"Contraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the word stage is a portion of the road, traveled between one resting-place and another. But in the United States it is used to mean the carriage,—being a sort of contraction for stage-coach. ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... steel prow with a cutting edge at either end of the sort of aerostat I foresee, and conceivably this aerial ram will be the most important weapon of the affair. When operating against balloons, such a fighting-machine will rush up the air as swiftly as possible, and then, with a rapid contraction of its bladders, fling itself like a knife at the sinking war-balloon of the foe. Down, down, down, through a vast alert tension of flight, down it will swoop, and, if its stoop is successful, slash explosively at last through a suffocating moment. Rifles will crack, ropes tear ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... is portrayed in the countenance of Laocoon, and not in the countenance alone, under the most violent suffering; the pain discovers itself in every muscle and sinew of his body, and the beholder, while looking at the agonized contraction of the abdomen, without viewing the face and the other parts, believes that he almost feels the pain himself. This pain expresses itself, however, without any violence, both in the features and in the whole posture. He raises no terrible shriek, such as Virgil makes his Laocoon utter, for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... to your attention the Secretary's views in respect to the likelihood of a serious contraction of this circulation, and to the modes by which that result may, in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... wider, or expansion, Drawing nearer, or contraction, Falling, rising, Slanting, crossing, Convex, concave, curved lines, Convex, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... Stretton, without a smile. His eyes were bent on the ground; there was a joyless contraction of his delicate, dark brows. It was with an evident effort that he suddenly looked up and spoke. "I have an interest in such subjects. I am trying to find pupils myself—or, at least, I hope to find some when I return to England in a ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... extravagant magnificence of his games (689)—in which all the equipments, even the cages of the wild beasts, appeared of massive silver—and generally by a liberality which was all the more princely that it was based solely on the contraction of debt. The attacks on the nobility were of the most varied kind. The abuses of aristocratic rule afforded copious materials; magistrates and advocates who were liberal or assumed a liberal hue, like Gaius Cornelius, Aulus Gabinius, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... action, should say, first of all, that for this reason I am now sitting here, because my body is composed of bones and sinews and that the bones are hard, and have joints separate from each other, but that the sinews, being capable of tension and contraction, cover the bones, together with the flesh and skin which contain them. The bones, therefore, being suspended in their sockets, the nerves, relaxing and tightening, enable me to bend my limbs as I now do, and from this cause ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... that was not there the day before, for, instead of the flaccid immobility in which he was mired all day, he was shaken at that moment by violent tremors, and on his expressionless, dead face there was a wrinkle of suffering life, a contraction as of pain. Jansoulet, profoundly moved, gazed at that thin, wasted, earth-colored face, on which the beard, having appropriated all the vitality of the body, grew with surprising vigor; then he stooped, placed his lips on the forehead moist with perspiration, and, feeling that he started, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... contraction of all her internal being, but outwardly she never so much as nicked an eyelash. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... language, notwithstanding all the disadvantages under which his youth must have been passed, pauses to notice one gross and repeated error. 'The vulgarism alluded to,' says the laureate, 'consists in the almost uniform use of a for have—never marked as a contraction, e.g. might a made me take heed—like to a been smothered.' Under favour, however, this is a sin against orthography rather than grammar: the tinker of Elstow only spelt according to the pronunciation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... all the vulgarity and ungainliness of his appearance; not a ray of intellect beams from his countenance; a lump of more ordinary clay never enclosed a powerful mind and lively imagination. He had a cold and sore throat, the latter of which occasioned a constant contraction of the muscles of the thorax, making him appear as if in momentary danger of a fit. His manner struck me as not pleasing, but it was not assuming, unembarrassed, yet not easy, unpolished, yet not coarse; there was no kind of usurpation of the conversation, no tenacity as to opinion ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the singular, dual and plural numbers, the usual persons and tenses, and three principal moods, viz., indicative, imperative and conditional. The verb-stem and a contraction of the pronoun are incorporated, and the word thus formed is used in ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews
... in a very different manner; he stood up so that he might not have to offer me a chair, and though I spoke Italian, with which language I knew him to be well acquainted, he answered me in Spanish, styling me 'ussia' (a contraction of 'vuestra senoria', your lordship, and used by everyone in Spain), while I gave him his proper title ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the body; whereas things that cause terror generally affect the bodily organs by the operation of the mind suggesting the danger; but both agreeing, either primarily or secondarily, in producing a tension, contraction, or violent emotion of the nerves,[31] they agree likewise in everything else. For it appears very clearly to me from this, as well as from many other examples, that when the body is disposed, by any means whatsoever, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tore the curtains aside so that the sunlight poured into the room, and Stella opened and shut her eyes with a contraction of pain. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... she perceived the same figure standing by her bedside. He appeared in his uniform, the hands pressed across the breast, the hair dishevelled, the face very pale. His large dark eyes were fixed full upon her; their expression was that of great excitement, and there was a peculiar contraction of the mouth, habitual to him when agitated. She saw him, even to each minute particular of his dress, as distinctly as she had ever done in her life; and she remembers to have noticed between his hands the white ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... It was still loose on the following morning, and I had the boiler pumped up with the intention of attempting to clear the propeller; but one of the manholes developed a leak, the packing being perished by cold or loosened by contraction, and the boiler had to ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... bodies, and then the mould was broken up, leaving the plaster-cast whole. Thus one touching incident in the terrible tragedy of eighteen centuries ago has been preserved for the admiration and respect of posterity. The arms and legs of the child showed a contraction and emaciation which could only result from illness. Of the mother only the right arm was preserved; she fell upon the ashes, and the remaining portion of her body was consumed. But the right hand still clasped the legs of the child; on her arm were two ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Position, and Size. By means of muscular contraction, then, the gullet-elevator carries the food into the stomach. This is a comparatively simple affair, merely a