linger, When the spirit, all forlorn, Shuts its ear against the singer, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... Lakamba, and the deep murmur of the crowd of spectators surging round the stockade. The smoke of the firing rose in white clouds on the green background of the forests, and he could not help comparing his own fleeting hopes to the rapidly disappearing vapour. He was by no means patriotically elated by the event, yet he had to force himself into a gracious behaviour when, the official reception being over, the naval officers of the Commission crossed the river to pay a visit to the solitary white ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... a few minutes on the seashore, on the bay formed between Cape Margelina and Puzzuoli. We stopped at the lake Agnano which is strongly impregnated with sulfur. On the banks of this lake are the Thermae or vapour baths, and here is also the famous Grotto del Cane, the pestilential vapour arising from which rises about three inches from the ground and has the appearance of a spider's web. An unfortunate dog performs the miracle of the resurrection to all those who ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... wonder of the Fountain of Brecelien! If a drop be taken and poured on a certain rock beside the spring, immediately the water changes into vapour, forms itself into great clouds filled with hail; the air becomes thick with shadows, and resonant with the muttering of thunder. Those who have come through curiosity to behold the prodigy wish that they had never done so, so filled are their hearts with ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... since leaving Brumer Islands, has usually been gloomy, with frequent rain, occasionally very heavy, and a close muggy feeling in the atmosphere as if one were living in a vapour bath; the temperature on board ship ranged between 72 and 83 degrees. During our five days' stay off Dufaure Island we were daily employed in catching rainwater for ship's use, being on reduced allowance of that necessary ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... the terms acid and alkaline vapour more proper than acid and alkaline air. But the term vapour having always been applied to elastic matters capable of being condensed in the temperature of the atmosphere, especially the vapour of water, it seems harsh to apply it to any elastic substance, which at the same time that it is as transparent as the air we breathe, is no more affected by ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... boat, the cloud of despair had floated away, and the long reach of glistening water looked like the way back to the bright world of hope and love—the way to home; while the thought of lying down there to die was but the filmy vapour ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... fertile country the beautiful blue sky, which no vapour dims! Ah, Niklausse, one might become a poet here! I do not understand why Saint Simeon Stylites was not one of the greatest poets of ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... most singular cloud, which extended itself over the east of the range called the Ox Mountains, in the County Sligo, accurately imitating, in shape, a higher range of mountains somewhat more distant; afterwards an extremely white vapour, resembling a snow-storm, appeared along the southern declivity of the range. Mr. Cooper remarked to a friend at the time, that he thought this vapour might be charged with the fluid causing the disease in the potato. The friend to whom this observation was made, being a resident near ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... made no demur. But he forgot that there are drinkers and drinkers, he forgot that the cool-headed men were not tainted by heredity, nor were their brains so delicately poised that the least grain of foreign matter introduced in the form of vapour could cause semi-insanity. And thus the sacrifice of Society—and the Exchequer—goes to the tomb amid contempt, and hissing, and scorn; while the saddest thing of all is that those who loved him most passionately are most glad to hear ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... were placed, and taking the tube of the pipe from the solemn Mussulman whose duty it was to prepare it, I stretched myself out in that indolent lazy peace which is only to be enjoyed in tropical countries. Silent and for the nonce perfectly happy, I slowly inhaled the fragrant vapour of tobacco and aromatic herbs and honey with which the hookah is filled. No sound save the monotonous bubbling and chuckling of the smoke through the water, or the gentle rustle of the leaves on the huge rhododendron-tree ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... wind freshened, and they could plainly see a long line of wicked, bright flames, in advance of the dense mass of vapour which hung in its rear. On it came, that rolling sea of flame, with inconceivable rapidity, gathering strength as it advanced. The demon of destruction spread its red wings to the blast, rushing on ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart. They were bent especially on opposing the transcendent idealism of Berkeley and the scepticism of David Hume, also in some measure Locke's doctrine of the blank sheet. They reconstituted the human mind and even the world (which had been so to speak driven off in vapour by their predecessors), much as they were in the time of Descartes. Let us believe, they said, in the reality of the external world; let us believe that there are causes and effects; let us believe there is an ego, a human person whom we directly apprehend, and who is a cause; ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... Brooke, because Mr. Brooke has thought much of his subject, nothing of himself, and hence the figure which he wished to present comes out quite clear and keen, without any interposing haze of literary vapour." ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... clammy air, rendered still more intense by the height of the window from the floor, reduced all the pictures that were standing around to the wizened feebleness of corpses on end. The shadowy parts of the room behind the different easels were veiled in a brown vapour, precluding all estimate of the extent of the studio, and only subdued in the foreground by the ruddy glare from an open stove of Dutch tiles. Somerset's footsteps had been so noiseless over the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... thick blur, men groped in and out; women, very few, grasped their reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to their mouths; crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver, haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light that seemed to drown in vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs loomed dim-shaped ever and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like rabbits to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... electricity in the material world; and, like that element, infinite in its affinities, infinite in its mode of action, combining the most discordant natures, fixing the most volatile, and arming the sluggish vapour of the marsh with arrows of fire; working alike in silence and in tempest, in growth and in destruction; now contracted to an individual soul, and now, as in a moment, dilating itself over a whole nation! Am I asked what this mighty power may be, and wherein it exists? If we are ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... manner of eyes have you frequently journeyed through Ching-fow of late, if the signs and omens there have not already warned you to prepare a coffin adequately designed to receive your well-proportioned body? Has not the pungent vapour of burning houses assailed your senses at every turn, or the salt tears from the eyes of forlorn ones dashed your peach-tea and spiced foods ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... star, That you should gloom within stone walls all day. At dawn to-morrow, take your staff, and come: We will salute the breezes, as they rise And leave their lofty beds, laden with odours Of melting snow, and fresh damp earth, and moss— Imprisoned spirits, which life-waking Spring Lets forth in vapour through the genial air. Come, we will see the sunrise; watch the light Leap from his chariot on the loftiest peak, And thence descend triumphant, step by step, The stairway of the hills. Free air and action Will soon dispel these ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Theoretically, he may be produced to infinity in any direction; he is all in every part. But, as a matter of fact, through the mere necessity of filling so much space his control becomes rarefied to an invisible vapour; he ends by becoming nothing in any part. With its ultimate principle reduced to the status of a Dieu faineant political Pantheism is transformed into political Atheism. Responsible government is perceived ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... lightning. Sometimes long streams of light were spread out with inconceivable swiftness. No rule could be traced in the movement of the light parcels which are called the "merry dancers." The sun and moon were often surrounded with haloes and concentric circles of vapour, tinted with the brightest hues of the rainbow. Parhelia, or mock suns, frequently shone in different quarters of the firmament. Still the life the explorers were compelled to lead was becoming very monotonous, when, on the morning of the ist of February, a number of figures were ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... though the groom did. I alighted immediately, and went up to it. As I approached it turned its head and looked full towards me with its soft mild eyes, and a friendly expression, like that of a loving dog; and then, without moving from the post, it began to fade gradually away, as if it were a vapour, till it had quite disappeared. All this the groom saw as well as myself; and now there could be no mistake as to what it was. A third time I saw it in broad daylight, and my curiosity greatly awakened, I resolved ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower. Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapour, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath, they touch us with soft responsive hands, they look at us with sad sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... more strange Than all his books can vapour;" "To what" (quoth squire) "shall Ovid change?" Quoth ...
— English Satires • Various
... only the murkiness in the far sky told that a yet larger centre of industry lurked beyond the horizon. Dunfield offered no prominent features save the chimneys of its factories and its fine church, the spire of which rose high above surrounding buildings; over all hung a canopy of foul vapour, heavy, pestiferous. Take in your fingers a spray from one of the trees even here on the Heath, and its ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... the exterior walls is a fine kitchen garden. From the top of what might have been the donjon, we surveyed the surrounding country—at that moment rendered hazy by an atmosphere of dense, heated, vapour. Indeed it was uncommonly hot. Upon the whole, both the village and Castle of Blamont merit at least the leisurely survey of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... early stages soothing antiseptic gargles are indicated. Later, when the patient is unable to gargle, the inhalation of steam impregnated with the vapour of carbolic acid or friar's balsam, and the application of hot fomentations or a large linseed poultice to the neck may afford relief. When an abscess is formed, it should be opened by means of a fine-pointed pair ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... two spring from the infernal regions—i.e. from the home of the frost-giants, and from Niffl-heim, "vapour-home, or hell"—one from the heavenly abode of the Asas. Its branches, says the Prose Edda, extend over the whole universe, and its stem bears up the earth. Beneath the root, which stretches through Niffl-heim, and which the snake-king continually gnaws, is the fount whence flow ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dazzling light he saw, and bewildered by the sulphurous vapour he noticed, Heinz nevertheless retained his presence of mind, and had sprung from the saddle ere the quivering steed fell on its side. Several of the guard at the gate quickly hastened to his assistance, examined the horse with him, and found the noble animal ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... one of those heavy days which sometimes occur in the summer months, when the whole atmosphere appears to be one low-hanging cloud, enveloping everything in a kind of dark-gray mist, that is only now and then pierced with red rays, and droops upon the distant fields in a straw-coloured vapour—the effect of the sunlight behind the atmosphere ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... will give you a little course of science. Everything, Bertrand (much as it may surprise you), has three states: a vapour, a liquid, a solid. These are fortune in the vapour: these are ideas. What are ideas? the protoplasm of wealth. To your head - which, by the way, is a solid, Bertrand - what are they but foul air? To mine, to my prehensile and constructive intellects, see, as I grasp and work ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... march of two days the Spaniards began the descent of the eastern side of the Cordillera, meeting by the way another and more important envoy, and seven days later the valley of Caxamalca lay before them, the vapour of its hot springs rising in the still air, and the slope of the further hillside white with the tents of the Inca's encampment for a space of several miles—a sight which filled the Spaniards with a dismay they could hardly ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... short turf of a clearing where the faint sweet scent of wild roses came to me on the wind and mixed with the heavy perfume of the elder, whose mingled odour is like the odour of the room of the dead, a vapour of incense and corruption. I stood at the edges of the wood, gazing at all the pomp and procession of the foxgloves towering amidst the bracken and shining red in the broad sunshine, and beyond them into deep thickets ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... slowly creep, And sobbing winds forget to grieve, And quiet waters gently heave, As if they rocked the ship to sleep? Ah no! that southern vapour white Will bring a tempest ere the night, And thunder through the quiet Heaven, Lashing the sea ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... Hurrying on, they emerged from the passage into a vast chamber, across which, though there was light enough to distinguish each other, they could not see. Mr. Hume took a step forward, with his face turned up, in an effort to see the roof through the films of vapour that floated overhead. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Yet so much is my poverty of spirit, So mighty and so many my defects, That I would rather hide me from my greatness,— Being a bark to brook no mighty sea,— Than in my greatness covet to be hid, And in the vapour of my glory smother'd. But, God be thank'd, there is no need of me,— And much I need to help you, were there need;— The royal tree hath left us royal fruit, Which, mellow'd by the stealing hours of time, Will well become the seat of majesty, And make, no ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... instruments. Lister himself suffered less in this way than most other surgeons; with some men it was a grave handicap. The spectators at a demonstration found it inconvenient, and in one instance at least we know that the patient was upset by the carbolic vapour reaching her eyes. This was no less a person than Queen Victoria, upon whom Lister was called to operate at Balmoral in 1870. About the use of this apparatus, which was an easy mark for ridicule, Lister had doubts for some time; but it was not the ridicule ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... necessitated to make a journey to a distant part of the country, after which he resolved to see Melissa. He performed his business, and was returning. It was toward evening, and the day had been uncommonly sultry for the autumnal season. A rising shower blackened the western hemisphere; the dark vapour ascended in folding ridges, and the thunder rolled at a distance. Alonzo saw he should be overtaken. He discovered an elegant seat about one hundred yards distant from the road; thither he hastened ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... the fall. A purple bank of vapour blocked the end of it. But the rolling outline was edged already with gold, and already ray upon ray of gold shivered across the upper sky and touched the pinewoods at the head of ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... rather be a toad, And live upon the vapour of a dungeon, Than keep a corner in the thing ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... answered. I do not think that my vision was a dream; leastways, I do not think that I was asleep when it visited me. I was on my knees at the time, beside my bed of wattles, and it was very late at night. Suddenly the far end of my hut grew palely lucent, as if a phosphorescent vapour were rising from the ground; it waved and rolled as it ascended in billows of incandescence, and then out of the heart of it there gradually grew a figure all in white over which there was a cloak of deepest blue all flecked with golden stars, and in the ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... this strange Phoenomenon, and standing round the Heart in a Circle, it gave a most prodigious Sigh or rather Crack, and dispersed all at once in Smoke and Vapour. This imaginary Noise, which methought was louder than the burst of a Cannon, produced such a violent Shake in my Brain, that it dissipated the Fumes of Sleep, and left me in an ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... also do I, the seeress, tell thee. He who was mummified shall be found in the dark country, where there is no sun, and men breathe the vapour of smoke, and light lamps at noonday, and wire themselves even with wires when the wind bloweth. And the place where the mummy dwelleth is beneath the Three Balls of Gold. And one will lead thee thither who abides hard by the great tree carven like the ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... drooping attitude of dejection or stupor. Her head was bent over her crossed hands, which rested on the table, and her grey hair, escaping from the back comb which fastened it, fell on both sides of her face. An oil lamp smoked on the table beside her, sending forth a cloud of black vapour like an unbottled genie, but she did not heed it. There was something uncanny in her complete detachment from the restless activity of life. The dead man lying upstairs was ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... grey daybreak the sun had risen in a warm and glorious splendour above the smooth immense gleam of the enlarged estuary. Wisps of mist floated like trails of luminous dust, and in the dazzling reflections of water and vapour, the shores had the murky semi- transparent darkness of shadows cast mysteriously from below. Powell, who had sailed out of London all his young seaman's life, told me that it was then, in a moment of entranced vision an hour or so after ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... appearance. He looked harassed and fatigued, and gladly took the seat Count Guy pointed to, close by his own, and having stirred the logs which burned lazily in the huge hearth, he observed, "Methinks the wood emits this sulphureous vapour more strongly than ever. I marvel, Guy, that you have not repaid the compliment of the English king's invitation to your weavers, by bringing over workmen to build you some of those long narrow passages which, beginning just over the fire, project from the top of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... greeted Odin's son, and Rota, She who invites the hero-kings to Valhall, Is here, where never din of arms resounded. With terror view'd I battle's haughty daughter: Dark stood she on a rock, enveiled in vapour; And on her shoulder, on her steel-cas'd shoulder, The bird of death, the mournful owl, sat croaking. Whom seeks she, far from every bloody Champain? And Surtur's branch, how soon is that discover'd, If fate but wish! ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... by night as by day; they that cut gravings of signets, and his diligence is to make great variety; he will set his heart to preserve likeness in his portraiture, and will be wakeful to finish his work. So is the smith sitting by the anvil, and considering the unwrought iron; the vapour of the fire will waste his flesh, and in the heat of the furnace will he wrestle with his work; the noise of the hammer will be ever in his ear, and his eyes are upon the pattern of the vessel; he will set his heart upon ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... "God save the King," And still believes his Tory paper,— You hate the anaemic fool? I thought You loved the weak! Was that all vapour? ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... impression which Halley and other early discoverers of nebulous objects received from their peculiar aspect was that of a phosphorescent vapour (like the matter of a comet's tail), or a gaseous and, so to speak, elementary form of luminous sidereal matter. Admitting the existence of such a medium, Sir W. Herschel was led to speculate on its gradual subsidence ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... rhythmic change like painted music in the heaven, radiant with ineffable glories or monstrous with inconceivable doom. This sea of silver, "hushed and halcyon," or this sea of wrath and ravin, wild as Judgment Day. So much vapour and sunshine and wind and ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... put in the charcoal, there will be no danger of its not burning.' And Tina suggested that that should not be done till just before Adelaide went to bed, lest she should perceive the effects of the vapour ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... which issues from the mouth of the vessel; he knows that the steam is formed by the heat from the fire, which joining with the water drives its parts further asunder, and makes it take another form, that of vapour or steam. He may apply this knowledge to the separation of the sugar and water; he may turn the water into steam, and the sugar will be left in the vessel in a solid form. If, instead of evaporating the water, the boy had added a greater quantity of sugar to the mixture, he would have seen, that ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... whole day, while they were making preparations for their night expedition, the sky remained shadowed with sombre clouds; and, as evening arrived, the sun went down in the midst of a thick cumulus of vapour. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... poignant regret, because a certain vague regret is indubitably caused by realizing that one is handicapped by a mental inefficiency which might, without too much difficulty, be cured. That vague regret exudes like a vapour from the more cultivated section of the public. It is to be detected everywhere, and especially among people who are near the half-way house of life. They perceive the existence of immense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest particle of which will they ever ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division;"—so it was when the Apostles were sent forth into the world: Peter applieth to that time the words of Joel, "And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood," Acts ii. 19, 20. The meaning is, such tribulation shall follow the gospel, which shall be like the darkening of the great lights of the world, and, as it were, a putting ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... matter of the open caldron the action of the water has no resistance but that of the atmosphere, whereas in the steam boiler the movement of the water is resisted from the moment it is heated, for then a vapour rises above it, and, as the heat increases, the resistance to the movement of the water is proportionally increased, and as the heat of the steam increases the pressure on the water increases proportionally all through, the steam being above the water. Any old ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... was a small house, backed up against the cemetery wall, which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring district. There was not much to betray it from without; only a stream of warm vapour from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted on the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. But within, behind the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon the poet, and some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cold water during nine months of the year. And there they shall wash their clothes, and dry them by steam; instead of washing them as now, at home, either under back sheds, where they catch cold and rheumatism, or too often, alas! in their own living rooms, in an atmosphere of foul vapour, which drives the father to the public-house and the children into the streets; and which not only prevents the clothes from being thoroughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you will know when you are older, a very hot-bed of disease. And they shall have other comforts, and even luxuries, these ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... thousand-foot level, looking like little black swallows against the green background. I dare say they were wondering what I was doing up in cloud-land. Suddenly a grey curtain drew across beneath me and the wet folds of vapour were swirling round my face. It was clammily cold and miserable. But I was above the hail-storm, and that was something gained. The cloud was as dark and thick as a London fog. In my anxiety to get clear, I cocked her nose up until the automatic alarm-bell rang, and ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... by the Lotharingians and Savoyans [says Bellonius] for meat allowed to be eaten on fish-dayes, although the body that beareth them be flesh and unclean for food. The manner of their dressing is, first roasting, and afterward seething in an open pot, that so the evill vapour may go away, and some in pottage made with Saffron; other with Ginger, and many with Brine; it is certain that the tail and forefeet taste very sweet, from whence came the Proverbe, That sweet is that fish, which ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... gesture from some sea-thing. And as the yellow deepened to gold, the Skipper set the church bells ringing. Sir Graham opened the parlour window wide and listened, leaning out towards the graves. Uniacke was behind him in the room. Vapour streamed up from the buffeted earth, which seemed panting for a repose it had no strength to gain. Ding dong! Ding dong! The wild and far-away light grew to flame and faded to darkness. In the darkness the bells seemed clearer, for light deafens the imagination. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... old-fashioned 'spy-glass.' After a long steady search—'Why,' said he to the men round him, 'there's a new wreck on the sands since yesterday!' The gale of the morning part of the day had been accompanied by low sweeping clouds of mist and driving fog, and as soon as the curtain of thick vapour lifted, Roberts noticed the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... look on me as worth much," said Jarrow, as he gazed at the column of smoke which rose straight in the air and hung over the island like a volcanic vapour, spreading out into ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... the battlements of the castle; "in that war-cry is the downfall of thy house. And know, too, even now, the doom which all thy power and strength is unable to avoid, though it is prepared for thee by this feeble hand. Markest thou the smouldering and suffocating vapour which already eddies in sable folds through the chamber? Rememberest thou the magazine of fuel that ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... from the top of the crags, above the rock glowing with fire, and the air was misty with smoke, nor could you have seen the sun's light. Then, though Hephaestus had ceased from his toils, the sea was still sending up a warm vapour. Hereupon on this side and on that the daughters of Nereus met them; and behind, lady Thetis set her hand to the rudder-blade, to guide them amid the Wandering rocks. And as when in fair weather herds of dolphins come up from the depths and sport ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... sinister, dark, slow-moving beast whose savage and crafty eyes took on a sudden flame when they detected the white mound which hid the shore beaver-house. The wolverene did not need that faint, almost invisible wisp of vapour from the air-holes to tell him there were beavers below. He knew something about beavers. His powerful forearms and mighty claws got him to the bottom of the snow in a few seconds. Other hungry marauders had done the same thing before, to find themselves ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Emblazoned Vapour! Half-eternal Shade! That gathers strength from ruin and decay;— Emperor of empires! (for the world hath made No substance that dare take thy shade away;) Thy banners nought but victories display: In ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... had made. Not a sound came out of the shadowy avenues between the tremendous colonnades of towering trunks, and the topmost sprays of the cedars and Douglas firs cut motionless against the blue high above. There was no wind, and the men's breath went straight up, a thin white vapour, into the biting air. Still, they were warm and comparatively well fed, which was a good deal to be thankful for, and three of them toiled contentedly, with now and then a glance at their companion, ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... piteous thing Not to be sure of my love's welfare—not To see her happy and good in that new home. Most piteous. I could all forego but this. O let me see her, Lord. What, also I! White ashes and a waft of vapour—I To flutter on before the winds. No, no. And yet for ever ay—my flesh shall hiss And I shall hear 't. Dreadful, unbearable! Is it to-morrow? Ay, indeed, indeed, To-morrow. But my moods are as great waves That rise ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... is torn by hungry tigers; he may discover and resist his enemies. He that perishes in the ambushes of envy, is destroyed by unknown and invisible assailants, and dies like a man suffocated by a poisonous vapour, without knowledge of his danger, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... he took a tiny leather case from his pocket and a small bottle out of that again. From this bottle he poured a few drops of some highly pungent liquid on to the paper, with the result that it grew black as ink and threw off a tiny vapour, which licked the edges of the bowl and curled upwards in a ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... living creatures who can accomplish what Karna accomplished in that frightful battle. Struck by Karna with shafts like a mountain with torrents of rain, Ghatotkacha once more disappeared from the field of battle like the melting forms of vapour in the sky. Contending in this way, the gigantic Rakshasa, that slayer of foes, destroyed the celestial weapons of Karna by means of his activity as also his power of illusion. Seeing his weapons destroyed by the Rakshasa, aided by his powers ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... none must be compared to her note; Ne'er breathed such glee from Philomela's bill, Nor from the morning-singer's swelling throat. Ah! when she riseth from her blissful bed She comforts all the world as doth the sun, And at her sight the night's foul vapour 's fled; When she is set the gladsome day is done. O glorious sun, imagine me the west, Shine in my arms, and ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... by our professors upon the subject of the position of the plates while exposed to the mercurial vapour. Mr. Hunt, in referring to this subject, says: "Daguerre himself laid much stress upon the necessity of exposing the plate to the mercury at an angle of about 45 deg.. This, perhaps, is the most convenient position as it enables the operator to view the plate distinctly, and watch the ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... "we will risk a bit of fire again, for the cold pierces to the bone; only be sure that you use perfectly dry wood. Examine each piece to see that no drip from the roof has penetrated it. If it is dry it will give but little smoke, and a slight vapour is not likely to be observed rising from the top ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... lift the weakened Judas from the dark pit; then they led him, half dead with hunger, out of the city to the hill of Calvary. There Judas prayed to the God whom he now feared and worshipped for a sign, some token to guide them in their search for the Holy Cross. As he prayed a sweet-smelling vapour, curling upwards like the incense-wreaths around the altar, rose to the skies from the summit of the hill. The sign was manifest to all, and Judas gave thanks to God for His great mercy; then, bidding the wondering soldiers help him, he began to dig. By this ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... of civilizations and empires, of gains made only to be lost and lost only to be fought for once again. Even when advance has come, it has come by mingled progress and cataclysm as water passes, through gradual increase of warmth, from ice suddenly to liquid and from liquid suddenly to vapour. Our nineteenth century ideas of evolution tended to create in us the impression that humanity had made a smooth and even ascent. We artificially graded the ascending track of human history, leveled and macadamized it, ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the universal spread of snow gave the eye a fair range yet, white, white, as far as the view could reach, with that light misty drapery round everything in the distance, and merging into the soft grey sky; and every now and then, as the wind served, a thick wreath of white vapour came by from the engine and hid all, eddying past the windows, and then skimming off away over the snowy ground from which it would not lift; a more palpable veil for a moment of the distant things and then broken, scattered, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... black and grey, rolling and gathering and spreading at a magnificent rate. The sun was presently hid behind the fringe of this curtain of blackness; by and by the mountains were hid beneath a further fringe of rain; a very thick fringe. Between, the masses of vapour in the sky seemed charging for a tremendous outburst. It had not come yet when the slow-going little wagon passed through Crum Elbow; but by this time the Captain had seen distant darts of lightning, and even heard the far-off warning growl of the thunder. A new idea started up in the Captain's ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... explores; and listen how, at every rush of the long ground-swell, mysterious mutterings, solemn sighs, sudden thunders, as of a pent-up earthquake, boom out of them across the glassy swell. Look at those blasts of delicate vapour that shoot up from hidden rifts, and hang a moment, and vanish; and those green columns of wave which rush mast-high up the perpendicular walls, and then fall back and outward in a waterfall of foam, lacing the ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... the primeval forest, by clumps of jungle, across streams, up steep ridges, and down into deep valleys. A thick haze covered the forests; rain often pelted us; the firmament was an unfathomable depth of grey vapour. The Doctor had perfect confidence in me, and I held ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... thatch; there was a huge fireplace at either end of the hall, but as the chimneys were constructed in a very clumsy manner, at least as much of the smoke found its way into the apartment as escaped by the proper vent. The constant vapour which this occasioned, had polished the rafters and beams of the low-browed hall, by encrusting them with a black varnish of soot. On the sides of the apartment hung implements of war and of the chase, and there were at each corner folding doors, which gave access to other ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... gasping while the water beat him in a vertical downpour, drove on him slanting in squalls, and he felt the drops striking him from above, from everywhere; drops thick, pressed and dashing at him as if flung from all sides by a mob of infuriated hands. From under his feet a great vapour of broken water floated up, he felt the ground become soft—melt under him—and saw the water spring out from the dry earth to meet the water that fell from the sombre heaven. An insane dread took possession of him, the dread of all that water around him, of the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... drifting clouds. The sombre waste about us; the deep violet vault overhead; those far summits, glowing with reflected rose; the deep impenetrable gloom which filled the gorge, and slowly and with vapour-like stealth climbed the mountain wall, extinguishing the red light, combined to produce an effect which may not be described; nor can I more than hint at the contrast between the brilliancy of the scene under full light, and the cold, death-like repose which followed when the wan ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... the Americans with intemperate vehemence of abuse. I said something in their favour; and added, that I was always sorry when he talked on that subject. This, it seems, exasperated him; though he said nothing at the time. The cloud was charged with sulphureous vapour, which was afterwards to burst in thunder.—We talked of a gentleman[933] who was running out his fortune in London; and I said, 'We must get him out of it. All his friends must quarrel with him, and that will soon drive him away.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir; we'll send ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell |
