"Oscillation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must, from the same cause. Already she moves slowly, scarce making way. And now—now she is motionless! He can tell it, by the glass rack and lamps overhead, that hang without the slightest oscillation. Anon, the barque gradually swings round, and he loses sight of the ship. Through the windows he still beholds the sea, calm and blue, but vacant; no outline of hull—no expanded sail—no flouting flag to keep up his heart, which ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... that the pendulum has reached the other extremity of the arc of oscillation, and that neither spiritual nor physical regeneration can walk in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... were not merely stupid, but vulgar and almost wicked, neglectful of the fact that it was by persons exactly analogous to themselves that those portions of Tennyson were adored which the young repudiate to-day. Not to expand too largely this question of the oscillation of taste—which, however, demands more careful examination than it has hitherto received—it is always important to discover what was honestly admired at a given date by the most enthusiastic and intelligent, in other words by the most poetic, students of poetry. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... mental condition, adopting, in short, a modus vivendi which merely gives us the complex impression of life. But imagine these two feelings as INELASTIC and unvarying elements in a really living man, make him oscillate from one to the other; above all, arrange that this oscillation becomes entirely mechanical by adopting the well-known form of some habitual, simple, childish contrivance: then you will get the image we have so far found in all laughable objects, SOMETHING MECHANICAL IN SOMETHING ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... roofs about the flying stage were dark with his people rejoicing over his safe return. A dark mass was crushed together under the stage, a darkness stippled with innumerable faces, and quivering with the minute oscillation of waved white handkerchiefs and ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... movement than the complete absence from the counsels of the English advocates of Home Rule of any definite and settled policy as to the form of self-government to be offered to Ireland, and their consequent oscillation between proposals radically differing from one another. Since the "new departure" initiated by Davitt and Devoy in 1878,[20] it has been the deliberate practice of Irish Nationalists to abstain from defining the Nationalist demand and to ask in general terms for "self-government," ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... drawing them in to diminish their surface in reefing them. Thence the necessity of running out on foot-ropes—movable ropes stretched below the yards—of working with one hand while holding on by the other—perilous work for any one who is not used to it. The oscillation from the rolling and pitching of the ship, very much increased by the length of the lever, the flapping of the sails under a stiff breeze, have often sent a man overboard. It was then a truly dangerous operation ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... that each lunar day, or the interval of twenty-four hours and about fifty-four minutes between two successive meridian passages of our satellite, is marked by a perceptible, though very small, double oscillation of the needle—two progressive movements from east to west, and two returns from west to east.[367] Moreover, the lunar, like the solar influence (as was proved in each case by Sabine's analysis of the Hobarton and Toronto observations), extends ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity. I had, indeed, nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure, when I found one in the death of my wife. This I can and do endure as becomes a man. It was the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope and despair which I could not longer have endured, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... as in Fig. 39 so that all the paths in cd are at right angles to those in ab there wouldn't be any effect in cd when a current in ab started or stopped. Look at the circuit of the oscillating audion in Fig. 38. If we should turn these coils at right angles to each other we would stop the oscillation. Electrons only influence other electrons which are in ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... physicist, born in Paris; distinguished for his studies in optics and problems connected with light; demonstrated the rate of the rotation of the globe by the oscillation of a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... perpendicular to the ecliptic. The strong evidence afforded by the history of mythology, and geological researches, that some event of this nature has taken place already, affords a strong presumption that this progress is not merely an oscillation, as has been surmised by some late ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... which stood by the fire there had risen a flat diamond-shaped head with wicked green eyes which came flickering upwards, waving gently from side to side, until a foot or more of glossy scaly neck was visible. Slowly the vicious head came floating up, while at every oscillation a fresh burst of ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at rest will obviously assume the shape of a sphere, under the influence of gravitation, and it is a stable form, because any oscillation of the liquid which might be started would gradually die away under the influence of friction, however small. If now we impart to the whole mass of liquid a small speed of rotation about some axis, which may be called the polar axis, in such a way that there are no internal ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the heels and was standing him on his head. Then he rolled him over and pressed his chest, with that oscillation which is helpful in restoring seemingly drowned persons, while the breathless George stood idly by watching everything with straining eyes. He could do nothing but pray ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... studies of men and the means of life, Thomas Carlyle. The religious instinct so conspicuous in him was a heritage from Scotland; thence the combination of shrewd common-sense and romantic sentiment; the oscillation between levity and dignity, from caustic jest to tender earnest; the restlessness, the fervour, the impetuosity—all these are the tokens of a Scotsman of parts, and were highly ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... lines a c and a c', the fork has what we term ten-degree pallet action. If the fork and pallets vibrate six degrees on each side of the line a b—that is, to the lines a d and a d'—we have twelve degrees pallet action. If we cut the arc down so the oscillation is only four and one-quarter degrees on each side of a b, as indicated by the lines a s and a s', we have a pallet-and-fork action of eight and one-half degrees; which, by the way, is a very desirable arc for ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... complementary to one another, the sum-total of the two combined always remaining the same in any cycle of work, according to the principle of the conservation of energy. We get a good example of this oscillation from kinetic to potential, and vice versa, in the planetary system. When the earth is farthest from the sun, its velocity, and consequently its kinetic energy, is at its lowest point; but there the potential energy is at its greatest. As the earth turns round in its orbit, however, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... that women like to have their own way; but they like, at the same time, to have difficulties to surmount and to conquer; otherwise, half the gratification is lost. Although tempests are to be deplored, still a certain degree of oscillation and motion are requisite to keep fresh and clear the lake of matrimony, the waters of which otherwise soon stagnate and become foul, and without some contrary currents of opinion between a married couple such a ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... incorporation with the "faith."