ballooning out, or swelling, of the food tube, like the bulb of a syringe, making a pouch, where the food can be stored between meals, and where ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... influence on our behaviour and conduct in society, but even on our ideas of vice and virtue; so as to make us regard any remarkable transgression of such a degree of partiality, either by too great an enlargement, or contraction of the affections, as vicious and immoral. This we may observe in our common judgments concerning actions, where we blame a person, who either centers all his affections in his family, or is so ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the after-birth is readily expelled; if not, clothes wrung out in hot water laid upon the bowels will often cause the contraction of the uterus, and the ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... his glass between thumb and fingers. Presently he said, looking straight before him at the table: "I have been thinking a good deal of late—more than ever before, positively, in fact—that whatever my prospects may be," (he did not see the momentary contraction of his father's brow) "I ought to begin some sort of a career in earnest. I'm afraid," he continued, "that I have been rather unmindful, and that I might have been of some use to you as well as myself if I had stayed at home instead of spending ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... and the bridge a little more marked, than in the year 1813. The eyelids were thinned, the lips pinched, the corners of the mouth drawn down, the cheek bones too prominent, and the neck visibly shrunken, which exaggerated the prominence of the chin and larynx. But the eyelids were closed without contraction, and the sockets much less hollow than one could have expected; the mouth was not at all distorted, like the mouth of a corpse; the skin was slightly wrinkled, but had not changed color,—it had only become a little more transparent, showing after a fashion the color ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... raises and lowers his arm). It would be interesting to produce contraction! The subject ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... in which female and child labor is only allowed conditionally. The great majority of these are industries involving special risk through the disengagement of dust-particles or vapors; while a few are ranked as dangerous, owing to risk of fire and the contraction of ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... every other bad thing imaginable. Johnstone's discretion, at least, was admirable, now that she thought of it. His bright eyes and frank look would have disarmed any suspicion short of the certainty she possessed. There had not been the least contraction of the lids, the smallest change in the expression of his mouth, not the faintest increase of ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... ugly ripple setting across it to the "head-gate." He saw something white clinging there and ran round the brink. It was the sodden fleece of the old ewe which had been drifted against the "head-gate," and held there to her death. Evesham, with a sickening contraction of the heart, threw off his jacket for a plunge, when Dorothy's voice called rather faintly from the willows ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... preparing us to enter one that in comparison is literally dark. From the age of Justinian, and from the rise of Islam in the early years of the seventh century, the geographical knowledge of Christendom is on a par with its practical contraction and apparent decline. There are travellers; but for the next five hundred years there are no more theorists, cosmographers, or map-makers of the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... of the heart is caused by its alternate expansion and contraction, as it receives and expels the blood. With one throb, the blood is sent from the right ventricle into the lungs, and from the left ventricle into ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... an apparently displeased contraction of her brows as he made this revelation. For the instant, a dreadful fear of having offended her seized upon and sickened him. But then her face cleared, as by magic. She smiled, and let her eyes twinkle in laughter at him, and lifted a forefinger ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... an inflammation of the tendons back of the ankle and a drawing up or contraction in consequence. Put on heel calks one inch, no toe, to rest and relieve the back tendons from strain. Apply the following liniment at night, after which put on cold-water swabs and let them remain all night: Soap liniment, 8 ounces; tincture iodine, 2 ounces; ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... considerate and forbearing, and they travelled slowly and talked little. At first Faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on familiar things. He seldom looked at a newspaper, he never opened a letter without a moment's contraction of the heart. It was not that he had any special cause for apprehension, but merely that a great trail of darkness lay on everything. He had looked too deep down into the abyss. ... But little by little health and energy returned to him, and with them the common promptings of curiosity. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... their places. There was Thomas Yownie, the Chief of Staff, with a wrist wound up in the handkerchief which he had borrowed from his neck. There was a burly lad who wore trousers much too large for him, and who was known as Peer Pairson, a contraction presumably for Peter Paterson. After him came a lean tall boy who answered to the name of Napoleon. There was a midget of a child, desperately sooty in the face either from battle or from fire-tending, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... dissatisfaction finally began to appear, and, after the nature of such things, they developed with marvellous rapidity. People began to grumble about "contraction of the currency." In every country there arose a party which demanded "free money." Demagogues pointed to the brief reign of paper money after the demonetization of gold as a happy period, when the people had enjoyed their rights, and the "money barons"—borrowing a ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... old-clothes men still whine at the corner, and look you up and down in cheap appraisal? Pop Smith is dead, who sold his photograph to Freshmen, but has he no successor? How about the old fellow who sold hot chestnuts at football games—"a nickel a bush"—a rare contraction meant to denote a bushel—in reality fifteen nuts and fifteen worms. Does George Felsburg still play the overture at Poli's, reading his newspaper the while, and do comic actors still jest ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... consist of parallel filaments marked by longitudinal and transverse striae, or minute channels. The fibers are nearly the same length as the muscles to which they belong. Each muscular fiber is capable of contraction; it may act singly, though usually it acts in unison with others. By a close inspection, it has been found that fibers may be drawn apart longitudinally, in which case they are termed fibrillae, or they may ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... and despised, but whom she was saving, or trying to save, with herself, carried the effrontery of his sham-honest face and cold manner through it all, unmoved, so far as she could see. Only once or twice in the course of the day he had laughed suddenly and nervously, with a contraction of the face and a raising of the flat upper lip that showed his sharp yellow teeth. No one noticed it but Matilde, and it frightened her. But hitherto he had said nothing more since he had first confided to her, as to his only possible helper, ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... looked at him, clinging with both hands to the seat. The skiff creaked and danced upon the river. She could not close her eyes, a frightful contraction kept them wide open riveted on the hideous struggle. She remained rigid ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... at the outset the entire contraction of all our previous efforts, in the simple passive: ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... and World Bank support in the mid-1980s because of its huge debt arrears. An austerity program implemented shortly after the Fujimori government took office in July 1990 contributed to a third consecutive yearly contraction of economic activity, but was able to generate a small recovery in the last quarter. After a burst of inflation as the program eliminated government price subsidies, monthly price increases eased to the single-digit level for ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Gums, livid Spots and fungous Ulcers[113] on his Legs, with Pains and Weakness all over. The fourth had also spungy Gums and a foetid Breath, Pains of the Legs and Arms, livid Blotches on his Legs, great Hardness and Contraction of the right Ham, and a livid hard Swelling on the Outside of the left Thigh, ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... the mixture of the heart is injured, or the heart is wounded seriously. Death is also caused by disease or injury of the brain. For the brain is the origin of the nerves which control the voluntary activities by means of contraction and expansion. If the chest does not contract, the warm air does not come out; if it does not expand, the cold air does not come in; and if the air does not come in or out, the heart loses its proportionality, and the animal dies. The functions of the animal soul are sensation and motion. This ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... weighing down the floe had allowed water to flow in over the sledge level. It is surprising to find such a big disturbance from what appears to be a simple cause. This crack is now joined, and the contraction is taking on a new one which has opened much nearer to us and seems to ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... native district, and where, excepting in Pietersburg and some other positions held by our troops, the natives are now almost the only inhabitants. Indeed, nothing is more characteristic of the latest stage of the war than the contraction of Boer resistance within certain wide but fairly well-defined districts, separated from one another by considerable spaces. Instead of ranging indifferently over the whole of the two late Republics, the enemy show an increasing tendency to confine ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... to suppose that this Abe Slaney was an American, since Abe is an American contraction, and since a letter from America had been the starting-point of all the trouble. I had also every cause to think that there was some criminal secret in the matter. The lady's allusions to her past and her refusal to take her husband into her confidence ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Socrates left it to be guessed by his auditors, whether, by the exemption from want which was to constitute happiness, he meant amplitude of possessions or contraction of desire. And, indeed, there is so little difference between them, that Alexander the Great confessed the inhabitant of a tub the next man to the master of the world; and left a declaration to future ages, that if he was not Alexander he ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... peculiar contraction of the Jew's red eye-brows, and a half closing of his deeply-set eyes, warned Miss Nancy that she was disposed to be too communicative, is not a matter of much importance. The fact is all we need ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... I said, giving him a touch on the arm; but the hammer rose and fell still by the contraction of his right hand, and went on ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... no very comprehensive search may venture to say that he has heard all this before; but it was never till now recommended by such a blaze of embellishment, or such sweetness of melody. The vigorous contraction of some thoughts, the luxuriant amplification of others, the incidental illustrations, and sometimes the dignity, sometimes the softness of the verses, enchain philosophy, suspend criticism, and oppress judgment by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... was the theme of verses 5-15, and was there pursued to its ultimate consequences of final judgment on rejecters, whilst the wider horizon of a future mission opens out from verse 16 onwards. A renewed contraction of the horizon is extremely unlikely. It would be as if 'a flower should shut and be a bud again.' The recurrence in verse 23 of 'Verily I say unto you,' which has already occurred in verse 15, closing the first section of the charge, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... try my slang dictionary," said Lydia, taking down a book and opening it. "Here it is. 'Pug—a fighting man's idea of the contracted word to be produced from pugilist.' What an extraordinary definition! A fighting man's idea of a contraction! Why should a man have a special idea of a contraction when he is fighting; or why should he think of such a thing at all under such circumstances? Perhaps 'fighting man' is slang too. No; it is not given here. Either I mistook ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... are filled, like bellows, because they are expanded," but Harvey thought that the action of spurting blood from a severed vessel disproved this. For the spurting was remittant, "now with greater, now with less impetus," and its greater force always corresponded to the expansion (diastole), not the contraction (systole) of the vessel. Furthermore, it was evident that contraction of the heart and the arteries was not simultaneous, as was commonly taught, because in that case there would be no marked propulsion ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the perplexed contraction of her brow deepened. She picked up Hilland's letter, and slowly and musingly folded it. Suddenly she pressed a fervent kiss upon it, and murmured: "Thank God, the writer of this has blood in his veins; and yet—and yet—he looked at first as ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... reviving slightly when he reached the market-place, and, as his strength returned, the firm pressure of his lips and contraction of his ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... big deep chair, her white hands loosely grasping its arms, and her white lids lowered. Now and then a tear would trickle from beneath those lids and a slight contraction of pain would move her lips. Any one looking in upon her so might well have wondered where were the friends and companions of this beautiful, lonely woman, shut into this small room, in the silence of a twilight that hung damp and gray outside, and that the smouldering fire ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... keep me hanging on for an eternity," he said, with the nervous contraction of his forehead she knew so well. "If we must go to the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... applied to women, is simply the Gipsy word romi, a contraction of romni, a wife; ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... pronunciation, Beeshee (you would probably call it Beetchee if you learned to speak Italian in England, but the Contessa had the Tuscan tongue in a Roman mouth, according to the proverb), which, as everybody knows, is the contraction of Beatrice. She was called Miss Beachey in the household, a name which was received—by the servants at least—as a quite proper and natural name; a great deal more sensible than Forno-Populo. Her position, however, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... a growing machine-building sector specializing in construction equipment, tractors, agricultural machinery, and some defense items. The breakup of the USSR in December 1991 and the collapse in demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products resulted in a short-term contraction of the economy, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995-97, the pace of the government program of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial shifting of assets ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... whatever. It was one of profound melancholy—of a phaseless and unceasing gloom. His eyes were abnormally large, and round like those of a cat. The pupils, too, upon any accession or diminution of light, underwent contraction or dilation, just such as is observed in the feline tribe. In moments of excitement the orbs grew bright to a degree almost inconceivable; seeming to emit luminous rays, not of a reflected but of an intrinsic lustre, as does a candle ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... carbonizing a strip of paper. He sealed this in a vessel of glass from which the air was exhausted and the electric current was led to the filament through platinum wires sealed in the glass. Platinum was used because its expansion and contraction is about the same as glass. Incidentally, many improvements were made in incandescent lamps and thirty years passed before a material was found to replace the platinum leading-in wires. The cost of platinum steadily increased and finally in the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... silent auditor of the conversation. A moment of indecision on the part of the Grangers had given him time to make this observation, but it was not concluded when Reuben's cracked voice sang out cheerfully, "Ye don't say!" A slight contraction passed over Stephen's face. Much as he would have liked to mark the bit of information for his own, now that it had been appropriated by another, he gave no further sign. The noise of the wagon died along the road, and still Reuben and Stephen Granger ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... isolation was the strangulation of filial love. When the monk abandoned the softening, refining influence of women and children, one side of his nature suffered a serious contraction. An Egyptian mother stood at the hut of two hermits, her sons. Weeping bitterly, she begged to see their faces. To her piteous entreaties, they said: "Why do you, who are already stricken with age, pour forth such ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... the particles of water, in moving toward the center, in order to get out of the basin, invariably set up a rotary motion. As the particles of this diffused nebula began to gather together they, too, gave to the mass a rotary movement. This grew more and more rapid, with greater contraction, until the particles on the outer edge of the rotating mass had just so much speed that the least bit more would make them tend to fly off as mud would fly from a revolving wheel. When this point was reached there was a balance ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... I'd nothin' else to do, as the ould song says. Ye see, Losh," (Bryan had invented a contraction for his friend's name, which he said was "convanient")—"ye see, Losh, there may be more nor wan raison for a gintleman lavin' his native land in order to thravel in furrin parts. It's thrue I had nothin' in the univarse to do, for I could niver git work nohow, an' whin I got it I could ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Bohemian Reformation was John Huss, or Hus, the son of a peasant. He was born in 1369 at Husinetz—of which his own name is a contraction—in Southern Bohemia. The principal events of his life, from the time that he took his degree at the University of Prague until his death at the stake, July 6, 1415, will be found in Trench's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... orifices of moisture—muscosi fontes, &c." Nor the cause rendered, that "the firmness of hides is for the armour of the body against extremities of heat or cold," doth not impugn the cause rendered, that "contraction of pores is incident to the outwardest parts, in regard of their adjacence to foreign or unlike bodies;" and so of the rest, both causes being true and compatible, the one declaring an intention, the other a consequence only. Neither doth this call in question or derogate from Divine ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... and Bracy watched every dislodged block as it fell, feeling a strange contraction about the heart, as it seemed certain that either it or the fragments into which it splintered must sweep some of the brave lads steadily marching along the shelf, horribly mutilated, into ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... the petioles would supply them with sufficient moisture. We shall hereafter see that many seedlings are protected from frost, but by a widely different process, namely, by being drawn beneath the surface by the contraction of their radicles. We may, however, believe that the extraordinary manner of germination of Megarrhiza has another and secondary advantage. The radicle begins in a few weeks to enlarge into a little tuber, which then abounds with starch ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... redound vnto both parts: may it seeme good vnto your discretion, as it seemeth expedient vnto vs, that some messengers of yours sufficiently authorised to parle, agree, and conclude with our deputy, about the mutuall contraction of a perpetuall league and confimation of friendship, may with all conuenient speede be sent vnto our presence. At whose arriuall, not onely in this busines so profitable and behoouefull, but also in certaine other affaires concerning the former treaties and conclusions, they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... There was an ugly contraction of Brian's brow at this moment. To Mr. Colquhoun the moments of doubt were full of anguish. Perchance Jeff had given his life for his son's, for life seemed long in returning to the little face that lay so still and white, with the pretty yellow curls dripping wet. At last Jeff opened ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... obvious misrepresentations. Thus, inwardly corroded by the venom it distills, his physical machine gets out of order, like that of Marat, but with other symptoms. When speaking in the tribune "his hands crisp with a sort of nervous contraction;" sudden tremors agitate "his shoulders and neck, shaking him convulsively to and fro."[31150] "His bilious complexion becomes livid," his eyelids quiver under his spectacles, and how he looks! "Ah," said a Montagnard, "you would have voted as we did on the 9th of Thermidor, had you seen his green ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the central depression. The so-called "microcytes" constitute an exception to this statement. These are small round forms, to which was allotted in the early days of the microscopic investigation of the blood, a special significance for the severe anaemias. They are however nothing but contraction forms of the poikilocytes, as the crenated are of the normal corpuscles. Consequently microcytes are but seldom found in dried specimens, whilst in wet preparations they are easily seen after some time. It is further of importance to know, that in fresh blood ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... elaborated into Beowulf, as we now have it. The poem was probably a long time in process of evolution, and many different scops doubtless added new episodes to the song, altering it by expansion and contraction under the inspiration of different times and places. Finally, it seems probable that some one English poet gave the work its present form, making it a more unified whole, and incorporating in it ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... with other lower marine animals under the name of "sea-fruit" (frutti di mare). There is nothing about them to show that they are animals. When they are taken out of the water with the net the most one can perceive is a slight contraction of the body that causes water to spout out in two places. The bulk of the Ascidiae are very small, at the most a few inches long. A few species are a foot or more in length. There are many species of ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... motor-centres occur in the grey matter of the hemispheres, a strong probability arises that they are not only the motor-centres, but also the volitional centres which originate the intellectual commands for the contraction of this and that group of muscles. Unfortunately we cannot interrogate an animal whether, when we stimulate a motor-centre, we arouse in the animal's mind an act of will to throw the corresponding group of muscles ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... propelled him splendidly. All that indecision with which fear works upon the mind had left him, but the old contraction of his nerves still hampered his action. The blaze from Maruffi's second shot half blinded him and its breath smote him like ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... other way. If they are three-cornered, it is probable that the object glass is subjected to undue pressure in its cell. This, if the telescope has been brought out on a cool night from a warm room, may arise from the unequal contraction of the metal work and the glass as they cool off. In fact, no good star image can be got while a telescope is assuming the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. Even the air inclosed in the tube is capable of making much trouble ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... shown in Figure 2. Here we have a mass of protoplasm with a nucleus (n) and cavities (vacuoles, v) filled with cell sap, but no cell wall. The protoplasm is in constant movement, and by extensions of a portion of the mass and contraction of other parts, the whole creeps slowly along. Other naked cells (Fig. 12, B; Fig. 16, C) are provided with delicate thread-like processes of protoplasm called "cilia" (sing. cilium), which are in active vibration, and propel the cell ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... kind, seem to have haunted the bays and waters of the primitive lands. But in this state of things there was no order of events similar to the present; the crust of the globe was exceedingly slender, and the source of fire a small distance from the surface. In consequence of contraction in one part of the mass, cavities were opened, which caused the entrance of water, and immense volcanic explosions took place, raising one part of the surface, depressing another, producing mountains, and causing new and extensive ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... Allan Harrington, he lay just as she had seen him that other time, white and moveless, seeming scarcely conscious except by an effort. Only she noticed a slight contraction, as of pain, ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... with the weight of years; others, both young and old, gaunt and haggard from the influence of disease and suffering, and many giving evidence by their aspect that their days on earth were numbered. Some, by the stern contraction of brow and lip, seemed to suggest that submission was the last thought that would enter their minds, but not a few of the party wore that look of patient endurance which is due to the influence of the Spirit of God—not to mere human strength of mind and will. All seemed ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... was alone in his down-town bachelor quarters; that is, alone save for an individual the club-man's friends termed his "Man Friday," an undersized and very black negro named Alexander Hamilton Brown, but answering to the contraction "Alec." Valet, man of all work, steward, Alec was as much a fixture about the place as the floor or the ceiling; and, like them, his presence, save ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... recognized a certain rhythm of expansion and contraction, and he found that the plant passes through it three times during any one cycle of its life. In the foliage the plant expands, in the calyx it contracts; it expands again in the flower and contracts in the pistil and stamens; finally, it expands in the fruit ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... caused the slowing down? Swelling of the earth by reason of accumulation of meteoric dust might do something, but probably very little. Contraction of the earth as it goes on cooling would act in the opposite direction, and probably more than counterbalance the dust effect. The problem is thus not a simple one, for there are several disturbing causes, and for none of them are the data enough to base a quantitative ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... streets, to their great commodity. It is for this reason called Upsal, because Ubbo—who, they say, was the son of Gomer, the son of Japhet, the son of Noah—this Ubbo built this town upon the river Sale, and therefore called it, after his own name, Ubbo Sale, by contraction of speech now called Upsal. All agree it to be one of the most ancient of their cities, the metropolitan see of their archbishop, and in old time the residence of their kings, and where they were invested with the regal dignity. The country about ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... when we entered Nikolaus's room was the time —a quarter to 10. Could that be correct? Only such a few minutes to live! I felt a contraction at my heart. Nikolaus jumped up and gave us a glad welcome. He was in good spirits over his plannings for his party and had not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... E Eck, contraction for Alexander. e'e, eye. een, eyes. e'en, even. e'enins, evenings. efterhan', afterwards. eident, diligent. elbuck, elbow. eneuch, enough. ense, otherwise. ettlin', inclined to. ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... no effect on the stability of the wall, it was thought that, for appearance sake, it would be desirable to prevent or control them, if possible. The first method suggested was to shorten the sections to 25 ft., which would give an expansion and contraction joint every 25 ft., it being thought that sections of this length would not crack between the joints. This, however, was not considered desirable. An effort was then made to prevent cracks in a section of wall, about 46 ft. long, on the south side, by using longitudinal ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • B.F. Cresson, Jr
... it is the cool night wind—the uneven contraction of materials expanded in the heat of ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... undulation any instrument or tune makes by its strokes in the air; which, vibrating upon the external parts of the patient, is communicated to the whole nervous system, and produces that happy alteration in the solids and fluids which so effectually contributes to the cure. The contraction of the solids, he says, impresses new mathematical motions and directions to the fluids; in one or both of which is seated all distempers, and without any other help than a continuance of faith, will alter their quality; ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... pianissimo passage, it is often held very lightly between the thumb and the first two fingers, while in a fortissimo one it is grasped tightly in the closed fist, the tension of the muscles being symbolic of the excitement expressed in the music at that point. All muscles must be relaxed unless a contraction occurs because of the conductor's response to emotional tension in the music. The wrist should be loose and flexible, and the entire beat so full of grace that the attention of the audience is never for an instant distracted from listening ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... speech was not in itself of a nature calculated to convey much; but the tone of the old trader's voice, the contraction of his eyebrows, and above all the overwhelming flow of cloudlets that followed, imparted to it a significance that induced the belief that Charley's taking his own way would be productive of more terrific consequences than ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... meantime, to reach their ultimate greatness and have an influence in the destinies of the world, these nations only require to come together and have a better knowledge of each other, to break up the old colonial isolation, and realize the contraction of America, as what is called the contraction of the world has always been effected by the annihilation of distance through railways, telegraphs, and the thousand and one means of communication and interchange at ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... of Greene lay at Round O., considerable alarm was excited in the American camp by tidings of large reinforcements made to the British strength in Charleston. General Leslie was now in command of the latter. The contraction of the American military 'cordon' had very greatly straitened the resources and comforts of the British general. The numerous refugees who had taken shelter in the city with their families, the great accumulation of horses within the lines, and the vigilant ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... Trotter. The old gentleman, in spite of his warlike title, had a most pacific appearance. He was large and fat, with a broad, hazy, muffin face, a sleepy eye, and a full double chin. He had a deep ravine from each corner of his mouth, not occasioned by any irascible contraction of the muscles, but apparently the deep-worn channels of two rivulets of gravy that oozed out from the huge mouthfuls that he masticated. But I forbear to dwell on the odd beings that were congregated together ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was adducted, the insertion of the anterior pterygoid was in a plane nearly level with the origin. Contraction of the anterior pterygoid when the jaw was in this position pulled the mandible forward and did not adduct it. Maximum depression of the mandible produced maximum disparity vertically between the levels of the origin and insertion. The force exerted by the ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... deceiving their guest as to the strength of the liquor he had drunk. They went into the Painting Room, and found Mr. Blyth there, pale and penitent, but manfully preparing to varnish The Golden Age, with a very trembling hand, and a very headachy contraction of ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... stood like a faithful sentinel close to the open window, and as his eyes rested on it he was conscious of a pained contraction of the heart, for it stood exactly where it had stood when last he watched the stars and rambled through his dreams and ideals, with the boy for listener. The thought came quick and sharp, goading him as many a puzzled thought had goaded him ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... spoke them of something else. The wine-merchant, still looking at her inquiringly, observed that her eyes wandered towards the chimney-piece once more. They fixed on the portrait of his mother, which hung there, and looked at it with that slight contraction of the brow which accompanies a scarcely conscious effort of memory. ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... of Oneguine's want of courtesy. He always replied "da" or "nyet," yes or no, instead of "das" or "nyets"—the final s being a contraction of "sudar" or "sudarinia," i.e. sir ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... a man's arm is raised, in sequence to that state of consciousness we call a volition, the volition is not the immediate cause of the elevation of the arm. On the contrary, that operation is effected by a certain change of form, technically known as "contraction" in sundry masses of flesh, technically known as muscles, which are fixed to the bones of the shoulder in such a manner that, if these muscles contract, they must raise the arm. Now each of these ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... become stiffened and rigid to an intolerable degree; and although, when I first came on deck, I had, by a strong exertion, brought my caput to its proper bearings, yet the moment I was dismissed by my superior officer, I for my own comfort was glad to conform to the contraction of the muscle, whereby I once more strayed along the deck, glowering up into the heavens, as if I had seen ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... himself, and became absorbed in his theme, he spoke with impressivensss and power; and everywhere throughout the audience was seen that thoughtful contraction of the brow and fixed gaze which betoken deep attention. But upon the faces of nearly all was the expression of one listening to something painful. This was especially true of Miss Martell and her father, while Harcourt's face grew cold and satirical. Lottie ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... dun pony jumped, this time because a sudden involuntary contraction of his rider's muscles had startled him. "What do you know of Delavan ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hardness and heat; next comes mobility as the expansive, sweet quality, as this shows itself in water. As the nature of the first was to bind and the second was fluid, so they both are combined in the bitter quality or the pain of anxiety, the principle of sensibility. (Contraction and expansion are the conditions of perceptibility.) From these three forms fright or lightning suddenly springs forth. This fourth quality is the turning-point at which light flames up from darkness and the love of God ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the liver: congestion, hardening and shrinking cirrhosis. (h) Diseases of the kidneys: change of structure into fatty or waxy-like condition and other changes leading to dropsy. (i) Diseases of the muscles: fatty changes in the muscles, by which they lose their power for proper active contraction. (j) Diseases of the membranes of the body: thickening and loss of elasticity, by which the parts wrapped up in the membrane are impaired for use, and premature decay ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Extreme. This is absolutely immaterial, and the basis of the order of the universe. From this ultimate principle, operating from all eternity, come all animate and inanimate nature. It operates in a twofold way, by expansion and contraction, or by ceaseless active and passive pulsations. The active expansive pulsation is called Yang, the passive intensive pulsation is Yin, and the two may be called the Positive and Negative Essences of all things. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... though not quite so speedily, as the pestilence which has smitten the potato-field. Whoever casts his eye on the table of prices given below[11] for twenty years in London and Dantzic, must at once see that, under a free-trade system, as large an importation of foreign produce, and as extensive a contraction of home, as has taken place this year is to be permanently looked for. The exportation and return of the precious metals, and contraction of credit now felt as so distressing, may be expected to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... his nerve-fibre must have been of that inert sort which transmits waves of sensation but slowly, so that the perception of the first blow reached the interior of his helmet just about as the second descended. At all events, he jerked back his foot, and somehow, between the involuntary contraction of his flexor muscles from pain and the glancing of my stick, his foot slipped from the stirrup. This, as I had learned from my instructor, was a great point gained, and in an instant I had him by the ankle and by the top of his jack-boot, doubling his leg, at the same ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... The contraction of the lateral outline and the sudden expansion on reaching the cutting edge noticed in this specimen are more clearly marked in other examples. The small celt shown in Fig. 16 is narrow above and quite ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... no more, but the bright colour faded from her cheek, and the contraction of care returned to her brow. She occupied herself with taking off her baby's walking things. Hester lingered, anxious to soothe and make peace; she was looking sorrowfully at Sylvia, when she saw tears dropping on the baby's cloak, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... is divided into mo-che in both editions, the "-che" beginning Fol. A. ii.b. Neither is altogether free from misprints, but these are not very numerous nor of much importance. It may be observed that marks of contraction are hardly ever used in the older edition, the word "y^e" being written "the" at length, and instead of "hged" we find "hanged." On the whole, the first edition would seem to be the more carefully printed, but the nature of the variations between them will be best understood by an exact ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... who in reply explained the structure of the apparatus by which they were produced, which apparatus had been constructed by himself. It was fastened around the muscular part of the upper arm, and was so arranged that clicks would be produced by a simple contraction of the muscle, unaccompanied by any motion of the joints of the arm, and entirely invisible to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... comfortable existence is at an end, for such inflammation will bring on constipation and constipation nervous misery. It is inevitable that inflammation should determine this outcome since it induces spasmodic contraction of the muscular walls of the tube, lessening the bore or closing the portion of the canal invaded. Plastic infiltration takes place in the walls of the gut, thickening and binding them together; or, ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... character of the fibre is caused by the unequal contraction of the outer scales, and depends in a great measure upon the hygroscopic nature of the wool. It may be entirely removed for the time by wetting the wool in hot water, then drying it in a stretched condition, or the curl may be artificially induced by unequal drying, a fact which is turned ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... read in his childhood. When he reached man's estate, he became a tree-pruner at Faverolles. His mother was named Jeanne Mathieu; his father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably a sobriquet, and a contraction of viola Jean, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... lungs, may be due to obstruction of the air-passages from foreign bodies in the larynx, drowning, suffocation, strangling, and hanging; from injury to the cervical cord; effusion into the pleurae, with consequent pressure on the lungs; embolism of the pulmonary artery; and from spasmodic contraction of the thoracic and ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... inexplicable. I felt a fire in my soul. I cannot see how it is possible to describe it. My bodily sufferings were unendurable. I have undergone most painful sufferings in this life, and, as the physicians say, the greatest that can be borne, such as the contraction of my sinews when I was paralysed, [1] without speaking of others of different kinds, yea, even those of which I have also spoken, [2] inflicted on me by Satan; yet all these were as nothing in comparison with what I felt then, especially when I saw that there ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... universe itself. Nature has not one law for the rich and another for the poor. The sun is shedding forth heat, and therefore, affirms this law, the sun must be shrinking in size. We have learned the rate at which this contraction proceeds; for among the many triumphs which mathematicians have accomplished must be reckoned that of having put a pair of callipers on the sun so as to measure its diameter. We thus find that the width of the great luminary is ten inches smaller ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... constipation. If it is the purpose of the injection to soften hardened fecal masses, the water should be comfortably warm and may have a little clean soap in it. If it is the purpose of the injection to stimulate sluggish bowels to contraction, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... to be called Shemakha, for that is the name of the town in the government of Baku from which they are exported. But the contraction of the word into Soumak is now universal. Erroneously too, these rugs are known as "Kashmir," for the sole reason that they are woven with a flat stitch and the loose ends left hanging at the back, just as they are in the old Kashmir shawls. The ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... contraction of Vuestra merced, "your grace", usually written as Vd., is the polite ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... The painful contraction in the chest of the lad grew easier, and black specks that had come before his eyes floated away. He returned to a firm land of reality, but he knew that his strength was not yet sufficient to permit of their going on. Tayoga came back in ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... compound of Sam-Oran, Coelestis Sol, fons Lucis. We read of Samicon in Elis, [238][Greek: chorion Samikon], with a sacred cavern: and of a town called [239]Samia, which lay above it. The word [Greek: Semnos] was a contraction of Semanos, from Sema-on; and properly signified divine and celestial. Hence [Greek: semnai theai, semne kora]. Antient Syria was particularly devoted to the worship of the Sun, and of the Heavens; and it was by the natives ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... nightingale sings when its soul is burdened with love. The passionate tremor that shakes the bird's throat at mating-time seemed to shake the unseen instruments that now discoursed strange melody, and Gervase, listening dreamily, felt a curious contraction and aching at his heart and a sense of suffocation in his throat, combined with an insatiate desire to seize in his arms the mysterious Ziska, with her dark fathomless eyes and slight, yet voluptuous, form,—to drag her to his breast and crush her ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... Walkers of Rotherham, the founders, and the masonry by the contractors, Jolliffe and Banks, that, when the work was finished, scarcely any sinking was discernible in the arches. From experiments made to ascertain the expansion and contraction between the extreme range of winter and summer temperature, it was found that the arch rose in the summer about one inch to one and a half inch. The works were commenced in 1813, and the bridge was opened by lamp-light, March 24th, 1819, as the clock of St. Paul's Cathedral tolled midnight. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... much longer," Banjo agreed, thinking of the hardship of being caught out in one of those sweeping blizzards, when the sudden cold grew so sharp that a man's banjo strings broke in the tense contraction. That had happened to him more than once, and it only seemed to sharpen the pleasure of being snowed in at a place like Alamito, where the kitchen was fat and the hand of the host free. He smiled as he turned to the kitchen to wash his face and soap ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... eccentricity were obviated by the young woman who had from the first taken him under her protection,—being, like the rest of her sex, peculiarly open to impositions,—and who at once disorganized her own tongue to suit his. This was affected by the contraction of the syllables of some words, the addition of syllables to others, and an ingenious disregard for tenses and the governing powers of the verb. The same singular law which impels people in conversation with ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... whip stroking across his naked back. His muscles corded and heaved up in horrible contraction, but no sound broke from him; again and again the hide whip licked about him until he felt the warm blood running down his legs, and then with merciful suddenness all things went black, and he hung limp ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... Doctor tried to talk of Henry and the sisters; but soon saw that Leonard had no power to dwell upon them. The brief answers were given with a stern compression and contraction of face; as if the manhood that had grown on him in these three years was no longer capable of the softening effusion of grief; and Dr. May, with all his tenderness, felt that it must be respected, and turned ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mentioned this to me. A silence of the sea, of the sky, merged into one indefinite immensity still as death around these saved, palpitating lives. "You might have heard a pin drop in the boat," he said with a queer contraction of his lips, like a man trying to master his sensibilities while relating some extremely moving fact. A silence! God alone, who had willed him as he was, knows what he made of it in his heart. "I didn't think any spot on earth ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... "item, unum pisanum," or "unum par pisanorum." Of course I have my own conjecture on the subject, but should be glad to hear other opinions; so I again put the question to your correspondents. In conclusion I would observe to "GASTROS" that they must be very late MSS. indeed in which such a contraction as pisan for partisan can be found. If you have room, and think it worth while, I will from time to time send you some corrections of the more flagrant errors ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... influenced by what the patient may choose to do, she may follow her own inclinations. The average patient will be restless and will keep on her feet most of the time; alternately she will walk or stand still as one or the other happens to make her more comfortable. As a contraction begins she often seeks support, leaning upon a chair or bending over the foot of the bed, and presses with her hands against the lower part of her back. Patients may sit down or lie down whenever they wish; if so inclined they may ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... with the small t stands for 'Gesellschaft,' which is the German for 'Company.' It is a customary contraction like our 'Co.' P, of course, stands for 'Papier.' Now for the Eg. Let us glance at our 'Continental Gazetteer'." He took down a heavy brown volume from his shelves. "Eglow, Eglonitz—here we are, Egria. It is in a German-speaking ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... and even that scarcely to be called life—mere muscular contraction, my dear sir, mere ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in fact, bristol board, which had been thoroughly formed, was suddenly superheated and then cooled while still on the driers. This was caused by a difference in temperature of the driers and resulted in the sudden contraction of the web of bristol; the strain on the machine was so great that not only were the driving-cogs broken on two of the driers around which the paper was at the moment passing, but the driers themselves were actually lifted out of place, showing a resisting power in the paper of at ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... Canada, laid the foundation of the present city of Quebec in the month of June, 1608, or three years after the removal of the little Acadian colony from St. Croix Island to the basin of the Annapolis. The name Quebec is now generally admitted to be an adaptation of an Indian word, meaning a contraction of the river or strait, a distinguishing feature of the St. Lawrence at this important point. The first buildings were constructed by Champlain on a relatively level piece of ground, now occupied by a market-house ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... it were, a rubber link in a moving bicycle chain. The revolutions of the chain mark the rhythm; and the stressed or unstressed or lightly stressed syllables in each "link" or foot, accommodate themselves, by almost unperceived expansion and contraction, to the rhythmic beat of the passage ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... have some hunters," said the Marquess, with a contraction of his brow. "I had thought of speaking to you about it. We will discuss ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... with kisses, concealing in this way her trouble and remorse, for from this time henceforward the unhappy woman was a prey to remorse, and never thought of her child without an agonized contraction of the heart. ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... my body, and only moving my benumbed fingers to wipe the chill drip from my face. It was weather to take the courage out of the strongest man, and the sight of the soaked and shivering wounded, packed in the jolting carts or limping through the mud, gave me, hardened as I was, a painful contraction of the heart. The best I could do was to lift upon my worn-out horse one brave young fellow who was hobbling along with a bandaged leg. Followed by the Cossack, whose horse bore a similar burden, I hurried along, hoping to get under cover before dark. At the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... which is here, I hold, a corruption of "I (or Ayy) h""yes indeed he." [I take "aywah" (as I would read the word) to be a different spelling for "aywa"yes indeed, which according to Spitta Bey, Gr. p. 168 is a contraction of "Ay (I) wa'llhi," yes by Allah. "What? thy lover?" asks the husband, and she emphatically affirms the fact, to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that has been already dried should be soaked for twenty-four hours, and then cut into a strip as carefully and as long as the size will permit. When thus prepared, it should be re-soaked for four or five hours, and used while wet as a lashing, drawn as tight as possible. The power of contraction is enormous, and when dry the skin becomes as hard as wood; but a fresh hide has not the same contractive power, and will stretch and become loose when subject to a severe strain." It was a great comfort to return to ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Obed, heartily. "And although I don't generally hanker after Britishers, yet I have a kind of respect for the old country, in spite of its narrowness and contraction, and all the more when I see that it can turn ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... thee, man!" exclaimed JOHN, the Smith, to THOMAS the Jones—a contraction of joiner. "It is these combinations—co-operations, as Sir EVANS, the Clerk at the church over yonder hath it—that ruin trade." Before THOMAS the Jones or joiner could reply, there was a crash, and it was known that Sir BRIAN ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... were horribly dramatic. Every efferent neuron in his system carried the message full power. Every muscle in his body responded with a contraction of full intensity. ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... the effect of the wavering shadows. And yet I could not convince myself that it did not move. It did move. It came forward. One side of it did certainly come forward. A kind of universal cramp seized me—a contraction of every fibre of my body. The patch opened like a door—wider and wider; and from behind came a great helmet peeping. I was all one terror, but my nerves held out so far that I lay like a watching dog—watching for what horror would come next. The door opened ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... She was dead. She sat in the same position in that chair as when I had left her, but her hand clutched her side and the smile she had given me was replaced by a sharp contraction, as if from pain. Swiftly her heart action had been gripped by an unseen force and stopped forever. I grew frantic when I found I could not revive her; I shrieked aloud in the agony of my heart, and father and the servants rushed here in ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... paper, and various other substances. A good varnish should be adhesive, that is, it should cling firmly to the surface to which it is applied; it should be elastic, so as not to crack on account of the expansion and contraction of the material to which it is applied; it should dry in a reasonable time; it should be limpid so as to flow easily in application; it should be transparent and brilliant when polished; and it should be durable. The necessary conditions ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... the discovery of the law of its rhythms, the measurement of its expansion and contraction, movement and pause, the pursuit of its evolution of forms and characters, are true achievements of the mind; but we cannot stop there. It is like a railway station; but the station platform is not our home. Only ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore |
