"Phenomenon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who as it appeared was listening through an aperture left purposely at the parlour door, put his head out, like a turtle from his shell, and desired the servant to shew the gentleman in; he would be with him in a moment. This was another phenomenon in morals! A clergyman suffer, nay encourage, or, as it must be, command, his servant to tell a lie? It was inconceivable! I knew nothing of fashionable manners, and that being denied to people whom you do not wish to see, instead of being thought insolent or false, was ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... kings have chosen to live with dancers. While such conduct is not, perhaps, strictly laudable, we can disregard it if it be accompanied by a certain measure of decorum. Still, a combination of ruler-ship and dalliance with a vagrant charmer is a phenomenon that is as much out of place as is an attempt to govern a ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... or rather pretender to be me, in his Rejected Articles, has made me minutely describe the dresses of the poissardes at Calais!—I could as soon resolve Euclid. I have no eye for forms and fashions. I substitute analysis, and get rid of the phenomenon by slurring in for it its impression. I am sure you must have observed this defect, or peculiarity, in my writings; else the delight would be incalculable in doing such a thing for Mathews, whom I greatly like—and Mrs. Mathews, whom I almost greatlier like. What a feast 'twould be to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... after this perilous adventure the sun likewise dipped into the sand (but not to rise therefrom so quickly as I had done); and I saw this daily phenomenon of sunset with pleasure, for I was engaged at that hour to dine with our old friend J-, who has established himself here in the most complete ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in its accent, the words inaudible but the air startling to Count Victor, who heard no more than half a bar before he had realised that it was the unfinished melody of the nocturnal flageolet. Before he could comment upon so unexpected and surprising a phenomenon, Mungo had dropped his gutting-knife and made with suspicious rapidity for the entrance of the castle, without a word of explanation ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... is a miracle and the most startling phenomenon in the history of nineteenth-century music. His audacious power dominates all his age; and in the face of such a genius, who would not follow Paganini's example, and hail him as Beethoven's only successor?[60] Who does not see what a poor figure the young ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... there; also Mr. Satterthwaite, who sat next to Winthrop and addressed several confidential and very unimportant remarks to him, and seemed to look upon his brother as a sort of meteoric phenomenon. President Darcy, of Mr. Herder's College, was the only other guest. Elizabeth sat next to Winthrop, but after the first formal greeting vouchsafed not a single look his way; she was in a dignified mood for all the company generally, ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... "The woods are now at rest" (Nun ruhen alle Walder); the discovery of what poetry is he made in 1830, when he read Uhland's Minstrel's Curse and perceived that the sole principle of art is not to write, like Schiller, eloquently about ideas, but "to make in a particular phenomenon the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the moor, and had fallen exhausted, when a solitary gypsy, rare phenomenon, I presume, with a divine spot awake in his heart, found him, gave him some gin, and took him to a hut he had in the wildest part of the heath. He lay helpless for a week, and then began to recover. When ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... them it seems that the name God stands for nothing, is the archetype of nothing, explains nothing, and contributes to nothing but the perpetuation of human imbecility, ignorance and error. To them it represents neither shadow nor substance, neither phenomenon nor thing, neither what is ideal nor what is real; yet is it the name without senseless faith in which ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... not so much caused by a contradiction between the former and the latter, as by the fact that an interpretation of the doctrine as applied to the facts of the new situation was not available before the new situation had actually arisen. This is a phenomenon frequently met with at the present day in legal practice; but no lawyer would dream of asserting that, because there had arisen an unprecedented state of facts, to which the application of the law was a matter of doubt or difficulty, therefore the law itself was obsolete or incomplete. ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... the dead, lifted too late from their shroud of snow, and borne thither to await the recognition of their friends, dry, and do not decay. In the "Catacombs" of the monastery of the Capuchins at Palermo, and in the "Bleikeller" at Bremen, the same phenomenon has appeared. Even Egypt is a confirmation of these statements, for it is probable that, had much less care been taken to preserve the dead, they would not there have yielded to decay as in other lands; and that moisture is so far absent from the ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... very quality and tones of my voice! We were never so taken back in our lives. All hands were called in to witness the phenomenon and, recovering from their astonishment, the boys joined hands and danced around me, singing and shouting in their excitement. Then each yelled something at the machine—bits of slang or slurs—and it made them roar to hear that funny ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the weird white object was human and could witness his movements the best thing to do would be to try and creep upon it unobserved. On the contrary, if the ghost was some natural phenomenon, or a supernatural agent, all he could do would ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... his eyes by chance from the ground, looked to the opposite side of the street, and there beheld a nose. He then turned his eyes to the earth in his usual meditative mood; but, reflecting that a nose without an owner was rather a singular phenomenon, he looked a second time, and there, behind the nose, he saw a man; it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... communicate with their friends and loved ones in earth life. All these things, I knew my father understood clearly, therefore I was prepared to accept the verity of his spiritual presence as readily as I would any other phenomenon of nature. In conclusion, I may as well tell you at this point, that the letter referred to by father as having been written by him in Alaska on December fifth, together with my conference in San Francisco, some months later, with Dewitt C. Dunbar; the arrival in port ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... giving, a brown jar with the word "Biscuits" in silver lettering would do very well. Carving knives were thought of but as Mrs. Atkins very fitly said, "Everybody is sure to give carving knives"—a phenomenon which all the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... It is a phenomenon of psychology that the balancing of the body suggests mental balance. Conversely, if the body is out of balance, there is the suggestion that the mind is no better poised. That is, if a man cannot keep his balance physically, we have an intuition that he is mentally ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... call your attention to the fact that the terrible battle of competition between the different nations of the world is no transitory phenomenon, and does not depend upon this or that fluctuation of the market, or upon any condition that is likely to pass away. It is the inevitable result of that which takes place throughout nature and affects man's part of nature as much as any other—namely, the struggle for existence, arising ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... that learned body solution of their curious problem, "Why, if a vessel is filled brimful of water, and a large live fish plunged into the water, nevertheless it shall not overflow the pitcher?" Doctor Rochecliffe's exposition of this phenomenon was the most ingenious and instructive of four that were given in; and it is certain the Doctor must have gained the honour of the day, but for the obstinacy of a plain, dull, country gentleman, who insisted ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... patriotic philologers insist upon deriving it from "rus sanum," healthy country. Its older names were Roscia, and Ruscianum; it is not marked in Peutinger. Countless jackdaws and kestrels nestle in this cliff, as well as clouds of swifts, both Alpine and common. These swifts are the ornithological phenomenon of Rossano, and I think the citizens have cause to be thankful for their existence; to them I attribute the fact that there are so few flies, mosquitoes, and other aerial plagues here. If only the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... on her period of high-strung life the time of first invention in the arts was over—the heroes of Craft, like Tubal Cain and Daedalus, necessarily belong to the infancy of culture. The phenomenon of Egypt could not occur again; the mission of Greece was rather to settle down to a task of gathering, interpreting, and bringing to perfection Egypt's gifts. The arts of civilization were never developed in watertight compartments, as is shown by the uniformity ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... fit for the company of a bull-dog. He catches the august pride of the animal, seems to think like a bulldog, to talk in the brief, scornful tones of a bulldog, and even to look fat and formidable like a bull-dog. That, however, is not an uncommon phenomenon among those who live with animals. Go to a fat stock show and look at the men around the cattle pens. Or recall the pork butchers you have known and tell me——. But possibly you, sir, who read these lines, are a pork butcher and resent ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... Narromine and made his little joke — 'They say we folks in Narromine are narrow-minded folk. But all the smartest men down here are puzzled to define A kind of new phenomenon that came ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... by Correa de Serra: see Sir J.E. Smith's 'English Flora' 1824 volume 1 page 311; also 'Life of Sir J.E. Smith' volume 2 page 210. I was guided to these references by the Reverend W.A. Leighton, who observed this same phenomenon with V. virgatum.) This occurs with V. thapsus, as I have repeatedly observed. The corolla first separates from its attachment, and then the sepals spontaneously bend inwards so as to clasp the ovarium, pushing off the corolla by their movement, in ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... [Feb. 1st, 1852,] we have had presented to our view, the beautiful phenomenon of FROSTED TREES, the most astonishing and brilliant that I ever remember to have noticed. The previous storm and mist had thickly covered every exposed object,—the loftiest trees, the minutest blade, hill and dale, with the icy garment. This transparency ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... phenomenon of a cab brought Becky to the door ere her grandmother could jump out. She was still under ten, but prematurely developed in body as in mind. There was something unintentionally insolent in her precocity, in her habitual ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... allowed them to be all good, but he prided himself on possessing a certain Spanish wine, esteemed above all price, because not to be had for money—amontillado is its name. Horace appealed to the Spanish officer, who confirmed all he said of this vinous phenomenon. "No cultivator can be certain of producing it. It has puzzled, almost to death, all the growers of Xeres:—it is a variety of sherry, almost as difficult to judge of as ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... bemoaned his vast outlying debts above all, which must remain for ever as obstacles to prevent his wife's advancement in the world. He had often groaned over these in midnight conversations with Rebecca, although as a bachelor they had never given him any disquiet. He himself was struck with this phenomenon. "Hang it," he would say (or perhaps use a still stronger expression out of his simple vocabulary), "before I was married I didn't care what bills I put my name to, and so long as Moses would wait or Levy would renew for three months, I kept on never minding. But ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... evidently about to inquire searchingly into the nature of this local phenomenon, but before she could begin the old gentleman turned and saw that they ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... it is a metal of which, in its unalloyed state, no relics have been found in England. Stone and bone first; then bronze or copper and tin combined; but no copper alone. I cannot get over this hiatus—cannot imagine a metallurgic industry beginning with the use of alloys. Such a phenomenon is a plant without the seed; and, as such, indicates ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... since rain had fallen in these regions, for the river was extremely low between its extraordinarily high banks, and the country all round was dry and parched; but even as we walked, a remarkable phenomenon occurred, which told of impending changes. I was oppressed with a sense of coming evil. I listened intently when Yamba requested me to do so, but at first all I could hear was a curious rumbling sound, far away in the distance. This noise gradually increased in volume, and came nearer and nearer, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... an unusually amiable mood, I inquired the probable cause of this phenomenon. She would not go so far as to give any judicial opinion, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... father's death, I told my mother about our adventure the night we drove home from Lady Colin Ferner's party, and asked her if she remembered ever having heard anything that could possibly account for the phenomenon. After a few moments' reflection, this is ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... siren song grew almost inaudible above the bird-calls of the surrounding wood, but it held its sway over the fascinated hare, for the animal suddenly sprang across the space intervening between himself and the mysterious hand and sat studying that phenomenon at ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... (as in fAther), i (as in machIne), u (as in fOOl), e (as in fEllow), and o (as in mOle). Although certain vowels become nearly "silent" in some environments, this phenomenon can be safely ignored ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... same pontiff should instruct the people not only in the celestial ceremonies, but also in (the manner of performing) funeral solemnities, and of appeasing the manes of the dead; and what prodigies sent by lightning or any other phenomenon were to be attended to and expiated. To elicit such knowledge from the divine mind, he dedicated an altar on the Aventine to Jupiter [28]Elicius, and consulted the god by auguries as to ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... given to such refinements, would explain the phenomenon upon more ordinary principles, and reduce the enigma to a case merely of literary monomania. Mr Carlyle, they would say, has been striving to understand these Puritans till he has grown, for the time, to resemble them. In the effort to project ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the real world, but until the imagination can find a function for it in reason's ideal realm, every piece of knowledge remains useless, or even an obstacle in the way of our intended advance. This applies to individuals just as truly as it does to mankind. And since man's reason is a natural phenomenon and does apparently belong to the class of elemental forces, this warfare against the apparent fact, and the fortitude and hope which its whole-hearted prosecution begets, appear as a natural law to the intelligence and as a command ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... still remembered - had lent to her thoughts, or rather to her mood, a cast of solemnity, and that idea of Fate - a pagan Fate, uncontrolled by any Christian deity, obscure, lawless, and august - moving indissuadably in the affairs of Christian men. Thus even that phenomenon of love at first sight, which is so rare and seems so simple and violent, like a disruption of life's tissue, may be decomposed into a sequence ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... point regarding this identification. The public mind has formed an entirely erroneous impression regarding the qualities of the so-called "Negative" pole of electrified or magnetized Matter. The terms Positive and Negative are very wrongly applied to this phenomenon by science. The word Positive means something real and strong, as compared with a Negative unreality or weakness. Nothing is further from the real facts of electrical phenomenon. The so-called Negative ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... of idle curiosity, but somehow I shared it, and so we waited till, turning slowly round upon its own axis, it had flamed and thundered by; and I remember wondering for how many thousands of years this same phenomenon had been taking place in the bowels of the earth, and for how many more thousands it would continue to take place. I wondered also if any mortal eyes would ever again mark its passage, or any mortal ears be thrilled and fascinated by the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... creative genius—a bard or seer—should have been developed among a people who, as a whole, have hardly passed through the clan or village stage of society, can be regarded as little less than a psychological phenomenon, and provokes the perhaps presumptuous inquiry as to whether there may not be some things about our common human nature that the learned doctors have not yet included ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... phenomenon occurred. A subtle but distinct and instantaneous change of colour took place, which made it seem as though the spectators were regarding the scene through tinted glass. All the brilliance and purity and beauty of the various hues had ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... "Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends." In fact, music is a psycho-physical phenomenon. In its germ, it is a sensation; in its full development, an ideal. It is sufficient not to be deaf to perceive music, at least, if not to appreciate it. Even idiots and maniacs are subject to its influence. Not being restricted to any precise ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... traits; and as we look forward to the future of our commonwealth we should wish to see them preserved, and should deprecate influences tending to destroy the conditions under which they exist. Any such phenomenon as immigration, exerting wide and lasting influence, should be examined with great care to see what its effect ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... earldom and his bounty, at a time when bounty was convenient and peers scarce. But it is hardly worth while farther to demonstrate the simple and intelligible fact, that there were faults on both sides. Neither war nor any other social phenomenon can divide infallibly the sheep from the goats, or collect all the saints under one set of staff-officers and all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... slowly, adding as though she could not quite explain the phenomenon herself: "I suppose we did forget ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... seated himself in a grass chair, lighted a cigar and leaned back, looking impersonally down on Point Old and the Rock. A big, slow swell rolled up off the Gulf, breaking with a precisely spaced boom along the cliffs. For forty-eight hours a southeaster had swept the sea, that rare phenomenon of a summer gale which did not blow itself out between suns. This had been a wild tantrum, driving everything of small tonnage to the nearest shelter, even ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... 2000 and 2500 feet. The position of the sun at the time of impact was directly behind the aircraft, being in a position approximately to the true north of the mountain and shining at an inclination of 34 deg. The co-existence of these factors produced without doubt the classic 'whiteout' phenomenon which occurs from time to time in polar regions, or in any terrain totally covered by snow. Very extensive evidence was received by the Commission as to the occurrence and the consequences of this weather phenomenon. So long as the view ahead from the flight deck of an aircraft flying over ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... water became wine was plainly a miracle, a phenomenon not susceptible of explanation, far less of demonstration, by what we consider the ordinary operation of natural law. This was the beginning of His miracles, or as expressed in the revized version of the New Testament, "his signs." In many scriptures ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... a half, according to the family Bible. Katy was a woman grown in the depth and tenderness of her feeling. But Katy wasn't twelve years of age, if measured by the development of her discretionary powers. The phenomenon of a girl in intellect with a woman's passion is not an uncommon one. Such girls are always attractive—feeling in woman goes for so much more than thought. And such a girl-woman as Kate has a twofold hold on other people—she ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... description of perhaps the most awful phenomenon in nature, gives full scope for almost every tone and gesture. Care should, however, be taken that the natural grandeur of the subject be not marred by a stilted, pompous, or affected delivery. Let the speaker try to realize the ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... have lost their political individuality. He instances the Copts of Egypt, the Maronites and Druses of Lebanon, the Parsees of India, the Armenians and Greeks of Asia as displaying, though in a less degree, the same phenomenon as the Jews. He attributes the long continuance of the Jews as a separate people mainly to two causes. One of them is Christian hatred, which compelled the Jews for many centuries to remain a separate people, unmixed with surrounding nations; living in a separate quarter; marrying among themselves; ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... DEAR LOVE,—I am not in what might be called an interesting country—low hills, rocky, stony, heathery, and peaty—but a new country has always something of interest to pass the time with. I saw a valuable archaeological phenomenon to-day. The Roman roads were all paved, and went straight over hill and across valley—never troubled about levels. In the parts of Britain where the Romans are historically known to have been, such roads have been fully identified. But there, as well as in other places, where it has ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... a matter of fact such orderly sequences and uniform laws meet us everywhere {82} in nature, is not the inference fairly inevitable? Let us be quite clear on one point: there are two ways, and two only, in which any phenomenon can be accounted for—design or chance; what is not purposed must be accidental. Does, then, nature impress us as the outcome of chance? If we saw a faultlessly executed mathematical diagram illustrating a proposition ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... no other result than that of eliciting the able and judicious analysis subsequently given by MR. WILKINSON (Vol. ii., p. 57.), they will have been of no ordinary utility. The silent early progress of any strong, moral, social, or intellectual phenomenon amongst a large mass of people, is always difficult to trace: for it is not thought worthy of record at the time, and before it becomes so distinctly marked as to attract attention, even tradition has for the most part died away. It then becomes ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... with a rifle is about to take a shot at it. Bang! There it goes! But I can't see that the bullet has damaged our flag. Look, how it whips about and snaps defiance! Now, all the men except the aviator himself have out glasses and are studying the phenomenon of our signal. They come above the tree, and I think they're going to make a swoop around the grove near the ground. Lie close, Weber! As I found out once before, a thick forest is the best defense against aeroplanes. They can't get through ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a sentiment he could not utter. Capable of inventing those refinements of sentimental grandeur which hindered her marriage in her early years, she yet could not recognize them in Athanase. This moral phenomenon will not seem surprising to persons who know that the qualities of the heart are as distinct from those of the mind as the faculties of genius are from the nobility of soul. A perfect, all-rounded man is so rare that Socrates, one of the noblest pearls of humanity, declared (as a phrenologist of ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... diverted for purposes of irrigation. Lima, the capital of Peru, is in one of the largest of these oases. Although frequently enveloped in a damp fog, the Peruvian coastal towns are almost never subjected to rain. The causes of this phenomenon are easy to understand. Winds coming from the east, laden with the moisture of the Atlantic Ocean and the steaming Amazon Basin, are rapidly cooled by the eastern slopes of the Andes and forced to deposit this moisture in the montana. By the time the ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... collect herself, but I saw very well that her troubled spirit vainly strove to recover itself. By a singular phenomenon I could see into her brain, and her thoughts appeared to me one after the other. She was saying to herself, "Let me collect myself; our Father, give me grace to collect myself," but the more effort she made to ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... taking courses in rhetoric and philosophy. On 21st August, 1560, however, a solar eclipse took place, total in Portugal, and therefore of small proportions in Denmark, and Tycho's keen interest was awakened, not so much by the phenomenon, as by the fact that it had occurred according to prediction. Soon afterwards he purchased an edition of Ptolemy in order to read up the subject of astronomy, to which, and to mathematics, he devoted most of the remainder ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... pen brought her all the money she needed; and she had secured a divorce from "That Man," and now had her two children with her in Paris. That she could do her literary work and still attend to her manifold social duties must ever mark her as a phenomenon. She was no mere adventuress. That she was systematic, orderly and abstemious in her habits must go without saying, otherwise her vitality would not have held out and allowed her to attend the funerals of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... digression about the sects, Josephus continues his narrative of the Jewish relations with the Romans. He turns aside now and then to detail the complicated family affairs of the Herodian family or to describe some remarkable geographical phenomenon, such as the glassy sands of the Ladder of Tyre.[1] The main theme is the growing irritation of the Jews, and the strengthening of the feeling that led to the outbreak of the great war. But Josephus, always under the spell ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... hidden fires beneath that heat the water. It is the illusion caused by superheated steam escaping through a fissure in the rock and dividing the water. The reflection from the surface thus formed and a black background formed by the sides and bottom of the pool account for the phenomenon. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... over this little bit of a count, if you plaze," said Andy, producing a dirty piece of paper, with some nearly inscrutable hieroglyphics upon it. Scatterbrain commenced an examination of this literary phenomenon from sheer curiosity, asking Andy at the same time if he ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... a banjosephine obligato in A-sia minor, by that justly renowned impresario, Signor Conde Tin-pani Rivers, specially engaged for this performance; with a pleasing and pan-hellenic song-and-dance turn by Miss Travis Bessemer, the infant phenomenon, otherwise known ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the river must have been fully five and twenty feet higher than it usually rises; and judging from his age, this occurrence might have taken place some twenty years before. As we proceed up the Darling, we shall see a clue to this phenomenon. But why, it may be asked, do not such floods more frequently occur? Is it that the climate is drier than it once was, and that the rains are less frequent? There are vestiges of floods over every part of the continent; but the decay of debris and ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... OF LIGHT This astronomical phenomenon may be defined as an apparent motion of the heavenly bodies; the stars describing annually orbits more or less elliptical, according to the latitude of the star; consequently at any moment the star appears to be displaced from its true position. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... one of the characteristic figures of the century's tendency. His many-sidedness, it is not too much to say, had no equal. Bringer of Salvation—social politician—wholesale business man—are only three comparisons which cannot by far exhaust the description of the phenomenon Booth. If ever the word can rightly be used of any one, then of William Booth it can be said he ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... Trust me, gentlemen, the command which is stringent against adoration of brutality, is stringent no less against adoration of chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to be reformed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. We have ceased from the making of monsters to be appeased by sacrifice;—it is well,—if indeed we have also ceased from making them in our thoughts. We have learned to distrust the adorning of fair fantasms, to ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... and see another rising in front, the other one looks terrifically steep, but as you get on to it, it flattens out in an inexplicable way; it is the change in our own position that accounts for the phenomenon. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... curse seems to cleave, and to God's curse man abandons it; he does not honour it by hate, still less will he lighten and share the guilt by descending to revenge. He turns aside with a sickness and loathing, and leaves Nature to purify from the earth the ghastly phenomenon she abhors. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... band of warriors arrived at the village, he found all of the people's minds still agitated with fear at the late phenomenon. Every one was talking of it with wonder and amazement, and the chief's opinion was demanded at once; they were expecting it, and wanted to know what the consequences were to be. Admonished by his recent defeat, Beckwourth ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... tokens of the wrath or favor of the Almighty. On December 11th, 1719, for the first time in the history of the Colony, the northern lights were seen here. They shone with the greatest brilliancy. The consternation they caused was fearful. The people had never heard of such a phenomenon. They considered it the opening scene of the day of judgment. All amusements were given up, all business was forsaken, and sleep itself was interrupted for days. Again, on the 29th of October, 1727, ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... for any phenomenon may later become embarrassing in the light of new knowledge. We do not really need to know why an occasional soil is supplied with the bacteria of a legume new to it. We have learned that the bacteria of sweet ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... probably, that had wandered from some old valley away in the mountains, where they were still believed in—but not the less a brownie; and if it was not the brownie who plaited Snowball's mane, who or what was it? A phenomenon must be accounted for, and he who will not accept a theory offered, or even a word applied, is indebted in a full explanation. The rumour spread in long slow ripples, till at last one of them struck the membrana tympani of the laird, where he sat at luncheon ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... a smokestack should push through the soil, to be followed a little later by a rudimentary steam whistle, the outlines of a boiler, and, rising through the sod, rude drive-wheels, piston-rods and cylinders, until after six months the great engine should stand forth in full completion. This phenomenon would be no more wonderful than that which actually goes on before man's blind eyes, when a tiny seed enlarges into the big tree of California and constructs a vegetable engine that lifts thousands of hogsheads of water up to the topmost boughs without any rattle ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... good terms with Him. The mystery of divinity never entered his head. It was a simple, steadfast faith, peculiar if you like, but unyielding in devotional loyalty to His supremacy. It was a wonderful phenomenon, which even cynical logicians might have found embarrassing to their iconoclastic notions could they have witnessed it. Here was an uncultured though magnificent-looking person passing through a sorrowful ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... gamekeeper in our own country, or often a shepherd or farm-servant. He pointed out a rock-woodpecker, which he called a "pito" (Colaptes rupicola), that was fluttering about and flying from rock to rock. Like the cliff-parrots we have already mentioned, this rock-woodpecker was a curious phenomenon, for, as their very name implies, the woodpeckers are all tree-dwelling birds, yet here was one of the genus living among rocks where not a tree was to be seen, and scarcely a plant, except the thorny cactuses and magueys, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... invincible. For even those who had known him longest and most intimately, Darvid had become this time a surprise; he had surpassed himself. The number of men was continually increasing who began to look on him as on a rare phenomenon of nature. Whence did the man get such uncommon mental and physical vigor? From mid-day till hours which were far beyond midnight he was unceasingly active. When has he time to sleep and take rest? What is he seeking to reach? What will he reach? This last question ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... appeared. Thus the coming of man indicated, in two directions, an extraordinary deviation from the ordinary course of animal development. Both physically and mentally evolution seemed to take an enormous leap, instead of proceeding by its usual minute steps, and in the advent of man we have a phenomenon remarkable alike in the development of the body ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... no means consumed with enthusiasm for the Palmerston Government, did not conceal his admiration of Lord John's sagacity at this crisis. 'The perfect neutrality of England in the destructive civil war now raging in America appears to me almost a phenomenon in political history. No such forbearance has been shown during the political history of the last two centuries. It is the single case in which the English Government and public, generally so meddlesome, have displayed most prudent and commendable forbearance in spite of great temptations to the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... woman, executed by drowning in 1594, whom the executioner could hardly keep under with repeated thrusts of his pole, so high did she bound upwards from the surface, and "so boil up," as it were, out of the depths of the water. The levity of possessed persons in water might be accounted for by a phenomenon attendant on those preternatural conditions of the body which follow excitements of an analogous kind. The victims of the flogging and dancing manias in the middle ages, and subjects of the fanatical fervors ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... You cannot divide literature into two elements and say: This is matter and that style. Further, the significance and the worth of literature are to be comprehended and assessed in the same way as the significance and the worth of any other phenomenon: by the exercise of common-sense. Common-sense will tell you that nobody, not even a genius, can be simultaneously vulgar and distinguished, or beautiful and ugly, or precise and vague, or tender and harsh. And common-sense will therefore ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... Our phenomenon is equally important in statements by witnesses. In many a case in which we suppose the whole or a portion of a witness's testimony to be incorrect, intentionally invented, or involuntarily imagined, we may succeed in extracting a part of the testimony as independent construction, and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... over the head of himself and his daughters by inducing people to pay him more for his services than they are worth. In the extreme instances of reaction against convention, female murderers get sheaves of offers of marriage; and when Nature throws up that rare phenomenon, an unscrupulous libertine, his success among "well brought-up" girls is so easy, and the devotion he inspires so extravagant, that it is impossible not to see that the revolt against conventional respectability has transfigured a commonplace rascal into a sort of Anarchist Saviour. As to the ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... An aerial phenomenon, superinduced by an ephemeral agitation of the nebular strata, whereby air, (hot or cold), impelled into transitory activity, generates a prolonged passage through space, owing to certain occult ethereal stimuli, and results in zephyrs, breezes, blows, blow-outs, blizzards, gales, simoons, hurricanes, ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... approach her, neither did he make any other movement or gesture. Flora de Barral told me all this. She could see him through her tears, blurred to a mere shadow on the white road, and then again becoming more distinct, but always absolutely still and as if lost in thought before a strange phenomenon which demanded the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... ahead, and we kept right straight for them, though no matter how far we walked they seemed just the same distance off. It was certainly discouraging, and I could not help thinking of the will-o'-the-wisp, and wondering if the phenomenon was ever seen in the Arctic. I could not remember any instance in my reading, and determined to reach that light or perish in the effort. At last it did seem nearer. We could make out the shapes of the tents, and finally we could hear dogs ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... getting along," or have ever made so great and immediate use of that information. So marked is the fact that the Constitution requires a decennial census that a distinguished French writer on statistics declares, "The United States presents in its history a phenomenon which has no parallel. It is that of a people who instituted the statistics of their country on the very day when they formed their government, and who regulated in the same instrument the census of their citizens, their civil and political rights ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... appear to have sunk into mere totemists and fetish worshippers, like the aboriginal races of India; while the Celtic tribes were at a loose and early stage of polytheism, with a Pantheon filled by every possible device, by the adoration of every kind of natural phenomenon, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, the winds and clouds, the earth and sea, rivers, wells, sacred trees, by the creation of tribal divinities, gods and goddesses of war, commerce, healing, and all the congeries of mutually tolerant devotions which we ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... to Lake Ontario. On the land side there was a succession of slightly elevated promontories, covered with forests abounding in recent clearings, their sombre colouring being relieved by the brilliant blue of the lake. I saw, for the only time, that beautiful phenomenon called the "water-mirage," by which trees, ships, and houses are placed in the most extraordinary and sometimes inverted positions. Yet still these endless promontories stretched away, till their distant outlines were lost in the soft blue haze of the Indian summer. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... already tall and well grown, in appearance quite a man. He was a student working his way to an education, and his example was a help to me. For I no longer hated lessons. Miss Coleman's talk had filled me with such zeal for knowledge that I became, before the term was over, the phenomenon of the school. Mr. Burke boarded at our house and he would bring home shining tales of my prowess, and often I would listen open-mouthed as we sat about the table at night and he told stories of the State University and the students and ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... thus possible to calculate the difference of the parallaxes of the sun and a planet crossing its disk. The idea of thus determining the parallax of the planets originated, or at least was developed, by Halley, and from this phenomenon he thought it possible to conclude the dimensions of all the planetary orbits. As we shall see further on, his views were found to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the parts of our universe, are as mere instants. Yet have we every reason which analogy can afford to believe that even the development of a whole universe such as ours should be regarded as but a minute local phenomenon of a universe infinitely higher in order, that universe in turn but a single member of a system of such universes, and so on, even ad infinitum. To reject the belief that this is possible is to share the folly of beings such as we have conceived regarding ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... doubt. When one finds practically the same "tags" of verse in such different dialects as Danish and Romaic, German and Italian, one cannot imagine that these sprang up independently in Denmark, Greece, Germany, and Florence. The same phenomenon is shown in another field of Folk-Lore where, as the late Mr. Newell showed, the same rhymes are used to brighten up the same children's games in Barcelona and in Boston; one cannot imagine them springing up independently in both places. So, too, when the same incidents of a fairy tale ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... as he was ambitious and industrious in the development of his own great talents. In 1824 he gave piano-forte lessons to Felix Mendelssohn, then a youth of fifteen, at Berlin. He wrote of the Mendelssohn family: "This is a family the like of which I have never known. Felix, a boy of fifteen, is a phenomenon. What are all prodigies as compared with him? Gifted children, but nothing else. This Felix Mendelssohn is already a mature artist, and yet but fifteen years old! We at once settled down together for several hours, for ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... regarded each other for some time in silence. Michael and Hildeguard, Molly and Dolly and two others of the staff of girls were grouped in the doorway exactly in Nancy's range of vision, and whispering to one another excitedly concerning the phenomenon ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... observed several of these great creatures grazing, and Lord John, with his glass, was able to report that they also were spotted with asphalt, though in a different place to the one which we had examined in the morning. What this phenomenon ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... coast of America, simply proves that there exists a layer of frozen drift, in the fissures of which (even now) the muscular flesh of any animal which should accidentally fall into them would be preserved intact. It is a slight local phenomenon. To me, the ensemble of geological phenomena seems to prove, not the prevalence of this glacial surface on which you would carry along your boulders, but a very high temperature spreading almost to the poles, a temperature favorable to organizations resembling those ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... and intelligence, and constituting reports more voluminous perhaps than exist upon any one other class of cases, is worth anything, it is difficult to deny, or even to doubt the existence of such a phenomenon as the Vampire. ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the cerebro-spinal activity; they temporarily extinguish the sexual appetite, and prevent by their interference the automatic mechanism of erection which they strive to produce. The greater the fear of failure, the more the psychic impotence increases. This phenomenon may be limited to a certain woman, but it is more often general. Sometimes an incomplete erection is produced, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... perhaps be expected that I should begin a lecture on the relations between thought and language with some definition of both these things; but thought, as Sir William Grove said of motion, is a phenomenon "so obvious to simple apprehension, that to define it would make it more obscure." {17} Definitions are useful where things are new to us, but they are superfluous about those that are already familiar, ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... all, familiar to us all. In the matter of particulars—a detail here, a detail there—we have had the choice climate of New South Wales' seacoast; we have had the Australian heat as furnished by Captain Sturt; we have had the wonderful dust-storm; and we have considered the phenomenon of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United States, with a narrow belt of civilization, population, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... claim for our art any outstanding phenomenon like the interest in the radio that has swept the country this year, or any remarkable development in the science of photography like the invention a few years ago of the Lumiere plate. The day may come when our exhibitions ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1922 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... carried throughout the plant by means of the flow of sap; these currents circulate through all the rootlets and center, as it were, in the stalk, carrying their tiny burdens of various elements and depositing them in their proper places. That this phenomenon of circulation is due to electricity cannot be doubted. Most plants grow more rapidly during the night than in the day. May not the following ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... those who seek to gain a view of the "midnight sun"—that is, of witnessing the phenomenon of the sun passing round the horizon without sinking beneath it—is to depart from Troendhjem by sea, for the North Cape, skirting the ironbound coast for a distance of about ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... may at least be suggested as a possible explanation of the seeming discrepancy, that when Saul had passed out of his moody madness it is not wonderful that he should have forgotten all which had occurred in his paroxysm. It is surely a common enough psychological phenomenon that a man restored to sanity has no remembrance of the events during his mental aberration. And as for Abner's profession of ignorance, an incipient jealousy of this stripling hero may naturally have made the "captain of the host" willing to keep the king as ignorant as he could concerning ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... me, has in this instance outdone his French confrere, as regards insight into the peculiar character and poetry of the pietistic movement. He has dealt with it as a psychological and not primarily as a pathological phenomenon. A comparison with Daudet suggests itself constantly in reading Kielland. Their methods of workmanship and their attitude toward life have many points in common. The charm of style, the delicacy of touch, and felicity of phrase, are in both cases preeminent. ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... eclipse of the sun was itself eclipsed by the world shadow. Shortly after noon a large inky blot obscured nearly three-quarters of the sun's surface and a violet haze hung over London, but very few people were heeding the phenomenon in the sky. The hawkers, even, were too busy selling patriotic favours to offer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... finds that it is not safe to use more than 3 per cent. (of the weight of the wool) of bichromate; if 4 per cent. be used, the colour becomes impaired, whilst if 12 per cent. be employed, the wool cannot be dyed at all with logwood, the phenomenon known as "over-chroming" being the result of such excessive treatment. I think there is no doubt, as Professor Hummel says, that the colouring matter is oxidised and destroyed in such over-chroming, but I also think that there can be no doubt that the wool itself is also greatly ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... back and regarded him in silence as a remarkable phenomenon such as had not previously come his way. Then he sighed, and picked up a ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... ignore the significance. In the first place, while it maintained the belief in degeneration, endorsed by Hebrew mythology, it definitely abandoned the Greek theory of cycles. The history of the earth was recognised as a unique phenomenon in time; it would never occur again or anything resembling it. More important than all is the fact that Christian theology constructed a synthesis which for the first time attempted to give a definite meaning to the whole course of human ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... supporters of the popular cause. I myself am exposed to the envy and attacks of all parties—for this simple reason, that whoever acts or means wrong finds me an insuperable obstacle. And there appears a kind of phenomenon in my situation—all parties against me, and a national popularity, which, in spite of every effort, has remained unchanged.... Given up to all the madness of license, faction, and popular rage, I stood ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... which decreased as it advanced upward, or the cloud itself being prest back again by its own weight, expanded in the manner I have mentioned; it appeared sometimes bright and sometimes dark and spotted according as it was either more or less impregnated with earth and cinders. This phenomenon seemed to a man of such learning and research as my uncle extraordinary and worth further looking into. He ordered a light vessel to be got ready, and gave me leave, if I liked, to accompany him. I said I had rather go on with my work; and it so happened ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... puts it; and when one remembers how through all the centuries the masters of thought and expression have appealed to men who knew nothing of criticism, higher or lower, one is tempted to doubt whether the critic be not an altogether superfluous phenomenon. ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... then [Page 88] its summit was drawn down into long filaments and threads, which were most curiously rolled backward and forward, like the volutes of an Ionic capital, and finally faded away, and by half-past two had vanished like the other. The whole phenomenon suggested most forcibly the idea of an explosion under the great prominence, acting mainly upward, but also in all directions outward; and then, after an interval, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... Dawn"; Subhi Kazib, a transient Light on the Horizon about an hour before the Subhi sadik or True Dawn; a well-known Phenomenon in ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... received with great applause, was played on sixty successive nights, but not to very crowded audiences. The press scarcely noticed the new actress. The critic of the Journal des Debats, however, while rashly affirming that Rachel was not a phenomenon and would never be extolled as a wonder, carefully noted certain of the merits and characteristics of her performance. "She was an unskilled child, but she possessed heart, soul, intellect. There was something bold, abrupt, uncouth ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... within certain limitations to make his own choice of alternatives, many determinists go so far as to admit that there may be in any action which is neither reflex nor determined by external causes solely an element of freedom. This view is corroborated by the phenomenon of remorse, in which the agent feels that he ought to, and could, have chosen a different course of action. These two kinds of determinism are sometimes distinguished as "hard" and "soft" determinism. The controversy between determinism and libertarianism hinges largely on the significance of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... could certainly see Patty Baxter as far as he could a sunrise, although he was not intimately acquainted with that natural phenomenon. He took a circuitous route from his watch-tower, and, knowing well the point from which there could be no espionage from Deacon Baxter's store windows, joined Patty in the road, took the pail from her hand, and walked up the hill beside her. Of course, the village could ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... public opinion is very great in the South. While this may be true of rural or semi-rural communities in any part of the land, nowhere else does collective opinion exert such overwhelming force as in the Southern States. Perhaps this phenomenon is a survival from Reconstruction days and after. Since certain attitudes toward the negro, for example, were defended on the ground of the necessity of protecting womanhood, a certain standard must be demanded from women, and every man claimed a sort of prescriptive right to assist in laying down ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... of course, much affected by your taste in literature. Indeed, I know many persons who have the purest taste in literature, and yet false taste in art, and it is a phenomenon which puzzles me not a little: but I have never known any one with false taste in books, and true taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest importance to you, not only for art's sake, but for all kinds of sake, in these ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... head toward the three hills, and with every step that brought her nearer the conviction grew that she had found the Saunders' place. To be sure, she had seen nothing of a house as yet, but, like the name of Saunders, three hills were not a common phenomenon in Oklahoma, at least not within riding distance of the ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... trumpets were sounded in the rear, and from all the glades and forest avenues began to trot forward towards the pavilion the yagers, half cavalry, half huntsmen, who composed the Imperial escort. Conjecture was on the stretch to divine the cause of this phenomenon, and the interest continually increased, in proportion as simple curiosity gradually deepened into the anxiety of uncertain danger. At first it had been imagined that some vast troops of deer, or other wild animals of the chase, had been disturbed in their forest haunts by the Emperor's ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... record was one of the most recent—the Frere sale at Sotheby's in 1896, already alluded to, where the prices realised for books in very secondary preservation set all records and precedents at thorough defiance. The phenomenon, if it could be referred to any cause, arose from the peculiar atmosphere and surroundings; it was a bona fide old library, formed partly by the Freres of Roydon Hall, Norfolk, and partly by their relative Sir John Fenn, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... a natural phenomenon, enjoying the most robust health. It may be a pleasure for a man with great will power and an iron constitution to study more carefully into the habits of the cyclone, but as far as I am concerned, individually, I could ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... government, which, in re-selling the goods below cost price, plunges thereby a little further into insolvency. The bread subsidies, now almost universal throughout Europe, are the leading example of this phenomenon. ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... felicitons! We've got him still—in Madame Tussaud's," cried Janet "He poisoned for money in cold blood—not exactly an artistic vice! Oh, he won't do!"—she laughed triumphantly—"if he did write charming things about the Renaissance! Besides, he illustrates my case; among us he was a phenomenon, like the elephant-headed man. Phenomena are for the scientists. You don't mean to tell me that any literature that pretends to call itself artistic has ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... tsetse, yet as undisturbed by its bite as oxen are when they first receive the fatal poison. There is not so much difference in the natures of the horse and zebra, the buffalo and ox, the sheep and antelope, as to afford any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. Is a man not as much a domestic animal as a dog? The curious feature in the case, that dogs perish though fed on milk, whereas the calves escape so long as they continue sucking, made us imagine that the mischief might be ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the trade wind soft and steady; only once was there bad weather; very bad while it lasted and very terrifying to those who had never before been at sea; but it happened that, during the storm, the electric phenomenon known as the Light of St. Elmo was seen over the rigging of the Mari-ga- lan'te, the Admiral's ship, and all that horde of superstitious men were reassured and considered it a sign that ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... only gives the preliminary steps in the ladder of contemplation but also tells the reader how to realize the higher stages. It traces, by the process of contemplation as it were, the relation of man, "the known," the manifested, the phenomenon, to "the unknown," the unmanifested, the noumenon. It shows the student what ideal to contemplate and how to rise up to it. It places before him the nature of the inner capacities of man and how to develop them. To a superficial ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... be guilty of alone. But this is something entirely different and still more curious and mysterious. Those people down yonder keep this up by themselves when they are alone—it attacks some of them before they have ever seen one of the meetings. It is certainly the strangest phenomenon of its kind that the world ever saw. It never loses its painful fascination for me. I can't pass it by. How ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... the base of every vital phenomenon. It is, as Huxley has well expressed it, 'the physical basis of life;' wherever there is life from its lowest to its highest manifestation there is protoplasm; wherever there is protoplasm there ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... conventional ordinary sort, she would have either gulped her sensation blindly,—"let herself go,"—or trembled with horror and run away as from some evil thing. Being as she was, modern, intellectual, proudly questioning all maxims, she kept this new phenomenon in her hand, saying, "What does it mean for me?" The note of ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... condition is most frequently a product of maternity, there would seem to be some reasonable degree of justification for the assumption that the wrecked health is the result of a legitimate physiological act, and consequently a natural phenomenon. This is not, however, altogether true. A displacement is not, under any circumstances, a natural process. It is the result of causes which are avoidable. Most of them are the penalties imposed by nature because of the infraction of her laws. We will not consider ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... the Queen's skin. That vacuum was dark, even pitch-black but here and there came momentary suggestions of vague light and color. Occasional pinpricks of brightness showed and were gone. And there had been one startling phenomenon like a distant, giant explosion, a sudden pallid glare in the dark, which appeared far ahead of the Queen and, for the instant it remained in sight, seemed to be rushing directly towards them. It had given Gefty the feeling that the ship itself was plowing at high speed through this eerie ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... patriarchal times, there is no complaint of Sabbath-breaking. We read of fratricide, drunkenness, lying, unbelief, theft, idolatry, slave-dealing, and other crimes, but no hint as to sanctifying or desecrating the Sabbath. At length, a few days before the giving of the law, a natural phenomenon announced to the Jews the great change that was at hand—the manna fell in double quantity on Friday, and was not found on Saturday. So new was this that, contrary to the command, the people went out on the seventh day as on other days, and were rebuked but not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the rise was due to some kind of resonance, and would be a maximum for some particular frequency. Mr. Mordey mentioned a peculiar phenomenon observed in the manufacture of his alternators. Each coil, he said, was tested to double the pressure of the completed dynamo, but when they were all fitted together, their insulation broke down at the same volts. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... attributed to his having a clearer conception of the things he describes than is common to other persons. Mr. Spence, in an elegant preface which he has written to the works of this poet, reasons very ingeniously, and, I imagine, for the most part, very rightly, upon the cause of this extraordinary phenomenon; but I cannot altogether agree with him, that some improprieties in language and thought, which occur in these poems, have arisen from the blind poet's imperfect conception of visual objects, since such improprieties, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... I wasn't mistaken in thinking that for an agitating minute the pinkness of Pogson's large countenance sickly ebbed and blanched. And while my attention was still engaged by this disquieting phenomenon, I became aware that Mrs. Pogson had joined us. Silently, mysteriously, she faded—the term holds good—into evidence, as on so many former occasions she ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... of what our 'King of Song' owed to the popular poetry of country people and elder times—and notably to the ballads—that have been handed down by memory rather than books. His was not an isolated phenomenon, blazing up meteor-like without visible cause or prompting. His poetry is rather the culminating effect of an impulse that had been making itself felt for generations. It was like one of those grand ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... tells us, in his 'Letters from High Latitudes,' of an indiscriminating cock which was shipped at Stornway, and had become quite bewildered on the subject of that meteorological phenomenon 'the Dawn of Day.' It was questioned, in fact, whether he ever slept for more than five minutes at a stretch without waking up in a state of nervous agitation lest it should be cock crow, and at last, when night ceased altogether, his constitution could no longer stand the shock. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... has arisen this strange phenomenon, that there is now a class of ladies and gentlemen, very refined indeed, though not perhaps as well informed as is generally supposed, and of this refined class there are many who do really love beauty and incident— i.e., art, ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... beneath which she sat. She looked off again at the view. Another leaf came swirling down past her, lighting on the ground. "It's probably a squirrel," she explained to herself, concerning this phenomenon of falling leaves in June, and tried again to descry its source, without success. When, however, a shower of the green missiles came down together, she got to her feet, ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... phenomenon, and one very familiar to the student of history, is this. The customs, beliefs, or needs of a primitive time establish a rule or a formula. In the course of centuries the custom, belief, or necessity disappears, ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... vision; seeing, view, perception; visibility; spectacle, phenomenon, panorama, vista, gapeseed, cynosure; (Colloq.) great number, many, multitude, great quantity. Associated Words: optics, optical, optic, ocular, optician, caligo, astigmatism, perimeter, perimetry, amaurosis, visual, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... a distance" has long ceased to be recognized as a possible phenomenon, although up to the present, the medium and method of gravitational attraction ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... as a few vegetable products, especially honey, strawberries and buckwheat, were most likely to be the cause of these violent disturbances. More recently it has been found that cow's milk very often shows the same peculiarity. It is now known that this remarkable phenomenon is due to the fact that the body sometimes becomes sensitized to certain proteins which thereafter act as most violent poisons and may cause death. Sensitization to animal proteins is much the more frequent. In such cases nut products become a very ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... their way North and South. Had we been painted scarlet, and flown the Black Jack instead of the Red Ensign, we could not have attracted more attention. Flags of greeting were run up to all mastheads, and boats from all sides were soon aboard inquiring into the strange phenomenon. Our object explained, we soon had calls for a doctor, and it has been the experience of almost every visitor to the coast from that day to this that he is expected to ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... is, I cannot yet close it without mentioning to you a singular phenomenon of nature, in the island of St. John. You know it is a flat, level island, chiefly formed out of the congestion of sand and soil from the sea. Tradition, experience, and authentic public acts (Proces verbaux) concur to attest that every ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... of an engine funnel.'—Compare the sixth paragraph of Professor Tyndall's 'Forms of Water,' and the following seventh one, in which the phenomenon of transparent steam becoming opaque is thus explained. "Every bit of steam shrinks, when chilled, to a much more minute particle of water. The liquid particles thus produced form a kind of water ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... inquirers into Foreign Literature, for all men anxious to see and understand the European world as it lies around them, a great problem is presented in this Goethe; a singular, highly significant phenomenon, and now also means more or less complete for ascertaining its significance. A man of wonderful, nay, unexampled reputation and intellectual influence among forty millions of reflective, serious and cultivated men, invites us to study him; and to determine ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... understanding of psychopathic phenomena, the underlying psychology of criminology becomes more clearly defined. Maladjustment may express itself in an insane outbreak, criminal act, or in an anti-social deed, indeed, in all of them the underlying phenomenon is a psychopathic condition which comes under the realm of abnormal psychology. The large group of criminals SHOULD not be looked upon as a homogenous class, but the individuality of criminal and the type of the delinquent act in reaction to his heredity, mental ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... whether they are not in another world. Columbus, however, orders an observation to be taken at day-break, when the needle is found to point to the north again; moreover he is ready with a theory sufficiently ingenious for that time, to account for the phenomenon of variation which had so disturbed the sailors, namely, that it was caused by the north star moving round the pole. The sailors are, ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... laid his grip upon the waters of the Tien-ho, and turned the flowing stream into a crystal highway, along which men might travel with ease and safety. Such a sight had never been seen before by any of the people who lived upon its banks, and many were the speculations as to what such a phenomenon might mean to the welfare of the people of the region. It never occurred to any one that this great snow-storm which had turned into ice a river that had never been known to freeze before, was all the work of demons determined on the ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... the immense majority of instances, to be regarded as mirror-pictures on earth, of celestial and meteorological phenomena. Thus even the story of the Earth Goddess, the Harvest Goddess, Demeter, was usually explained as a reflection in myth of one or another celestial phenomenon—dawn, storm-cloud, or something ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... until the age of ten or twelve, had rather stumpy faces with noses actually turned up, and most beautiful large eyes softened by abnormally long eyelashes, the eyes themselves, strangely enough, being quite a fleur de tete. I noticed this curious phenomenon in members of the same family, and the older ones told me that when they were young their faces were also stubby and their ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... economic milieu. The savage is not without discrimination. He is quite capable of distinguishing between the living and the dead. Not all stones are held by him to be alive in any important sense, and not all beasts to be powerful. He is a practical thinker and deals with each phenomenon as it presents itself, and particularly as it shows itself to be connected with his interests. He is constantly on the alert to distinguish between the profitable and the unprofitable, the helpful and the injurious. He himself is the center of his ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy |
