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Elastic   Listen
noun
Elastic  n.  An elastic woven fabric, as a belt, braces or suspenders, etc., made in part of India rubber. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Elastic" Quotes from Famous Books



... artistic capacity, so far as I can see, the temperament of every invert seems to strive to find artistic expression—crudely or otherwise. Inverts, as a rule, seek the paths of life that lie in pleasant places; their resistance to opposing obstacles is elastic, their work is never strenuous (if they can help it), and their accomplishments hardly ever of practical use. This is all true of the born artist, as well. Both inverts and artists are inordinately fond of praise; both yearn for a life where admiration is the reward for little energy. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... weld and round it. He supplied an alloy, the alloy of fancy, or—as he also calls it—of one fact more: this fact being the echo of those past existences awakened within his own. He breathed into the dead record the breath of his own life; and when his ring of evidence had re-formed, first in elastic then in solid strength, here delicately incised, there broadly stamped with human thought and passion, he could cast fancy aside, and bid his readers recognise in what he set before them unadulterated ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... been-uttered—that of the occultism of D. G, Rossetti and some of his friends. It has been frequently said that Rossetti was a spiritualist, and it is a fact that he went to several seances; but the word 'spiritualism' seems to have a rather elastic meaning. A spiritualist, as distinguished from a materialist, Rossetti certainly was, but his spiritualism was not, I should say, that which in common parlance bears this name. It was exactly like 'Aylwinism,' which seems to have been related to the doctrines ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... States, as I understand them, are more elastic than those in Europe. In England, until a few years ago, a man could not contract a legal marriage with his deceased wife's sister, although he could marry the betrothed wife of his deceased brother. It is curious to compare ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... appeared and the Fay, but about the attitude of the latter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of elastic joy. She floated again from out the light and into the gloom (which deepened momently), and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she made the circuit of the island (while the sun ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... sod, the grass was flushed with emerald, while the tender green of a willow copse formed a background for her lissom figure as she leaned forward to stroke the neck of the big gray horse, which pawed at the elastic turf. There was bright sunshine above us, dimming even the sweep of azure, and a glorious rush of breeze. All spoke of life and courage, and I strove to cheer her, until a horseman swept into sight across a rise, and my teeth closed together ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... unavoidably suspended in the interim. A serious obstacle arose from the informality of the proceeding, the sanction of the royal approbation being necessary, according to custom, upon the nomination of a new Speaker. The elastic character of the Constitution, however, although not providing direct remedies for such special cases, admits of adaptation to the most unforeseen exigencies; and so urgent was the pressure of affairs at this agitating juncture, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... up: a Georgian—a clerk in a store of Cakhetine wines, and some railroad agent, a very proud and very poor nobleman, with shirt cuffs the colour of a cabbage rose, and with an eye which had been replaced by a black circle on an elastic. Pasha, passive in everything save her impersonal sensuality, would go with anybody who might call her, but the administration of the house vigilantly guards its interests in her. A near insanity already flits over her lovely face, in her half-closed ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... leaves nothing to be desired in all the qualities required to enable the player to follow out every conceivable manner of tone and movement—lightness, firmness, and elasticity. Tartini had made the stick of his bow elastic, an innovation from the time of Corelli, and had thus attained a certain flexibility and brilliancy in his bowing superior to his predecessors. But the full development of all the powers of the violin, or the ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... the apparatus. A couple of elastic metal bands fastened the canister to the chest of the wearer. The fabric molded into a perfect, tight face mask ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... elastic poised and swung Harebell or yellow adder's tongue, Nor blither any bird ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... openings, in the rocks around the sides of the mountain, is forced down under this molten mass by the immense pressure given to it by the height of the mountain. There it is turned into steam. For a time it is kept down by the vast weight of the lava which is over it, but after a time the elastic force of it gets so great that a bubble of it bursts up, and comes out at the top of the mountain in a great, thundering puff, bringing up some portion of the melted lava with it, and throwing it high ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... these things really true that she told him? Was he actually out of his body, and was his name really Jimbo? His thoughts kept groping backwards, ever seeking the other companions he had lost; but, like a piece of stretched elastic too short to reach its object, they always came back with a snap just when he seemed on the point of finding them. He wanted these companions very badly indeed, but the struggling of his memory was ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... from the river valley hung low over the fresh budding trees. With swift elastic tread the gray lines moved forward through the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... unaccompanied except by the old Indian who looked after McTavish's wants. She was small and spare, and wore glasses that enlarged her mild blue eyes. She had overcome nature's delinquency in the matter of luxurious hair by the application of a "transformation," done into numerous elastic curls. Because of the difficulty of communication with the outside world, this was now several shades lighter than her own, a fact which gave her great pain, ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... the observer sees stretched over the field of view of the telescope demand a few words of explanation. We require for this purpose a material which shall be very fine and fairly durable, as well as somewhat elastic, and of no appreciable weight. These conditions cannot be completely fulfilled by any metallic wire, but they are exquisitely realised in the beautiful thread which is spun by the spider. The delicate fibres ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... Kenneth's elastic rod was bent nearly double, as Max leaned forward, and, instead of lowering the net well into the water so that the fish might glide into it, he made an excited poke, and struck the fish with the ring; there was a faint whish as ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... about Bogan is that he's begun to be fidgety about his personal appearance—and you know he wasn't a dood. He wears a collar now, and polishes his boots; he wears elastic-sides, and polishes 'em himself—the only thing is that he blackens over the elastic. He can do many things for himself, and he's proud of it. He says he can see many things that he couldn't see when he had his eyes. You seldom hear him swear, save in a friendly way; ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... you mind the sexton's chatter?" said the wife. "'Youth is elastic, but age is solid,' as the saying goes. You're excellent ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... boldly into a shimmering length of petticoat-silk. When she put down the great shears, there lay on the table the detached parts of that which the appreciative and experienced eyes of the craftsmen knew to be a new and original variation of that elastic ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber

... and prolate spheroids, balls of varied substances, solid and hollow, many boxes of diverse size and shape, with hinged lids and screw lids and fitting lids, and one or two to catch and lock; there were bands of elastic and leather, and a number of rough and sturdy little objects of a size together that could stand up steadily and suggest the shape of a man. "Give 'em these," said Cossar. "One ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... man, and that morning he had picked up a pin and stuck it in the lapel of his rough coat, but he had done this hastily and carelessly. The pin was of a recently invented kind, being of a light, elastic metal, with its head of steel. As Cunningham leaned forward the pin slipped out of his coat; it fell through one of the openings in the grating, and ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... themselves, by innate want of that taste which the Parisienne possesses, only the cause of something like a sneer from many a cultivated man; and of something like a sneer, too, from yonder gipsy woman who passes by, with bold bright face, and swinging hip, and footstep stately and elastic; far better dressed, according to all true canons of taste, than most town-girls; and thanking her fate that she and her "Rom" are no house-dwellers and gaslight-sightseers, but fatten on free air ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... played with a firm, elastic touch, the opening chords struck, and a great shining voice, masterful, like a golden trumpet, filled the room. Caroline sat dumb; Miss Honey, instinctively humming the prelude, got up from her foot-stool and followed ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... majesty, and woe to the guilty master! Many of these wrongs came to Nicholas's notice; and he came to hate the system, and tried to undermine it. Opposition met him, of course; not so much the ponderous laziness of Peter's time as an opposition, polite and elastic, which never ranted and never stood up—for then Nicholas would have throttled it and stamped upon it. But it did its best to entangle his reason and thwart his action. He was told that the serfs were well-fed, well-housed, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... country that those beautiful paroquets named kessi-kessi are procured. Here the crystal mountains are found; and here the three different species of the ara are seen in great abundance. Here too grows the tree from which the gum-elastic is got: it is large and as tall as any in the forest. The wood has much the appearance of sycamore. The gum is contained in the bark: when that is cut through it oozes out very freely; it is quite white and looks as rich as cream; ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... more. "Each particular straw of this dank, damp bed was elastic with delight, at bearing such angelic pressure; and, as our heroine cast her ineffably beaming eyes about the dark void, lighting up with their effulgent rays each little portion of the dungeon, as she glanced them from one part to another, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... instead of waist-high grass, there lay around me acres and acres of the fine rich hay-grass, full-grown, but without a blade wider than a knitting-needle or taller than my knee. It covered the marsh like a deep, thick fur, like a wonderland carpet into whose elastic, velvety pile my feet sank and sank, never quite feeling the floor. Here and there were patches of higher sedges, green, but of differing shades, which seemed spread upon the ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... because his stomach was constantly overloaded with indigestible trash, and the blood in his brain-vessels was always either galloping or creeping, under the first or second effect of stimulants administered, at first, by thoughtless physicians. Behold him now—bronzed, pinky, bright-eyed, elastic; and only one fit in ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... she came in the authority and integrity of herself, that was also, most dearly, most marvelously, himself as well—permeative, penetrative, real, a subtle breath named Elspeth! So subtle, so wide and deep, elastic, universal, with no horizons that he could see.... To and fro played ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... "played the sedulous ape" to Berlioz and it was natural, with his fanciful imagination and full-blooded temperament, that his themes are clothed in shining orchestration, that his formal sense would work to happier ends within the elastic form of the Liszt symphonic poem. He wrote symphonies and a "symphoniette" on Russian themes, but his genius is best displayed in freer forms. His third symphony, redolent of Haydn, with a delightful scherzo, his fugues, quartet, ballets, operas—he composed fifteen, some of which are ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... Brook Farm really came, it was full of wit and charm, as well as of the truth he so seriously desired to convey. The audience was like a firm, elastic wall, against which he threw the balls of his wit, while they bounded steadily back into his hand. Almost the first thing he said was quoted from Horatio Greenough, whom he esteemed one of the greatest men of our ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... of his head was remarkably high, in the regions of the phrenological organs of firmness, conscientiousness, self-esteem, indicating a stern will, unswerving integrity, and marvellous self-possession. He walked rapidly with a firm and elastic tread. He was somewhat like John Baptist, taciturn in habits, usually wrapped in meditation. He was rather meteoric in his movements, appearing suddenly and unexpectedly at this place, and then disappearing in the same ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... work before him. Soon his hand and knife Replaced the saddle firmer than before Upon the gentle horse; and then he turned To mount the maiden. But bewilderment A moment lasted; for he knew not how, With stirrup-hand and steady arm, to throne, Elastic, on her steed, the ascending maid: A moment only; for while yet she thanked, Nor yet had time to teach her further will, Around her waist he put his brawny hands, That almost zoned her round; and like a child Lifting her high, he ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... Anne first, but she was far more comely. Her family seemed to have reached its limits, for one thing, and she was no more the helpless drudge she had been. Several of the children were at school, and that wonderfully elastic salary of Mary's had done miraculous things in the way of bringing comfort and even refinement to Walter ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... tenor of education. We may blame, despise, regret as we please, but customs long established, and habits long indulged, assume an empire despotic, though their power is but prescriptive. Opposing them is vain; Nature herself, when forced aside, is not more elastic in ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... should fall into the hands of any sensitive American who cannot bear to be told that the working of the institutions of his country is far from perfect; that in spite of the advantage she has over all other nations in the elastic freshness and vigour of her youth, she is far from being a model for the earth to copy; and that even in those pictures of the national manners with which he quarrels most, there is still (after the lapse of several years, each of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... Particular (as Mr. Guppy said of the fog) that small figures can loom so large in the vapour, and even mingle with quite different figures, and have the appearance of a mob. But, above all, I have dwelt on the telescopic quality in these twilight avenues, because unless the reader realises how elastic and unlimited they are, he simply will not believe in the abominations we have ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... unshrinking firmness. Let it not however be supposed that I endured it without repining and abhorrence. My time was divided between the terrors of an animal that skulks from its pursuers, the obstinacy of unshrinking firmness, and that elastic revulsion that from time to time seems to shrivel the very hearts of the miserable. If at some moments I fiercely defied all the rigours of my fate, at others, and those of frequent recurrence, I sunk into helpless despondence. I looked forward without hope ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... on the time-table and life of a school is like that of a hot water heating system which spreads an equal warmth through all parts of a building. Teachers of other subjects will find that such training provides them with pupils more responsive, more elastic and of more character than they otherwise would be. Therefore, the study of rhythm, as well as education by means of rhythm, ought to be most closely ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze

... a plain, dark walking-suit, and something about her quick, elastic step and slim, trim figure as she sailed along, looking neither to the right nor to the left, attracted his attention. Her head was set on her shoulders in a way that gave her quite an air, and as she passed under a lamp the light showed the flash of a fine profile and ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... game didn't begin until two, we had a perfectly lovely time watching the people gather. Cousin Tracy said there were about forty thousand. The cheering section was just a solid mass of college men, with a band at the bottom, and the most elastic lot of cheer leaders in white sweaters you ever saw. This is the way they ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs

... the positive and negative corpuscles, as they seem to us, are tiny areas in which the granules are unequally distributed. Each theory has its difficulties. We do not know the origin of the electron, because we do not know the nature of ether. To some it is an elastic solid, quivering in waves at every movement of the particles; to others it is a continuous fluid, every cubic millimetre of which possesses "an energy equivalent to the output of a million-horse-power station for 40.000,000 years" (Lodge); to others it is a close-packed ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... vague term of abuse, like 'Hun' during the war. People who didn't like Carson called him a Bolshevist; people who didn't like manual labourers called them Bolshevists. What all these users of the mysterious and elastic epithet lacked was a clear ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... around. It was a divided cage, and a monkey, poking through the bars and around the partition, had had its paw seized by a big gray wolf who was trying to pull it off by main strength. The arm seemed stretching out longer end longer like a thick elastic, and the unfortunate monkey's mates were raising a terrible din. No keeper was at hand, so the Leopard Man stepped over a couple of paces, dealt the wolf a sharp blow on the nose with the light cane he carried, and returned ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... persuasively on his shoulder. 'It has done me harm, my friend. It has aged me, tired me, vexed me, disappointed me. It does no man any good to have his patience worn out, and to think himself ill-used. I fancy, even already, that unavailing attendance on delays and evasions has made you something less elastic than you used ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... an elastic constitution, prevailed over disease, and Miriam was raised from the bed of death; but so changed in person and in manner, that you would scarcely have recognized her. She was thinner, but not paler—an intense consuming fire ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... every carriage with two strong metal pipes, running just over the doors, and projecting a foot or so beyond the length of the carriage, the end of the pipe to have a raised collar, by which means an elastic gutta percha tube could connect the pipes while the carriages were being attached; a branch tube of gutta percha should then be led from the pipe on one side into each compartment, so that any passenger, by blowing through ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... of calling the whole tract Midian; the section above El-Muwaylah (Madyan Proper) I would term "North Midian," and that below it "South Midian." In the days of the ancient Midianites the frontiers were so elastic that, at times, but never for a continuity, they embraced Sinai, and were pushed forward even into Central Palestine. Moreover, I would prolong the limits eastward as far as the Damascus-Mednah road. This would be politically and ethnologically correct. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... spent the first few days in sleep, pain, and trying to accept the hard fact that school and play were done with for months perhaps. But young spirits are wonderfully elastic and soon cheer up, and healthy young bodies heal fast, or easily adapt themselves to new conditions. So our invalids began to mend on the fourth day, and to drive their nurses distracted with efforts to amuse them, before the first week ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... girl in black stretched out a long arm towards the last vase of chrysanthemums, which pressed against the glass great curled polls almost as large as her own head. It was impossible to imagine a Scotswoman practising so felinely elastic an attitude before the open street, or possessing a face so ecstatic with pertness, or finding herself inside a dress which, though black, disclaimed all intention of being mourning and sought rather, in its clinging economy, to be ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... space for maneuvering or for wriggling free. Clear from the ground Brice's feet were swung. The breath was squeezed out of him. His elastic strength was cramped and made useless. His lungs seemed bursting. The pressure on his ribs was unbearable. Like many a better man he was paying the price for a single ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... or putrefaction inside the wound. He also set himself to devise some 'protective' which would enable Nature to do her healing work without further interference from without. Animals have the power to form quickly a natural scab over a wound, which is impermeable and at the same time elastic. The human skin, after a slight wound, in a pure atmosphere, may heal quickly; but a serious wound may continue open for a long time, discharging 'pus' at intervals, while decomposition is slowly lowering ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... appeared, moving with long elastic steps. Their eyes were bright, their faces flushed. They came up to Murphy, took his arm. They were solid, corporeal. They had no invisible ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance

... that firmness in death which so many of his victims displayed. They triumphed even in their death. Louis and Vergniaud, Marie Antoinette, and Madame Roland, felt that they were stepping from life into glory, and their step was light and elastic. Robespierre was sinking from existence into infamy. During those fearful hours, in which nothing in life was left him but to suffer, how wretched must have been the reminiscences of his career! He, who had so constantly pursued one idea, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... guijo (also spelt guiso or guisoc; Dipterocarpus guiso—Bl.), a wood of red color, which is strong, durable, tough, and elastic; it produces logs 75 feet long by 24 inches square, and is now used in Hongkong for wharf-decks and flooring, but in Manila for carriage shafts (U.S. Gazetteer of Philippine Islands). Blanco says that this tree is much esteemed for carriage-wheels, and is also used for topmasts and keels. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour's repose had snatched from his elastic frame the weariness with which many hours of toil had burthened it. Now he stirred—now moved his lips, without a sound—now talked in an inward tone to the noonday spectres of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... Chocolates and Bon Bons Coe's Cough Balsam Consumers Company Corsets Coupons Crane's Lotion Crown Headache Powders Daisy Fly Killer "Dead Stuck" for Bugs Delatone Dennos Food Digesto Dissolvene Rubber Garments Downs' Obesity Reducer Drosis Duponts Hair Restorative Dyspepsia Remedy, Graham's Elastic Stockings El Perfecto Veda Rose Rouge Empress Hair Color Restorer Empress Shampoo Soap Euca-Scentol Femaform Cones Golden Remedy for Epilepsy Golden Rule Hair Restorative Goodwin's Corn Salve Goodwin's Foot Powder Gowans ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... rooms were jaguar skins, with wonderful spots, and thick monkey furs of exquisite fleeciness. Light curtains of the russet silk, produced by the "sumauma," hung from the windows. The beds, enveloped in mosquito curtains, had their pillows, mattresses, and bolsters filled with that fresh and elastic substance which in the Upper Amazon is yielded ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... Furze grows commonly throughout England on dry exposed plains. It covers these during the flowering season with a gorgeous sheet of yellow blossoms, orange perfumed, and which entirely conceals the rugged brown unsightly branches beneath. Its elastic seed vessels burst with a crackling noise in hot [64] weather, and scatter the seeds on all sides. "Some," says Parkinson, "have used the flowers against the jaundice," but probably only because of their yellow colour. "The seeds," adds Gerard, "are employed in medicines against ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... of seeing Master Briggs's hat floating on the surface, and an unfinished exercise lying on the bank. Briggs, therefore, was not at all sanguine on the subject of holidays; and these two sharers of little Paul's bedroom were so fair a sample of the young gentlemen in general, that the most elastic among them contemplated the arrival of those festive periods with ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... moment, kicked off with the second boot, and the child goes shouting to complete the landscape with the lacking colour of life. You are inclined to wonder that, even undressed, he still shouts with a Cockney accent. You half expect pure vowels and elastic syllables from his restoration, his spring, his slenderness, his brightness, and his glow. Old ivory and wild rose in the deepening midsummer sun, he gives his ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... 1888, as I said before, Mr. Gallivant's mustaches began to curl. They became elastic. They twisted themselves this way and that in graceful good-humor. They twined themselves lovingly about his nose and danced in constant ecstasy. Mr. Gallivant's office in the Equitable Building saw less and less of him. He left his lodgings in Harlem ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... graceful figure coming up the street with quick, elastic steps has not the aspect of one driven forth by grave business cares, nor in the natural course of things would one expect so young a lady to know much of life's burdens and responsibilities. As she passes I am sure the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... with a shout. They would even race toward that sunny place, their weariness all gone. When a bird sang we always stopped to listen; and the song acted upon them as the music of a band acts upon drooping soldiers. On the next stage of the journey their eyes sparkled, and their step was more elastic. When one stumbled and fell, we helped him to his feet and praised his effort, wholly ignoring the fall. Sometimes one would become discouraged and would want to drop out of the company and return home. When this happened, we would gather about him and tell him ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... Being impatient to get into the mountains, the mission assembled immediately, and delegated Mr. Stocking to accompany him. Dr. Wright said of him, at this time, that "his spirits were buoyant, his step elastic, and his energy untiring." Two Nestorians went with them, and they had letters from the governor and some Persian nobles to the Persian Khan and the Emir of the Hakary Koords. At Khosrawa, Mr. Stocking was constrained by sickness to return; and both the native assistants were so alarmed ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... which the General was known to keep on hand. The party to which Mr. Smooth belonged, "Young America," enrolled among its numbers many young gentlemen whose spirits were fast, and young ladies whose talents were fast increasing; hence it was that he was a firm believer in the elastic principles of a go-ahead government: such an one, albeit, as would republicanize Russia, knock Austria into a smash, or make her declare herself something—revolutionize Europe in general, and in particular teach kings of the christian faith how ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... it. Talk to an Englishman about anything serious, and he listens to you curiously for a moment just as he listens to a chap playing classical music. Then he goes back to his marine golf, or motoring, or flying, or women, just like a bit of stretched elastic when you let it go. [Soaring to the height of his theme] Oh, youre quite right. We are only in our infancy. I ought to be in a perambulator, with a nurse shoving me along. It's true: it's absolutely true. But some day we'll grow up; and then, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... sound which invaded the silence came from the light, quick footsteps of a person whose youth betrayed itself in its elastic and unmeasured tread, and in the gay, free carol which broke out by fits and starts upon the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... gay and voluptuous waltz with a 'bock' in their hand, singing the Gaudeamus igitur, that students' hymn glorifying the material life free from care. The French sing amid rippling laughter, and dance with their free and elastic limbs, greeting with rapturous applause their fantastic and monkey-like movements. The English have turned their dance into gymnastics, with the energy of a healthy body delighting in its own strength. But all ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the kind of rumour that challenged his insolent indifference to the public and the Press. Seeing me come into Lady Rothschild's ball-room one night, he left the side of the man he was conversing with and with his elastic step stalked down the empty parquet floor to greet me. He asked me to sit down next to him in a conspicuous place; and we talked through two dances. I was told afterwards that some one who had been ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... an earthquake shock through the earth takes place with wonderful rapidity. The elastic wave varies in velocity from 800 to 1,000 feet per second in sand or clay to three miles per second in ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... the sentences were equally of eight measures. The "sing-song" effect of much so-called popular music is due to the stereotyped metrical pattern. You can always tell just where and how you are coming out. In order to gain a free and elastic phraseology, composers early began to combine three four-measure phrases into a twelve measure sentence. It is obvious that with three phrases there can be more subtle effects of contrast and balance than with two, as the following chart ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... Byron, Shelley, Rogers, Ruskin and the two Brownings, none were more admirably equipped for it than Hawthorne. We cannot read "The Romance of Monte Beni" without recognizing a decidedly Italian element in his composition,—not the light-hearted, subtle, elastic, fiery Italian, such as we are accustomed to think them, but the tenderly feeling, terribly earnest Tuscan, like Dante and Savonarola. The myrtle and the cypress are both emblematic of Italian character, and there was more of the latter than ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... exquisite, the enthusiasm of the spectators more bewitching. Many a young man who makes out to keep right the rest of the year, capsizes now. When he came to town in the autumn, his eye was bright, his cheek rosy, his step elastic; but, before spring, as you pass him you will say to your friend, "What is the matter with that young man?" The fact is that one winter of dissipation has done ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... with every new face, and had been rejected a score of times; he comforted himself, however, with the very scaly proverb, 'there is as good fish in the sea as ever was caught,' and—cast in his line for another chance. He had tried poor women and rich women, young school-girls and elastic old maids, brunettes and blondes, but all in vain; and the moment he saw Ann Harriet he determined to make one more attempt to secure a heart that should beat for him alone, an ear that should be ever on the alert for his footstep, and eyes that should ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... while the rest retains the power of motion. Different persons are affected in very different degrees by electricity, according to their peculiar constitutional susceptibility. Dr. Young remarks, that a very minute tremor, communicated to the most elastic parts of the body, in particular the chest, produces an agitation of the nerves, which is not wholly unlike the effect of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various

... carried to excess: his sternest and his deepest qualities were mingled with fickleness and caprice; his profound sagacity often frustrated by a whim; his towering ambition deserted for some frivolous temptation; and his elastic, sanguine, and high-spirited nature, faithful only to the desire of military glory, to the poetry of a daring and stormy life, and to the susceptibilities of that tender passion without whose colourings no portrait of chivalry is complete, and in which he was capable of a sentiment, a tenderness, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... a happy fellow on earth it was myself when this letter was written, sealed, and fairly despatched. The die was cast, and I walked into the air a regenerated and an elastic being! Let what might happen, I was sure of Anna. Her gentleness would calm my irritability; her prudence temper my energies; her bland but enduring affections soothe my soul. I felt at peace with all around me, myself included, and I found a sweet assurance ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Newton still more forcibly illustrates the position, that in forming physical theories we draw for our materials upon the world of fact. Before he began to deal with light, he was intimately acquainted with the laws of elastic collision, which all of you have seen more or less perfectly illustrated on a billiard-table. As regards the collision of sensible elastic masses, Newton knew the angle of incidence to be equal to the angle of reflection, ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... colours are cracked, or, upon reading Sterne, that he always wrote "you was" instead of "you were." "Did it ever strike you," said a friend of mine, "that whenever you hear of a young woman found drowned she always is described as having worn elastic boots?" Such persons look at all things through a distorting medium. Important things become unimportant and vice versa. The foreground is thrust back, the distance brought forward, and the middle distance is nowhere. The effect of an exaggerated praise generally is that an unfair reaction ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... foot of Charlotte Street and had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder. I ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... office early. The man was for ever being drawn to the theatre as by an invisible but powerful elastic cord. The papers had a worse attack than ever of Isabel Joy, for she had been convicted of transgression in a Chicago court of law, but a tremendous lawyer from St. Louis had loomed over Chicago and, having examined the documents in the case, was hopeful of getting the ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... fashion. If the pollen were shed during perfectly calm weather, it would simply fall upon the ground, without reaching the pistils of neighboring plants at all. But by having the stamens thus doubled up, with elastic stalks, it happens that even when ripe they do not open and shed the pollen unless upon the occurrence of some slight concussion. This concussion is given when the stems are waved about by the wind; and then the pollen is shaken out under ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... looking around him superciliously with a cynical air of contempt, stood forward with a firm and elastic step before his silent worshippers. He was a stalwart savage, in the very prime of life, tall, lithe, and active. His figure was that of a man well used to command; but his face, though handsome, was visibly marked by every external sign of cruelty, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... light grey, and one, who bore the heaviest load of all, a snowy white. His master called him "Aleppo," and chided him gently for his weariness. Phil made himself known to him as he knelt to be unloaded, throwing the weight of his body on the thick elastic pads that Nature had given him on his broad chest and on each elbow and knee of his fore-limbs. These elastic cushions, Phil saw, were on the front of his hind knees too, and smaller ones ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... weight and slender and elastic the form of the man who can sleep many nights comfortably in a seventy-pound canoe without injuring it. Cedar canoes, after being subjected to such use for some time, generally become leaky; so, to avoid ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... and the Medway, with an elaborate catalogue of the English and Irish rivers, and the names of the sea-nymphs. In truth, he had exhausted his proper allegory, or he got tired of it. His poem became an elastic framework, into which he could fit whatever interested him and tempted him to composition. The gravity of the first books disappears. He passes into satire and caricature. We meet with Braggadochio and ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... plantain. Large yellow gentians, mulleins, the nearly black and the purple orchids, vetches of all colours, the Alpine clover with four or five enormous flowers in a head instead of fifty little ones, the Astrantias (like a circular brooch made up of fifty gems each mounted on a long elastic wire and set vibrating side by side), the sky-blue forget-me-nots, and the golden potentillas, are usually components of the Alpine meadow. At Murren, and no doubt commonly elsewhere, there are a few very beautiful grasses among the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... stately. Time had not marred the lines of his slender figure, no increase of flesh enlarged his girth, no weakness made his shoulders droop and rounded his back, and when dressed with exquisite taste, and carrying his head proudly erect, he walked with a light, elastic step through the streets or across the carpet of a drawing-room, he would have been taken at a distance, or if one was a little near-sighted, not only for a handsome man, but even for one ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... manner by rotating the rod h'e', the lantern-wheel at the end of which turns a crown-wheel on whose axle is a pinion-wheel working in the teeth of the circle c. The casings at e and e', in which the rods he and h'e' respectively work, are so fastened by elastic cords that an upward pressure on the handle h, or a downward pressure on the handle h', at once releases the endless screw or the crown-wheel respectively, so that the telescope can be swept at once through any desired angle in altitude or azimuth. ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... result in entire frustration; that the passion for old forms of freedom would gather tenfold vigor in consequence. It would be far better to favor its indulgence, in the hope that the love of her child would, like an elastic but infrangible cord, gradually tame her down to a more ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... brown men of the West, but from the old Selection Districts, where many drovers came from, and of the old bush school; one of those slight active little fellows whom we used to see in cabbage-tree hats, Crimean shirts, strapped trousers, and elastic-side boots—"larstins," they called them. They could dance well; sing indifferently, and mostly through their noses, the old bush songs; play the concertina horribly; and ride like—like—well, they ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... A girl of fifteen or sixteen, naked, except for a kilt of gaily-striped material reaching from her waist to her knees. Her long black hair was drawn back from the forehead, and tied behind with a loop of the elastic vine. A scarlet blossom was stuck behind her right ear, after the fashion of a clerk's pen. Her face was beautiful, powdered with tiny freckles; especially under the eyes, which were of a deep, tranquil blue-grey. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... sustain it, and also to secure voluntary motion. They are about two hundred and fifty in number, (there being sometimes a few more or less,) and are fastened together by cartilage, or gristle, a substance like the bones, but softer, and more elastic. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... quandary. Traveling men meet such men as Harris frequently. He gave the order because he was friendly to the house, but he had not asked for prices on anything. What was I to do? I had several prices, for my figures were elastic, to offer trade, according as the buyer was a close one or not, and just where to put Harris I did not know. I proposed to ask him all I dared and not get into trouble, but to decide on what this limit was ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... female beauty, and nowhere can you see people in the same class more becomingly attired. At the same time there is nothing rustic about them, except genuine good nature and unaffected simplicity of manners. To judge by their light elastic step and rosy smiling countenances, no people on earth seem to enjoy a greater share of health ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... sudden there died out of her face the fawn-like, woodland look, the maternal wildness, the red-blooded joy. She was the harassed and unquiet Jinny whom he knew. It was so that her genius dealt with her. She had been swung high on a strong elastic, luminous wave; and now she was ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... every chemical test. In either condition, protoplasm, as such, has properties of the same nature (though not of the same kind) as those of water, oxygen gas, or any other matter; it is colorless, heavy, sticky, elastic, and so forth; but besides all that (without the aid of electricity or any physical force we can apply) one has the power of producing more protoplasm—gathering for itself, by virtue of its inherent power, the materials ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... They are encamped on the other shore. This soldier has gone to his rest, and now, crippled, blinded, and broken, his widow comes to you and to me, gentlemen of the jury, to right her wrongs. She was not always as you see her now. Once her step was elastic. Her face was fair. Her voice was as sweet as any that rang in the mountains of old Virginia. Now she is old. She is poor and defenceless. Out here on the prairies of Illinois, hundreds of miles ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... enjoyment of a royal party has ever been seen in Europe. The main carriage—for there are several in the suite—called, par excellence, the emperor's own, is eighty-five feet long, and something over the usual width. It rests upon two undivided sleepers of such elastic and well-grained wood that they would bear the entire weight of the carriage, without the necessity of a support in the middle, forming a single stretch or arch, from axle to axle, of about seventy feet. The springs, wheels, brakes, and various kinds of iron-work, are of the finest ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... the true way to lengthen each day. Time is infinitely elastic. The noblest work is to do 'the works of Him that sent me.' There should be no care for the future. It is in His hand. There will be room in it for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Top Surface of Ice on a Pond, the Amount of Water let in and out being the Same Day by Day, on a Level with the Water Surface or above it?—Ice is slightly elastic, and when fast to the shore the central portion rises and falls with slight variations in water level, the proportion above and below water level being as is the weight of ice to the weight of water ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... exalt all around her, and to pour whatever else of ambition was left unsatisfied into sympathy with the aspirations of man. Despite her father's fears of the bleak air of England, in that air she had strengthened the delicate health of her childhood. Her elastic step—her eyes full of sweetness and light—her bloom, at once soft and luxuriant—all spoke of the vital powers fit to sustain a mind of such exquisite mould, and the emotions of a heart that, once aroused, could ennoble ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... fast. Joey was capable of great fatigue; he had grown considerably, it is true, during the last two years; still he was small for his age; but every muscle in his body was a wire, and his strength, as had been proved by his school-mates, was proportionate. He was elastic as india-rubber, and bold and determined as one who had been all his ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... its marvellous velocity, each foot is armed with two sharp hooks, with elastic opposable pads, so that the hair can not only be rapidly seized and firmly held, but as quickly disengaged, as the creature whirls ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... over-sanguine expectations of successfully rivalling the glory of Frederick and Catherine, and the ill success of his war against the Turks, all tended to break down his enthusiastic spirit, which only wanted the elastic resistance of fortitude to have made him a great character. He for some time sunk into a profound melancholy; and expired on the 20th of January, 1791, accusing his Belgian subjects of having caused ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... the common and unnoticed grass by the roadside or in the field, he can see in each blade a system of masonry and architecture that no human skill has ever been able to equal. The stem is very slender, but is so elastic and strong that it waves gracefully in the breeze and bends to the earth in the storm without breaking, and assumes an upright attitude again. It is made up of delicate cells and perfect and intricate ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... chetahs would be very powerful vermin-gins, made expressly of great size and strength, so as to lie one foot square when open. Even a common jackal-trap would hold a leopard, provided the chain was fastened to an elastic bough, so that it would yield slightly to his spring; but if it were secured to a post, or to anything that would enable him to get a dead pull against it, something would most likely give way. I have constantly set these traps for them, ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... success and was going to return an old, broken-down failure. On the contrary, the thought of again walking the streets of his native land, breathing the atmosphere, and hearing the voices of his beloved countrymen so lightened his heart that his steps were almost elastic. He kicked the snow aside with vigour, and jumped on the street car as if he were a boy. He saluted the conductor with such a hearty good-morning, that the man looked ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... feeble gaslight shone, disclosing Aphrodite—somewhat disarranged by the panic—standing smiling in front of the erstwhile Voodoo. She looked down at his feet. There, sure enough, one huge member was unshod and stockingless; the elastic-slit congress gaiter, lost in the shuffle, lay out of the radius of Ambrose's long leg. Miss Aphrodite picked it up and, stooping, slipped it over his mighty toes, noticing as she did so the thick coating of phosphorescent paint that ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... ecclesiastical : eklezia. echo : ehxo, resonadi. edge : rando, trancxrando, bordo edify : edifi. edit : redakti. edition : eldono. editor : redaktoro. educate : eduki. eel : angilo. effect : efiko, efekto. effective : efektiva. efficacious : efika. effort : peno, klopodo. eiderduck : molanaso. elastic : elast'a, -ajxo. elbow : kubuto. elder : (tree), sambuko. elect : elekti, baloti. electricity : elektro. elegant : eleganta. elf : koboldo, elfo. elm : ulmo. eloquent : elokventa. embalm : balzami. embrace ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... child and the young was good that this beautiful miracle could be brought about. Judith went home with elastic step and lifted, ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... seemed to be a dry-land sailor, with a wife in every town he ever had made in his life. Mackenzie understood about Mexican marriages. If they were priest marriages, they were counted good; if they were merely justice of the peace ones they were subject to wide and elastic infringement on both sides. Probably Indian marriages were similar. Surely Dad was old enough to know ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... jewellers came down from London, and opened a bazaar under the trees. In one booth the politician might find his coffee and the London Gazette; in another were gamblers playing deep at basset; and, on fine evenings, the fiddles were in attendance and there were morris dances on the elastic turf of the bowling green. In 1685 a subscription had just been raised among those who frequented the wells for building a church, which the Tories, who then domineered everywhere, insisted on dedicating to Saint ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... resemblance to an enormous turtle lying across the river, forms an arch through which the eye takes in a little sheet of water, clear as a mirror, where the stream seems to sleep until it reaches in the distance a series of cascades falling among huge rocks, where little weeping willows with elastic motion sway back and forth ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... in their elastic and buoyant natures to grasp the full significance of the thing at once, or easily. Their position in the social structure, too, was all against clear-sightedness in material matters. A general, for example, uniformed and in the saddle, advancing ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... aided him where he lay beside her to slip the pack straps over his shoulders. Then she drew toward her the little osier cage in which their only remaining carrier-pigeon rested secured by elastic bands, grasped the smaller sack with ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... as bright and white, but the spring was already advanced. The wet soil smelt of spring. Clear cold water ran everywhere from under the loose, thawing snow. The branches of the trees were springy and elastic. For miles and miles around, the country opened up ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... sent by turns over to Wall's to Sunday-school. When Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots, and there was no end of rows about them in the family—for the mother made him lend them to his sister Annie, to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn. There were only about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the family, and these were saved for great occasions. The children were ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... duck-pond than ride twice atop of his hay-waggon; and between the smell of hay and the softness of it, and the height you are up above other folk, and the danger of tumbling off if you don't look out—for hay is elastic as well as soft—you don't easily beat a ride on a hay-waggon for pleasure. But as I say, I'd rather put to sea on the duck-pond, though the best craft I could borrow was the pigstye-door, and a pole to punt with, and the village boys jeering ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... brilliant, by occasional sighs of wind, that removed from the traveller the superfluous heat of an unclouded sun. In spite of the adventure, so mysterious and vexatious, in which he was engaged, Edward's elastic spirit (assisted, perhaps, by the brandy he had unwittingly swallowed) rose higher as he rode on; and he soon found himself endeavoring to accommodate the tune of one of Hugh Crombie's ballads to the motion of the horse. Nor did this reviving cheerfulness ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... already made certain preparations, for news of the completion of which he was anxiously waiting. And at length the news came; whereupon, having dispatched to the commanders at the other three points identical sets of instructions, of a sufficiently elastic character to leave plenty of scope for initiative on the part of the leaders, he summoned the commanders of his own division to his tent as soon as the day's fighting was over, and, having carefully and fully explained his plans to them, gave them explicit instructions regarding their conduct upon ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... tendencies—she was above all else a Russian, and bent all the resources of her powerful personality to the enlightenment and advancement of the land of her adoption. Her people were not "knouted into civilization," but invited and drawn into it. Her touch was terribly firm—but elastic. She was arbitrary, but tolerant; and if her reign was a despotism, it was a despotism of that broad type which deals with the sources of things, and does not bear heavily upon individuals. The Empress Catherine ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... the Papacy and the necessities of civil government. All Catholics are bound to oppose this opinion. Only that which is of Divine institution is unchangeable through all time. But the sovereignty of the Popes is extremely elastic, and has already gone through many forms. No contrast can be stronger than that between the use which the Popes made of their power in the thirteenth or the fifteenth century, and the system of Consalvi. There is no reason, therefore, to doubt, that it will now, after ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... woodside on a summer noon trolling on his pipe until he charmed the hearts of upland ploughmen. And the Greeks, in so figuring, uttered the last word of human experience. To certain smoke-dried spirits matter and motion and elastic ethers, and the hypothesis of this or that other spectacled professor, tell a speaking story; but for youth and all ductile and congenial minds, Pan is not dead, but of all the classic hierarchy alone survives ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from her pocket a beautiful pair of elastic glass slippers, which she caused Cinderella to put on; and when she had thus completed her work, and Cinderella stood before her, arrayed in her beautiful clothes, the fairy was much pleased, and desired her to get into the carriage with all expedition, ...
— Little Cinderella • Anonymous

... hand on his arm, and shook her head with a pleasant smile. She was regarding with pride and satisfaction her brother's fine figure, admirably shown in the elastic grace of his blue Guernsey. She turned the collar low enough to leave his round throat a little bare, and put his blue flannel Tam o' Shanter over his close, clustering curls. "Go as you are," she said. "In that dress you feel at home, and ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... that dark period of desolation and despair, you marvel how you lived through it. But the nature of youth is elastic. You have learned that law offers colored men nothing but its penalties; that white men engross all its protection; still you are tempted to make another bargain for your freedom. Your new master seems easy and good-natured, and you trust he will prove more honorable than your brother has ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child

... pink, shell-like ear; these complete a picture which seems to belong to another clime and another age, and lives hardly but on the canvas of Titian. We are almost sorry to enter the room and break the spell. Mary Anderson's manner as she starts up from the organ with a light elastic spring to greet her visitors is singularly gracious and winning. There is a frank fearlessness in the beautiful speaking eyes so full of poetry and soul, a mingled tenderness and decision in the mouth, with an utter absence of ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar

... the most sluggish of God's creatures, he sleeps continually, digests huge meals, and grunts, gurgles, pipes, trills and whistles in the most engaging way. In the sea he is transformed into one of the most elastic and lithe of beasts, catching his fish and swallowing them whole. As you stand over his blow-hole his head appears, and he snorts at you with surprise but no fear, opening and shutting his nostrils the while as he takes in a supply of fresh air. It is clear that they travel for many ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... learnt so much, it was tantalizing not to learn a little more. If he could only make sure of that millionaire friend of Minchin! In his own mind he was all but sure, but his own mind was too elastic by half. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... expedition, which was very soon to take place. The Young Girl was full of enthusiasm; she is one of those young persons, I think, who are impressible, and of necessity depressible when their nervous systems are overtasked, but elastic, recovering easily from mental worries and fatigues, and only wanting a little change of their conditions to get back their bloom and cheerfulness. I could not help being pleased to see how much of the child was left in her, after all the drudgery she had been through. What is there ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... has accomplished its two main objects. It has secured an abundant revenue and been productive of an abounding prosperity. Under it the country has had a very large export and import trade. A constant revision of the tariff by the Congress is disturbing and harmful. The present law contains an elastic provision authorizing the President to increase or decrease present schedules not in excess of 50 per centum to meet the difference in cost of production at home and abroad. This does not, to my mind, warrant a rewriting ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Vanheimert longed to hear him snore. At last the rabbiter fell into a doze, and when he awoke the auspicious music filled the tent. He listened on one elbow, peering till the darkness turned less dense; and there lay Howie across the opening of the tent. Vanheimert reached for his thin elastic-sided bushman's boots, and his hands trembled as he drew them on. He could now see the form of Howie plainly enough as it lay half in the starlight and half in the darkness of the tent. He stepped over it without a mistake, and the ignoble ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... of that loose-bound hair; the poise of head and neck; the eloquent sway of the form; the folds of garments that no longer hide, but are illumined by, the plenitude of an inner life and grace; the elastic feet; the ethereal energy and discipline of arms and shoulders; the supple wrists; the very fingers quivering on the strings; the rapt face, and the ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... a sort of berline hung on five pieces of rather elastic wood between wheels placed rather wide apart and of moderate height; that this carriage is driven by a "yemtchik," on the front seat, who has three horses, to whom is added a postilion, the "faletre," when it is necessary to hire a fourth ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... great merit of Angioletto's that he always took things and men (especially women) as he found them. Such as they were he could be for the time. He was by no means waxen; elastic rather. Down he plumped, accordingly, cross-legged by his new mistress, and warbled a canzone to the ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... sinuses at the base of all the toes of the four feet, with two rudimentary hoofs on the fore legs, two inguinal teats to the udder, with a short tail in the wild breed, but of varying length in the domesticated; have no incisor teeth in the upper jaw, but in their place a hard elastic cushion along the margin of the gum, on which the animal nips and breaks the herbage on which it feeds; in the lower jaw there are eight incisor teeth and six molars on each side of both jaws, making in all 32 teeth. The fleece consists of two coats, one to keep ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... disease, when my limbs were swollen, and my stomach refused to retain the food—taken in in sorrow, then I looked with pleasure on the scheme: but as soon as dry frosty weather came, or the rains and damps passed off, and I was filled with elastic health, from crown to sole, then the thought of the weight of pecuniary obligation from so many people reconciled me; but I have broken ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... hated most were the earthworms. The red elastic things made me shiver with horror, and if I happened to step on one it made me quite ill. When I had a pain in my side la mere Colas used to forbid my sister to go out. But my sister got tired of remaining indoors and wanted to go out and take me with her. So she used to go and collect ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux

... the mould will stand obliquely to the piston, and a dangerous friction will result." "Of course, it is necessary to protect the man working the hydraulic valves during compression. At Waltham Abbey they have a curtain made of ship's hawsers, which is at the same time elastic and resistant." Mr Guttmann has found that a partition wall 12 inches thick, made of 2-inch planks, and filled with ground cinders, gives very effective protection. A door in this partition enables the workman to ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... some inherent character in nature affording a rule of presentation of events. Furthermore congruence cannot be defined by the permanence of the measuring rod. The permanence is itself meaningless apart from some immediate judgment of self-congruence. Otherwise how is an elastic string differentiated from a rigid measuring rod? Each remains the same self-identical object. Why is one a possible measuring rod and the other not so? The meaning of congruence lies beyond the self-identity of the object. In other words measurement presupposes ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... a belief in superhuman beings who rule the world, and, second, an attempt to win their favour, it clearly assumes that the course of nature is to some extent elastic or variable, and that we can persuade or induce the mighty beings who control it to deflect, for our benefit, the current of events from the channel in which they would otherwise flow. Now this implied ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... that could be wrought by Heaven, for the purpose of continually confounding the local vestiges of popular reverence which might have gathered round stocks and stones, so obstinate is the hankering after this mode of superstition in man that his heart returns to it with an elastic recoil as often as the openings are restored. Agreeably to this infatuation, the temple of the true God—even its awful adytum—the holy of holies—or the places where the ark of the covenant had rested ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... ruddier hue, the sparkle of his black eyes mellowed into a calm and steady radiance. There was no trace of feverish elation which, in solitude, recoiled to the brink of despair. He sang to himself evenings in his dormitory, clearly and with joy. His step was as elastic as that of any schoolboy. I often thought upon this change, and meditated how beautiful an illustration of confession's blessings it furnished. Frequently we were alone, but he never referred again to that memorable evening, even by implication. At first I dreaded to have ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... drawn over his trousers to the knee, and his great spurs, and a brace of pistols in his belt, seemed incongruous accessories to the habiliments of a miller. His large, dark hat was thrust far back on his head; his hair, rising straight in a sort of elastic wave from his brow, was powdered white; the effect of his florid color and his dark eyes was accented by the contrast; his pointed beard revealed its natural tints because of his habit of frequently brushing his hand over it, and was distinctly ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... Charmian thought he looked as if he had once, consenting, been gently boiled. A flowing blue tie, freely peppered with ample white spots, gave a Bohemian touch to his pleasant and innocent appearance. He was dressed for cool weather in England, and wore boots with square toes and elastic sides. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... several traders having joined us. The "Clumsy's" yard looks much better than formerly. I cut off about ten feet from the end, as it was topheavy. The yard of this class of vessel should look like an immense fishing-rod, and should be proportionately elastic, as it tapers gradually to a point. Course S.E. I hear that the Shillook tribe have attacked Chenooda's people, and that his boat was capsized, and some lives lost in the hasty retreat. It serves these slave-hunters ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... only characteristic symptom of hernia is the presentation of an elastic, or doughy tumor of variable size, which either gradually or suddenly makes its appearance. There is flatulence, uneasiness, and sometimes pain ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... voice and gesticulates; he makes great movements in the night at the vision of his idol, to whom his leanness and his long elastic arms give him some resemblance. "He's for war; he's for Alsace-Lorraine, that's what he's for; and above all, he's for nothing else. Ah, that's all there is to it! The Boches have got to disappear off the earth, else ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... at the table. Seated opposite me, he never appears to see me, whilst you, grave Gilbert, do not know at times what to do with your eyes; but the other day he crossed the great hall with such a quick and elastic step that the Count's attention was drawn to him. I must caution him to be more discreet. I am also uneasy because in our nocturnal tete-a-tetes he often raises his voice, moves the furniture, and storms round the room; ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... the Amy Rutherford in heaven, would have pleaded for and won me absolution in a far worse case than this; and they at once set themselves to work to demolish my almost morbid fancies in connection with the theft of the jewels. The very fact that I had now told them all was a relief, and my elastic spirits at once began to rise from the weight which had burdened them during the last ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... law officers took a more liberal view. The fact is that the questions referred to the law officers for opinions by the Foreign Office have very often much more connection with policy than with law, and their opinions are elastic. There never were such law officers as James and Herschell. They did their work with extraordinary promptitude and decision, and with the highest possible skill. They never differed, and they always gave us ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... stool, which the old one wiped off. I washed her cunt, threw her on the bed, and looked at the little quim. It seemed impossible I could have been up it; but from that day I knew a cunt to be the most elastic article in the world, and believed the old woman's saying, that a prick can always go up where a ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... shows on the hand; it was closely fitted to a figure not yet fully developed, but which the creator of the chef-d'oeuvre deigned to declare was faultless. Usually, he said, he recommended his customers to wear a certain corset of a special cut, with elastic material over the hips covered by satin that matched the riding-habit, but at Mademoiselle's age, and so supple as she was, the corset was not necessary. In short, the habit was fashioned to perfection, ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... there was a steady downfall of rain, but sunshine came with the morning, and we found that the spring we had left at the North was summer here, and saw that the season was moving forward with quickened and elastic tread. Before the day grew warm we started from our hotel at Norfolk for the strawberry plantation, rattling and bouncing past comfortable and substantial homes, over a pavement that surpassed even the ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... carried home the net while Amiel had borne the spoils and protested courteously when Jennie offered an assisting hand. It was dreary consolation to realize that never for a moment had the proud smile wavered. She was beginning to feel as though an elastic band had been stretched for hours under her nose and behind her ears, and the sole comment her lofty amiability had drawn forth had been a reference to the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... the human intellect thrives and is joyous, with a tough, elastic strength, under the terrible blows of the divinely fashioned weapon. Protestant writers consider that they have all the private judgment to themselves, and that we have the superincumbent oppression of authority. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... together by the effectual energy of a single will."[12] Vessels in a state of concentration he compares to a fan that opens and shuts. In this view concentration connotes not a homogeneous body, but a compound organism controlled from a common centre, and elastic enough to permit it to cover a wide field without sacrificing the mutual ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... mother, left behind her an only daughter, who was dear as the apple of his eye to the old warrior, but, at the same time, he had no idea of any one connected with him having any freedom of will or exercise of opinion—save what he allowed—nor did he believe women's hearts were less elastic than his own, which he could bend to any needful expedient. About the period our story commences the Lady May was nearly eighteen years of age, a beautiful and gentle girl, whose hand was sought by ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various

... her ten minutes later. When she came into the little hall she saw lying on a table beside Dion's hat several letters. She stopped by the table and looked down at them. They lay there in a pile held together by an elastic band, and she could only see the writing on the envelope which was at the top. It was addressed to Dion and had been through the post. She wondered whether among those letters there was one from Rosamund. Had she written to the husband whom she ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... jewels and other articles of personal adornment is very expansive, and a fall in the price of any one article of this kind causes a relatively large increase in the consumption of it. Since the want to which a costly ornament caters is thus elastic, the cheapening of all articles that cater to this want would enlarge the consumption of all of them. The cheapening of a particular one of these articles, if there were in the market many others of the ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... and remained there. He began to love me and desired me. Yes—desired!' said she, getting her overshoe and her boot off at last and starting to take off her stockings. To remove those long stockings fastened with elastic it was necessary to raise her skirts. ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy

... prospect of the other girls, coming—and Tom and his friends, too—and the fun in store for them all at Snow Camp, soon made Ruth Fielding forget small troubles. Besides, the muscles of youth are elastic and the weariness soon went out of her bones. Before the party arrived from Scarboro she had opportunity of going all about the great log lodge, and getting acquainted with all it held ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... really is; most people are satisfied to frame an answer to suit their own case, and so it happens that we have a multiplicity of definitions for the word, many of which are devoid of scientific solidity, and others have not even the merit of intelligibility. A recent definition, extremely elastic, was propounded by a popular preacher in a lecture delivered before the Glasgow Young Men's Christian Association and reported in the newspapers,—"Superstition is Scepticism," which may be legitimately paraphrased "Superstition is not believing ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... that the voice was that of a girl. The song was barely at an end, when he soon espied in the opposite direction, a beautiful girl advancing with majestic and elastic step; a girl quite unlike any ordinary mortal being. There is this poem, which gives ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin



Words linked to "Elastic" :   bouncy, adaptable, fictile, rubber band, band, elastic bandage, textile, elastic tissue, material, expansible, chewy, live, stretch, lively, elastic modulus, elasticized, moldable, flexible, rubbery, pliable, expandible, elastic band



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