"Combustible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is prepared—the chambers of the mine Are cramm'd with the combustible, which, harmless While yet unkindled, as the sable sand, Needs but a spark to change its nature so, That he who wakes it from its slumbrous mood, Dreads scarce the explosion less than he who knows That 'tis his towers which meet its ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Lunites do not breathe; they live without waste and without supply. You look as if you do not understand this. Yet your people have, as you well know, what they call incandescent lights everywhere. You would have said there can be no lamp without oil or gas, or other combustible substance, to feed it; and yet you see a filament which sheds a light like that of noon all around it, and does not waste at all. So the Lunites live by influx of divine energy, just as the incandescent lamp glows,—glows, and is not consumed; receiving its life, if we may call ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... considerable height, and then Ghee, or melted preserved butter, poured on the top. Two bamboos were then put over them and held fast down, and fire put to the pile, which immediately blazed very fiercely, owing to the dry and combustible materials of which it was composed. No sooner was the fire kindled than all the people set up a great shout—Hurree-Bol, Hurree-Bol, which is a common shout of joy, and an invocation of Hurree, or Seeb. It was impossible to have heard the woman had she groaned, or ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... is the mystery of fire. The oxidizing processes are identical, only one is a building up or integrating process, and the other is a pulling down or disintegrating process. More than that, we can evoke fire any time, by both mechanical and chemical means, from the combustible matter about us; but we cannot evoke life. The equivalents of life do not slumber in our tools as do the equivalents of fire. Hence life is the deeper mystery. The ancients thought of a spirit of fire as they did of a spirit of health and of disease, and of good ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... the buffo in his workshop. His two combustible Turkish pavilions were finished, ready to be fired by Ettorina, and he was full of his devils. I inquired why we were doing Guido Santo so soon; it was only a year since my last visit to Palermo, when I had witnessed his lamented end after a fortnight of starvation ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... 1832, there fell, in the fields of Kourianof, Russia, a combustible yellowish substance, covering, at least two inches thick, an area of 600 or 700 square feet. It was resinous and yellowish: so one inclines to the conventional explanation that it was pollen from pine trees—but, when ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... received of the great wealth and respectability of his brother, who had had no communion with him for years, and supposed him dead. He abjured his employers and resolved to abandon them; but before coming to England he decided to destroy all trace of his combustible inventions by dropping them into the neighbouring lake at night from a boat. You feel the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... type too heavy to drag with them on their hasty march to Morristown. Beside the cannon Molly also saw a lighted fuse slowly burning down at one end. She had a temptation as she looked at the piece of rope soaked in some combustible, lying there ready to achieve its purpose. She stooped over Dilwyn again, then she rose and went to the cannon, fuse in hand. In a half-second the booming of the great gun shook the battle-field—Molly had touched it off, and at exactly the right moment, for even then ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... family having wreaked vengeance, the crowd piled all kinds of combustible stuff around the scaffold, poured oil on it and set it afire. The Negro rolled and tossed out of the mass, only to be pushed back by the people nearest him. He tossed out again, and was roped and pulled back. Hundreds of people turned away, but the vast crowd still looked ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... additions of fuel that the sun's heat had to be sustained. Suppose that all the coal seams which underlie America were made to yield up their stores. Suppose that all the coal fields of England and Scotland, Australia, China, and elsewhere were compelled to contribute every combustible particle they contained. Suppose, in fact, that we extracted from this earth every ton of coal it possesses, in every island and in every continent. Suppose that this vast store of fuel, which is adequate to ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... unhesitatingly; "to be quite candid with you, dear, I do not. Whatever may be the cargo that the schooner carries, it is evidently of a highly combustible character, and now seems to be fairly ignited. The fire gains ground even as we stand and gaze; and if the crew could not conquer it at the outset, they are not likely to do so now. ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... unfavorable to the development of honorable character, than that sustained by the slaveholder to the slave. Reason is imprisoned here, and passions run wild. Like the fires of the prairie, once lighted, they are at the mercy of every wind, and must burn, till they have consumed all that is combustible within their remorseless grasp. Capt. Anthony could be kind, and, at times, he even showed an affectionate disposition. Could the reader have seen him gently leading me by the hand—as he sometimes did—patting me on ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... clan are more obnoxious to vanity than others. And from vanity consequently flows that great sensibility of disrespect, that quick resentment, that tinder of the mind that kindles at every spark, and justly marks them out for the genus irritabile among mankind. And from this combustible temper, this serious anger for no very serious things, things looked on by most as foreign to the important points of life, as consequentially flows that inheritance of ridicule, which devolves on them, from generation to generation. As soon as they become authors, they become ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... next as the medium of buoyancy. This for the free and non-navigable balloon, though for the airship, carrying means of combustion, and in military work liable to ignition by explosives, the gas helium seems likely to replace hydrogen, being non-combustible. ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... for critics, whose pious forefathers kindled the fires of Smithfield, to assert that their practice was wholly barbarous. In the present case a pyre, some twelve feet high, was built at the foot of a huge granite boulder, near the sea-coast: it was constructed of dry wood, and was drenched with combustible materials. Jean was bound firmly to a strong hurdle, made of birch stems and withies securely lashed together. Judith, Garthmund, and the principal elders, placed themselves under the venerable oak; the people stood at a respectful distance. Twelve stalwart warriors bore the litter ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... moment, they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in God, this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted. You ask me if anything transpires here on the subject of South America? Not a word. I know that there are combustible materials there, and that they wait the torch only. But this country probably will join the extinguishers. The want of facts worth communicating to you, has occasioned me to give a little loose to dissertation. We must be contented to amuse, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... let me ask one question," said Jill. "Would not the difference of cost between a house built in the ordinary combustible style and the same made fire-proof, or even 'slow-burning,' pay the cost of insurance at the usual rates many times over and ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... would have made your heart bleed to see him. Thrice did he go round the earth in every parallel of latitude; and at last, wearied and jaded out, back came he to Hecla in despair, and would have thrown himself into the volcano, if he had been made of combustible materials. Luckily at that time our sisters were engaged in settling the balance of Europe; and whilst they were looking over projects, and counter-projects, and ultimatums, and post ultimatums, the poor Devil, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... domestic fires a necessity, while in Great Britain especially the demand of the various industries which depend on wood as a material, or on mechanical power derived from heat, are very great. Coal and peat serve as a combustible instead of wood in them all, and England imports an immense quantity of timber from her foreign possessions. Fortunately, the character of soil, surface, and climate renders the forest of less importance as a geographical agent in these northern regions than in Spain and Portugal, where ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... their bodies horribly mutilated. After their successful raid, the savages destroyed everything they found in the wagons, tearing the covers into shreds, throwing the flour on the trail, and winding up by burning everything that was combustible. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... in gauze wire which, while it admits oxygen to feed the flame, prevents communication between the flame and any combustible or explosive ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... forgotten that at her wish, if by Margaret's deed, he was summoned into this danger. Her mother was one of those who throw out terrible possibilities, miserable probabilities, unfortunate chances of all kinds, as a rocket throws out sparks; but if the sparks light on some combustible matter, they smoulder first, and burst out into a frightful flame at last. Margaret was glad when, her filial duties gently and carefully performed, she could go down into the study. She wondered how her father and Higgins ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... England in its place. On the approach, however, of an overwhelming army of the enemy in the autumn of the ensuing year it was abandoned by our troops, after having been dismantled and reduced, in its more combustible parts, to ashes. The Americans, who have erected new fortifications on the site of the old, still retain possession of a post to which they attach considerable importance, from the circumstance of its being a key to the more ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... War was, of course, a percussion-cap weapon. Even with the powder and bullet contained in a combustible paper cartridge, loading such an arm was a slow process: each bullet had to be forced in the front of the chamber on top of its propellant charge by means of a hinged rammer under the barrel, and a tiny copper cap had to be placed on each nipple. It was nothing to attempt on a prancing ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... beacons, but as common street-lights, before either oil or gas-lights were known. Some of these cressets were formed of a wreathed rope, smeared over with pitch, and placed in an elevated cage of iron, others contained combustible materials in a hollow pan. Occasionally these primitive street-lights were placed at the summit of a pole, from either side of which, projecting pieces of wood formed a ready mode of ascent to trim the light, and obviated the need of a ladder for ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... place in front of the church. A figure of Judas, the size of life, is filled with squibs and crackers, and is frequently made to bear a resemblance to some obnoxious inhabitant of the place. After the match is applied to the combustible figure, the cholos dance around it, and exult in the blowing up ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... special metallic cylinder, fitted with a vane tail to ensure direction of flight when launched, and with a detonating head. This is dropped overboard. When it strikes the ground the detonator fires a charge which emits a report without damaging the message container, and at the same time fires a combustible charge emitting considerable smoke. The noise attracts anyone in the vicinity of the spot where the message has fallen, while at the same time the clouds of smoke guide one to the point and enable the cylinder to be recovered. This device is extensively used by the German aviators, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... and purposes, the slow burning of iron. It develops heat, and, if the heat be preserved, a high temperature may be thus attained. The destruction of the first Atlantic cable was probably due to heat developed in this way. Other metals are still more combustible than iron. You may ignite strips of zinc in a candle flame, and cause them to burn almost like strips of paper. But we must now expand our definition of combustion, and include under this term, not only combustion in air, but also combustion in liquids. Water, for example, contains a store of ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... as a reasoner, he has convinced those who had no doubt before; as a moralist, he has taught, that virtue may disgrace; and, as a patriot, he has gratified the mean by insults on the high. Finding sedition ascendant, he has been able to advance it; finding the nation combustible, he has been able to inflame it. Let us abstract from his wit the vivacity of insolence, and withdraw from his efficacy the sympathetick favour of plebeian malignity; I do not say that we shall leave him nothing; the cause that I defend, scorns the help of falsehood; but if we leave him only ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... marked its advance, and now dying away in hoarse murmurs, as if to gather strength for the new and more furious outburst that the next moment followed, it kept on its terrific march till it reached the central elevation, which embraced the most tangled, densely covered, and combustible part of the slash, and on which had been left standing an enormous dry pine, that towered so up high above the surrounding forest as to have long served as a landmark for the hunters and fishermen, in setting their courses through ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... because they were afraid of some few arquebuses with which those of the inside threatened them. But they endeavored to set fire to the convent and church three times without being able to succeed, notwithstanding that the material of the building was but little less combustible than tinder, for it was all constructed of wood, bamboo, and nipa. Those who tried to burn that edifice, regarded that as a miracle. Moreover, one can well understand the necessity that they suffered for they had no place whence to get relief, not even for the necessities of life. Consequently ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... puts a stop to the mischief; but parties of men are also sent out into the woods to "fight the fire." They tread out the flames among the dry leaves by trampling them down, and they rake away the combustible materials, to confine the enemy to its old grounds, when it soon exhausts itself. The flames spread more frequently along the earth, than from ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... from the clouds by rods erected on elevated buildings. As this was not sufficiently demonstrative he succeeded at length in drawing the lightning from the clouds by means of a kite and silken string, so as to ignite spirits and other combustible substances by an electric spark similar to those from a Leyden jar. To utilize his discovery of the identity of lightning with electricity he erected lightning-rods to protect buildings, that is, to convey the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... wise men the ancient world did know, We scarce know seven who think themselves not so. When man learn'd undefiled religion, We were commanded to be all as one; Fiery disputes that union have calcined; Almost as many minds as men we find, And when that flame finds combustible earth, Thence fatuus fires, and meteors take their birth; 160 Legions of sects and insects come in throngs; To name them all would tire a hundred tongues. So were the Centaurs of Ixion's race, Who a bright cloud for Juno did embrace; And such the monsters of Chimaera's ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... sticking in handfuls in different parts of the vessel. Three dead bodies were found in her hold, but nothing having life was met with on board. There was a tar-bucket filled at hand, and this was placed beneath the hatch, covered with all the combustible materials that could be laid hold of, and set on fire. So active were the flames at that dry season that Raoul regretted he had not taken the precaution to awaken them after he had removed his own vessel; but the southerly air continuing, he was enabled to get to a safe distance ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... human kind. [32] They died in torments, and their torments were imbittered by insult and derision. Some were nailed on crosses; others sewn up in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to the fury of dogs; others again, smeared over with combustible materials, were used as torches to illuminate the darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero were destined for the melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with a horse-race and honored with the presence of the emperor, who mingled with the populace in the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... given; because they had fired red-hot shot, and had also a preparation sent, as they said, by the convention from Paris, which seems to have been of the nature of the Greek fire; for it became liquid when it was discharged, and water would not extinguish its flames. This combustible was concealed with great care in the captured ships; like the red-hot shot, it had been found useless in battle. Admiral Hotham's action saved Corsica for the time; but the victory had been incomplete, and the arrival at Toulon of six sail of the line, two ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... mankind. Their executions were so contrived, as to expose them to derision and contempt. Some were covered over with the skins of wild beasts, that they might be torn to pieces by dogs; some were crucified; while others, having been daubed over with combustible materials, were set up for lights in the night time, and thus burned to death. For these spectacles Nero gave his own gardens, and, at the same time, exhibited there the diversions of the circus; sometimes standing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer; ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... were supposed to have the secret of a mysterious combustible known as "Greek Fire" which was unquenchable by water. I think that "Greek Fire" was nothing more or less than ordinary petroleum, which was practically unknown in Europe in 1866, though from personal experience I can say that it was ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... allow the bonfire no more—no, not at all; nor the fireworks neither—no, nothing of no kind of the sort." All this in his natural voice: then, swelling in dignity and in diction, "but, for the accumulated pile of combustibles, I say—for the combustible pile that you have accumulated, that you may not be deprived of the merit of doing a good action, the materials of which it is composed, that is to say, the logs of wood, and the bavins of furze, with the pole and tar-barrel, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... more; I fear that if I were to arrive at a definition of it, I should cease to feel it and to possess it. Passion is like suffering, and like suffering it creates its object. It is easier for the fire to find something to burn than for something combustible to find ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... circumstances frequently occur, in which the ebullition of party spirit is, although temporary, subsiding after the cause that produced it has passed away, and leaving the kind peasant to the natural, affectionate, and generous impulses of his character. But poor Paddy, unfortunately, is as combustible a material in politics or religion as in fighting—thinking it his duty to take the weak side*, without any other consideration than because it ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... he found the depth diminished, but the fire was not three hundred paces distant. His heart sank within him. But when on the eve of returning to his former position, with a resolution to remove as much of the combustible matter as possible, a gleam of joy spread over his features, as, casting a glance in a contrary direction from that they had recently pursued, he beheld the identical mound he had ascended before dark, and from which his unsteady and erratic riding in the ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... mines extend under the waves like the coalfields at Newcastle. Here, dressed in diving suits, pick and mattock in hand, my men go out and dig this carbon fuel for which I don't need a single mine on land. When I burn this combustible to produce sodium, the smoke escaping from the mountain's crater gives it the appearance ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... raised by Mr. Johnson is finally quitted, to acquaint the reader with its fate. In 1798, after having stood only five years, it was discovered one evening to be on fire, and, all efforts to save it proving useless, from the combustible nature of the materials, it was consumed in an hour. "This was a great loss," observes the historian of the colony, "for during the working days of the week the building was used as a school, in which from 150 to 200 children were educated, under the immediate inspection of Mr. Johnson. As this ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... accident, by purposely setting the vestry on fire. The bare chance that prompt assistance might arrive, and that the books might, by the remotest possibility, be saved, would have been enough, on a moment's consideration, to dismiss any idea of this sort from his mind. Remembering the quantity of combustible objects in the vestry—the straw, the papers, the packing-cases, the dry wood, the old worm-eaten presses—all the probabilities, in my estimation, point to the fire as the result of an accident with his matches or ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... to be the most nearly fire-proof church structure on the continent, the only combustible material used in its construction being that used in the doors and pews. A striking feature of the church is a beautiful apartment known as the "Mother's Room," which is approached through a superb archway ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... a piece of paper and brings it near the flame of a candle; another child looks on. Both are completely absorbed by the objects, both are ignorant or oblivious of the relation between the combustible object and the flame: a relation which becomes apparent only when the paper is alight. What is called the thoughtlessness of childhood prevents their seeing this unapparent fact; it is a fact which has not been sufficiently impressed upon their experience ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... obtained, at least during sufficient time to enable the chief defences to be blown up and the harbour fleet to be destroyed. If you will so far favour me, I should be gratified by having an opportunity of demonstrating to your strong mind, free from professional bias, the fact that combustible ships may be not only placed on a parity with stone forts fitted to fire red-hot shot, but secured from injury more effectually than if incased ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... was burned. Animal bodies, full of moisture, glowed awhile and then remained charred wrecks. Wood and other easily combustible things burned to ashes. On the ground lay the bodies, amidst heaps of hot mud, heaps of gleaming ashes and piles of volcanic ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... prevent the ball from entering the piece; it is found, however, that the windage is still sufficient for loading with facility. These red-hot balls are principally used to fire wooden buildings, ships, and other combustible matter. They are therefore much used as a projectile for coast defence, and all fortifications on the seaboard should be provided with furnaces and grates, arranged so as to heat ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... equilibrium. We had, on Thursday, an instance of their worth in the establishment of a cook-house to supply the native population with cooked rations. This was a praiseworthy innovation, for wood and such fuel as Mars permitted to be combustible were extremely scarce. The native had been cured of his weakness for the dismemberment of mahogany; indirectly the cooking-depot warded off a "relapse," and was altogether an Institution creditable ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... dormant because of shade, would begin to amount to something much quicker than that supplied by seed trees afterward. Nor is the system feasible where there is much fir or other species less fire-resisting than pine. It is dangerous in practice except where there is very little combustible matter on the ground and fire is generally easy of control, and exceedingly dangerous to advocate because serves as a pretext and example for indiscriminate carelessness with fire under all conditions. Finally, the alleged immunity of pine from injury ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... infernal machines, or "hell-burners," as they were called, a fleet of thirty-two smaller vessels was prepared. Covered with tar, turpentine, rosin, and filled with inflammable and combustible materials, these barks were to be sent from Antwerp down the river in detachments of eight every half hour with the ebb tide. The object was to clear the way, if possible, of the raft, and to occupy the attention of the Spaniards, until the 'Fortune' and the 'Hope' should ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... heated, as sulphur, nitre, etc., and those which do not. The metals were considered to be composed of sulphur and mercury. These substances are themselves compounds, but they act as elements in the composition of metals. Sulphur represented their combustible aspect, and also that which gave them their solid form; while mercury was that to which their weight and powers of becoming ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... The action of the burning candle may be thus explained. The radiant heat from the flame melts the tallow or wax, which then passes up into the texture of the wick by capillary attraction until it reaches the glowing wick, where the heat decomposes the combustible matter into carbonated hydrogen (C^{4}H^{4}), ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... with the curling fronds; and where I do not cut, the foresters and miners will be preparing heaps to carry away for litter and bedding. By the end of July the forest beneath the oaks will be covered with a carpet of stuff as combustible as tinder. Let us but fire it at Newnham, Littledean, Blakeney, Coleford, and at Speech by the courthouse, and we shall lay tens of thousands of oaks in blackened ruin. Philip of Spain has but to scatter the present small navy of England, for no more ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... first to show that combustion is due to union with oxygen. Previous to his time combustion was supposed to be due to the presence of a substance or principle called phlogiston. One substance was thought to be more combustible than another because it contained more phlogiston. Coal, for example, was thought to be very rich in phlogiston. The ashes left after combustion would not burn because all the phlogiston had escaped. If the phlogiston could be restored ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... once every other college generation, we try to make the celebration bigger than the stories of other celebrations that have been handed down. We'd been planning this celebration all winter and had everything combustible in Jonesville spotted. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... But albeit ludicrous in his own plight and position, there was nothing of that character in the scene around him, or in his own contemplations. The fire raged with amazing fury and power,—stimulated to madness as it were, by the pitch, and tar, and dried timbers, and other combustible materials used in the constriction of the boat. The lurid flames ascended to a great height,—the smoke rolled upward in majestic volumes, while the light, red as the flames of AEtna, streamed across the lake, gilding the crumbling battlements ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... no knowledge; and their optics extend not beyond the making of convex and concave lenses of rock crystal to assist the sight in magnifying, or throwing more rays upon, small objects and, by collecting to a focus the rays of the sun, to set fire to combustible substances. These lenses are cut with a saw and afterwards polished, the powder of crystal being used in both operations. To polish diamonds they make use of the powder of adamantine spar, or the corundum stone. In cutting ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... a wide circle was traced by a small rod, tipped apparently with sponge saturated with some combustible naphtha-like fluid, so that a pale lambent flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided it, burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely native fable-talk, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the interest on the first cost of the plant, which is considerable, and probably some outlay for repairs in excess of that in the case of ordinary ovens, has also to be charged. Mr. Jameson takes credit for the combustible gas, which is used up in the Carves ovens, but which remains over in his process, and is available, though not nearly all consumed, in raising steam for the various purposes of a colliery, including, no doubt, before long, the generation of electricity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... the courts of Castile and Aragon, the Jews were active as ministers, physicians, astronomers. But the people, incited by the propaganda of the clerics, nursed frightful hatred against the Jews, not only as "infidels," but also as intellectual aristocrats. The rage of the populace was the combustible material in the terrific explosions that occurred periodically, in the bloody saturnalia of the Pastouraux (1320), in the Black Death riots (1348), in ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... whole mind. Such mercurial fire will indeed require a certain imaginative temperament; and there are many persons who, short of a life-long domestic attachment, can conceive of nothing but sordid vice. But even an inconstant flame may burn brightly, if the soul is naturally combustible. Indeed these sparks and glints of passion, just because they come and vary so quickly, offer admirable illustrations of it, in which it may be viewed, so to speak, under the microscope ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... machine to another, the thyroid may be compared to the accelerator of an automobile. That is a rough and superficial comparison because an accelerator lets in more of the fuel to be burned up, while the thyroid makes the fuel more combustible. It thus resembles more the primer, for a rich mixture of gasoline and air burns at a greater velocity than a poor one. But the action of thyroid could really be simulated only by some substance that could be introduced into ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... which I had come was indeed a novel sight. Its buildings average in height one-third of ours, although they occupy nearly as much ground space. They are composed almost totally of non-combustible materials. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... across the street. The fire had spread with astonishing rapidity. Some combustible material in the second story had exploded with great force, and this had seemed to scatter the fire. The entire second story was on fire now, as well as the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... of a cow. But a week after that, on the 30th of July, 1844, the same destroying spirit Joe Smith was allowed to attack me directly, to show how he would be able to kill a man in a minute, if he would be permitted. But he was seized by my guardian and cast into a combustible matter which was by his infernal electricity instantly kindled. George Karle was permitted to be drowned, because the time for establishing our centre had not yet arrived, and Karle had an important mission in the spirit ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... or Bober and Queiss, into the Lausitz (to Gorlitz, Guben, where we have Magazines for him), comes upon it from the southeast,—nobody expecting any of them. Three simultaneous Armies hurled on the head of your Friedrich; combustible deluges flowing towards him, as from the ends of Germany; so opaque, silent, yet of fire wholly: will not that surprise him!' thinks Bruhl. These are the schemes ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... all ordinary combustion there is a definite temperature, called the ignition or kindling temperature, to which combustible substance must be heated in order that it may unite with the gas in supporting the combustion. The burning substance must not only be heated up to the kindling temperature, but it must be kept as high as this temperature, or combustion ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... thousands of barrels of petroleum had been stored up in vats, and when the combustible fluid was spouting from the wells at the rate of many hundred barrels per day. Before the present deep wells were bored, oil was not produced in sufficient quantities to cause such a conflagration, and there was never seen upon the creek a stratum of the fluid of such consistency ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... trwm," as a person "seirchiawc saphwyawc—(and perhaps) elydnan," would necessarily be. The bundles of combustible materials, which he also carried, would add to the weight of his armour, and tend to retard his movements. Or, "yn trwm" may refer to the battle, as being a pressure, or a ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... moment, now rising high into the air in a towering sheet of flame, now shooting forward like an enormous dragon vomiting streams of fire upon its foes. All at once the flames changed colour, and were partially obscured by a thick black smoke. A large warehouse filled with resin, tar, and other combustible matters, had caught fire, and the dense vapour proceeded from the burning pitch. But it cleared off in a few minutes, and the flames burnt more brightly ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... pieces of what is vulgarly called fox-fire,[A] made into the likeness of human eyes, some material being placed in its mouth, around which was a piece of the thinnest scarlet tiffany, in order to make it appear of a flame colour. They had also constructed a large combustible ball, of several thicknesses of paste-board, to which a match was placed. The image was to be conveyed into her room, and placed, in the dark, before her bed;—while in that position, the ball was to be rubbed over with phosphorus, the match set on fire, and rolled ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... our combustible material was expended, and a disheartening kind of darkness settled down upon us. The boys collected together here and there in knots, consulting as to what should be done. It yet lacked four or five hours of daybreak, and none of us were in the humor to return ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... theory 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 ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... prescription) he tooke forthwith eight of his woorst and basest ships which came next to hand, and disburthening them of all things which seemed to be of any value, filled them with gun-powder, pitch, brimstone, and with other combustible and firy matter; and charging all their ordinance with powder, bullets, and stones, he sent the sayd ships vpon the 28 of Iuly being Sunday, about two of the clocke after midnight, with the winde and tide against the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... of danger Hutter had made ample provision, and the building itself, the bark roof excepted, was not very combustible. The floor was scuttled in several places, and buckets provided with ropes were in daily use, in readiness for any such emergency. One of the girls could easily extinguish any fire that might be lighted, provided it had not time to make much headway. Judith, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... on burning coals (juxta carbones accensos). This punishment is described by Marsollier in his Histoire de l'Inquisition. First a good fire was started; then the victim was stretched out on the ground, his feet manacled, and turned toward the flame. Grease, fat, or some other combustible substance was rubbed upon them, so that they were horribly burned. From time to time a screen was placed between the victim's feet and the brazier, that the Inquisitor might have an opportunity to resume ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... Fontaine. The "enemy" was seldom obvious, but during the war it inflicted a loss upon us of eight killed and twenty-three wounded. We took various stockades, shot from sixty to eighty Malays, burned a good deal of what was combustible, and gave stability to the shaky rule of the Datu Klana, Syed Abdulrahman. Of this prince, who owed his firm seat on the throne to British intervention, the Resident wrote in 1880:—"Loyal to his engagements, he had gained the good will of the British Government. Straightforward, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... when they burst, they make a great noise. They consist of a large shell of cast iron, which is round and hollow. A hole is made through the shell to receive a fusee, as it is called; this is a small pipe, or hollow piece of wood, which is filled with some combustible matter. When a bomb is about to be fired, it is filled with powder, after which the fusee is driven into the vent, ...
— Whig Against Tory - The Military Adventures of a Shoemaker, A Tale Of The Revolution • Unknown
... thin? He's a broth of a boy; and I'll tell ye. Shure he knows all about the red-coats, case he's an arthillery man himself, and that's the way he's found out his gran' combustible." ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... of the laboratory were opened, ventilating blowers were built, and refrigerating coils were set up everywhere, even in the tubular structure and behind the visiplates. After assuring themselves that everything combustible had been removed, the two scientists put on under their helmets, goggles whose protecting lenses could be built up to any desired thickness. Rovol then threw a switch, and a hemisphere of flaming golden radiance surrounded ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... an extent that he had optical illusions favorable to the "darling" who deceived him. His most alluring illusion was a booby idea that his "pet" was an invalid, and she kept pouring oil on the joke to keep it burning, and pulled the wool down further and further so that hubby could not see the combustible fluid she was pouring into the flames. Her illness was one of those "to be continued" story kinds—better to-day, worse to-morrow—and she "took" to the blankets at the most annoying and inopportune moments; and every ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... to ask me what had changed her regard for Ingram during that solitary year, so that she received him at the end of it as she did, I don't know that I can tell you. Slowly discovery—of herself, of him—came to her, slowly combustible stuff was heaped within her; it slowly kindled, and smouldered long. No doubt he himself blew it into clear flame by his let-drop news of Claire's death. She had not known that: she never read the newspaper, having neither time for the world's affairs nor interest in ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... sketches by enquiring into the nature of the combustible which has fed for so many thousands of years the fire of the peak of Teneriffe;—I might examine whether it be sodium or potassium, the metallic basis of some earth, carburet of hydrogen, or pure sulphur combined with iron, that burns in the volcano;—but ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... being very high, the flame soon spread itself over the roof of the palace, and catching at every combustible in its way, the invaders became so terrified at the quick progress of fire which threatened to consume themselves as well as their plunder, that they quitted the spot with precipitation. Decrying the count and his soldiers at a short distance, they ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... sitting from September 1st to October 13th, framed a constitution and made request that California be taken into the Union. This constitution prohibited slavery, and thus a new firebrand was tossed into the combustible material with which the political situation abounded. By this time nearly all the friends of freedom were for the proviso, but its enemies as well had greatly increased. The immense growth, actual and prospective, of northern ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... miles above the surface, and was observed at different extremities of the kingdom. The sound of an explosion was heard through Devon and Cornwall, and along the opposite coast of Bretagne. Halley conjectured this and similar displays to proceed from combustible vapors aggregated on the outskirts of the atmosphere, and suddenly set on fire by some unknown cause. But since his time, the fact has been established, of the actual fall of heavy bodies to the earth from surrounding space, which requires another hypothesis. To these ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... restored either by the public care of government, or the activity of private interest. Yet two causes may be alleged, which render the calamity of fire more destructive to a flourishing than a decayed city. 1. The more combustible materials of brick, timber, and metals, are first melted or consumed; but the flames may play without injury or effect on the naked walls, and massy arches, that have been despoiled of their ornaments. 2. It ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... thundering AEtna, whose combustible And fuel'd entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singed ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... volcanoes, which in almost every corner of the earth are continually vomiting up either flames or smoke. "These," said he, "are the great vents appointed by nature for the discharge of that rarefied air and combustible matter, which, if confined, would burst the globe asunder; but, besides the larger outlets, there are some small chimneys through which part of the heat transpires; a vapour of that sort, I conceive, must pass through the bed or channel of this spring, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... was not plain and ordinary, and the smiles which were intended as innocent lures from snares, instead of into them, might make trouble for all concerned. Haldane was naturally combustible, to begin with, and was now at the most inflammable period ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... "broke out," says an account in the Boston News-Letter, "in an old tenement within a backyard in Cornhill, near the First Meeting-house, occasioned by the carelessness of a poor Scottish woman by using fire near a parcel of ocum, chips, and other combustible rubbish." ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... Every thing that has the smell of woman will be destroyed. Woman is the capsheaf of the abomination of desolation-full of all deviltry. In a short time, the world will take fire and dissolve; it is combustible already. All women, not obedient, had better become so as soon as possible, and let the wicked spirit depart, and become temples of truth. Praying is all mocking. When you see any one wring the neck of a fowl, instead of cutting off its head, he has not got the Holy Ghost. ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... say it was. I've been worried about having him sit near the gasoline tank, it brings his hair so close to a high combustible. But it has one advantage: if we don't get home before dark we shan't need to light up. Red's torch of a head will do the trick; we can come in by the ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... regarded as fabulous. Tradition supports the narrative of Sacred Scripture so far as to teach that the channel of the Dead Sea was once a fertile valley, partly resting on a mass of subterranean water, and partly composed of a stratum of bitumen; and that a fire from heaven kindling these combustible materials, the rich soil sunk into the abyss beneath, and Sodom and Gomorrah were ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... winter, and ten in summer, there is a curfew-bell rung, warning the people to put out their lights, and go to bed. This is a very necessary precaution in towns subject to conflagrations; but of small use in Nice, where there is very little combustible in the houses. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... because a passive power is moved by an active principle. But in order that some quality be caused in that which is passive the active principle must entirely overcome the passive. Whence we see that because fire cannot at once overcome the combustible, it does not enkindle at once; but it gradually expels contrary dispositions, so that by overcoming it entirely, it may impress its likeness on it. Now it is clear that the active principle which is reason, cannot ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... fogies, when he lightens at 'em, Shrivel like leaves; to him 'tis granted Always to say the word that's wanted, So that he seems but speaking clearer The tiptop thought of every hearer; 80 Each flash his brooding heart lets fall Fires what's combustible in all, And sends the applauses bursting in Like an exploded magazine. His eloquence no frothy show, The gutter's street-polluted flow, No Mississippi's yellow flood Whose shoalness can't be seen for mud;— So simply clear, serenely deep, 89 So silent-strong its graceful sweep, None measures its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... himself upon some occasion, fastened upon the basis, which was of dry deal board, underneath; which suddenly conceiving flame, gave fire to the device of the masque, all of oiled paper, and dry fir, etc. And so, in a moment, disposed itself among the rest of that combustible matter that it was past any man's approach before it was almost discovered. Two hours begun and ended that ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... too earnestly request your attention to the necessity of providing a more secure building for this Department. The danger of destruction to which its important books and papers are continually exposed, as well from the highly combustible character of the building occupied as from that of others in the vicinity, calls loudly ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... bitterly opposed railroads as impractical. Snow, it was said, would block them for weeks. If locomotives were used, the sparks would make it impossible to carry hay or other things combustible. The boilers would blow up as they did on steamboats. Canals were therefore safer and cheaper. Read McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... tales which will be the eternal opprobrium of their ingenious authour.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, Lord Hailes has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hailes thinks there is, he must be more combustible than other people[548].' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... made him forget his wine and his cigar. He emptied the glass at a single draught, but it proved far more difficult to light the cigar. "Zounds! this is a non-combustible," he growled. "When I arrive at smoking ten sous cigars, I sha'n't come here ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... some inflammable substance until a blaze comes; but where was I to get the punk from? I had also heard that fire had been made with lenses of glass, which, being held up to the sun, concentrate the rays and make a great heat, sufficient to set wood and like combustible things on fire; but I had no lens. Of course, I have no need to tell you that I had no matches, such as we ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... has been for some time hanging over the European world. If it should break forth into a storm, who can insure us that in its progress a part of its fury would not be spent upon us? No reasonable man would hastily pronounce that we are entirely out of its reach. Or if the combustible materials that now seem to be collecting should be dissipated without coming to maturity, or if a flame should be kindled without extending to us, what security can we have that our tranquillity will ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Livingston, with a regiment of Canadians, and Brown, with part of a Boston regiment, were to make false attacks on Cape Diamond Bastion, St. John and St. Louis Gates, which they were to fire, if possible, with combustible ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... however, I saw that we had little to hope for. While the masts and rigging were all enveloped in flame, a dense smoke was rising from the hold, indicating that the electric fluid, in its descent through the ship, had come in contact with something in the cargo that was highly combustible. Passengers and crew stood looking on with pale, horror-stricken faces. But the captain, a man of self-possession, aroused all from their lethargy by ordering, in a loud, clear voice, the masts and rigging to be cut away instantly. This order was ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... say the schools, "is received in proportion to the recipient." The power of a political treatise depends much upon the disposition of the people; the nation was then combustible, and a spark set it on fire. It is boasted, that between November and January eleven thousand were sold; a great number at that time, when we were not yet a nation of readers. To its propagation certainly no agency of power or influence was wanting. It furnished ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... each other, and then in consternation upon the burning building, every window of which was belching flame, while the sound of some falling rafter, or the explosion of some combustible substance, was continually heard! To venture into that blazing house, with its sinking roof and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... night was warm, for I happened to know that a good deal of the cargo which we were carrying was of a highly combustible character, such as furniture, pianos, Manchester goods, and the like, to say nothing of several cases of sporting ammunition. I knew that if once the fire happened to get a good hold upon such material as that the chances were all against our being able to master it, especially in such a strong ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... now fix our attention for a moment on the gunpowder which urges the cannon-ball. This is composed of combustible matter, which if burnt in the open air would yield a certain amount of heat. It will not yield this amount if it perform the work of urging a ball. The heat then generated by the gunpowder will fall ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... loving people throughout the world, and the pride and glory of American citizens. Every year since the adoption of the old Constitution, have discordant elements cropped out, and incidents transpired, which demonstrated to every rational mind, that as time rolled on, the accumulation of combustible elements would ultimately explode, and shake the civilized world ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... ditch would be within arrow shot before noon of the next day, Marion and Lee determined to adopt this speedy mode of effecting their object. Orders were instantly issued to prepare bows and arrows, with missive combustible matter. This measure was reluctantly adopted; for the destruction of private property was repugnant to the principles which swayed the two commandants, and upon this occasion was peculiarly distressing. The devoted house was a large, pleasant edifice, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... been left to continue, Barrent would have been burned to death, for the Arena was nearly filled with the highly combustible vines. But the flames were endangering the wooden walls of the Arena. The Tetrahyde guard detachment put the fire out in time to save both Barrent ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... the darkest house, Betwixt King Arthur's court and Caucasus: If you depart, the flame shall still remain, 410 And the bright blaze enlighten all the plain: Nor, till the fuel perish, can decay, By nature form'd on things combustible to prey. Such is not man, who, mixing better seed With worse, begets a base degenerate breed: The bad corrupts the good, and leaves behind No trace of all the great begetter's mind. The father sinks ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... being no undergrowth to supply their place, they become thinner every year; and, as they diminish, they shade the grass less, which therefore grows more luxuriantly; and, where a strong wind carries a fire through dried grass and leaves, which cover the earth with combustible matter several feet deep, the volume of flame destroys all before it; the very animals cannot escape. We have seen it enwrap the forest upon which it was precipitated, and destroy whole acres of trees. After beginning;, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... design, with marble and other trim work, and the railings of the main gallery construction are likewise of ornate treatment. All exterior doors and trim are of metal and all interior carpenter work is done with Kalomein iron protection, so that the building, in its strictest sense, will contain no combustible material. ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... minute to me, sir,' said my father, with a glowing reminiscence of Jorian DeWitt, which was almost too much for the combustible old man, even ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be inflicted. To those who have excited a spirit of resentment in the bosom of an Indian, the tomahawk and scalping knife are instruments of mercy. Death by the faggot—by splinters of the most combustible wood, stuck in the flesh and fired—maiming and disemboweling, tortures on which the soul sickens but to reflect, are frequently practiced. To an enemy of their own color, they are perhaps more cruel and severe, than ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... with combustible materials, and fitted with grappling-irons, to hook and set fire to the enemy's ships. Notwithstanding what is said respecting the siege of Tyre, perhaps the practice of using regular fire-ships ought to be dated ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the hardships of their march, had been thought so necessary a measure by all the chieftains, that even Oubacha himself was the first to authorize the act by his own example. He seized a torch previously prepared with materials the most durable as well as combustible, and steadily applied it to the timbers of his own palace. Nothing was saved from the general wreck except the portable part of the domestic utensils, and that part of the woodwork which could be applied to the manufacture of the long Tartar ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... by thongs of bamboo. Cutting a passage through these, we entered the place, which contained perhaps a hundred houses, neatly built of wicker-work, and having their high conical roofs thatched with palmetto-leaves. Such edifices were in the highest degree combustible, and being set on fire, it was worth while for a lover of the picturesque to watch the flames, as they ran up the conical roofs, and meeting at the apex, whirled themselves fiercely into ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... as he, it's like the rebellion had been more durable and sanguinarie' But as soon as the news of Argyll's landing on the west coast came, this is his note, 'Argile, minding the former animosities and discontents in the country, thought to have found us all alike combustible tinder, that he had no more adoe then to hold the match to us, and we would all blow up in a rebellion; but the tymes are altered, and the peeple are scalded so severely with the former insurrections, that they are frighted to adventure on a new on. The Privy Council, though they despised this invasion, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... as regards dynamic product, the gas motor preserves the advantage, although the relatively high price of the illuminating gas employed in the production of the motive power generally renders the use of this combustible more costly than steam, especially for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... detour we came into a valley flanked to the east by Raccoon Mountain, and we visited a large saltpetre works at Nick-a-Jack Cave. These works we destroyed by breaking the large iron kettles and by burning all combustible structures. A portion of the detachment was sent under cover of the thick woods to the railroad east of Shellmound, a station near the river, where we expected to cut off a train of cars engaged in loading, for removal, supplies of provisions. The engineer, a few moments ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... inde animis, &c. But when as I say, nox, vinum, et adolescentia, youth, wine, and night, shall concur, nox amoris et quietis conscia, 'tis a wonder they be not all plunged over head and ears in love; for youth is benigna in amorem, et prona materies, a very combustible matter, naphtha itself, the fuel of love's fire, and most apt to kindle it. If there be seven servants in an ordinary house, you shall have three couple in some good liking at least, and amongst idle persons how should it be otherwise? "Living ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... slaver, this is the most dreaded and unmanageable. The news appalled me. Impetuous with anxiety I rushed to the captain, and regardless of fever or insanity, disclosed the dreadful fact. He stared at me for a minute as if in doubt; then opening his bureau and pointing to a long coil of combustible material, said that it communicated through the decks with the powder magazine, and ordered me to—"blow ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... is, however, no reliable evidence to support the belief in the spontaneous combustion of the body. A few apochryphal cases only have been recorded. The opinion that the tissues of drunkards might be so saturated with alcohol as to render the body combustible is disproved by the simple experiment of placing flesh in spirits for a long time and then trying to burn it. Liebig and others found that flesh soaked in alcohol would burn only until the alcohol was consumed. That various substances ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... telegraphic and telephonic wires are extended so as to traverse practically all the streets of every city, the fire-insurance companies will find it to their advantage to promote a simple plan, depending on the use of a combustible thread passing round little pulleys in the corners of all the rooms and finally out to the front, where an electrical "contact-maker" is fixed, so that on the thread being burnt and broken at any point in its circuit, an electric message will be ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... storms he supposed that the man must be very angry and that the sounds and flashes were the result of throwing or rolling heavy or combustible articles of furniture as he had so repeatedly known his mother and uncle to do. As such a view of life was all that he knew, it was not strange that he ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... several handspikes and pinch-bars aboard, and with these they attacked bulkheads and spare woodwork, and fed the fires with the fragments; for a glance down the hatches had shown them nothing more combustible and detachable in the cargo than a few layers of railroad iron, which covered and blocked the openings ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... suggested suspicion of incendiarism and suicide. The papers, the books, the oil betrayed themselves as combustible materials, carried into the place for a purpose. The medicine chest was known (by its use in cases of illness among the servants) to contain opium. Adjourned inquiry elicited that the laboratory was not ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... suggests to us. Ah, dear friends! we do not need to go to Jacob and Peter; let us look at our own hearts, and if we will honestly examine one day of our lives, I think we shall understand how it is possible for a man, on the foundation, yet to build upon it these worthless and combustible ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... sort of Pores to be found in all Woods and Vegetables; the shape of them; the number, thickness, manner and use of these Pores. An explication of the Phaenomena of Coals. The manner of charring Wood, or any other body. What part of Wood is combustible. An Hypothesis of fire explicated in twelve particulars, wherein the Action of the Air, as a Menstruum in the dissolution of all sulphureous bodies, is very particularly explicated, and some other Considerations ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... he knelt before the combustible accumulation he had been diligently heaping together and struck a spark which, seizing on the dry material, immediately ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Thousand Barrels of Gun-powder, in that they call the White-Tower, when all at once the middle Flooring did not only give way, or shrink, but fell flat down upon other Barrels of Powder, together with many of the same combustible Matter which had been placed upon it. It was a Providence strangely neglected at that Time, and hardly thought of since; But let any considerate Man consult the Consequences, if it had taken fire; perhaps to the Destruction of the ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... for, of all words in our vernacular tongue, to express comfort and security from ill, commend us to the expletive of free and easy. We had rather not meddle with civil or religious liberty: they are as combustible as the Cotopaxi, or the new governments, of South America; and our attempts at reformation do not extend beyond paper and print, which the unamused reader may burn or not, as he pleases without searing his own conscience or exciting our revenge. To ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... squashing in her shoes, her clothes spoiled and her bonnet looking like an over-ripe fig, with a terrible cold that made her voice only a whisper, and sneezing herself almost to pieces, Mrs. Sparsit found Bounderby at his city hotel, exploded with the combustible information she carried and fainted quite away on ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... people and the guards; then ensued a general pillage, and a conflagration. Every house was fired after it had been ransacked, and the English Ribauds running along the platform with torches in their hands, applied the flame to everything combustible—doors, galleries, partitions, rafters —all blazed, and the only portion of the castle and town that was left unconsumed were the latrines, to which they did not consider it worth their pains to ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... each. I say, it must be inferior, because nothing can be so hot, so tormenting, so intolerably insupportable, as the quickest apprehensions of, and the immediate sinking under, that guilt and indignation that is proportional to the offence. Should all the wood, and brimstone, and combustible matter on earth be gathered together for the tormenting of one body, yet that cannot yield that torment to that which the sense of guilt and burning-hot application of the indignation of God will do to the soul; yea, suppose the fire wherewith the body is tormented in hell should be seven times ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... wood, sticks, and other inflammable rubbish and refuse, on which they place the newly formed articles, and then set the floor on fire, until the whole is thoroughly burnt. Fragments of broken objects, etc., are not removed. The combustible material is thus reduced to ashes, and the broken pieces remain within them; their convex surfaces, of course, falling outwards, and thus resting on the floor. In this manner a thick layer of ashes and charcoal, ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... gathered together a goodly portion of combustible wood, and there was plenty more at hand, so that a roaring fire was soon casting its light away from the wood, which somewhat sheltered them behind; and as soon as some of the good-sized pieces of bush were well ablaze, Chicory began to send them flying in the directions where ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... day at sea, and a little flushed with drink; "Come," said he, "let us make a hell of our own, and try how long we can bear it." Accordingly he, with two or three others, went down into the hold, and closing up all the hatches, filled several pots full of brimstone, and other combustible matter; they then set it on fire, and so continued till they were almost suffocated, when some of the men cried out for air; at length he opened the hatches, not a little pleased that he had held ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... quantity of the seared grass, and heaped a dry couch upon which Ben laid his charge within the genial heat that came from the cedar tree. Then they gathered up all the combustible matter within reach, and began to kindle a fire so near to the place where she lay that its heat must help to drive back the chill of death if there was a spark of life yet vital ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... producing moss-roses—we clearly see that the nature of the conditions is of subordinate importance in comparison with the nature of the organism in determining each particular form of variation; perhaps of not more importance than the nature of the spark, by which a mass of combustible matter is ignited, has in determining the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... policy of the Rebels in that region,—as of an effort to fulfil their threats and burn it, by some nocturnal dash. The most valuable buildings belonged to Union men, and the upper part of the town, built chiefly of resinous pine, was combustible to the last degree. In case of fire, if the wind blew towards the river, we might lose steamers and all. I remember regulating my degree of disrobing by the direction of the wind; if it blew from the river, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Aetna, whose combustible And fuell'd entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singed bottom, all involved With stench and smoke; such resting found the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... Tartars under Emir Mirza, the Cossacks of the Dobroja, by whom the electric shock is transmitted to Poland and Hungary, form an unbroken chain, by which the spark is carried into the heart of Europe, where all the combustible elements wait for the moment of explosion. Twenty-four years ago Turkey was believed to be in a decaying state; it is now stronger than it has been for the last ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... raft really floating on this substance, which is in the highest degree combustible? Where had this naphtha come from? Was it a natural phenomenon taking place on the surface of the Angara, or was it to serve as an engine of destruction, put in motion by the Tartars? Did they intend ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... fear," said my strange companion; "it is only imprudence that makes victims. Olivari, who perished at Orleans, ascended in a mongolfier made of paper; his car, suspended below the chafing-dish, and ballasted with combustible materials, became a prey to the flames! Olivari fell, and was killed. Mosment ascended at Lille, on a light platform; an oscillation made him lose his equilibrium. Mosment fell, and was killed. Bittorf, at Manheim, saw his paper balloon take fire in the air! Bittorf fell, and was killed. Harris ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... upon my settlement, about forty yards from the creek of St. John, till I could build my house, and lodging {19} for my people. As my hut was composed of very combustible materials, I caused a fire to be made at a distance, about half way from the creek, to avoid accidents: which occasioned an adventure, that put me in mind of the prejudices they have in Europe, from the relations that are ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz |
