"Explode" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and she were pleasant acquaintances together. Presently she should inform him better as to that. But why, oh, why, that small flinching at the sight of him, the very man she had fared into the downpour to explode, not pausing even to ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and was lying back against the cushion of the car-seat. After a little, he said: "Just after we saw the Italian killed last week I told you I had a notion, Ford. I've got it yet, and I've been turning it over in my mind and wondering if I'd better explode it on you. On the whole, I think I'd better not. It's a case of surgery. If the patient lives, you'll know about it. If the patient dies, you'll be no worse off than you are now. Shall we let it rest ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... bomb-shell to explode in their midst, carrying widespread destruction, perhaps; for though one swallow does not make a summer, one engagement is apt to make several, and her boys were, most of them, at the inflammable age when a spark ignites the flame, which soon flickers and dies out, or burns warm and clear ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... was placed in his room," he went on, "must have been a little infernal machine of glass, constructed so as to explode the moment the wrapper was broken. The flying pieces of glass injected the poison as by a myriad of hypodermic needles— the highly poisonous toxin of abrin, product of the jequirity, which is ordinarily destroyed in the stomach ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... for this motherless lamb, or kid,—whichever she may prove. One thing more, and here-after I shall hold my peace. You need not live in chronic dread, lest the Guy Fawkes of female curiosity pry into, and explode your mystery; for I assure you, Peyton, I shall never directly or indirectly question the child, and until you voluntarily broach the subject I shall never mention it to you. Are ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the boat an' began to push through the bushes, we went straight for the line of my musket, as I had expected; but by some unlucky chance it didn't explode, for I saw the line torn away by the men's legs, and heard the click o' the lock; so I fancy the priming had got damp and didn't catch. I was in a great quandary now what to do, for I couldn't concoct in my mind, in the hurry, any good reason for firin' off ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... brute isn't vicious; doesn't blow up or explode, or shed its safety valve, or anything," I remarked with a facetiousness which in the circumstances did ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... other proportion, by the accurate and exact standard, viz. the enumeration of the minute indivisible parts, they both employ a standard, which is useless in practice, and actually establish the indivisibility of extension, which they endeavour to explode. Or if they employ, as is usual, the inaccurate standard, derived from a comparison of objects, upon their general appearance, corrected by measuring and juxtaposition; their first principles, though certain and infallible, are ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... that the two do not harmonize. Just like wind, water, thunder and lightning, which, when they meet in the bowels of the earth, must necessarily, as they are both to dissolve and are likewise unable to yield, clash and explode to the end that they may at length exhaust themselves. Hence it is that these spirits have also forcibly to diffuse themselves into the human race to find an outlet, so that they may then completely disperse, with the result that men and women are suddenly imbued with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Miss Mohun that the door opened at that moment to admit some more visitors, for she saw that Gillian might at any moment explode. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Anthony and me. And we blew such beautiful ones to-day, and they'll explode and then we'll blow more and more, I guess—bubbles just as big and just as beautiful, until all the soap and water ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... properly in the detonator, or the detonator is not properly enclosed in the cartridge, or the fuse is injured by improper tamping. If several shots have been fired together, particularly at the change of a "shift," the men who have to remove the broken material may in so doing explode the missed charge. Or, more inexcusable still, men will often be so foolish as to try to clear out the drill hole and remove the missed cartridge. When a charge is known to have missed all that is necessary ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... choral songs have frequently little or no connexion with the fable, and are nothing better than a mere episodical ornament, they therefore conclude that the Greeks had only to take one more step in the progress of dramatic art, to explode the Chorus altogether. To refute these superficial conjectures, it is only necessary to observe that Sophocles wrote a Treatise on the Chorus, in prose, in opposition to the principles of some other poets; and that, far from following blindly the practice ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... I watched the fuse in the hand of that red-haired guy. He started to count—one, two, and his hand began to shake; at three his hand was moving about violently; at four the bomb fell. I wonder if there is any one in the world who thinks that we stopped there to see that bomb explode. No, we didn't. ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... Isolani. Will it explode, ha?—Is the Duke about To make the attempt? In me, friend, you may place Full confidence.—Nay, put me to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... outskirts of the little village of West Brookfield we came to a stand-still; the spark disappeared,—or rather from a large, round, fat spark it dropped to an insignificant little blue sparklet that would not explode a squib. ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... and listening to his tense voice, Jane felt as if she were standing at the edge of a mine that might explode at ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... slain except a woman and two children who hid themselves during the heat of the massacre, and a boy who was spared because he had been kind to Tarra. All the bodies were taken ashore and eaten. One of the chiefs while curiously examining a barrel of gunpowder caused it to explode, blowing himself and a dozen ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... crowded, minutes of glorious life. Hasted, who was one of those who enjoyed this destruction, complains that they did not know much about what to do; they burred the breech-block threads and smashed the sights with pickaxes. The Mills bombs put in the bores did not explode satisfactorily. Then they fell back. One of the sergeants was hit in the chest, Sergeant Tivey, a Canadian; he was put on one of the Turkish garrons and led along. 'From the attention he received from the enemy's guns, they must have thought him a Field-Marshal.'[15] ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... treatment of his children varies. If England go right for the Kaiser, well, and his Majesty is in good-humor with Queen, with Crown-Prince and Wilhelmina. If England go wrong for the Kaiser, dark clouds gather on the royal brow, in the royal heart; explode in thunder-storms; and at length crockery goes flying through the rooms, blows descend on the poor Prince's back; and her Majesty is in tears, mere Chaos come again. For as a general rule, unless the English Negotiation have some prospering fit, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... retired from the gates of the capital, the nation bankrupt beyond all hopes of liquidation, the various states in chronic discontent both in Europe and in Asia, and the claims of Greece threatening to explode the combustible materials, we may well appreciate the back-door that has so frequently afforded a retreat from ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... "The sentence," says the decree, "will at once be executed by the detachment on duty." We are preparing for the worst; in the Place of the Pantheon, and other squares, it is proposed to take up the paving stones, because they will, if left, explode shells which may strike them. The windows of the Louvre and other public edifices are being filled with sand bags. This morning I was walking along the Rue Lafayette, when I heard a cry "A bas les cigares!" and I found that if I continued to smoke, it was thought that I should set light ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... although she was fond of sweets. Her rather heavy face, with no clearly cut outline in it, was not the typical face for passion; but she was capable of passion to an extraordinary degree, and what is more remarkable, it was not explosive passion, or rather it was not passion which she suffered to explode. I remember once when she was a little mite she was asked out somewhere to tea. She was dressed and ready, but it began to rain fast, and she was told she could not go. She besought, but it was in vain. We could not afford cabs, and there was no omnibus. Marie, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... among Greek roots, and chew over the cud of his misfortune. Punctual to the time and place, that same evening beheld the injured Cudmore resume his wonted corner, pretty much with the feeling with which a forlorn hope stands match in hand to ignite the train destined to explode with ruin to thousands —himself perhaps amongst the number: there he sat with a brain as burning, and a heart as excited, as though, instead of sipping his bohea beside a sea-coal fire, he was that instant trembling beneath the frown of Dr. Elrington, for the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... shall carry a ball of yarn dipped in turpentine, mixed with sulphur and other inflammable things. They shall also carry another ball, having but a thin coating of the yarn, and powder inside so as to explode. When the clock strikes two, we will say, each of them will smash the window of some store, light both balls, and put them in. I want the explosion of one ball to scare anyone who may be sleeping there half out of their senses, and make ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... no cause for alarm. Thomas Roch's explosive will not burn unless subjected to a special deflagrator. Neither fire nor shock will explode it." ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... risen and was moving towards the door, to cover her own inclination to explode, and thus make the situation more awkward for the girl, when the principal checked her ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... belie him; for his temper was very inflammable; and at a word, he would explode in a shower of hard words and imprecations. It was Max that several times set on foot those conspiracies against Jackson, which I have spoken of before; but he ended by paying him a grumbling ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... something good," said Mrs. Peavey in a doleful tone. "Looks like the world have got into astonishing misery. Did you all read in the Bolivar Herald last week about that explode in a mine in Delyware; a terrible flood in Louisianny and the man that killed his wife and six children in Kansas? I don't know what we're a-coming to. I told Mr. Peavey and Buck this morning, but they ain't either of 'em got any sympathy. ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Lords. The nobles, in the last resort, would all stand by each other: there was now a Douglas plot of the old sort to bring back the exiles; and Darnley, with his jealous desire to murder Riccio, was but the cat's-paw to light the train and explode Mary and her Government. Ruthven, whom Mary had always distrusted, came into the conspiracy. Through Randolph all was known in England. "Bands" were drawn up, signed by Argyll (safe in his own hills), Murray, Glencairn, Rothes, Boyd, Ochiltree (the father of Knox's young wife), ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... suggested excuses, and placed the matter in as favorable a light as the truth would admit. The straightforward sailor, however, saw through it all. He could not contain his indignation: after letting it explode in true sailor fashion, he concluded with this piece of practical philosophy: "Never mind, Hawser; 'tis the way of the world. I have always found it so. As for gratitude, affection, disinterested kindness, and friendship, 'tis all a ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... those professors of Cambridge from their materialism, I saw personally those three, who belonged to the committee who have published their opinion regarding the phenomena, called spirit manifestations, and also the fourth who did not belong to the committee, but was the strongest operator to explode the truth, that departed spirits are in close connexion with congenial mortals, and that they, when circumstances are favorable and it agrees with the Plan of Divine Government, give also to exterior senses of men perceivable ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... mode in which they broke up with the liberation of some of their store of internal energy. How could we imagine an atomic structure which would persist unchanged for long periods of time, and yet eventually spontaneously explode, as here an atom and there an atom ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... ammunition dump, and report after report rent the air as first one shell and then another would burst and go up in flame. It was fourteen hours going off and the military officer ordered the girls to their billets until it should be over. It was like this: First a couple of shells would explode, then there would be a second's quiet and a keg of powder would flare; then some boxes of ammunition would go off; then some more shells. It was a terrible pandemonium of sound. Thirty miles away in Gondrecourt they saw the fire and ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... waiting to learn any more, but I stayed up till far into the night preparing my final plans. My intention was to shoot her just before dinner, and arrange for the false report to explode after he had arrived and hidden himself in the old staircase, waiting for her to go to him. Then, when the report startled everybody in the dining-room, I intended to be the first to rush upstairs, and lead the search in the direction of the old ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... give an idea of its size, the vessel weighed about two tons. Inside was a piece of clock-work, the mainspring of which, on withdrawing a peg placed on the outside, would, after going six or ten minutes, draw the trigger of a lock, and explode the vessel. Every other part was filled with about 40 barrels of gunpowder and other inflammable matter. As much ballast was placed in it as would keep the upper surface of the deck even with the water's edge. It had no mast, and had to be towed towards the scene of its operations. The tow-rope ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... as the shell, after grazing the funnel, struck full against it, afforded most satisfactory evidence of the accuracy of the line. Happily, the shell contented itself with cutting the foremast very nearly in two, and did not explode until it had passed safely overboard, otherwise the havoc created by it on the crowded deck of the steamer must ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... gelatine, inserted in one of Settle's water cartridges, was suspended in the boiler tube and fired with a fulminate of mercury detonator in the usual manner. The gelatine did not, however, explode, the only report being that of the detonator. After a safe interval the unexploded cartridge was recovered, or so much of it as had not been scattered by the detonator, and the gelatine was found to be frozen. This fact was also evident from an inspection of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... despair because he thought that she had carried off with her all that remained to him of youth and passion, and how two days later he had recognized his mistake on feeling the gunpowder in his heart, though swamped with so many sobs and tears, dry, kindle, and explode at the first look of love cast at him by the first woman he met. He narrated the sudden and imperious invasion of forgetfulness, without his even having summoned it in aid of his grief, and how this grief was dead and ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... and at night a raiding party swam down the ice cold Yser, and, negotiating the submerged wire, landed in the Allied support line. Stunning the sentry with a bomb which, fortunately, refused to explode, they proceeded to the front line to seek gas emplacements. Either through unexpected disturbance, or for some other reason, they were compelled to leave before completing their inspection, and successfully swam the Yser canal back to their own trenches. This hazardous enterprise represents but ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... Cross have gaily leaped into the arena, and of how the foes have been forgotten and there stands the Cross still, we may say of the whole crowd, beginning with the earliest, and coming down to the latest brand-new theory that is going to explode Christianity —'it is hard to kick against the pricks.' Your own limbs you may wound; you will not do the goad ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... upon the badly ignited fuse of a bomb, and makes it explode in his face, is no more terrified than was Mahiette at the effect of that name, abruptly launched into the cell of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... have a French agent within the town named Hubert. This brave man has been in constant communication with us, and he had promised to explode the magazine. It was to be done in the early morning, and for two days running we have had a storming party of a thousand Grenadiers waiting for the breach to be formed. But there has been no explosion, and for these two days we have had no communication from Hubert. ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Major, comin' to a sittin' position. 'Hoor-rash-o!' says he again, and then he went off like a pack of firecrackers. A sneeze wouldn't more'n get fairly started before another'd explode in the middle of it. And the Major was as powerful a sneezer as he was talker. Gee! them bass sneezes of his sounded like a freight-engine exhaust. Mind you, he didn't open his eyes; just sat there, covered with carmine and soothin' syrup, rockin' ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... to pieces an enemy's camp that lies in the open field. All this is accomplished by dropping shells composed partly of some elements not found in our world. These shells are made in such a way that they explode as soon as they touch any substance, and the concussion is much more terrible than is caused by our most powerful explosives. Because no ship could hold together under such destructive shells, the nations abandoned their navies and devoted their energy ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... slopes of the neighbouring mountains were heard the stirring sounds of the bagpipes and drums, and at short intervals a halfpenny rocket would explode in mid-air, streaking the blue sky with a wreath ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... in a man's life when all language fails;—pantomime moments, when one stares and tries to speak and stares again. They were both at it—St. George waiting until Harry should explode, and Harry trying to get his breath, the earth opening under him, the skies ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... burn slowly or explode at once?" he said, with a reckless laugh. "Let's see!" and once more he threw up ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... it is true, it has one fault, that is so serious that it outweighs all the virtues. This fault is that the dynamite-gun has a habit of going off at both ends; that is to say, it is liable to explode both at the breech and the muzzle. It may therefore be quite as destructive to the army firing it, as to the enemy ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... things. They were unguided, of necessity, but the robot bombs had to be equipped with proximity fuses. No remote control could be so accurate as to determine the best moment for detonation at 4,000 miles' distance. So the war rockets had to be devised to explode when near anything which reflected their probing radar waves. They had to be designed to be triggered by anything ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... turn such complete disturbance of the dust to the account of their own private investigations—and that, when the Mounds were gone, and they had worked those chances for their own joint benefit solely, they should then, and not before, explode on the minion and worm. But here came the conditional clause, and to this he entreated the special attention of his comrade, brother, and partner. It was not to be borne that the minion and worm should carry off any of that property which was now to be regarded as ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... The melinite was originally filled into the ordinary cast-iron common shell (obus ordinaire) with thick walls, but soon afterwards a forged-steel thin-walled shell (obus allonge) was introduced. To explode the shell a steel receptacle (called a gaine) is screwed into the nose of the shell. It is filled with explosive and fitted with a detonator which is exploded by a percussion fuze. Except for the means adopted to ensure detonation this shell is practically the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... committee-men; the fundamental law of England knowing no such constitution, abhorring such administrations: and that the Hon. Court would release your petitioner from the injurious effects of the said committee's act, and explode ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... had always been much afraid of fireworks, and had never allowed the boys to bring gunpowder into the house. She was even afraid of torpedoes; they looked so much like sugar-plums she was sure some of the children would swallow them, and explode ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... side, the Spaniards had advanced to Terracino, and the French to Nepi. The cardinals saw that Rome now stood upon a mine which the least spark might cause to explode: they summoned the ambassadors of the Emperor of Germany, the Kings of France and Spain, and the republic of Venice to raise their voice in the name of their masters. The ambassadors, impressed with the urgency of the situation, began by declaring the Sacred College ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... positions. There were at the last thirty-five tons of it in the inner chamber. And while the boring machines bored and the work went on, Lieutenant Malvezzi was carefully working out the problem of "il massimo effetto dirompimento" and deciding exactly how to pack and explode his little hoard. On the eleventh of July, at 3.30, as he rejoices to state in his official report, "the mine responded perfectly both in respect of the calculations made and of the practical effects," that is to say, the Austrians were largely missing and the Italians were in possession ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Yellowstone Park when all the geysers are angry at the same time. Roofs, beams, chips of stone commenced to fly in every direction. In the middle of the hubbub a small dump of bombs was struck by a shell and started to explode behind me. The blast of the explosion caught me up and hurled me down fifteen stairs of the dug-out I had been trying to discover. I landed on all fours in a place full of darkness; a door banged behind ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... Spanish army, John Wright, Thomas Percy, cousin of the Earl of Northumberland, Sir Everard Digby, and Francis Tresham. A mine was to be run under the House of Commons charged with gunpowder, which Fawkes undertook to explode. An adjoining house was secured, and the cellar stretching under the Parliament buildings was leased. Everything was arranged for the destruction of the king, lords and commons at the opening of Parliament fixed finally for the 5th November 1605, but Tresham, anxious to save ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... impatient to rise as the captive and exuberant balloon which only strong ropes and the knotted arms of men hold tight to mother earth. Jimmy, however, has a passion for his ignoble calling; he sings at his work like the gravedigger in "Hamlet." And before the inflated Russell was able to explode, Jimmy had an hour or so to himself in the discussion of Mr. Mundella's efforts to deal with labour. It was on this occasion that Jimmy spread something like dismay in the bench on which he sate. Mr. Schloss, who had been appointed ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... curious how many things seem omitted in this survey of the heroic. At the age of forty-five Carlyle had not recognised Friedrich at all, for he does not figure in the "Hero as King." Napoleon takes his place, though Bonaparte was a "hero" only in the bad sense of hero which Carlyle was seeking to explode. It is well that, since he finished the French Revolution, Carlyle seems to have found out that Bonaparte "parted with Reality," and had become a charlatan, a sham. Still for all that, he remains "our last great man." Mazzini was present at the delivery of these lectures: and when he had listened ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... harmony. There certainly is some use even in defects. A faultless style sends you to sleep. Defects rouse and excite the sensibility to seek and appreciate excellences. Some of Shakspeare's finest passages explode all grammar and rhetoric like skyrockets—the thought blows the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is no more than a gratuitous and superficial passion for change for its own sake. The sentiment of Irish nationality may or may not be able to justify itself in the eye of prudential reason, and English statesmen may or may not have been wise in inviting it to explode. Those are different questions. But Sir Henry Maine himself admits in another connection (p. 83) that "vague and shadowy as are the recommendations of what is called a Nationality, a State founded on this principle has generally one real practical advantage, through its obliteration ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... regulated so as to cause the gun to fire at regular intervals of from thirty minutes to an hour. Through the woods we strung concealed wires and sticks attached to hand grenades, the slightest touch of which would cause them to explode. Meanwhile in the rear, "B" Company Engineers, who had relieved "A" Company Engineers, were busily engaged in stuffing gun cotton, explosives and inflammable material in every building and ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... said. He was being careful and accurate. I wondered what he thought I'd do if I caught him in a mistake. Make a magic pass and explode him like a bomb, probably. I took in some more smoke, wondering whether the Captain thought I had psi powers—which, of course, I didn't; no need for them in my work—and musing sourly on how long it would take before the job was done and I was ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... moment, having got a good aim, Coxen pulled the trigger. The cap refused to explode. Angrily he lowered the gun, removed the cap and examined it. It looked all right, and there was plenty of priming in the tube. He turned the cap round, and ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... around them, but the lava, overflowing the bed of Red Creek, threatened to cut off the road to the corral. The nearest rows of trees caught fire, and their sap, suddenly transformed into vapor, caused them to explode with loud reports, while others, less moist, remained unhurt in the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... The man really is churlish, and much more often than he is tender. His demeanour is merely just to his character. So, when a writer annoys you for ten pages and then enchants you for ten lines, you must not explode against his style. You must not say that his style won't let his matter "come out." You must remember the churlish, tender man. The more you reflect, the more clearly you will see that faults and excellences of style are faults ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... oxides, and no acids except HF. HF, HCl, HBr, HI, are striking illustrations of acids with no O. HClO4 is a very strong oxidizing agent. A drop of it will set paper on fire, or with powdered charcoal explode violently. This is owing to the ease with which it gives up 0. Notice why its molecule is broken up more readily than HC103. The higher the molecular tower, or the more atoms it contains, the greater its liability to fall. Some organic compounds contain hundreds of atoms, and ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... fix, I'll blow the whole shooting match," he promised himself, holding the glass beneath the faucet and fiddling nervously with the valves. For a moment he fancied the tank must be empty, for nothing came of his efforts. Then abruptly the fixture seemed to explode. "A geyser!" he cried, blinded with the dash of carbonated water and syrup in his face, while he fumbled ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the air, and falling a quarter of a mile away from us, in the woods. I did not at once learn that this first shot killed two of the Maine men, and wounded two more. This was fired wide, but the numerous shots which followed were admirably aimed, and seldom failed to fall or explode close to our own ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... gingerly as if she were afraid it might prick her or explode in her hand. Then she threw back her head ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... pistol explode and his face felt scorched, but he struck savagely, and something rattled upon the floor. The pistol had dropped and he was somewhat surprised to feel himself unhurt as he grappled with Daly. They reeled through the door and fell ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... patience of even a pair of lovers. It is not surprising if the traveller does lose both at times, but it is admirable if he does not. I remember how adorable you were, while I was a bundle of dynamite, ready to explode and send the stolid, uncommunicative conductor and brakemen into a journey through space, when we suffered that long delay coming from California. It is due the travelling public to explain such delays, but the railroads of America have grown to feel that they owe no explanation to ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... brother-in-law who smokes cigars in the bath, a disgusting habit. I have often wondered where he hid the ends, and I find now that he has made a cache of them in the gas-ring of the geyser. One day the ash will get into the burners and then the geyser will explode. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... less. I perceived that only one of the half-dozen appeared to be working her full complement of sweeps, while another was hobbling off under the impulse of but a single pair. Shells, though they be of but four-inches diameter, are capable of inflicting serious damage when they hit and explode. ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Field, visiting ends and tackles, meeting him for the first time, had nearly laughed in his face, and prepared to slaughter him, only to discover, with alarm and horror which steadily increased from the first whistle to the last, that Standish could explode his muscles with such a burst of dynamic energy that his hundred and sixty pounds felt like two hundred and ten. It was equally discouraging to learn, from breathless experience, that when he was in his stride he was as unpursueable ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... . . . We must make haste, or . . . I shall explode with impatience! Do you know who she is? You will never guess. The young wife of our old police superintendent, Yevgraf Kuzmitch, Olga Petrovna; that's who it is! She ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wrote Sydney to Mrs. Lefanu, early in 1812, 'we have all the comfort and independence of a home.... As to me, I am every inch a wife, and so ends that brilliant thing that was Glorvina. N.B.—I intend to write a book to explode the vulgar idea of matrimony being the tomb of love. Matrimony is the real thing, and all before but leather and prunella.' In a letter to Lady Stanley she paints Sir Charles in the romantic colours appropriate to a novelist's husband. 'In love he is Sheridan's Falkland, and in his view ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Sunday (16th), and with it he went on to Durham, taking his telegrapher along. Some torpedoes had been found on the road below, and McCoy diminished the risk from any others, by putting some empty cars ahead of the locomotive to explode them if there should be any. He got through safely, however, found Kilpatrick at Durham, opened telegraphic communication with headquarters at Raleigh, was authorized to read and transmit by the wire Johnston's reply, and so was able before night to give his impatiently ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... a reproof on her lips, but it died away, and a new expression came into her eyes as she seemed to see something in this unruly pupil she had not before suspected. Hal still looked as if a smothered sense of injustice might presently explode into hot words; but in the meantime the air of dignity stood its ground in ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... of temper, which were not infrequent, his face turned a dull purple, while the top of his bald head shone by contrast like white marble, and the bags under his eyes swelled till it seemed they would presently explode with a pop. And at these times he presented a distinctly ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... to climb a telegraph pole, and as it ran down the other side Aunt Miranda wanted to know for the tenth time if it would explode. ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... disease was there, and if one thing had not awakened it some other would. And so, if the population of a great city have got into a socially diseased state, it matters little what shock may have caused it to explode. Politics may in one case, fanaticism in another, national hatred in a third, hunger in a fourth—perhaps even, as in Byzantium of old, no more important matter than the jealousy between the blue and the green charioteers in the theatre, may inflame a whole population to madness ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the trenches ran right through them. And here, in this desecrated resting-place of the village dead, where the shattered gravestones were mingled with barbed wire, death-dealing fragments of iron, and rusting stick-bombs that had failed to explode, was a wooden cross, on which was rudely written the name of Hans Siebert. Mouldering at the foot of the cross was a grey woollen German tunic from which the buttons ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... eye met evidences of defective work—rusty contacts, open insulations and exposed connections. There were carelessly exposed buoys betraying to the naked eye supposedly invisible submarine mines. The whole mine field was so badly laid that the Japanese were subsequently able to drag and explode three out of every five mines. This explains the astounding fact that during Admiral Togo's five dashes, some of them lasting thirty-six hours, all that he lost from torpedoes and mines was one ship, the Hatsuse, which struck ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... is never entirely filled, for the atmospheric pressure diminishing as it ascends, allows the hydrogen gas to dilate, in virtue of its expansive force, and, unless there is space for this expansion, the balloon is sure to explode ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... sounded from the top, and a projectile fell into the western enclosures of the town. Others, better aimed, followed in quick succession; the camp came under a rapid bombardment, accurate but harmless, for the small common shell from the enemy's field-pieces failed to explode on impact with the sodden ground. The cavalry and the mounted infantry, whose horses had remained in camp, moved out of sight behind a stony kopje in front of it; the infantry, already equipped, fell rapidly into their places, each company before its own ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... recovered himself, and, casting about to see what was the best thing to be done, it came into his head that he would act the part of the wolf in the fable of the wolf and the lamb. As there was no way of finding out how the magazine happened to explode, he took the ground that the French prisoners whom he had shut up in the hold, had thrown a lighted match into the magazine, wishing thus to revenge themselves even though they should, at the same ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... the cocher would explode. But he merely nodded. Far be it from me to say that he did not understand the Artist's French for "short cut." Perhaps he thought best to save all comment until the hour of reckoning arrived. He ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... It was half fun. You and John and your aunt sit up and explode into enthusiasm over verse, when it could all be said far better in ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced—from electricity, lightning, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the town. Having brought up numbers of guns into the newly-formed Merville salient, they shelled Bethune daily, until on May 17th, a shell landed near enough to the base of the Church Tower to explode the charge, and the remnants of the tower disappeared with the most appalling explosion, followed by an enormous cloud of dust and debris, bricks and stones being thrown for hundreds of yards. Numerous ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... which could be set off by percussion. It was the plan to drop these down from the airship, into the midst of the savages. When the bomb struck the ground, or even on the bodies of the red dwarfs, it would explode. It was hoped that these would so dismay the little men that they would desert the village, and leave the way clear for a search to be made for the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... which explained the cause of the explosion. A bottle of champagne, placed in one of the pockets of the carriage, had been uncorked; and the heat, added to the motion of the carriage, or rather the malice of the young traveler, had made it explode with ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... denies this totally. The Quaker denies what the disciple of Calvin or Knox believes, while the Universalist ignores what the latter professes; and now the Mormons, spiritual rappers, and Transcendentalists explode the Bible altogether. The Catholic church, with those countless millions of her children that constitute her body, has been reading the Bible and studying it these nineteen hundred years, and never yet, with all her learning, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... blinded, he rushed against the fence then against the side of the house, then against a tree. He barked as though he thought he might explode the nuisance with loud sound, but the sound was confined in so strange a speaking-trumpet that he could not have known his own voice. His way seemed hedged up. Fright and anger and remorse and shame whirled him ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... last they catch him alone, each in turn threatens him with sore visitings, and then follows the direction, "Here somebody must cast fire to Iniquity"; who probably had some fireworks about his person, to explode for the amusement of the audience, as ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... since then he had been even more enlightened. It was but too evident to him that his protector was engaged in some dark and insidious plot, and Paul felt that he was standing over a mine which might explode at any moment. He now began to fancy that there was some mysterious link between the woman Schimmel, who was so carefully watched, and the Marquis de Croisenois, so haughty, and yet on such intimate terms with ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... foibles is accentuated by a tone of pretended praise, savouring of Grobianism and anticipating the sort of ridicule which was to be relished by Pope and the critics of Queen Anne's time. "This treatise ... will at least shake, if not totally explode, that common opinion, viz., that women are the worst piece of the Hexameron creation.... This is the composition of some amorous person, who, animated with the same spirit and affection as I am, hath undertaken, and ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... one of their shells that lit on the deck of the Valley City, which fortunately did not explode. If the Valley City had been afloat, she would have silenced their ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... yes, but I used to think it is such men who forgive one day and kill the next. You never can tell where they will explode, philosophy or no philosophy." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... front," he said. "Aim right here, where his chest makes a kind of V at the base of the neck. A 50-mm will go six or eight feet into him before it explodes, and it'll explode among his heart and lungs and things. If it goes straight along his body, it'll open him up and make the cutting-up easier, and it won't spoil much wax. That's ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... have always been interested to know if you—er—tramps ever think of anything else but food and lodging and loafing. Nothing personal, I assure you. Merely a general interest in social conditions which you seem so well fitted to explode from experience. For instance, now, ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... all is still, so still one feels That something huge must presently explode, And back, far back, is heard the noise of wheels From Prussian waggons on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... as the chimneys come around to him, having been the proper time in the bath, he takes them out to be dried, sorted, cleaned, and packed. The bath has to be of just the right temperature, as, if it be too hot or too cold, the chimneys are liable to explode. In either case the process of annealing is imperfect. By working the tables at a certain rate, the baths are kept at the right temperature by the immersion of the red hot glass. Oil or tallow is used in the bath. Any greasy substance will do, though ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... his brain clearing out of its racing whirl, and became conscious of Joan's hand grasping his. Behind them the ammunition in the burning wagon began to explode, and Joan, shuddering as with cold, covered her white face with ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... "But it didn't explode, you see, nor did it have wings," laughed Wynifred. "So it took no aerial voyage—we may be sure of that. I'd give anything to find where ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Parisians that it was "the anniversary of Sedan, that they would soon be obliged to surrender the city, and that the Russians had been crushed on the Prussian frontier." Another bomb had been dropped on the roof of Number 29 Rue du Mail and broke into an empty room, but did not explode. A third bomb fell on a schoolhouse in the Rue Colbert; ricochetting off the wall, it fell into a courtyard, where it exploded and made a hole in the ground. Other bombs were dropped in the Rue de Londres and ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... know what kind that is, but it sounds good on a Fourth of July," said Jerry with a laugh. "I hope it doesn't explode when I eat it, though, like ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... he went to look at his machines, while I walked about the streets and visited the Capitol! The human machine is what interests me most. I don't even care for the political—for that's what they call their Government here—"the machine." It operates very roughly, and some day, evidently, it will explode. It is true that you would never suspect that they have a government; this is the principal seat, but, save for three or four big buildings, most of them affreux, it looks like a settlement of negroes. No movement, no officials, ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... on any pretext whatever. Go without eating rather than do it. Your credit is still good; but it is being slowly undermined—and the indiscretion of a friend who chanced to say: "I think Valorsay is hard up," might fire the train, and then you'd explode.'" ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Josie, nodding her head with intelligent perception. "Each section, when lighted, will burn for one hour, running along its groove but harmless until the end of the fuse is reached. If the entire fuse is lighted, it will require just six hours to explode the bomb, while if it is cut off to the last mark and then lighted, the bomb will explode in fifteen minutes. The operator can set it to suit himself, as ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must plead for a distinction. Everything depends on the reality of a poet's classic character. If he is a dubious classic, let us sift him; if he is a false classic, let us explode him. But if he is a real classic, if his work belongs to the class of the very best (for this is the true and right meaning of the word classic, classical), then the great thing for us is to feel and enjoy his ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... by his past annoyances, waits for an opportunity to explode, and Caroline slumbers ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... place to get to know the name of the vessel, but I bamboozled them, and gave them cigars and vodka, and they weren't long in forgetting about what had happened. I think there is no doubt about your being the cause of having the mines raised, as, to my certain knowledge, they tried to explode them the day after you left the port, and very few of them went off. Things were kept a bit quiet, but I can always get to know what is going on, and if the gunboats had been properly handled that night it would have been all up ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... there I was trying to be, only she didn't understand. Then, another day, not long before, I coaxed some big boys who have a naphtha-launch to give the 'Balls a sail on it down the bay. The thing happened to explode, and, though nobody was hurt, she went on just terrible because I'd taken the children without asking her. How could I ask her when she was off shopping, or somewhere, just at the very moment the idea popped into my head? And nothing ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... had she given Di? They were not arguments that Lady Diana accepted, but she weakened her own cause by trying to reinforce it with all the Stympson farrago, the exaggeration of which Dermot, after his own meeting with Henry Alison, and with Prometesky to corroborate him, was fully prepared to explode, to the satisfaction even ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to hear him on the same bench. A man who opens his doors, and invites the public indiscriminately to come in, runs the risk of playing with inflammable materials, and can never be sure at what time or in what direction they may explode. ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... "If it did not explode after your pipe, sir," I replied in my best Shakespearian, "my cigarette won't do any ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Lieutenant Fay, who had likewise come to America in April, 1915, and two other Germans, by name Scholz and Daeche. Their idea was to put Allied munition ships out of action by means of infernal machines, fastened to the rudders, and timed to explode shortly after their departure. My first information concerning these gentlemen was the report in the Press of their arrest, which was apparently effected while they were experimenting with their apparatus under cover of a wood. A telegraphic inquiry elicited from Berlin the reply ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... in her chair exhausted by her excitement. Alf reached round for the chair he had left, and brought it to the table. He sat down, his elbows on the table and his hands clasped; and he looked directly at Jenny as though he were determined to explode this false bubble of misunderstanding which she was sedulously creating. As he looked at her, with his face made keen by the strength of his resolve, Jenny felt her heart turn to water. She was physically afraid of him, not because he had any power to move her, but because in sheer ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... was that finally adopted by the board. It was that a certain kind of powder, known as 'B' powder, degenerates under heat, and becomes, in time, extremely combustible, so that it will sometimes explode apparently without ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... saved, thanks to the orders of the commander, Major von Manteuffel, who ordered that the burning houses on the right side of the City Hall be leveled to the ground. The military removed from a cellar of the City Hall a quantity of ammunition which threatened to explode through extreme heat of the fire. Four soldiers were severely injured thereby. The Rathaus, thanks to the precautions taken by the German military, and in spite of its nearness to the conflagration, was not damaged in the interior, nor did its rich outer architecture suffer ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... There quite some quantities of flour and canned food, weapons and munitions, war and railroad equipment, had escaped the well-prepared explosion, and had been saved only because there had not been enough time to complete the work of destruction and to explode all the mines that had been laid. A happy exception among this horrible riot of wholesale destruction was found occasionally in the case of some few estates of the Polish nobility. In some way they ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon) |
