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Workings   /wˈərkɪŋz/   Listen
Workings

noun
1.
The internal mechanism of a device.  Synonym: works.
2.
A mine or quarry that is being or has been worked.  Synonym: working.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Workings" Quotes from Famous Books



... McNerney listened, in astonishment, as Emil Einstein unveiled the double life of his former patron. The inner workings of Magdal's Pharmacy, the dual trades on different banks of the East River, the duplex Braun and Meyer, and the whole scenario of the Cafe Bavaria and the Newport Art Gallery—all these were ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... even suspect the existence of one another, may be regarded by the learned philologists and ethonologists[TN-6] of two or three thousand years hence. These will, perhaps, also pretend that these coincidences are simply the curious workings of the human mind—the efforts of men endeavoring to express their thoughts in language, that being reduced to a certain number of sounds, must, of necessity produce, if not the same, at least very similar words to express the same idea—and that ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... sound abate? Lo, the next Hour of Fate Whetting her vengeance due On new whet-stones, for new Workings of hate. ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus

... supposed life-creating laws may not have existed within record to any great extent. On the other hand, as we see the physical laws of early times still acting with more or less force, it might not be unreasonable to expect that we should still see some remnants, or partial and occasional workings of the life-creating energy amidst a system of things generally stable and at rest. Are there, then, any such remnants to be traced in our own day, or during man's existence upon earth? If there be, it clearly would form a strong evidence in favour of the doctrine, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... The workings of this law can be traced even in the case of the savage tribes of our own day. Of the African negroes, P. Bandin says that "their traditions and religious doctrines ... show clearly that they are a people in decadence.... They have an obscure and confused ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... he said. "Only a man with a light conscience can skate on thin ice. To return to our original subject, what about the inner workings of this odd game? It is so curious to have lived for years on theory, and suddenly to come face to face with practice. I tell you I'm starving for facts." He stepped forward quickly and dropped into a chair that faced ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... did not stick his head into the sand as some of his colleagues did when political activities hampered their operations. In Johannesburg he had kept aloof from the struggle with Oom Paul, not from lack of will, but because he had no stomach for daily intrigue and guerrilla warfare and subterranean workings; and he was convinced that only a great and bloody struggle would end the contest for progress and equal rights for all white men on the Rand. His inquiries had been bent towards so disposing the financial operations, so bulwarking the mining ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... write something about myself. My life has been rather a strange one. It may not seem particularly useful or respectable; but it has been, in some respects, adventurous; and that may give it claims to be read, even in the most prejudiced circles. I am an example of some of the workings of the social system of this illustrious country on the individual native, during the early part of the present century; and, if I may say so without unbecoming vanity, I should like to quote myself for the ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins

... hot springs, wherever they have been found, have excited the greatest attention and interest, in travellers and scientific men, and their workings have been explained ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... Europe in July, 1870. Later, it became one of the chief interests of Sir Charles's mind to track out the workings of those few men who prepared what seemed a sudden outburst; here it is important only to outline his attitude towards the combatants. In that period of European history every politician was of necessity attracted or repelled by the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... workings of the Comstock vein is now over 150 deg.F., and an enormous quantity of hot water is discharged through the Sutro Tunnel. This water has been heated by coming in contact with hot rocks at a lower level than the present workings of the Comstock lode, and has been ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... was incalculable because he persisted in teaching the millions who read his paper that peace was at any time possible if Abraham Lincoln would only agree to accept it. As a Southern-born man, the President knew the workings of the mind of Jefferson Davis as clearly as he understood his own. Both these men were born in Kentucky within a few miles of each other on almost the same day. The President knew that Jefferson Davis would ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... was doing something, and here she was doing nothing. What was there she could do? This became the great question of her life. If I were about to write out this story I would say something here about the workings of her mind; but that is not necessary now. But her mind worked a great deal, and the end of it was that she determined to be a nurse. Nursing, indeed, is the only thing a young woman can do in ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... whom I loved far more dearly than Randall Holmes, I went to bed and slept peacefully. A gallant lad died in battle; there is nothing more to be said, nothing more to be thought. The finality, heroically sublime, overwhelms the poor workings of the brain. But in the case of a fellow like Randall Holmes—well, as I have said, I did not get a wink of ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... the Jesuits, and all of them, even although elected, owed their election entirely to their priests. This sort of thought-suggested representation was the most fitting for the Indians at the time,*2* and those who look into the workings of a County Council of to-day cannot but think at times that the majority of the councillors would have been better chosen had the electorate had the benefit of some controlling hand, though from what quarter it is difficult to see. The problem ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... lodged where it irritates a nerve or a muscle or disturbs the workings of some organ of the body, the surgeon is apt to let it stay, until Nature has tried to throw a wall about it and enclose ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... analyze the workings of the human mind as they would the entrails of an eight-day clock, explain the phenomenon I am about to relate, or decline to believe it, as they choose—she became suddenly aware that she was getting perilously near the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... disgraceful. Everything connected with awa had for them a cherished value. In the mele given on p. 130 the cry was, "Kane is drunken with awa!" The two gods Kane and Ku were companions in their revels as well as in nobler adventures. Such a poem as this flashes a strong light into the workings of the Hawaiian mind on the creations of their own imagination, the beings who stood to them as gods; not robbing them of their power, not deposing them from the throne of the universe, perhaps not even penetrating the veil of enchantment and mystery with which ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... plan was submitted to quite a number of librarians for criticism. Among the hundreds of points raised as to its practical workings and usefulness there was only one in which it was not shown to be equal or superior to any other system known. This objection applied only to the arrangement on the shelves; not at all to the catalogues or indexes. It was, that in this relative ...
— A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library [Dewey Decimal Classification] • Melvil Dewey

... the Regent evinced such an amount of energy; never before had she so laid bare the secret workings of her soul. The adherents of the Princes trembled as they discovered with how formidable an enemy they should be called thenceforward to contend; while the majority of the nobles who were faithful to the royal cause, and above all those whose names she had so ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... the first seen that much stuff of no common quality and texture was to be found in the disposition and mind of the English village boy. On further acquaintance, he perceived that, under a child's innocent simplicity, there were the workings of an acuteness that required but development and direction. He ascertained that the pattern-boy's progress at the village school proceeded from something more than mechanical docility and readiness ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... more skilled to portray the workings of the human heart, than mine, to sketch his real feelings, when he received his last month's wages; the last that he felt he would ever earn for his family, and turned his steps homeward. He loved the wife who had forsaken the wealth and comfort of a father's house, and had been all in all to ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... but Eileen's impositions were so skillfully maneuvered, her selfishness was so adorably taken for granted that Marian in retrospection felt that perhaps she was responsible for at least a small part of it. She never had been able to see the inner workings of Eileen's heart. She was not capable of understanding that when John Gilman was poor and struggling Eileen had ignored him. It had not occurred to Marian that when the success for which he struggled began to come generously, Eileen would begin to covet the man she ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... non-aesthetic functions of conveying signals or acting on the nerves. Whatever is unnecessary for either of these motives (or any others) for making a noise, can be put to the account of the desire to avoid ugliness and enjoy beauty. But the workings of the aesthetic imperative can best be studied in the Art of the visual-representative group, and especially in painting, which allows us to follow the interplay of the desire to be told (or tell) facts about things with the desire to contemplate shapes, and to contemplate them ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee

... spongy forms closed in upon the sky. It was a sudden overgrowth of atmospheric fungi which had their roots in the neighbouring sea, and by the time that horse, man, and corpse entered Yalbury Great Wood, these silent workings of an invisible hand had reached them, and they were completely enveloped, this being the first arrival of the autumn fogs, and the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... require to be nothing more than men of fair abilities to discharge it to the entire satisfaction of the nation. The machine which they direct is indeed a vast one, but so logical in its principles and direct and simple in its workings, that it all but runs itself; and nobody but a fool could derange it, as I think you will agree after a few words of explanation. Since you already have a pretty good idea of the working of the distributive ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... properly worked, in a country ripe for it; but here in Australia, my dear sir, we do not know what federal government means. I have travelled round and round the world—ha! ha! not in a hurry, my dear sir, but with the object of seeing and learning all about the political workings of countries as well as other subjects. I travel so much sometimes that on waking in the morning I have to rub my eyes to think for a moment whether I am in St. Petersburg or Ottawa, San Francisco or London. I travel so much, one country and another ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... they gathered from him, and, alas! from my sweet but frail little friend Nita, that the chances were against my signing a certain covenant, they came to what, even now, seems to me a strange decision. They decided that I must die. There I fail wholly to follow the workings of your mind, Immelan. How was my death likely ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... living and of the dead assuredly illustrate in a striking manner the mysterious workings of the human mind, and the unsuspected influence ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... century. There are passages in it which leave me marvelling afresh each time I read them, that any writer, however gifted, could make quite so intimate a revelation, without personal knowledge of the inside workings of the movement he describes so perfectly. But it is a fact that Corbett never spoke with Stairs or Reynolds, or Crondall; neither, I think, was he personally known to any member of the executive of The Citizens. Yet I know from my own working experience of the Revival, both in ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... wild and tame, with their structure, habits, and uses; the rocks, woods, hills, streams, seasons, clouds, heat, and cold. There is also the observation of devices and inventions; tools, machinery and their workings, the different raw and manufactured products, with their ways of growth and transformation. Besides these are the various kinds and dispositions of men, different classes and races of people, with great variety of character, occupation, and ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... agricultural produce. A great market, chiefly for the sale of cattle, is held annually in September, and extends over several days. The manufacture of matches is aided by the existence of sulphur workings in the vicinity; and Albacete formerly had an extensive trade in cutlery, from which it was named the Sheffield of Spain. Despite the importation of cutlery from England and Germany, Albacete is still famous for its daggers, which arc held in high repute by Spaniards. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... ancestors may make itself felt upon the offspring through the operation of the law of atavism, before alluded to, and thus prevent the children from equaling their parents in their natural endowments. Notwithstanding the workings of these opposing forces, and others which might be mentioned, we find abundant illustration of the hereditary nature of talent ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... return to their quiet and much-loved retreat at Arenemberg. The prince, however, who never allowed himself to waste a moment of time, devoted himself, during this short visit to England, assiduously to the study of the workings of British institutions, and to the progress which the nation had attained in the sciences and the arts. It was not easy for Hortense and her son to return to Arenemberg. The Government of Louis Philippe would not permit them to pass through France. Austria vigilantly and indignantly watched ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... work of only a few moments to drive the visiray projection to Europa, where Czuv, to the great relief of all, found that the hexans had not yet discovered either Wruszk or the Terrestrial workings. All Europan humanity, fully aware of the hexan investment, was exerting every possible precaution against discovery by the enemy. This information was duly flashed to the Council of Callisto, and the projection was then hurled across the intervening reaches of space ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... discovery, coming as it did too late to be of any benefit to him, and at a moment, too, when his feelings, notwithstanding his recent declarations to Miss Haviland, and his subsequent resolves, were sore from the insidious workings of jealousy, and the revolting thought of the pretensions of his hated foe to her hand—this discovery, we say, wrought up his mind, already embittered to the last degree of endurance, to a state little short of absolute frenzy. And clinching the fragments of the book, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... as the basis of his system that all argument about man or God must be based upon what we know of man's present life, and of God's workings in this ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... persons who have experienced the force of these special workings of the mind. The generality of men are only sensible of five or six passions, in the limited round of which they pass their lives, and within which all their agitations are confined. Remove them from the influence ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... good faith for a generation; and as a result there was founded the Christian community of Metlakatla, Alaska, almost an ideal little republic, so long as no self-seeking Anglo-Saxon interfered with its workings. The Indians became carpenters, blacksmiths, farmers, gardeners, as well as better fishermen. They established a sawmill and a salmon cannery. They built houses and boats, and finally a steamboat, which was run by one of their number. Mr. Duncan never allowed strong drink to enter the colony; he ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... of what I do know: once this spirit of mine, that now by the workings of destiny for a little while occupies the body of a fourth-rate auctioneer, and of the editor of a trade journal, dwelt in that of a Pharaoh of Egypt—never mind which Pharoah. Yes, although you may laugh and think me mad to say it, for me the legions fought and thundered; to me the peoples ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... precocity at a Twelfth Night juvenile party at Macready's; and tremendous predictions of the governess, dimly suggesting his having got out of pot-hooks and hangers, and darkly insinuating the possibility of his writing us a letter before long; and many other workings of the same prophetic spirit, in reference to him and his sisters, very gladdening to their mother's heart, and not at all depressing to their father's. There was, also, the doctor's report, which was a clean bill; and the nurse's report, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... that little Todd Walters has made the best choice," said the druggist. "You see, he has been selling fly-paper for me all summer on commission, and I've had a chance to see the inner workings. People are always coming to me with some pleasant thing to say about him. He's certainly won the 'loving favour' of all he's had anything to do with, whether they were his customers or not, and the good name he has made for himself will stick to ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston

... wanted things to eat, they wanted to talk,—talk and ask questions. Well, she would wait on them, but she wouldn't talk. She turned a dry, parchment-like face to their conversational blandishments, and responded only by adding up their bills. Wonderful are the workings of patriotism. For the first time in her life, Mrs. Bilton was grumbled at for ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... to intrude," he said again. In the gloom I was beginning to discern the workings of the tortured apoplectic face. "But, I say, what's de ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... of women, who in character and intellect could not be surpassed. The final hearing of those in favor of the amendment was held June 28, when U. S. Senator Joseph M. Carey, who had come by urgent invitation, made a most convincing speech, describing the practical workings of woman suffrage in Wyoming and urging the men of New York to enfranchise the women of the State. He was followed by Mrs. Mary T. Burt, representing the W. C. T. U., ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... Interstate Commerce Commission, the {172} government moved and appointed a royal commission, with Sir A. T. Galt as chairman, to consider the general question. Their report noted the existence of many grievances and suggested specific remedies, but considered that until further experience of the workings of the English and American commissions was available, Canada's needs could best be met by an extension of the powers of the Railway Committee of ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... Republic. There is no shrinking from fellowship and cooperation and conflict with the keen or bold men of the market-place and council hall, in that mind of exquisite and, as drawn by itself, exaggerated sensibility. The doings and characters of men, the workings of society, the fortunes of Italy, were watched and thought of with as deep an interest as the courses of the stars, and read in the real spectacle of life with as profound emotion as in the miraculous page ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... want to pass from one scheme to another to see the inner workings of all. I shall be content to ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... his heart was no greater than the sorrow, the suffering, the poisoned deliriums of the thousands who had given themselves to this mighty flood, which was so vast and powerful that it dwarfed the senses of mortals to a feeling of the proper proportion of their affairs in the workings ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest gloried; but he would be very sluggish, indeed, who could not look back with some degree of enthusiasm to the days of gentlemen adventurers in no-man's-land, in a word, to the workings of the great fur trading companies. Theirs were the trappers and runners, the Coureurs des Bois and Bois-Brules, who traversed the immense solitudes of the pathless west; theirs, the brigades of gay voyageurs chanting hilarious refrains in unison with the rhythmic sweep of paddle blades ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... British precept—that foreigners should not see for themselves the workings of English rule in Ireland—finds frequent expression in the Irish State Papers. In a letter from Dublin Castle of August, 1572, from the Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam to Burghley Elizabeth's chief Minister, we are told that the "three German Earls" with "their conductor," Mr. ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... last night in which this was decided upon. Your brilliant record in this seminary and other qualifications which have been mentioned to us by high authorities, were the reasons for this action which appeared upon the surface, but I want you to know the inner workings—I asked your cousin to bring me here that I might have ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... mitigating tragedy by a checker of sunlight at the close. He had little use for the degenerate types of mankind: certainly none for degeneracy for its own sake, or because of a kind of scientific interest in its workings. Nor did he conceive of the mission of fiction as being primarily instructional: nor set too high a value on a novel as a lesson in life—although at times (read the moral tag to "The Heart of Midlothian") he speaks in quite the preacher's tone of the improvement ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... may be with other men, but of one branch of knowledge, which pertains directly to the human heart, and, when it be what its name indicates, to its eternal life, I gained no insight whatever from my books and my lessons, nor from my observance of its workings in those around me, and that was the passion of love. Of that I truly could learn naught except by turning my reflections toward my ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... with violent protestations of disapproval by the Cubists, the Futurists, and the Post-Impressionists, who claimed that this was entirely unnecessary, as they were able in their pictures to reveal the most secret workings of the brain, and that upon their canvases they laid bare for the study of the scientific world all that it was necessary for it ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... in the country-lanes, Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew, Met him, and of his way of life enquired; Whereat he answer'd, that the gipsy-crew, His mates, had arts to rule as they desired The workings of men's brains, And they can bind them to what thoughts they will. "And I," he said, "the secret of their art, When fully learn'd, will to the world impart; But it needs heaven-sent moments ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... midnight dances, and a scaur or cliff bearing the marks of volcanic action or of lightning is invariably associated with some tale of diabolic fury. Almost every reader can add instances of natural appearances or effects idealized by the workings of the imagination of uncivilized ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... was as deep as Ruskin's, and he was impatient of abstractions of any sort. With as great a desire to further the true progress of his time as Carlyle or Ruskin, he joined a greater calmness and disinterestedness. "To be less and less personal in one's desires and workings" he learned to look upon as after all the great matter. Of the lessons that are impressed upon us by his whole life and work rather than by specific teachings, perhaps the most precious is the inspiration ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... chosen the inside workings of the great insurance companies as his field of battle; the salons of the great Fifth Avenue mansions as the antechambers of his field of intrigue: and the two things which every natural, big man desires, love ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... painter, do not tell Of silvery streams and shaded, flowery dell, Nor talk of clouds with faces to the sun, That hang low down where golden rivers run. But dare to paint with skillful, cunning art The secret workings of a woman's heart. Oh, catch the light that lingers in her eyes— The passing gleam that o'er the shadow flies; Then paint for me the secrets of her soul, That I may read as on some written scroll. If this you cannot do, then talk no more Of nature's wealth of deep and mystic ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

... coal-mine, a friend recommended him to visit Killingworth pit, where he would find one George Stephenson, a most intelligent workman, in charge. My father was introduced to Mr. Stephenson accordingly; and after rambling over the underground workings, and observing the pumping and winding engines in full operation, a friendship was made, which afterwards proved of the greatest service to myself, by facilitating my being placed as a pupil at the great engineering works of Messrs. Robert ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... rule of Saint Bruno, and made the journey to the Grande Chartreuse on foot, absorbed in solemn thoughts. That was a memorable day. I was not prepared for the grandeur of the scenery; the workings of an unknown Power greater than that of man were visible at every step; the overhanging crags, the precipices on either hand, the stillness only broken by the voices of the mountain streams, the sternness and wildness of the landscape, relieved here and ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... coal-mining practice at the present date does not take out more than one-half the coal, leaving the less easily mined or lower grade material to be made permanently inaccessible by the caving in of the abandoned workings. The loss to the Nation from this form of waste is ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... are to be bought in the open market. It is like this, Maude. The mine was a very good one, and paid handsome dividends. Then it had some misfortunes. First, there was no water, and then there was too much water, and the workings were flooded. So, of course, the price of the shares fell. Now they are getting the mine all right again, but the shares are still low. It certainly seems a very good chance to pick a few ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... It is well that it is so. The years of usefulness between the cradle and the grave are few. The shortness of a life restricted to them is sufficient to discourage many from making strong efforts toward impressing the workings of their souls upon their fellows. The number to whose minds we have immediate access is small, and they do not remain. Is the good we might do worth the labor? We cannot at times refuse a hearing to the question. Fortunately, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... then speak what is true in Thy sight, O Lord, that when carnal men and infidels (for the gaining and initiating whom, the initiatory Sacraments and the mighty workings of miracles are necessary, which we suppose to be signified by the name of fishes and whales) undertake the bodily refreshment, or otherwise succour Thy servant with something useful for this present life; whereas they be ignorant, why this is to be done, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... again, and seemed to hesitate. Throughout the interview with Ludlow, the air of the free-trader had been mild, though, at times, it was playful; and not for an instant had he seemed to return the resentment which the other had so plainly manifested. It now became perplexed, and, by the workings of his features, it would seem that he vacillated in his opinions. The sounds of the whistle were ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... If prices have been driven to an unreasonable level by wasteful workings, then, a big decline in prices ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer

... naked face, in which you see the brain always working, with an almost painful simplicity—just saved from being painful by a humorous sense of external things, which becomes also a kind of intellectual criticism. He is a fatalist, and he studies the workings of fate in the chief vivifying and disturbing influence in life, women. His view of women is more French than English; it is subtle, a little cruel, not as tolerant as it seems, thoroughly a man's point of view, and not, as with Meredith, man's and woman's at once. He ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... war-engine, and, instead of its going strong, I saw that in each of its workings there was always something wrong; In fact, with the old black powder and the obsolete Brown Bess The chances of missing your target ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... it might have been imagined that there were to be seen miscarriages of the Creator's intentions, these were to be attributed to the presence and influence of mysterious forces of evil. Such attempts to hinder or frustrate the workings of good might be part of a purpose of good because they only afforded fresh opportunities for a display of the Divine wisdom, whose ordinary interventions were accepted as Providences, whilst Miracles supplied the rarer exhibitions ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson

... the only one about the temporary railroad station who eyed the group with curiosity and interest. Two of the travellers were ladies from the bluegrass and scarcely one of all the natives lingering about the workings had ever seen a lady from the bluegrass, while, to the young surveyors and the group of civil engineers who had, for months, been exiled by their work among the mountains from all association with such lovely creatures, it was a joy to stand apart and covertly gaze ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... of epochs of tolerance and destruction is in accordance with the workings of God's providence here and now. For though the characteristic of that providence as we see it is merciful forbearance, yet we are not left without many a premonition of the mighty final 'day of the Lord.' For long ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... working of these institutions in the mother country, they could not, or would not, distinguish between such institutions in England and their professed counterpart in Upper Canada. Nor could they believe that the great champion of their cause, who in the past had exposed the pernicious and oppressive workings of the so-called British institutions in Upper Canada, was sincere in his exposition of the principles and the promulgation of doctrines in regard to men and things in Britain, which were now declared by Mr. W. L. Mackenzie ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... could not, alone. The whole artillery of the phalanx, therefore, was played secretly on the President, and he was obliged himself to take a step which should parry the overture while it wears the face of acceding to it. (Mark that I state this as conjecture; but founded on workings and indications which have been under our eyes.) Yesterday, therefore, he sent in a nomination of Oliver Ellsworth, Patrick Henry, and William Vans Murray, Envoys Extraordinary and Ministers Plenipotentiary to the French ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... uncommon virtue to impress your interlocutor with the conviction that you believe exactly as he—or she—wants you to? In point of fact, there was something heroically pathetic in the way in which each mind strove to veil from the other its inner workings, while every day showed more and more the impossibility of ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... that a scientific system of mining would renew the supply of gold, which may not be represented by the scanty washings that have been occasionally tried in Hayti and Cuba. In Hayti, "as well as at Brazil, it would be more profitable to attempt subterraneous workings, on veins, in primitive and intermediary soils, than to renew the gold-washings which were abandoned in the ages of barbarism, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... he duly administered the sacraments according to the rites of the English Church. He hurried back to commit to his Diary the analysis of his reflections, and to describe, under the mystic formula of secrecy, the intricate workings of his conscience to Robert Wilberforce. But, alas! he was no Newman; and even the fourteen folios of St. Augustine himself, strange to say, gave him ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... Mary on the subject of religion. It was not an uncommon incident of those times for persons of great elevation and purity of character to be familiarly known and spoken of as living under a cloud of religious gloom; and it was simply regarded as one more mysterious instance of the workings of that infinite decree which denied to them the special illumination of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... adult male population, for he had no favorites. When he invaded virgin territory he believed in starting the largest possible number of accounts without delay. The advantage of his system, as he explained its workings to Mahaffy, was that it bred a noble spirit of emulation. He let it be known in a general way that things were looking up with him; just in what quarter he did not specify, but there he was, seated in the Belle Plain carriage and the inference was unavoidable ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... suspended? Sudden deaths often occur by mal-position. That of the late Secretary Marcy is doubtless an example. After his blood was heated and his circulation quickened, he laid himself down on his back, his head not raised. Attention to the workings of such a piece of apparatus as might be made, would have shown the fatal effects of such a position at ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard

... on the surface; let us go deeper, if we can, and have a peep at the workings beneath. I knock for information on this head at the mind and heart of all sorts of people. I note down the answers of the Minister and of the Deputy, as well as those of the waiter who serves my coffee and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... and neighbourhood," indeed! To learn and be able to depict with faithful accuracy what people "were doing, how they were living, and what they were thinking about"—all this being best done (domestic circumstances, nay, soul-workings and all!) through fleeting glimpses of shifting [82] panoramas of intelligent human beings! What a bright notion! We have here the suggestion of a capacity too superhuman to be accepted on trust, especially when, as in this case, it is by implication self-arrogated. The modesty of this thaumaturgic ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... contrast with the other poems in the collection. There is no romantic glamour about it. It is a grim, domestic tragedy, moving among the homeliest surroundings. Save for the lawlessness of a primitive state of society which gave free play to the workings of the passions, the story might have passed in Yorkshire or New England. A book like "Wuthering Heights," or "Pembroke," occasionally exhibits the same obstinate Berserkir rage of the tough old Teutonic stock, operating under modern conditions. For the men and women of the sagas are hard as ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... laws and the workings of our government to the new conditions which confront us without sacrificing any essential element of this system of government which has so nobly stood the test of time and without abandoning the political principles which have inspired the growth ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root

... been fierce underground fighting at Hill 60 and elsewhere, when our tunnelers saw the Germans had listened to one another's workings, racing to strike through first to their enemies' galleries and touch off their high-explosive charges. Our miners, aided by the magnificent work of Australian and Canadian tunnelers, had beaten the enemy into sheer ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... uniformity of law in nature; till then the world was alien to him. The law that he discovered is nothing but the perception of harmony that prevails between reason which is of the soul of man and the workings of the world. This is the bond of union through which man is related to the world in which he lives, and he feels an exceeding joy when he finds this out, for then he realises himself in his surroundings. To understand anything is to find in it something which is our own, and it is ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore

... Poet's dream, Shadow forth his glorious theme, And in written language tell The workings of the potent spell, Whose mysterious tones impart Life and vigour to his heart? 'Tis an emanation bright, Shooting from the fount of light; Flowing in upon the mind, Like sudden dayspring on the blind; Gilding with immortal dyes Scenes unknown to common eyes; ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... Gittha, which is a village of Samaria, and having rushed to the height of sorcery, at first persuaded many, by the wonder-working he wrought, to attend his school, and call him some divine Power. But afterwards seeing the apostles accomplishing wonder-workings that were really true and divine, and bestowing on those who came to them the grace of the Spirit, thinking himself also worthy to receive equal power from them, when great Peter detected his villainous intention, and bade him heal ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead

... of Rhodesia as a gold-producing country. He wanted the economic value of the country to rank with the political. Thousands of years ago the natives dug mines and many of these ancient workings are still to be seen. They never exceed forty or fifty feet in depth. Many leading authorities claimed that the South Arabians of the Kingdom of Saba often referred to in the Bible were the pioneers in the Rhodesian gold ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... curiosity to behold the inner workings of a domestic's life, and one day ventured to ask my friend's permission to enter her kitchen. Surprise was manifested at such a request, when I began to apologize and explain. But my hostess ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... plane of self-indulgence; and, in the pursuance of their great end, the one watched against his better nature as the other did against his worse. It is but fair, then, to take their lives as the practical workings of their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... words. By the nearness his face was become the dominant thing. What was there between the mountains so terrible and so gentle, so full of awe, of wisdom, and of beauty, as this human face? Behind the eyes the outlaw horse saw the workings of that mystery which had haunted his still evenings in ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... remark from Mrs. Gurney, followed by a warning look, caused the subject to be suddenly changed, and in the conversation that followed, the angry flush faded from Dexie's cheeks, the firm shut mouth relaxed; but the workings of her mind were not quite hidden from the motherly eyes that ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... "And remember, I give you my word as a God that I will not interfere in any way with the workings of chance. Is ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... tempestuous, and violent measures. Such measures do not fit into their philosophy, which sees, as the cause of our present intolerable social wrongs, not the malevolence of individuals or of classes, but the workings of certain economic laws. One can cut off the head of an individual, but it is not possible to cut off the head of an economic law. From the beginning of the modern socialist movement, this has been perfectly clear to the socialist, whose philosophy has taught him that appeals ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... was plain to be seen from the workings of his countenance that once more he was living over ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... nervous and excited, as he realized that he was facing a supreme moment in his career, he patiently explained to all who came, Congressmen, men of science, representatives of foreign governments, and hard-headed men of business, the workings of the instrument and proved its feasibility. The majority saw and wondered, but went away unconvinced. On February 21, President Martin Van Buren and his entire Cabinet, at their own special request, visited the room and saw the telegraph in operation. But no action ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... reason, why some that name the name of Christ, depart not from iniquity, is, for that, though they rest not in bare notions, as those forementioned, yet they take up as they, short of the saving grace of God. There are bare notions, there are common workings, and there is a work that is saving, and that will do the soul ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... with scarce half an hour's notice. My venerable neighbor, of eighty years of age, who had passed his life here, and knows well the workings of the clouds among the mountains, had dined with us, but hastened his departure to get home before what looked like a shower, crossing with his feeble steps the stream whose strongest bridge, an hour after, was swept ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... the eye. Crystalline in its transparency, sensitive in receptivity, delicate in its adjustments, quick in its motions, the eye is a fitting servant for the eager soul, and, at times, the truest interpreter between man and man of the spirit's inmost workings. The rainbow's vivid hues and the pallor of the lily, the fair creations of art and the glance of mutual affection, all are pictured in its translucent depths, and transformed and glorified by the mind within. Banish vision, and the material universe shrinks for us to that which ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... shortly know that lengthened breath Is not the sweetest gift God sends his friend, And that, sometimes, the sable pall of death Conceals the fairest boon his love can send. If we could push ajar the gates of life, And stand within and all God's workings see, We could interpret all this doubt and strife, And for each mystery could find ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr

... can realize that never again that majestic form shall rise in the council-chambers of his country to beat back the storms of anarchy which may threaten, or pour the oil of peace upon the troubled billows as they rage and menace around! Who can realize that the workings of that mighty mind have ceased, that the throbbings of that gallant heart are stilled, that the mighty sweep of that graceful arm will be felt no more, and the magic of that eloquent tongue, which spake as spake no other tongue besides, is ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... that of the Union, and the vote of its principal city may decide that of the state. All this is perfectly well known to some of the friends of the scheme, but it is not so to those who are to pay for it, and who are less familiar with the workings of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... the wonderful workings of things—as we know all things do work together for good—this fact was good for Ursula. It taught her that, in losing Guy, she had not lost all her blessings. It showed her what in the passion of her mother-love she might have been tempted to forget—many mothers ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... fight and yet so ridiculously laughable that you don't know whether you are on foot or a horseback. Of course some of the Knights in attendance were from the back woods, and while they were well up in all the secret workings of the order, they were awful "new" ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... For behold, I have workings in the spirit, which doth weary me even that all my joints are weak, for those who are at Jerusalem; for had not the Lord been merciful, to show unto me concerning them, even as he had prophets of old, ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... o'clock of the morning. He looked about reflectively. The rough board cabin and the rougher shaft-house were scarcely worth knocking down for lumber. There, on the big, barren dike, were several tunnels and prospects, in addition to the shaft, all "workings" that Briggs had opened up in his labors on the ledge. They were mere yawning mockeries of mining, but at least had served a charlatan's requirements. A few tools lay about, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... they strained their eyes looking down the river, they saw in the distance a faint, white, phosphorescent gleam, and as it appeared the roar grew louder, and rounder, and more all-pervading. On it came, carrying with it the hoarse cadence of some vast surf flung ashore from the workings of a distant storm, or the thunder of some mighty cataract ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... fresh dizziness. A terrible struggle was taking place between two instincts. Who shall explain the mysterious workings of man's brain when his soul is grappling with the senses, and one part of his being is striving to strangle the other? In an organization like mine, such a conflict, believe me, was bound to be terrible; and do not imagine that the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... "that mixture of melancholy and dignity, of womanly softness and noble decision, which pervaded her character." There is a sort of gentleness even in her anger, and a certain indescribable womanly charm in the workings of her mind, which cause all who read her story, while they can not but think that Elizabeth was right, to ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net-result of my Workings amounted as yet simply to—Nothing. How then could I believe in my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous question, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain Faculty, a certain Worth, such ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... though why this should be so is a question which effectually puzzles many who are conscious of treating their native dependants only with extreme kindness and consideration. The answer, however, is not difficult for those who possess the merest insight into the workings of the Chinese mind; for just as every inhabitant of the eighteen provinces believes China to be the centre of civilisation and power, so does he infer that his language and customs are the only ones worthy of attention from native and barbarian alike. The very antagonism of ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... dress held a greater restraint than the elders; though Linda recognized that it was no less lavish; and their feminine trifles, the morocco beauty-cases and powder-boxes, the shoulder-pins, their slipper and garter buckles were extravagant in exquisite metals and workings. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... we found, about the old Spanish workings, ancient, roofless, stone buildings with loop-holed turrets for bandits and niches for saints. These structures, as well as the waste dumped by the Spaniards, were being "repicked for values," and broken ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... specimens of the inner workings of the peculiar institution. John, however, had not only observed Slavery from a domestic stand-point, he had also watched master and mistress abroad as visitors and guests in other people's houses, noticed not only how they treated white people, but also how ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... workings of her mind. How entirely an answer of assent, at once acted on for better or for worse, would clear the spectre from her path, there needed no tongue to tell. It would, moreover, accomplish that end without ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... esthetic idyll, for the profoundest presentation, or for any casually thrown off, passing piece of verse, he is the only man. He not only wields an unlimited power over our mirth and our tears, over all the workings of passion, humor, thought, and observation, but he possesses also an infinite region full of the phantasy of fiction, of a horrifying and an amusing character. He possesses penetration both in the world of fiction and of reality, and above this ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... namesake, Roger Bacon, but in an age more favourable to intellectual reform, he attempted a sort of renewal of the human mind (Instauratio Magna) or at least a radical revolution in the methods and workings of the human mind. Although Francis Bacon professed admiration for many of the thinkers of antiquity, he urged that it was wrong to rely on them because they had not sufficiently observed; one must not, like the schoolmen, have ideas a priori, which are "idols," ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet

... strange workings of Waymark's face with close interest. When the latter suddenly turned his eyes, as if to see the effect of all his frankness, Casti coloured slightly and looked away, but with a ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... Acid in the Air of Mines.—According to a series of analyses by Angus Smith, the proportion of carbonic acid in the air of underground workings varied from 0.04 to 2.7 per cent. by volume. In places where men are working the proportion ought not ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... from the surface and in the gravel of rivers. In Neolithic times men had learned to mine for flint. Flint occurs in nodules in the chalk. Near Brandon, England, was discovered a series of these workings. They consist of shafts connected together by galleries. These pits vary in size from twenty to sixty feet in diameter, and in some cases were as much as thirty feet deep. From the bottom of these shafts they would excavate as far as they dared to the sides. They made no use ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... performances. That which we call a science or study puts the net product of past experience in the form which makes it most available for the future. It represents a capitalization which may at once be turned to interest. It economizes the workings of the mind in every way. Memory is less taxed because the facts are grouped together about some common principle, instead of being connected solely with the varying incidents of their original discovery. Observation is assisted; we know what to look for ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey

... the Army's manpower management, he and Maj. James D. Fowler, a black West Point graduate and personnel officer, provided the committee with the needed breakthrough. Step by step they led Fahy and his associates through the complex workings of the Army's career guidance program, showing them how segregation caused the inefficient use of manpower on several counts.[14-48] The Army, for example, as part of a continuing effort to find men who could be trained for specialties in which it ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... why this sentiment is not allowed to die which should always be remembered by those who wish to grasp the inner workings of the Irish mind. Briefly stated, the view prevails in Ireland that in dealing with questions affecting our material well-being, the government of our country by the English was, in the past, characterised ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... their aviation corps with standardized machines of a few types only. Thus interchangeable parts could always be kept in readiness in case of an emergency, and the aviation corps was obliged to familiarize itself with the workings of only a few machines. The objection to the system is the fact that it practically stopped all development of any machines in France except the favoured few. Moreover it threw out of the service at a stroke, or remanded for further instruction, not less than four hundred pilots who had been trained ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... reign, while showing emphatic signs of reviving intellectual activity, is remarkable not for its own excellence, for profundity of thought, intensity of passion, or mastery of form, but as exhibiting the first random and tentative workings of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... "Pagan rites," as they are termed, we discern the workings of an intuitive belief that the spirit of man still retains the sensations, attributes, and desires which have accompanied it ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... be anything else but our own hell, both here and hereafter." "There is nothing that is supernatural," he says very finely, "in the whole system of our redemption. Every part of it has its ground in the workings and powers of nature, and all our redemption is only nature set right, or made to be that which it ought to be.[354] There is nothing that is supernatural but God alone.... Right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, happiness and misery, are as unchangeable ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... are times when it forbears to work, and then it works again. David had an intermitting pulse, Peter had an intermitting pulse, as also many other of the saints of God. I call that an intermitting pulse, with reference to the fear we speak of, when there is some obstruction by the workings of corruptions in the soul; I say, some obstruction from, and hindrance of, the continual motion of this fear of God; yet none of these, though they are various, and some of them signs of weakness, are signs of death, but life. "I will put my fear in their hearts, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... The underground workings here are about thirty kilometres in length. Beside these Metlaoui deposits, the company has begun to attack those of Redeyeff, and will shortly open an assault upon the others at Ain Moulares, which lie near Henchir Souatir, the present terminus ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... popular superstitions of the time, and in addition it served as the starting-point for new superstitions and for new developments of the older ones. The Pan-daemonism of the New Testament, with its wonder-workings by devilish agencies, its exorcisms of evil spirits and the like, could not fail to have a deep effect on the popular mind. The authority that the book believed to be divinely inspired necessarily ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... contented themselves with the easy task of maintaining in peace and dignity the general worship of mankind. We have already seen how various, how loose, and how uncertain were the religious sentiments of Polytheists. They were abandoned, almost without control, to the natural workings of a superstitious fancy. The accidental circumstances of their life and situation determined the object as well as the degree of their devotion; and as long as their adoration was successively prostituted to a thousand deities, it was scarcely ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... so qualified and mitigated a form, the spirit of reformation exhibited in this country little of its stronger and more turbulent workings. No sect at that time arose purely and peculiarly English: our native divines did not embrace exclusively, or with vehemence, the tenets of any one of the great leaders of reform on the continent, and a kind of eclectic system became ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... a maneless lion, wrapped in the solitude of his own originality. Aloof from the vulgar pack, he lived and moved and had his being but in the atmosphere of the Fighting Nigger, in whose society only could he hope to find a little congenial companionship, and to whom only he unbosomed the workings of his ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... and ingenious processes which, step by step, have made their way among us, and are beginning to make their workings felt, even in institutions most stoutly opposed to progress, are all ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... that I cannot know thy change. In many's looks, the false heart's history Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange. But heaven in thy creation did decree That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell; Whate'er thy thoughts, or thy heart's workings be, Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell. How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow, If thy sweet virtue answer not ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... munched her biscuits. It had been a long time since she had eaten anything so delicious, although if those same biscuits had appeared on the Cary table a month ago they would have probably been scorned. But eager as her appetite was it did not stop the active workings of her mind and she presently was struck by an idea which tried to force itself out through a mouthful of biscuit—with the ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... to these various forms of disease merely allegorical, I should still have judged it not unprofitable to represent a somewhat hackneyed class of maladies in the light of a parable. None of our faculties is more familiar to us in its workings than the memory, and there is hardly any force or power in nature which every one knows so well as the force of habit. To say that a neurotic subject is like a person with a retentive memory, or that a diathesis gradually acquired is ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... upon. Suddenly the bushes parted and the Fawn bounded into her father's arms. To accurately describe the agony of this scene would be impossible; consternation for a moment held them spell-bound; horror was pictured in faces so long trained to conceal the workings of the mind, and for the first time the Fawn remained uncaressed in her father's arms. Astonished and grieved she turned to Grey Eagle; the light had fled from his face, and his soul apparently; he seemed petrified and lifeless as the rock he stood ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah

... the men were too interested to learn the reason of Gooja Singh's torture and death to care for the workings of a Kurdish chief's conscience. They crowded closer and closer, interrupting with shouted questions and bidding each other be still. So Ranjoor Singh said a word to Abraham and he changed the line of questioning. The truth ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... conversation, therefore, he mentioned the shaft, on which he pretended to have come in his rambles. Remarking on the danger of such places, he learned that this one served for ventilation, and was still accessible below from other workings. Thereafter he begged permission to go down one of the pits, on pretext of examining the coal-strata, and having secured for his guide one of the most intelligent of those whose acquaintance he had made at the inn, persuaded him, partly by expressions ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... throat, reflecting that she was keeping the workings of the love potion under wonderful control; indeed to look at her no one could have guessed that she had recently absorbed this magic Eastern medicine. However, something must be done; he had gone too ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... Tommy's way. He did not care a straw about political experience, and he liked to look at things through the medium of paper and ink. Then there were the Phoenician remains in the foot-hills where the copper was mined-old workings, and things which might have been forts or temples. He knew all that was to be known about them, but he had never seen them and never wanted to. Once only he went to the hills, to open some new reservoirs and make the ordinary Governor's speech; ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... rustic did not remember, but neither did he doubt. He was full of exclamations of wonder and admiration at the workings of so wonderful and generous a Government; and then came the climax. Would Mr. Smug direct him to this ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... Hohen-Tuebingen, where Wilhelmine had wandered, a lonely stranger, on the morning of her arrival in Wirtemberg. Now she was the queen of the grim fortress, and, looking upon the fair valley and the distant hills, she would often ponder on the marvellous workings of ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... because it had become impregnated with moisture, but she did not say so, having no desire to contribute her quota of pats to this air-ball, or to encourage the superficial workings of his mind just then. She quietly awaited the response to her appeal to his deeper nature which she felt certain would be forthcoming. ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... the Inquisition, and which the philosopher intended to dedicate to Clement VIII. But the loss of this elaborated system is hardly to be regretted, except for the clearer light it must have thrown upon the workings of the most illuminated intellect in the sixteenth century. We know that it could not have revealed to us the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... glance that sweetly thrills—the looks that melt; No speaking gaze of fond attachment told, But all was dull and gloomy, sad and cold. Yet he was kind, or laboured to be kind, And strove to hide the workings of his mind; And cloak'd his heart, to soothe his wife's distress, Under a mask of tender gentleness. It was in vain—for ah! how light and frail To love's keen eye is falsehood's gilded veil. Sweet winning words may for a time beguile, Professions ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... fearlessly, disinterestedly do they discharge their trust, often in the midst of appalling dangers. Crusoe sprang from the bank with such impetus that his broad chest ploughed up the water like the bow of a boat, and the energetic workings of his muscles were indicated by the force of each successive ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... red light flickered again and Jakes brought forth from the delivery drawer a hand gun complete with shoulder harness. "Nasty weapon," he said. "But we'd better go on down to the armory and show you its workings." ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds



Words linked to "Workings" :   plural, mechanism, plural form, excavation



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