[465] The limits of the latter therefore seem to be indefinitely extended, whilst on the other hand tradition, and polemics too in many cases, demanded an adherence to the shortest formula. The oscillation between this brief formula, the contents of which, as a rule, did not suffice, and that fulness, which admitted of no bounds at all, is characteristic of the old Catholic Fathers we have mentioned. In the second place, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... planks, or plates of iron, with reference to certain forces of impact to be sustained, and of inertia to be overcome; or we construct a wall or roof with distinct reference to forces of pressure and oscillation, to be sustained or guarded against; and therefore, in every case, with especial consideration of the strength of our materials, and the nature of that strength, elastic, tenacious, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... then, however, its desires are boundless, and every satisfied wish begets a new one. So-called pleasures are only a mode of temporary relief. Pain soon returns in the form of satiety. Life is a more or less violent oscillation between pain and ennui. The latter, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to swoop down wherever it sees a life ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... kettle dreamily. The fire glowed and flashed and sank, and glowed again. Now he could distinctly see a serpent twisting among the embers. The clock ticked in measured unison with the slow oscillation of the flame serpent. The wind blew hard against the panes and sent a sudden chill creeping to ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... animals induces and occasions a capacity for change which is wanting in wild animals—the introduction of new causes occasioning new effects. For, though a certain degree of variability (normally, in all probability, only oscillation) exists in all organisms, yet domestic ones are exposed to new and different causes of variability, resulting in such striking divergencies as have been observed. Not even in this latter case, however, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... some geological freak had formed the mineral. Venus was a strange planet anyway. But that didn't matter. The important thing now was to get to know this process. He went off into a happy mist of quantum mechanics, oscillation theory, and periodic functions ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... free, single, and of various colours, sporting about in every direction. Numerous species resemble pearly or opaline cups or vases, fringed round the margin with delicate fibres, that are in constant oscillation. Some of these are attached by spiral tendrils; others are united by a slender stem to one common trunk, appearing like a bunch of hare-bells; others are of a globular form, and grouped together in a definite pattern, on a tabular or spherical membranous ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... attach an heterogeneal collection of massive seals and keys to one end of a chain, and a small church-clock to the other. The chain then formed a pendulum in front of their small-clothes, and the dignified oscillation of the appendages was considered to distinguish the gentleman. They were also used as auxiliaries in argument; for whenever an hiatus occurred in the discussion, the speaker, by having resort to his watch-chain, could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... persevere. Fatigued with our former course, too listless to explore a new one, kept in action by inertness, moving only because we have been in motion, with a sort of plodding perseverance we resolve to measure back again the very same joyless, hopeless, and inglorious track. Backward and forward,—oscillation, space,—the travels of a postilion, miles enough to circle the globe in one short stage,—we have been, and we are yet to be, jolted and rattled over the loose, misplaced stones and the treacherous hollows of this rough, ill-kept, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... disappearance the floor seemed to change its level. A giddy feeling seized him; he put his feet to the floor; it was unmistakably wet and oozing. He hurriedly clothed himself, still accompanied by the strange feeling of oscillation and giddiness, and passed though the opening into the next room. Again his step produced the same effect upon the floor, and he actually stumbled against her shaking figure, as she wiped the tears of uncontrollable mirth from her eyes with her apron. The contact seemed to upset her remaining ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... place, the way is upon long beams introduced into holes made in the rock, like a bridge, and covered up with earth. Brr!—At the thought that a little stone might get loose and roll down the slope of the mountain, or that a too strong oscillation of the beams could precipitate the whole structure into the abyss, and with it him who had ventured upon the perilous path, one feels like fainting more than once during this ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... dressed in well-worn civilian costume, with the exception of an old blue coat showing dim remnants of military garniture. Heeling up to a gentleman who sat near me, he glared stupidly at him from beneath a broad-brimmed hat, demanding a seat mutely, but with such eloquence of oscillation that no words were necessary. The respectable person thus addressed, not anxious to receive the stranger into his lap, rose and walked away, with that air of not, having seen anything so common to disconcerted people who wish to conceal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... under a dome of stars. It shrieked by mysterious stations, dragging furiously its freight of luxury and light and human masks through placid and humble villages and towns, of which it ignored everything save their coloured signals of safety. Ages of oscillation seemed to pass. In traversing the corridors one saw interior after interior full of the signs of wearied humanity: magazines thrown aside, rugs in disorder, hair dishevelled, eyes heavy, cheeks flushed, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... does not prove, that the four-bar linkage was then in use. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) delineated, if he did not build, a crank and slider mechanism, also for a sawmill (fig. 2). In the 16th century may be found the conversion of rotary to reciprocating motion (strictly speaking, an oscillation through a small arc of a large circle) and vice versa by use of linkages of rigid members (figs. 3 and 4), although the conversion of rotary to reciprocating motion was at that time more frequently accomplished by cams and intermittent gearing. Nevertheless, the idea of linkages ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... CO. six months to go wrong in, and then called for that pass-book again. My eye fell upon a paying and deducting and refunding and readjusting of an item itself so shameful that it dared only appear under its initials. Why this oscillation? I asked myself. So we engaged upon another correspondence, and another interview took place, at which I was supported by my subaltern (who could multiply and add), and the bank-man was supported by a young ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... At Punta Gorda, in Banda Oriental, I found an alternation of the Pampaean estuary deposit, with a limestone containing some of the same extinct sea-shells; and this shows either a change in the former currents, or more probably an oscillation of level in the bottom of the ancient estuary. Until lately, my reasons for considering the Pampaean formation to be an estuary deposit were, its general appearance, its position at the mouth of the existing great river the Plata, and the presence of so many bones of terrestrial ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... velocity we have contended for, ought to keep the tail invariably directed from the axis of the vortex; but, where there are two forces or tendencies, as in this case, analogy would teach us that a certain degree of oscillation is a necessary result. There may, also, be slight and transient changes in the direction of the radial stream. In the hurricane there are short and fitful blasts inclined to the general direction of the wind, which must arise from the inertia of the moving mass of atmosphere, causing temporary ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... therefore, is the only area in which we have clear proofs of the recent elevation of a district, which, by our theory (although the barrier-reefs are there not well characterised), has lately subsided. But we have no reason to be surprised at oscillation, of level of this kind having occasionally taken place. There can be scarcely any doubt that Savage, Aurora (Aurora Island is described by Mr. Couthouy ("Remarks," page 58); it lies 120 miles north-east of Tahiti; ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... had not the high waves somewhat impeded her progress. Although only a moderate breeze was blowing, the sea was rough, a circumstance to be accounted for only by the diminution in the force of the earth's attraction rendering the liquid particles so buoyant, that by the mere effect of oscillation they were carried to a height that was quite unprecedented. M. Arago has fixed twenty-five or twenty-six feet as the maximum elevation ever attained by the highest waves, and his astonishment would have been very great to see them rising fifty or even sixty feet. Nor did these waves ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... invented the mercurial compensation pendulum, consisting of a glass or iron jar filled with quicksilver and fixed to the end of the pendulum rod. When the rod was lengthened by heat, the quicksilver and the jar which contained it were simultaneously expanded and elevated, and the centre of oscillation was thus continued at the same distance from the ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... to use it with a stout heart. Then he advanced toward the snake, which was comparatively quiescent—that portion of its long body which hung between the tree and the first coil that it made round the beauteous form of Nisida alone moving; and this motion was a waving kind of oscillation, like that of a bell-rope which a person holds by ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... infidels, kicking violently against this standing miracle (because, if not so in itself, yet, according to Bishop Butler's just explanation concerning miraculous per de-rivationem as recording a miraculous power of vision), have by oscillation clung to the fixture of basis, and rejected it; for now Gibbon denies that the Arabs have held this constant tenor of life; they have changed it, he asserts, in large and notorious cases. Well, then, if they ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... hand (his right being occupied in holding, as usual, the conducting-stick) this key is lowered, the protuberance passes into the cup filled with quicksilver, a slight electric spark is emitted, and the stick placed at the other extremity of the copper ribbon makes an oscillation before its board. The communication of the fluid and the movement are quite simultaneous, no matter how great ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... required in case the waves were so cut off. This was a source of considerable encouragement to Marconi, and his apparatus was further improved so that the resonance of the circuit and the variation of the capacity of the primary circuit of the oscillation transformer made for increased efficiency. The coherer was still retained and by the end of 1900 enough had been accomplished to warrant Marconi in arranging for trans-Atlantic experiments between Poldhu, Cornwall and the United ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... a prey either to some foreign potentate, or to the Church, or else to an ambitious family among its members. The small scale of the Italian commonwealths, taken singly, favored rapid change, and gave an undue value to distinguished wealth or unscrupulous ability among the burghers. The oscillation between democracy and aristocracy and back again, the repetition of exhausting discords, and the demoralizing influences of occasional despotism, so broke the spirit of each commonwealth that in the end the citizens forgot their ancient zeal for liberty, and were glad to accept tyranny for ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... another in one and the same plane is one kind; that which follows one and the same conceptual direction through descending planes is another. Creative and fertile thought is the thought which adopts the second kind of work. The ideal is a continual oscillation from one plane to the other, a restless alternative of intuitive concentration and conceptual expansion. But our idleness takes exception to this, for the feeling of effort appears precisely in the traject from the dynamic scheme to the images and concepts, in the passing ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... tramping and swearing. She heard Marsac at the door talking to Noko in French and the woman answering him. Her heart beat so that it well-nigh strangled her. But he did not come in. Presently the rumbling and unloading were over, and there was no sound but the oscillation of the vessel as it floundered in the tide with short beats, until the turning, and then the motion grew more endurable. If she could only see! But from her window there was nothing save an expanse of water, dotted ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... l'Ecriture, Sainte, L. 3, 4), or as Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois XXVI., 15) more mildly expresses it, in the laws. The application of this principle would, on account of the extreme changeableness of the laws of every state, lead to most extreme insecurity, and to a steady oscillation from one Utopia to another, from one revolution to another, if it were not, at the same time, recognized that each one had a just title to the acquisitions he had made, not because the law, for the time being existing, acknowledged the right, but because they were the product ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... sometimes exceeding two hundred feet, caused it, confined, as it was, only at the extremities, to dip with an alarming inclination towards the centre, while the motion given to it by the passenger occasioned an oscillation still more frightful, as his eye wandered over the dark abyss of waters that foamed and tumbled many a fathom beneath. Yet these light and fragile fabrics were crossed without fear by the Peruvians, and are still retained by the Spaniards over those streams which, from ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... color-wheel, with center at O, and with equal sectors A and B, in front of which a rod P oscillates to right and left on the same axis as that of the wheel. Let the disc rotate clockwise, and let P be observed in its rightward oscillation. Since the disc moves faster than the rod, the front of the sector A will at some point come up to and pass behind the rod P, say at p^{A}. P now hides a part of A and both are moving in the same direction. Since the disc still moves the faster, the front of A will presently emerge ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... analogous relation in their constantly intersecting orbits. As yet, however, we have no certain knowledge as to whether changes in the periods at which the stream becomes visible, or the 'retardations' of the phenomena of which I have already spoken, indicate a regular precession of oscillation of the nodes — that is to say, of the points of intersection of the Earth's orbit and of that of the ring; or whether this ring or zone attains so considerable a degree of breadth from the irregular grouping and distances apart of the small bodies, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... arc lamp with approximately parallel carbons. One of the carbons can rotate through a small arc being pivoted at its base. This oscillation is regulated by an electro-magnet at its base, and the carbons touch when no current is passing. They separate a little when the current passes, establishing an arc. The regulation is comparable to that of ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... perseverance, and success. The profound and long-continued researches of the illustrious geometer completely established the perpetual variability of the planetary ellipses. He demonstrated that the extremities of their major axes make the circuit of the heavens; that independent of oscillation, the planes of their orbits undergo displacements by which their intersections with the plane of the terrestrial orbit are each year directed toward different stars. But in the midst of this apparant chaos, there is one element which remains constant, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... been one of the first who observed this significance of the oscillation of the birth-rate, though he expressed it in a somewhat peculiar way, as the social capillarity theory. It is the natural and universal tendency of mankind to ascend, he declared; a high birth-rate and a strong ascensional impulse are mutually contradictory. Large families are ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... was one of those high-strung men who pay for their periods of religious rapture by hours of melancholy. This oscillation of the spirits in extraordinary men appears to be more or less a law of nature; and this the Widow Gough was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... distractions Israel lost her innocence, forgot what her own God was or had done for her, and ceased to enquire of Him. Hence her present vices and misery in contrast with her early troth and safety. Hence the twin evils of the time—on the one hand the nation's trust in heathen powers and silly oscillation between Egypt and Assyria; on the other the gross immoralities to which the Baals had seduced its sons. There was a double prostitution, to gods and to men, so foul that the young prophet uses the rankest facts in the rural life which ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... O holy Father! pardon in me The oscillation of a mind Unsteadfast, and that cannot find Its centre of rest and harmony! For evermore before mine eyes This ghastly phantom flits and flies, And as a madman through a crowd, With frantic gestures and wild cries, It hurries onward, and aloud Repeats its awful prophecies! Weakness is wretchedness! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... kindly done this miracle to please us; but I unfortunately said "Oh! Mrs. Hall! it will crush your chandelier!" (one of Venice glass, very precious)—at which unbelieving remark, probably, the spirits took umbrage, for at once the table ceased ascending, and with a slow oscillation descended very gently on to the carpet. This sort of petty miracle is a frequent experience among the spiritualists, and how it is effected I cannot imagine. There could be no contrivance or machinery in our host's drawing-room, as must be the case imitatively at the Egyptian Hall; none of the company ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... small pieces, three Poems of Devotion, whose merit may not indeed be great, but whose feeling is, I think, genuine. Whatever were his faults, and they were not few, hypocrisy was not one of them. His nature was fierce and honest. He might boast, but he could not pretend. His oscillation between the reformed and the Romish church can hardly have had other cause than a vacillating conviction. It could not have served any prudential end that we can see, to turn catholic in the reign of Elizabeth, while ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... — N. periodicity, intermittence; beat; oscillation &c 314; pulse, pulsation; rhythm; alternation, alternateness, alternativeness, alternity^. bout, round, revolution, rotation, turn, say. anniversary, jubilee, centenary. catamenia^, courses, menses, menstrual flux. [Regularity of return] rota, cycle, period, stated ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... it may even seem to be a virtue. A more serious weakness, which our literature shares with other modern literatures, is one-sidedness or incompleteness of view, which reveals itself by a series of reactions, and in England has taken the form of an oscillation between sentimentalism and a rather cruel realism, the latter being dominant at the present time. These two schools represent excesses of temperament, the one of generosity and kindliness, the other of truth; and among our writers of genius Dickens and Hardy ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Roman Catholic Christianity, and Liberal and Rational Christianity an advance on Church Orthodoxy. But all such advances are subject to reaction and relapse. Reaction differs from relapse in this, that it is an oscillation, not a fall. Reaction is the backward swing of the wave, which will presently return, going farther forward than before. Relapse is the fall of the tide, which leaves the ships aground, and the beach uncovered. Reaction is going back to recover some substantial truth, left ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... dared not watch too closely what followed. Inured as he thought he was to the tricks of Hyperspace, to acceleration and anti-gravity, the oscillation of that swinging seat, the weird swaying of the half-recumbent figure, did things to his sight and to his sense of balance which seemed perilous in the extreme. But when the groan broke through the hum of Ali's mysterious machine, all of them knew that the Engineer-apprentice ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... spasmodic. There was a clearly perceptible interval—probably several minutes—between the first stirrings of consciousness and the full clarification of my faculties. I began to be aware of the rumble and oscillation of the train without realizing what was meant. Then I opened my eyes and blinked at the lamp, and vaguely noted the yellow oil washing to and fro in the bowl. Then the white square of the "Avis aux Voyageurs" caught ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... these weak and scattered forces, Prince Hohenlohe proposed a bold move forward to the Main. Brunswick, on the other hand, counselled a prudent defensive; but he could not, or would not, enforce his plan; and the result was an oscillation between the two extremes. Had he massed all his forces so as to command the valleys of the Saale and Elster near Jena and Gera, the campaign might possibly have been prolonged until the Russians came up. As it was, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... us suppose that this convex scale is pulled out of shape from the interior, so that it is slightly flattened and as quickly released; it will immediately regain its original convexity owing to the elasticity of the nervures. From this oscillation a ticking ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... drummed with his thick hands on the board in front of him; he looked steadily in Herrick's face, and Herrick as steadily looked upon the table and the pattering fingers; there was a gentle oscillation of the anchored ship, and a big patch of sunlight travelled to and fro between the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... I imparted to the avuncular pendulum a gentle oscillation, and retiring to cover behind a contiguous rock, lifted up my voice in a long rasping cry whose diminishing final note was drowned in a noise like that of a swearing cat, which emanated from the sack. Instantly that formidable ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... and was drawn towards it with the violently agitated waters around its base. The Frenchman, unable longer to endure the awful sight bowed his head upon his hands; another moment, and he was lost to sight in the circle of mist and spray that enveloped the foot of the column; then a strong oscillation began to be visible in the body of the water-spout; it swayed heavily to and fro; the cloud at its apex seemed to stoop, and the whole mass broke and fell, with a noise that might have been heard for miles. The sea, far around, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... to insure that the line should be clear. The powerful engine called Rochdale (No. 247 on the company's register) was attached to two carriages, with a guard's van behind. The first carriage was solely for the purpose of decreasing the inconvenience arising from the oscillation. The second was divided, as usual, into four compartments, a first-class, a first-class smoking, a second-class, and a second-class smoking. The first compartment, which was nearest to the engine, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... felt his gaze, although her eyes were not towards him. At last the lily came to an end and she tossed the naked stalk after the flower. She loved this man; it was a perilous moment: one touch, a hair's breadth of oscillation, and the two would have been one. At such a crisis the least external disturbance is often decisive. The first note of the thunder was heard, and suddenly the image of Mrs. Cardew presented itself before Catharine's eyes, appealing to her piteously, ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... in turn, promotes marriage, and increases the population, until again there is a shortage of food; and this oscillation, though irregular, will always be found, and there will always be a tendency for the population to oscillate around the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... putting their clumsy thoughts into clearer phrases, or foisting showy nonsense upon them for his own purposes, or simply laughing at them in his sleeve. But, in a purely literary sense, this ambiguous hovering between two meanings, this oscillation between the ironical and the serious, is always amusing, and sometimes delightful. Some simple-minded people are revolted, even in literature, by the ironical method; and tell the humorist, with an air of moral disapproval, that they never know whether he is in jest or in earnest. To such matter-of-fact ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... subject to very slow and gradual changes, as well as to very small daily oscillations. It was found about fifty years ago by Lamont (a Bavarian astronomer, but a native of Scotland) that the extent of this daily oscillation increases and decreases regularly in a period which he gave as 10-1/3 years, but which was subsequently found to be 11-1/10 years, exactly the same as the period of the spots on the sun. From a diligent study of the records of magnetic observations it has been found that ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... deformation of the reality, ever since the day when at Ajaccio he attended a performance of "Norma," in which the moon was represented by a round transparent disc, lit from behind by a lantern hanging at the end of a string, whose oscillation revealed by turns first the luminary and then the transparency. This was enough to disgust him for ever with the theatre and the opera, whose motionless choruses, contrasting with the sometimes frantic movement of the music, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... imagination we behold them now, trudging gravely along behind the moving office fixtures, their goggle eyes cast down in Christian meditation, their horizontal ears flopping solemnly in unison with their measured tread. Ever and anon the leader halts, uprolls the speculative eye, arrests the oscillation of the ears, laying them rigidly back along the neck, exalts the conscious tail, drops the lank jaw, and warbles a psalm of praise that shakes the blind hills from their eternal repose. His companions take up the parable in turn, "and ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... before," said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de coeur. She would like advice, but is not sure that the matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet even here we may discriminate. When a woman has been seriously wronged by a man she no longer oscillates, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... invention, and which has been generally imitated since his time, is a species of rhyming in prose, where one clause answers to another in measure and quantity, like the tagging of syllables at the end of a verse; the close of the period follows as mechanically as the oscillation of a pendulum, the sense is balanced with the sound; each sentence, revolving round its centre of gravity, is contained with itself like a couplet, and each paragraph forms itself into a stanza. Dr. Johnson is also ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... act of attention; and in the close-up of the moving pictures this inner state is objectified. The mind is filled with emotions; and by means of the camera the whole scenery echoes them. Even in the most objective factor of the mind, the perception, we find this peculiar oscillation. We perceive the movement; and yet we perceive it as something which has not its independent character as an outer world process, because our mind has built it up from single pictures rapidly following one another. We perceive things in their plastic depth; and yet again the depth is not that ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... covered with dense clouds, but not a breath of air was stirring; and the balloon, kept in its place by only a single anchor, experienced not the slightest oscillation. ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... comes up and tells them the animals are not really there. I've often heard,' I says, 'about ladies stepping in and breaking up a friendship between men. Why should that be? I'll tell you, Paisley, the first sight and hot biscuit of Mrs. Jessup appears to have inserted a oscillation into each of our bosoms. Let the best man of us have her. I'll play you a square game, and won't do any underhanded work. I'll do all of my courting of her in your presence, so you will have an equal opportunity. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... law is known because it is a fact. The law is imperative. It must be obeyed without hesitation. Laws of crystallization, laws of proportion in chemical combination,—neither in these nor in any other law of Nature is there any margin left for oscillation of disobedience. Only the primal will of God works in the material world, and no secondary ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... can be other than poor temporary makeshifts, which, if they try to fancy and make themselves permanent, will be displaced by new explosions recurring more speedily than last time. In such baleful oscillation, afloat as amid raging bottomless eddies and conflicting sea-currents, not steadfast as on fixed foundations, must European Society continue swaying, now disastrously tumbling, then painfully readjusting itself, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... formations along the flank of the Ural chain. It would thus seem that they spread continuously across the whole breadth of Russia in Europe. Though almost everywhere undisturbed, they afford evidence of some terrestrial oscillation between the time of their formation and that of the Silurian rocks on which they rest, for they are found gradually to overlap Upper ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... elderly people acquire a see-saw motion of their bodies from one side to the other, as they sit, like the oscillation of a pendulum. By these motions the muscles, which preserve the perpendicularity of the body, are alternately quiescent, and exerted; and are thus less liable to fatigue or exhaustion. This therefore resembles the tremors of old people above mentioned, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... of knowledge based on the analysis of the idea of Disorder—Two opposed forms of order: the problem of genera and the problem of laws—The idea of "disorder" an oscillation of the intellect between the two kinds ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... long expected, impossible, amazing reality. When I had deciphered the last word, when I had it borne fully in upon me, the significance of it all, I turned to the one natural effort to answer this Martian communication. I sent out from the battery of our transmitter the longest wave of magnetic oscillation I could emit. The message was simple: "Have received ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... advantageous. One is the piston machine of M. Albert Schmid, engineer at Zurich. The cylinder is oscillating, and the distribution is effected, without an eccentric, by the relative motion of two spherical surfaces fitted one against the other, and having the axis of oscillation for a common axis. The convex surface, which is movable and forms part of the cylinder, serves as a port face, and has two ports in it communicating with the two ends of the cylinder. The concave surface, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... changing scene we can observe a certain regularity, a law of oscillation. Rise is followed by fall, and fall by rise; it is a mistake to think that the human race is always deteriorating. [Footnote: Ib. cap. VII. p. 361: "cum aeterna quadam lege naturae conversio rerum omnium velut in orbem redire videatur, ut aeque vitia virtutibus, ignoratio ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... takes a step toward the wife, who she thinks is unadvised, and raises her left hand with a sign of disapprobation. This position of the hand is described in full as open, raised high, and oscillated from right to left. Several of the Indian signs have the same idea of oscillation of the hand raised, often near the head, to express folly, fool. She clearly says, "What a thing to ask! what a fool you are!" and at the same time makes with the right hand the sign of money. This is made by the extremities of the thumb and ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... upon these winter months, Piers could distinguish nothing clearly. It was a time of confused and obscure motives, of oscillation, of dreary conflict, of dull suffering. His correspondence with Olga, his meetings with her, had no issue. He made a thousand resolves; a thousand times he lost them. But for the day's work, which kept him in an even tenor for a certain number of hours, he must have drifted ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... a "natural period of oscillation" in which its electric charge vibrates. It is found possible to "tune," or "syntonize," the aerial rod or wire of a receiving station with a transmitter. A vertical wire about 200 feet in length, says Professor J.A. Fleming,[15] has a natural time period of electrical oscillation ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... manifest sensitiveness to the same metals, some being cured by iron, others by copper, while the greatest number were susceptible to gold. Many interesting facts relating to these cures were noted, such as periods of transition and oscillation in the maladies, and most curious of all, a kind of transference. For example, should a paralysis or a contraction seat itself on the right side, the application of the discs would effect a cure, but the malady would ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... expected to be thrilled by the sight of a thousand men crossing the great structure in measured tread, with band playing and colors flying. They did not know that the structure, being a suspension bridge, might have been weakened and possibly destroyed by the force of rhythmic oscillation. Yet the accumulated force in the tramp of a thousand men is no greater than that which lies in the sympathetic vibrations of a musical note. Every metal structure has its note, and it is an old engineering saw that a huge structure like the Brooklyn Bridge eventually could be destroyed by ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... which no two pyrometers agree; the changeable nature of the atmosphere; the uncertainty as to the true level of the sea; the extreme difficulty of measuring accurately the distance between the point of suspension and the centre of oscillation, and even of finding that centre; also the variety of terrestrial attraction, from which cause the motions of the pendulum are also liable to variation, even in the same latitude. In pursuing his researches, Capt. Kater discovered that the motions of the pendulum ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... province of reasoning, it was much more so in matters directly appealing to the intellectual taste. In a robust and unwavering judgment of this sort, there is a kind of witchcraft; when it decides justly, it produces a responsive vibration in every ingenuous mind. In this sense, my oscillation and scepticism were fixed by her boldness. When a true opinion emanated in this way from another mind, the conviction produced in my own assumed a similar character, instantaneous and firm. This species of intellect probably differs from the other, chiefly in the relation of earlier ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... suppose that while the planet is coursing along, the shape of the track is gradually altering. But this alteration may be so slow, that it does not appreciably affect the movement of the engine in a single revolution. We can also suppose that the plane in which the rails have been laid has a slow oscillation in level, and that the whole orbit is with more or less uniformity moved ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... exotic rhythms, no inherited aptitudes for their instant comprehension, no racial impulses whatever in harmony with them. But when they have become familiar through study, after a long residence in the Orient, how nervously fascinant the oscillation of the dance, and the singular ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... has her full share o' a' feelin's belangin' to fallen human natur'," said Mrs Mellis, with a slow horizontal oscillation of the head. "But ye jist come an' see wi' yer ain een, an' syne jeedge for yersel': it 's nae business ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... diminished at the rate of nearly one-quarter of a mile per minute, and that entirely by side-pressure on the rail, which, if not sufficient to cause the engine to leave the line, would be quite sufficient to produce violent and dangerous oscillation. It may be observed, in conclusion, that as the cause above alluded to will be inoperative while we travel along the parallels of latitude, it clearly follows, that a higher degree of speed may be attained with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... fury by the people of the country which they were traversing; and with good reason, since the law of self-preservation had now obliged the fugitive Tartars to plunder provisions and to forage wherever they passed. In this respect their condition was a constant oscillation of wretchedness; for sometimes, pressed by grinding famine, they took a circuit of perhaps a hundred miles, in order to strike into a land 5 rich in the comforts of life; but in such a land they were sure to find a crowded population, of which every arm was ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... purification. When the body is no longer believed to be, even remotely, the real man; when all appetites and desires are thoroughly subdued and purified; when the emotions are rested and calm, and when the oscillation of the intellect ceases and perfect poise is secured, then, and not till then, does consciousness become one with the Infinite; not until then is childlike wisdom and ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... the cripple gradually subsided from his hard rocking into a gentle oscillation. It expressed, perhaps, the soothed mood ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... whether this oscillation would slacken or increase with time. Would she swing on a longer and more dangerous rhythm? Would she be flung backwards and forwards ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... my coils to the seldom used oscillation frequency which Halsey had told us Anita's transmitter ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... light, a frantic oscillation of the Atom Smasher, a sense of death, awful and indescribable—and stark unconsciousness rushed over Jim. His last thought was that Lucille's arms were about him, and that he was holding her. Nothing mattered, therefore, even though they two were plunged into that awful nothingness of the fifth ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... was attained by careful calculations and experiments with perpendicular wires kept in position by weights, which, to avoid oscillation, were suspended in buckets of water. From shaft to shaft the tunnel is 1,770 yards in length and 26 feet in diameter; but for a length of 400 feet at the James Street and Hamilton Square stations the arch is enlarged ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... were fixed to the corners of the great stone tomb with the covering of glass, which was being dragged upward. As it arose it filled closely the whole aperture. When its bottom had reached the level of the floor it stopped, and remained rigid. There was no room for oscillation. It was at once surrounded by a number of black figures, who raised the glass covering and bore it away into the darkness. Then there stepped forward a very tall man, black-bearded, and with head-gear like my guide, but made ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... usually to be heard on board a ship is perceptible, not even the rippling of the water along the hull. Nor is there the slightest movement to be felt; yet, in the estuary of the Neuse, the current is always strong enough, to cause a marked oscillation to any vessel. ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... tenderness, he kissed her tear-bedewed cheeks and gently he laid her head upon his shoulder, and then with both arms clasped about her, he imparted to her statuesque figure a sort of rocking motion, crooning with each oscillation, "There, there, there, there," until the paroxysm of her grief abated and passed from weeping into gradually subsiding sobs, and he began to tell her that he would be only too happy to give his legal services to convict the villains when caught—as they surely would be. The lady by degrees ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... after having disappeared for a moment, came to the surface, and floated about with the oscillation produced by ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... with salt and butter and a sprinkle of parsley. And even as we watch, the golden mass melts together; sighs and quivers, and thickens into wrinkles; bodies itself slowly into form and shape, under crafty oscillation; and is at last dexterously rolled out, a burnished ingot, upon the long platter, with a flourish that bespeaks practice and confidence. The stiff face of the old woman involuntarily relaxes with honest pride; she looks up half unconsciously ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... into a vessel containing either water or methylic alcohol. Three or four gas jets, one of which is shown at E, are arranged around the porous vessel, as close as possible, but in such a way as not to touch it during the oscillation of the beam. These gas jets communicate with a gasometer tilled with hydrogen, the bell of which is so charged as to furnish a jet of sufficient strength. Experience will indicate the best place to give the gas jets, but, in general, it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... accuracy of mechanism, and the slightest irregularity causes the current to rise or fall quite beyond the limits required for distinct signals. No important difference was observed between signals sent by alternate reverse currents and those sent by the more usual method. The amount of oscillation, and the consequent distinctness of signalling, were nearly the same in the two cases. An advantage in the first signals sent is, however, obtained by the use of Messrs. Sieman's and Halske's submarine key, by which the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... independent attachment of the draught clevis to the whiffletree bolt to permit the independent oscillation of the whiffletree without affecting ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... to swing the bucket back and forth, and after he had got it well a-swinging, he let down the rope suddenly, at the moment when the bucket was at the extent of its oscillation. The bucket filled instantly; but, as the boat was advancing rapidly, it was caught by the water with such force that the rope was twitched out of Marco's hand ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... law of bankruptcy has therefore been largely the product of commercial development, it has necessarily been of slow and gradual growth, tentative in its character, and subject to oscillation between the extremes of conflicting interests according to the temporary and varying predominance of each of these interests from time to time. No intelligible grasp of the principles which underlie the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... to fix even approximately the future velocity of the aerial locomotive. Let us rather attempt to calculate the probable velocity of a locomotive gliding through the air, without the possibility of running off the rails, without any oscillation, without the least obstacle. Let us fancy such locomotive encountering on its way, in the midst, one of those atmospheric currents which travel at the rate of forty leagues an hour, and following that current; add together these formidable data, and your imagination will recoil in adding still ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... Greenwich. The instrument at Kew Observatory confirmed the records of Greenwich, and so did the barometers of other places in the kingdom. Everywhere in Europe also this fact was corroborated, and in some places even a seventh oscillation was recorded. The Greenwich record shows that the air-waves took about thirty-six hours to travel from pole to pole, thus proving that they travelled at about the rate of ordinary sound-waves, which, roughly speaking, travel at the rate of between ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... They gained twenty years' freedom from all restraint and reform at the cost of the whirlwind of the red terror; and in their turn the unbridled extremists of the terror induced a blind reaction; and so, with convulsion and oscillation from one extreme to another, with alterations of violent radicalism and violent Bourbonism, the French people went through misery ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... he put Rickman altogether from his mind. It was not to think about Rickman that he came down to Court House. On a day as hot as this, he wanted nothing but to keep cool. The gentle oscillation of the hammock in the green shadows of the beech-tree symbolized this attitude towards Rickman and all other ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... instant filled with light. With light, I say, though you can see nothing. You can see and hear the spark indeed—but that is a mere secondary disturbance we can for the present ignore—I do not mean any secondary disturbance. I mean the true ethereal waves emitted by the electric oscillation going on in the neighborhood of this recoiling dielectric. You pull aside the prong of a tuning fork and let it go; vibration follows and sound is produced. You charge a Leyden jar and let it discharge; vibration follows and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... there seemed to be a new reign: the Legislative Assembly found themselves on that day face to face with a king who, destitute of authority, ruled over a people destitute of moderation. They felt on their first sitting the oscillation of a power without a counterpoise, that seeks to balance itself by its own wisdom, and changing from insult to repentance, wounds itself with the weapon that has been placed ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... was connected by means of an inconceivably light—looking and yet very primitive bridge. It was formed of a single, broad and thick plank of the tulip wood. This was forty feet long, and spanned the interval between shore and shore with a slight but very perceptible arch, preventing all oscillation. From the southern extreme of the lake issued a continuation of the rivulet, which, after meandering for, perhaps, thirty yards, finally passed through the "depression" (already described) in the middle of the southern declivity, and tumbling down ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... key to the correspondence between these phenomena and the mind, we should know all the thoughts and wishes of the person to whom the brain belonged—we should see what took place in his soul, as a telegraph operator could read by the oscillation of his needles the meaning of a message which was sent through his instrument. The notion of an equality or parallelism between conscious activity and cerebral activity, was commonly adopted by modern physiology, and it was ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... time, is no proof of the salubrity of diet. The increased strength may not continue, though the diet should be continued. On the contrary, there is a sort of oscillation; the strength just rising, then sinking again. This is what is experienced by the trainers of boxers. A certain time is necessary to get these men into condition; but this condition cannot be maintained for many weeks together, though the process ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... prices for a while, but it also calls forth an increase in supply which tends to restore the old price level, or may even force prices below it. In the latter case, the supply falls off and prices find their real level. The relation of supply to demand causes an oscillation of prices, but it is not the determinant of value. When prices rise above a certain level, demand slackens or ceases, and prices are inevitably lowered. Prices may and do fall with a decreased demand, but it is clear that unless the producers can ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... by the sunset glow as the dust of a battlefield is reddened with blood. I felt as if I were stabbed; the red dust seemed to swim round me; I staggered slightly: in another instant I had recovered myself, but the momentary oscillation had terrified my comrades. The seventh and highest, feeling the human pyramid tremble beneath him, involuntarily, unconsciously, opened his arms to save himself. He did not lose his balance, but he let the child fall. It dropped as an apple broken off ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... phlegm, their long, expressionless faces, the dull, monotonous twang of their voices, the oscillation of the three large feet hung over the bony knees had now, as often before, a singular effect upon Farnham's irritation. He felt he could not irritate them in return; they could not appreciate his motives, and thought too little of his ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... two more, the table at which they were seated, began to move up and down with a kind of vertical oscillation, and several things in the room began to slide about, by short, apparently purposeless jerks. Everything threatened to assume motion, and turn the library into a domestic chaos. Mrs. Elton declared afterwards that ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... or run the perpetual chance of capsizing. A little alarming, also, is it to look out on the stone-strewn furrow, over which the mules carry you safely enough; and when you have become reconciled to the oscillation, and have learned to trim the boat in which you have embarked, it is long before your ear becomes accustomed to the stunning sound of a hundred little bells fastened to the mules' heads. "Do take them off," said we, after ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... of oscillation is a point in a pendulum or any swinging body, such, that if all the matter of the body were to be collected into that point, the velocity of its vibration would remain unaffected. It is in fact the mean distance from the centre of suspension of ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... it was generally admitted that these did not proceed from earthquake shocks, but from atmospheric vibrations. No deviation of the magnetic needle was observed at the Meteorological Institute of Batavia; but a vertical oscillation was apparent, and persons who listened with the ear placed on the ground, even during the most violent detonations, could hear no subterranean noise whatever. It became clear that the sounds came from ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... ceased to gaze, with an air of amiable authority, into a world which, as yet, beheld no symptoms of the Indian Mutiny. And yet, gently swinging against the wall, within the black tube, was a voice which recked nothing of Uncle James, of China teapots, or of red velvet curtains. She watched the oscillation of the tube, and at the same moment became conscious of the individuality of the house in which she stood; she heard the soft domestic sounds of regular existence upon staircases and floors above her head, and movements through the wall in the house next ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... but the whole raft moved under this inexplicable impulsion,—which had communicated to it a rocking motion, not from side to side, but upwards and downwards! So quick and violent was this mysterious oscillation, that it was with difficulty the three individuals who still occupied the decks of the craft could keep either their balance or ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... so completely sheltered by its shape, that a storm might have raged outside without producing any perceptible effect below. It would be difficult to explain the regularity of these opposite currents, but it is not so difficult to see that some such oscillation might be expected. It will be better, however, to defer any suggestions on this point till the glaciere has been more ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... mentioned, a slight widening of the stream of the Bievre, once a watering-place for cattle. The sun, now at high noon, massed the trees' shadow close around their trunks. The unbroken surface of the water reflected its rays back in our eyes. The current was barely indicated by the gentle oscillation of a few water-lily leaves. Two big blue dragonflies poised and quivered upon our floats, and not a fish seemed to care to ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... in ever-increasing doses—a terrible narcotic, one of whose multitudinous effects is that of sending all the patient's thoughts circling around one central idea like planets round the sun. Painful and agonising as had been my suspense,—my oscillation between hope and dread,—during my wanderings with the Lovells, these wanderings had not been without their moments of comfort, for all of which I had been indebted to Sinfi. She would sit with me in an English lane, under a hedge or tree, on a balmy summer evening, or among the primroses, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the Spider's moving her position, the oscillation is resumed in the opposite direction. By means of this alternate motion, interspersed with numerous contacts, a segment of the sheet is obtained, of a very accurate texture. When this is done, the Spider moves a little along a circular line and the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... dividing them into portions of equal weight, one of which is suspended from each end of the pingo. By a swaying motion communicated to them as he starts, his own movement is facilitated, whereas one unaccustomed to the work, by allowing the oscillation to become irregular, finds it almost impossible to proceed with a load ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Pilots have been known to declare that all compasses are liable to swing of their own accord when in clouds, though the real explanation is probably that they themselves have disturbed the needle unduly by a continuous pressure on each side of the rudder-bar in turn, thus causing an oscillation of the rudder and a consequent zigzagged line of flight. The trouble is more serious than it would seem to the layman, as when the compass is out of action, and no other guides are available, one tends to drift round in a large circle, like a man lost in the jungle. Should the craft be driven ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... that flow before the lava, and the lava itself, and from these the several places are filled, according as the overflow from time to time happens to come to each of them. But all these move up and down as it were by a certain oscillation existing in the earth. And this oscillation proceeds from such natural cause as this: one of the chasms of the earth is exceedingly large, and perforated through the entire earth, and is that which Homer[43] speaks of, 'very far off, where is the most profound ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... this country, practically governed as it is now by universal suffrage, every man who does his duty must exercise political functions. And, if the evils which are inseparable from the good of political liberty are to be checked, if the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom; it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political, as they now deal ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... observation. So it went on till March. It then waited, and after a bit longer began to return, until June. By September it was displaced as much to the north as it had been to the south, and by December it had got back to its original position. It had described, in fact, a small oscillation in the course of the year. The motion affected neighbouring stars in a similar way, and was called an "aberration," or wandering from their ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... image increases with the time of exposure. This increase is due in part to the diffraction of the telescope, to imperfect achromatism or spherical aberration of the objective, to irregular grinding of the glass, and especially to variations in the refraction of the air, which produce an oscillation of the ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... to correct was the oscillation and chatter of the leading truck. This was accomplished by a simple centering device in the form of a pair of V-shaped double incline planes (D on fig. 3) situated at the center of the truck frame (A). The lower ...
— Introduction of the Locomotive Safety Truck - Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Paper 24 • John H. White
... little or nothing in it; but that little or nothing was pleasantly uttered, and served perhaps as well as something cleverer to pass a faint electric flash between common mind and mind. The slouch, the hands-in-pocket mood, the toe-and-heel oscillation upon the hearth-rug—those flying signals that self was at home to nobody but himself, had for the time vanished; desire to please had tied up the black dog in his kennel, and let the white one out. By keeping close in the protective shadow of ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... that come of having two parents, is that the one balances and rectifies the motions of the other. No one is good but God. No one holds the truth, or can hold it, in one and the same thought, but God. Our human life is often, at best, but an oscillation between the extremes which together make the truth; and it is not a bad thing in a family, that the pendulums of father and mother should differ in movement so far, that when the one is at one extremity ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... constantly exhibited in lectures. Yet, it may fairly be regarded as a mere abstract principle, until the late Mr. Bramah, by substituting a pump instead of the smaller column, converted it into a most valuable and powerful engine.—The principle of the convertibility of the centres of oscillation and suspension in the pendulum, discovered by Huygens more than a century and a half ago, remained, until within these few years, a sterile, though most elegant proposition; when, after being hinted at by Prony, ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... other official prestige and Court of St. James's. On such minor and personal incidents (so to call them,) often depend the great growths and turns of civilization. This moment of a woman and a queen surely swung the grandest oscillation of modern history's pendulum. Many sayings and doings of that period, from foreign potentates and powers, might well be dropt in oblivion by America—but never this, if I could have my way. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... although I frequently carried the pendulum, as I shall call it, to the window sill, and set it in motion by way of experiment, I had not, up to the time of a certain incident which I shall very soon have to relate, had the courage to keep up the oscillation beyond ten or a dozen strokes; partly from fear of the trees, partly from a dim dread of exercising power whose source and extent were not within my knowledge. I kept the pendulum in the closet I have mentioned, and never spoke ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... his attention was attracted by the oscillation of a brass lamp suspended from the ceiling of the cathedral at Pisa. Galileo was impressed with the regularity of its motion as it swung backwards and forwards, and was led to imagine that the pendulum movement might prove a valuable method for the correct measurement of time. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... no kind of difficulty in descending the stairs; there was practically no oscillation of any kind in this still and windless summer night, and the two came down easily and looked round ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... being the vitascope, which has a revolvable cylinder, blackened with soot, and this being rotated at a certain speed, the stylus, which is attached to the vibrating body, in contact with the cylinder, will show the number per second, as well as the particular character of each oscillation. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... progress became slower. It fell on the small trees and, bending them by its weight, it would drop a few seconds later on to a lower one. The trepidation on our side was intense. At last the graceful body stuck across a bigger tree and swung on it for some minutes. The oscillation slowly ceased, and tree and goat became motionless. There our prey ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... from the sound national inheritance tax I have mentioned above it is evident we would have supplied for the period of change from one tax system to another an 'adequate governor' to use a mechanical illustration, to prevent undue oscillation of prices ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... relapsed, and really for so long a time that the day inevitably came for a further sounding of their depths. These depths, constantly bridged over by a structure firm enough in spite of its lightness and of its occasional oscillation in the somewhat vertiginous air, invited on occasion, in the interest of their nerves, a dropping of the plummet and a measurement of the abyss. A difference had been made moreover, once for all, by the ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... hills of a range, and winding in and out through pretty valleys, where all available land is used for farming purposes. We round some curves that look almost impossible, and I begin to feel the oscillation of the carriages, by no means unlike the rolling of a ship at sea. I often wished that it had been summer instead of winter, that I might better have enjoyed the beauty of the scenery as we sped along. As it was, I could see that ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... gushed forth perpetually a sort of sonorous flood, a mighty oscillation of sentiments and ideas, which, from billow to billow, and from people to people, flowed to the utmost confines of the earth, to set in motion those intelligent waves which are called souls. Frequently one knew not why such and such a law, such ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... doubt of the source whence emanate these high-flown ideas. It cannot be better expressed than as a politique d'ostentation, which is, if we may compare small things with great, eminently French. The oscillation of French and Russian influence, and the amicable manner in which their delegates relinquish the field to each other alternately, implies the existence of a mutual understanding between them. Whether this accord extends to a wider sphere and more ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... than that made by the oscillation of a falling leaf came from a point some distance ahead and on his right. So soft indeed was the sound that it cannot be explained how the human ear could be trained to the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis |
