"Bubble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like an open pair of glistening scissors and his face and throat a beautiful ruddy buff. There were so many glints of color on his steel-blue back and wings, as he spread them in the sun, that it seemed as if in some of his nights he must have collided with a great soap-bubble, which left its shifting hues upon ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... wives and lovers that have watched those little fishing-craft as they went gayly out like this, but have waited long—too long—and seen them again no more. In night and fog they have gone down under the keel of some ocean packet or Indiaman, and sunk with brave hearts and hands, like a bubble in the mighty waters. Yet Mrs. Pennel did not turn back to her house in apprehension of this. Her husband had made so many voyages, and always returned safely, that she confidently expected before long to ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the sweet and reviving influences of life now began to circle round the wanderers. Among them was the savoury odour that arose from the pot of bubble-um-squeak, also the improved appearance of ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... June morning, is older than he chooses to let every body know. Bless you all, readers dear! he was by when the Tulip Mania was hatched, (mixed figure,) and it was he who punctured the great South Sea Bubble, and sent it on a burst. Ha! ha! he-e-e!—how he laughs when he recurs to those days of the long, long ago, with their miserable little swindles, no better than farthing candles, (allowable rhyme,) and their puny dodges devised for ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... added: 'I am losing hope sadly about Frederick; he is letting us down gently, but I can see that Mr. Lennox himself has no hope of hunting up the witnesses under years and years of time. No,' said she, 'that bubble was very pretty, and very dear to our hearts; but it has burst like many another; and we must console ourselves with being glad that Frederick is so happy, and with being a great deal to each other. So don't offend me by talking of being able to spare me, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... "My child, where is your hair?" and Woolsey, bursting out with a most tremendous oath against Walker that would send Miss Prim into convulsions, put his handkerchief to his face, and actually wept. "The infernal bubble-ubble-ackguard!" said he, roaring and clenching ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... against the English. All along the Gulf shore the sites and remains of the small forts once held by the Spaniards are known traditionally and indiscriminately as "Spanish Fort." When John Law,—author of that famed Mississippi Bubble, which was in Paris what the South Sea Bubble was in London,—failed in his efforts at colonization on the Arkansas, his Arkansas settlers came down the Mississippi to within some sixty miles of New Orleans and established themselves in a colony at first called the Cote Allemande ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... and her vehemence was a surprise to Kent; he knew her as all froth and bubble. What had brought the dark circles under her eyes and the unwonted seriousness ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... look dreamily into the Bubblin' Well I would methink how I do wish I knowed how and where you come to be so hot, and I'd think how much it could tell if it would bubble up and speak so's we could understand it. Mebby it wuz het in a big reservoir of solid gold and run some of the way through sluice ways of shinin' silver and anon over beds of diamonds and rubies. How could I tell! but ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... little doubt he was the natural son of Dr. William Oldys, Chancellor of Lincoln, and Advocate of the Admiralty Court. His father left him some property, which he appears to have lost in the South Sea Bubble. From the year 1724 to 1730 Oldys resided in Yorkshire, but in the latter year he returned to London, and became acquainted with Edward Harley, the second Earl of Oxford, to whom he sold his collection of manuscripts ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... have learned better since. They abused republics in general, rejoicing openly in the ruin they affected to see before ours. Yes, the United States of America and their boasted Constitution were a vast bubble - no solidity - rather a collection of bubbles, which would go to pieces by their own contact. Specially the weight of dislike and maligning fell on the Northern portion of the country; sympathy was with the South. These natives of the free British ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the camels put its head out of the blanket and began groaning and hubble-bubble-ubbling, after the manner of camels; so, to quiet it, the girl tore down a tree or two, and stuffed them into the bundle also. On this, the farmer to whom the trees belonged came running up, and calling, ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... now, hark thee, should one syllable of this night's business bubble through thy lips, thou hadst better have stayed in the paws ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... should clearly distinguish between thoughtless exuberance of spirits and downright maliciousness. "If we only had a boys' room," plaintively writes one sympathetic librarian, "where we could get them together without disturbing their elders and could thus let them bubble over with their 'animal spirits' without infringing on other people, I believe we could win ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... trunk uprooted from its ancient settlement. Irresistibly the conviction impressed itself upon his mind that, if he were alone in this old abbey, with no mother to break that strange fountain of fancies that seemed always to bubble up in his solitude, he might be happy. He wanted no companions; he loved to be alone, to listen to the winds, and gaze upon the trees and waters, and wander in those dim cloisters and ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... "Ah, musha, musha, GOD bless you! GOD be wid you!" Mr. Sadler, waving his flag and his hat, and bowing to the world below, soon pierced a white cloud, and disappeared; then emerging, the balloon looked like a moon, black on one side, silver on the other; then like a dark bubble; then less and less, and now only a speck is seen; and now the fleeting rack obscures it. Never did I feel the full merit of ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... You've summer all at once; In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns, 'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well, The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... my eyes as they have been, and again they passed as they now are, with no trace of their ancient greatness, but here and there a ruin, and everywhere the desolation of tombs. With all their splendour, power, and might, they vanished like a bubble, or like the dream of a child, leaving but for a moment a drop of cold sweat upon the sleeper's brow, or a quivering smile upon his lips; then, this wiped away, dream, sweat, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... for it, holding about a quart, and another, holding three or four quarts, for the other kinds. The fat that has been skimmed from soups, boiled beef and fowl, should be cooked rather slowly until the sediment falls to the bottom and there is not the shadow of a bubble. It can then be strained into the jar with the other fat; but if strained while bubbles remain, there is water in it, and it will spoil quickly. The fat from sausages can also be strained into the larger pot. Another pot, holding about three quarts, should be kept for the ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... the grain of her nature was kindly enough beneath its veneer of worldly cleverness; but her grief was more than tempered by a sense of self-congratulation, of unlimited approval of the prudence which had enabled her to marry her daughter so irreproachably before the bubble burst. Indeed, the little glow of pride which mingled quite harmoniously with her nevertheless perfectly sincere regret, was an almost visible element in her moral atmosphere, as she emerged from the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... prophets false, I pricked The bubble of perfection, And clapped upon their inner ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the glimmering murk; shook my head. I could see nothing. It was indeed, as though the clustered cubes sped within a bubble of the now wanly glistening vapors; or rather as though in our passage—as a projectile does in air—we piled before us a thick wave of the mists which streaming along each side, closing in behind, obscured ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... don't seem to be able to say anything I mean, in French. It's always a sort of make-believe talk with me. Our whole life here seems a sort of dream,—as if we were living in some wonderful bubble that will suddenly burst one day, and leave us floating alone in space, with nothing ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... in securing a coveted picture the ardent photographer was the happiest boy in the county. His pleasure caused him to fairly bubble over with ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... after curious research, of a pretender who once called himself, to the amusement of his contemporaries, Henry the Fourth of France; or was the world-empire for which so many armies were marshalled, so many ducats expended, so many falsehoods told, to prove a bubble after all? Time was to show. Meantime wise men of the day who, like the sages of every generation, read the future like a printed scroll, were pitying the delusion and rebuking the wickedness of Henry the Bearnese; persisting as he did in his cruel, sanguinary, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... observations made by Boyle led to the invention of his "statical barometer," the mercurial barometer having been invented, as we have seen, by Torricelli, in 1643. In describing this invention he says: "Making choice of a large, thin, and light glass bubble, blown at the flame of a lamp, I counterpoised it with a metallic weight, in a pair of scales that were suspended in a frame, that would turn with the thirtieth part of a grain. Both the frame and the balance were then placed ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... looked angrily upward, as if poor Clifford wronged them by setting an image of beauty afloat so near their dusty pathway. A great many put out their fingers or their walking-sticks to touch, withal; and were perversely gratified, no doubt, when the bubble, with all its pictured earth and sky scene, vanished as if it had ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the streets, alleys, and public squares every one was either buying or selling Mississippi shares. Monsieur Griffard left his pastry-shop in the charge of his eldest assistant while he himself went in search of millions, and, what is more, found them. But one day, like a beautiful soap-bubble, the whole Mississippi joke collapsed, and Monsieur Griffard found himself out in the cold with but ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... of the first engine that traverses the San Francisco Railroad from end to end will be a death-warning to the disciples of Jo Smith. The moment the Mormon bubble gets touched by neighbours it will break. Similarly, the red man's course is very nearly run. A scalped stoker is the outward and visible sign of his utter extermination. Not Quakers enough to reach from here to Jerusalem will save him by the term ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... universe, be called a serving of my God? It is communion with God; he holds it with me, else never could I hold it with him. I am as the foam-froth upon his infinite ocean, but of the water of the ocean is the bubble on ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... grand-daughter had been introduced there was no more talking about Hanky and Panky; for George began to bubble over with the subject that was nearest his heart, and how much he feared that it would be some time yet before he could be married. Many a story did he tell of his early attachment and of its course for the last ten years, but ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... "Bubble Chirk," replied the freckled boy, with one eye on his book, and the other measuring a tall spire of pigweed, towards which ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... plague! d'ye think I'd have you counterfeit Forever? but a day, to give me time To bubble Chremes of the ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... seconds, then he also stepped forward and peered in at the little window with Laura, who was still talking; and instantly, his sudden curiosity fell flat like a bubble pricked. For he saw just enough resemblance in this ordinary, pale, alert little girl, with the bright eyes and the freckles on her nose, to make sure she was the same person, and after that one glance he stood looking away to sea with his hands in his pockets, whistling ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... his errand as well as their masters, and had their answers ready, let him present himself before them when he would: so he besieged the doors of St. James's and Mayfair, Kensington Gore and Netting Hill, no longer. He knew that the bubble of his poor foolish life had burst, and that there was nothing left for him but ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... mockery from me. There was no firm foothold anywhere. What were all the religions of the word but narcotics with which Humanity seeks to dull its pain, drugs in which it drowns its terrors, faith but a bubble ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... your secret heart you're as much afraid as I am that a Relieving Column will be sent down from——Do tell me again where Grumer is with the Brigade? Uli, in Upper Rhodesia—thanks! Well, Grumer is quite a near friend of Bingo's, and an old flame of mine. But—to burst our lovely peacock bubble of Siege and let the whole situation down, sans coup ferir, into muddy commonplace—may Grumer never come!" She held up her coffee-cup, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... afraid? my stories are the true ones." And he laid hold of a calabash, for he was one that loved curiosities. Now he had no sooner laid hand upon the calabash than that which he handled, and that which he saw and stood on, burst like a bubble and was gone; and night closed upon him, and the waters, and the meshes of the net; and he wallowed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... swung it over the flames. Then she brought in Ball-Carrier, who, seeing all these preparations, wished that as long as he was in the kettle the water might not really boil, though it would hiss and bubble, and also, that the spirits would turn ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... our lines for events to come," Jack said, when they advanced upon the dessert and prepared to occupy an extensive territory of ices, fruit, and jellied something or other. "It would be a sin for Aunt Mary to leave this famous battlefield without a few honorable scars! We must take her out in a bubble for ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... all this?" he thought, staring downwards at the headlong flow so smooth and clean that only the passage of a faint air-bubble, or a thin vanishing streak of foam like a white hair, disclosed its vertiginous rapidity, its terrible force. "Why has that meddlesome old Englishman blundered against me? And what is this silly tale of a crazy ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... is constant for the same liquid at a given temperature, no longer has the same value when the thickness of the layer of liquid becomes extremely small. Newton noticed even in his time that a dark zone is seen to form on a soap bubble at the moment when it becomes so thin that it must burst. Professor Reinold and Sir Arthur Ruecker have shown that this zone is no longer exactly spherical; and from this we must conclude that the superficial tension, constant for all thicknesses above a certain ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... grass-grown plot. In the foreground, to the right, a fantastic lava formation, a hollow cone five yards in height and three yards in circumference, once an enormous lava bubble produced by gases in the liquid lava. In course of time, the roof has crumbled, also the nearest wall. The farther wall is still standing, but there is a hole in it, through which the sky can be seen. Farther back and somewhat to the ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... that journey—five days of perfect unalloyed delight. Nobody could rob him of that. She had said to him that even at the beginning of the journey she had known that she did not love him—she had known but he had not, and even though he had cheated himself with the glittering bubble of an illusion the splendour had ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... and Anna May Angerell." An indulgent smile curved Grace's lips. "They have spied us from afar. They are the dearest little girls. I can't begin to tell you what a comfort they've been to me this summer. They're such joyous youngsters. They fairly bubble with happiness. What a wonderful estate childhood is, Elfreda. Yet we never realize it until long after it has passed away. I've often wished I could go back and live it over, even for ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... passage of time or the mere circumstance of what might be called an outside marriage, but now extinct, to come between them? There is many a spring, Robert, which does not show when a man first begins to dig, but it will bubble up in time. And, Robert, it bubbles now." And with her head bent a little downwards, although her eyes were still fixed upon him, she made another ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... My bubble has vanished into thin air. Jimsy Brooks has declared his love for me and a wonderful thing has gone out of my life forever. I had always felt so perfectly safe with Jimsy. When I think of the all-day picnics that we two used to go on together and the outrageous ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... the facts of our present condition, unless you touch the very deepest springs of conduct, and these are to be found in communion with God. All the rest is surface drainage. Get down to the love of God, and the love of men therefrom, and you have got an Artesian well which will bubble up unfailingly. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... after round into their ship. Only twelve remained alive at nine o'clock, when she began to list to port. Slowly more and more of the under-water part of her hull showed above the sea, and she continued to heel until her keel was right side up. In this position she sank, a large bubble marking the spot. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... and noble busts of the wise and great, is the head of poor old Furry preserved, with the mouth wide open, to display the extraordinary tooth! Fame is a strange thing, after all. I believe that our friend the rat was not the first, nor will be the last, to pay a heavy price for the bubble! ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... the trouble to moderate her voice; and one of the new arrivals, who hovered alone on the edge of the crowd, like a bubble of foam flung out by the surging wave, stood near enough to overhear. She turned and threw a glance at the group, in time to catch en route to the back of her dress a look sent forth from the eyes of Miss Dene. It was that look which ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... fountains broke,—broke in rains of tempestuous tears, such gusts and gushes of grief as threatened to wash away life itself; and when Eloise issued from this stormy deep, the warmth and the wealth of being obscured, the effervescence and bubble of the child destroyed, feeling like a flower sodden with showers, if she had been capable of finding herself at all, she would have found ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... dim semblance of a man in gaiters and smock, bearing a whip in one hand while in the other he upheld a foaming beaker—but never in nature did ale or beer ever so foam, froth, bubble and seethe as did this ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... about bubbles—auras—what d'you call 'em? You can't see my bubble; I can't see yours; all we see of each other is a speck, like the wick in the middle of that flame. The flame goes about with us everywhere; it's not ourselves exactly, but what we feel; the world is short, or people mainly; ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... dretful bubblin' and sparklin'. Why sunthin' seemed to be a sparklin' up all the time in the water and I thought to myself mebby it wuz water thoughts, mebby it wanted to tell sunthin', mebby it has all through these years been a tryin' to bubble up and sparkle out in wisdom but haint found any one yet who could understand its liquid language. ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... I made grandmamma a cup of tea. It is not every one who knows how to make tea. The water must boil and bubble up. It isn't fully boiling when the steam begins to rise from the spout, but if you will wait five minutes after that it will be just right for use. Pour a very little into the teapot, rinse it, and pour the ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... Diana's children. They knew all the spots their mother had loved so well in her girlhood at old Green Gables—the long Lover's Lane, that was pink-hedged in wild-rose time, the always neat yard, with its willows and poplars, the Dryad's Bubble, lucent and lovely as of yore, the Lake of Shining Waters, and Willowmere. The twins had their mother's old porch-gable room, and Aunt Marilla used to come in at night, when she thought they ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... also say that if Voltaire himself had not written these, he must have written other things of the kind. The mordant wit, the easy, fluent, rippling style, so entirely free from boisterousness yet with constant "wap" of wavelet and bursting of foam-bubble; above all, the pure unadulterated faculty of tale-telling, must have found vent and play somehow. It had been well if the playfulness had not been, as playfulness too often is, of what contemporary English called an "unlucky" (that is, a "mischievous") kind; and if ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... of the resentment he might have expected that his dream should come half-true only to be shattered like the bubble it was. Because he had no delusions. He knew that he was only an employee, that a girl of her caste would ever regard him as the great regard those that serve them—kindly but impersonally—but for now he asked for nothing ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... things, of course, for they are patent to the world; but she allows zeal to run away with judgment. The rules for satire are the rules for Irish stew. You mustn't empty the pepper-castor, and the pot should be kept at a gentle bubble only. There is reason in the profitable denunciation of a wicked world, as well as ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... were too apt to ineffectualize those successes, in the fields of national and political life, by extraordinary venality and instability of character. I shall draw here deeply on Professor Mahaffy, who very wisely sets out to restore the balance as between Greeks and Persians, and burst bubble-notions commonly held. Greek culture was extremely varied, and therein lay its strength; you can find all sorts of types there; and there are outstanding figures of the noblest. But on the whole, says Mahaffy—I think rightly—there was something sordid, grasping, and calculating: noblesse ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the tea and warming a big pancake of cornbread which he put into an iron dripping-pan down before the glowing coals at one side. While they waited for the water to bubble for the tea the old man went to the big chest, and began to talk and fondle something. Ruth heard the rustling again and ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... home straight—continuing the while to walk in quite the opposite direction—and that he wouldn't be goin' to the Joyces' place to-night at all; what 'ud bring him there, and it gettin' so late? But of course he went there, as surely as a swimming bubble goes over the cataract's smooth lip, or a fascinated little bird ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... I had shot my rocket, I had, in a desperate attempt to escape that turmoil of tumbling air, released a catch and dropped all that it was possible to drop of my ultron ballast. My swooper shot upward, like a bubble streaking for the ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... this prayer "at their mother's knee": men do not do such things through habit. It must have been because each one saw removed the thousand and one ways in which he had relied on human, material things to help him—including even dependence on the overturned boat with its bubble of air inside, which any moment a rising swell might remove as it tilted the boat too far sideways, and sink the boat below the surface—saw laid bare his utter dependence on something that had made him and given him power to think—whether he named it God or Divine Power ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... within and without the walls, of which the steward of Sheikh Abraham was a citizen. They have encompassed them with gardens, and filled them with fountains. They gleam amid their groves of fruit, wind through their vivid meads, sparkle-among perpetual flowers, gush from the walls, bubble in the courtyards, dance and carol in the streets: everywhere their joyous voices, everywhere their glancing forms, filling the whole world around with freshness, and brilliancy, and fragrance, and ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... fixed a thin sheath of copper, b', which slides on it, and supports a small plate of polished copper, a', in such a manner that the latter can be held vertically at a small distance from the inner opening of the tube, and so regulate the size of the bubble of air to be directed upward into the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... LOVELY!" Her fingers cautiously held the long bubble of silver and glowing rose, cleaving to it with a curious, irritating possession. The man's eyes moved away from her. The lesser child was fumbling with one ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... over-supply, that it is possible that at each of the points of production, A, B, C, D, E, and in all or the majority of industries at the same time, there should be an excess of forms of capital as compared with that which would suffice for the output, F. The automatic growth of bubble companies and every species of rash or fraudulent investment at times of depressed trade is proof that every legitimate occupation for capital is closed, and that the current rate of saving is beyond that which is industrially sound and requisite. These bubble ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... "Maypole" or Hop-pole, who had run short of money, as she often did) were about beginning to jingle in Ireland; [Coxe (i. 216, 217, and SUPPLY the dates); Walpole to Townshend, 13th October, 1723 (ib. ii. 275): "The Drapier's Letters" are of 1724.] when Law's Bubble "System" had fallen, well flaccid, into Chaos again; when Dubois the unutterable Cardinal had at length died, and d'Orleans the unutterable Regent was unexpectedly about to do so,—in a most surprising Sodom-and-Gomorrah manner. [2d December, 1723: Barbier, Journal Historique ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to her malice. An occasional deed of alms, done not for charity's sake, but for ostentation; an adroit deal of cards, or a horoscope cast to flatter a foolish girl; a word of sympathy, hollow as a water bubble, but colored with iridescent prettiness, averted suspicion from the darker ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... /n./ [by analogy with 'typo'] A momentary, correctable glitch in mental processing, especially one involving recall of information learned by rote; a bubble in the stream of consciousness. Syn. {braino}; see also {brain ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... in vacant space and see the earth rolling by you, a huge bubble with all its continents and seas and changing seasons and countless forms of life upon it, and remember that you are looking upon a great cosmic organism, pulsing with the vital currents of the universe, and ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... the right and left lie two spacious cavities which are known in Provencal as the chapels (li capello). Together they form the church (la gleiso). Their forward limit is formed by a creamy yellow membrane, soft and thin; the hinder limit by a dry membrane coloured like a soap bubble and known in Provencal as ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... find ourselves followed by the consciousness of duty—to pain us forever if it has been violated, and to console us so far as God has given us grace to perform it." Weighed against conscience the world itself is but a bubble. For God himself is in conscience lending ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which, they have given us two hundred millions of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air, as Morris's notes did. We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of 'a public debt being a public blessing,' and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... steerage-deck as he is, that I wished to have you see." He was, it will be noted, learning something of diplomacy. "He has a magnificent old face—the face of a fine nature which has suffered terribly. I have seen him as he stood at the ship's rail, astern, watching the white wake as if every bubble on it was a marker on a tragic path. It is as if all he loved on earth except the girl—you ought to see him look at her!—lies at the far end of that ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... judgment, they are but mere scarecrows, set up by politic heads, to keep the ignorant in subjection. Well, he goes back, fool as he is, conscience sleeps, and flesh is sweet; but, behold, he again sees his own nakedness-he sees the law whetting his axe-the world is a bubble. He also smells the brimstone which begins to burn within him. Oh! saith he, I am deluded! "Have mercy upon me, O God!"-(Christ a Complete Saviour, vol. 1, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... plentiful as it was, did not mean as much to her as it might have meant to some women; it simply spelled luxuries, without which she could exist if she must. His charm for her had, perhaps, consisted mostly in the atmosphere of flawless security, which seemed to surround him—a glittering bubble of romance. That, by one fell attack, was now burst. He was seen to be quite as other men, subject to the same storms, the same danger of shipwreck. Only he was a better sailor than most. She recuperated gradually; left for home; left for Europe; details too long to be narrated. Sohlberg, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... received with some suspicion. He smeared Henry Marten's face with the ink of his pen, and Marten in return smeared his, say the narratives. Probably so. With reference to this anecdote it has been wisely observed, "Such 'toys of desperation' commonly bubble up from a deep flowing stream below." Another anecdote is told by Clarendon; that Colonel Ingoldsby, one who signed the warrant, was forced to do so with great violence, by Cromwell and others; "and Cromwell, with a loud laughter, taking his hand in his, and putting ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... was but the prototype of the Verdant Greens in the full-bottomed wigs, and buckles and shorts of George I.'s day, who were nearly beggared by the bursting of the Mississippi Scheme and South-Sea Bubble; and these, in their turn, were duly represented by their successors. And thus the family character was handed down with the family nose, until they both re-appeared (according to the veracious chronicle of Burke, to which we have referred) in "VERDANT GREEN, of the Manor Green, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... never forgot, and out of which afterwards grew a fairy fabric of romantic regard glittering with all the rainbow hues of boyish sentiment, and falling collapsed in the after-crash of life, like many another soap-bubble experience ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... dinner; so to make all as safe as he could, he cried: "Where are all the little crabs gone? There is not one here and I am so hungry; and generally, even when they are under water, one can see them going bubble, bubble, bubble, and all the little bubbles go pop! pop! pop!" On hearing this the Alligator, who was buried in the mud under the river bank, thought: "I will pretend to be a little crab." And he began to blow, "Puff, puff, puff! Bubble, bubble, bubble!" and all the great bubbles rushed ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... the devoted nursing he received from wife and mother, and to his own youth and health, Sir Alick completely recovered from the injury. But in the meantime, the bubble had burst, Sherrifmuir had been fought, Mar's army had been totally routed, the prisons in England and Scotland had been filled with his misguided followers, and the headsman and the hangman were beginning their ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... carried the materials used in the disgusting practice of betel-nut chewing—which seems to be equivalent to the western tobacco-chewing. If a pipe is wanted the Dyak will in a wonderfully short space of time make a huge hubble-bubble out of bamboos of different sizes, and if his long-bladed knife requires a sheath the same gigantic grass supplies one almost ready-made. But the uses to which this reed may be applied are almost endless, and the great outstanding advantage ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... as lamp-oil, a bubble ascending from the surface of the water on which it floated, met by another descending; the deception of this is perfect. That it is due to reflection, is apparent from the variation of the length of the descent, according to the angle under which it is viewed. When viewed from beneath ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... the pious to leave coppers before a blood-red, golden-tongued Kali, half visible through the door of a mud hut—where all the dealers in brass dishes and glass armlets and silver-gilt stands for the comfortable hubble-bubble, squatted in line upon their thresholds and accepted them with indifference. So they passed, worthy of a glance from that divinity who shapes ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... that there are any such really there, but only they appear so to us, through a false reflection of light cast upon them; so truly this world, this earth on which we live, is nothing else but a great bubble blown up by the breath of God in the midst of the air, where it now hangs. It sparkles with ten thousand glories; not that they are so in themselves, but only they seem so to us through the false light by which we look upon ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... as not to be compared with the crown of glory that awaits him who shall gain entrance into the Kingdom. What is this speck we call life? Mark," he continued, taking up a pebble and dropping it into the water, "it is like the bubble that rises to burst, or the sound of my voice that dies as soon away. Thereon waste I not a thought, except to prepare me for the coming ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... scales off that wing there would be no color left, for the scales are like little sacs, and many of them contain grains of color called pigment—red, yellow, or brown. You have all seen the rainbow of colors on a soap-bubble? Well, the brilliant colors of the wing are made in just the same way as the colors on a bubble: by the light striking the little ridges ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... his inspiration, or to such part of it as can survive the test of time and the discipline of expression.... Wealth of sensation and freedom of fancy, which make an extraordinary ferment in his ignorant heart, presently bubble over into some kind ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... not brood, he felt sure she would get well and be more contented. The desperate view she had taken of her misfortunes troubled him, and he had thought it possible that she might sink into despondency and something like invalidism; but that involuntary bubble of laughter reassured him. "Quiet, wholesome, cheerful life will restore her to health," he thought, as he put his favorite beverage and the sputtering steak on the table. "Now," he said, placing a chair at the table, "you can pour me a ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... learn, just out of respect for your own soul; and there's a great deal in that point of view, in one's noblest moments; but one's noblest moments are like bubbles, radiant while they last, then going pop! quite to one's own surprise, leaving one all flat, and nothing to show for the late bubble except a little ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... take effect on that delicate forehead, but struck him on the shoulder: nevertheless, Frank, who with all his grace and agility was as fragile as a lily, and a very bubble of the earth, staggered, and lost his guard, and before he could recover himself, Amyas saw a dagger gleam, and one, two, three ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... another jet burst out on the other side, whistling in the different key, while in the middle of the mud-pool there was a quivering and rifting of the surface, followed by the formation of a huge bubble, which kept on rising up larger and larger till it was a big globe of quite two feet high, when it suddenly burst with a peculiar sound, as if someone had said the word Beff! ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... (Lat for "bubble"), which gives us another "bull" in English, was the term used by the Romans for any boss or stud, such as those on doors, sword-belts, shields and boxes. It was applied, however, more particularly to an ornament, generally of gold, a round or heart-shaped box containing an amulet, worn suspended ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... little cup, and in the other a clay-pipe. He is blowing soap-bubbles. The swing moves, and the bubbles float in charming changing colors: the last is still hanging to the end of the pipe, and rocks in the breeze. The swing moves. The little black dog, as light as a soap-bubble, jumps up on his hind legs to try to get into the swing. It moves, the dog falls down, barks, and is angry. They tease him; the bubble bursts! A swing, a bursting ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... history for England. If not, then I mistake the Duke of Gloucester. It is obvious now that, to him, this meeting is no accident—it was timed for most adroitly. Why did he tarry so long at Pontefract, unless because it were easier to prick the Woodville bubble ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... precincts, had gone to some busy commercial town with the sole object of making money by his wits, and thence surveyed his plan in true perspective. Well, all that was clear to him amounted to this, that the whole scheme had burst up, like an iridescent soap-bubble, under the touch of a reasoned inquiry. He looked back at himself along the vista of his past years, and his thought ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... the Pagoda on the Hill of the Imperial Spring (Yue Ch'uean Shan T'a; more commonly Chen-shui T'a, 'Water-repressing Pagoda'). [27] The spring is still there, and day and night, unceasingly, its clear waters bubble up and flow eastward to Peking, which would now be a barren wilderness but for Yen ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... interesting book The Tragic Era, speaks of a brilliant ball given the night before the "breaking of the bubble of the Credit Mobilier" in 1873, by Henry D. Cooke. It was in this house that the ball took place. Can't you picture the coaches as they rolled up to the door, discharging the ladies in their crinolines, laces, ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... proper point on the map. This gives a plot like Fig. 5. The best instrument with which to take these levels, is the ordinary telescope-level used by railroad engineers, shown in Fig. 6, which has a telescope with cross hairs intersecting each other in the center of the line of sight, and a "bubble" placed exactly parallel to this line. The instrument, fixed on a tripod, and so adjusted that it will turn to any point of the compass without disturbing the position of the bubble, will, (as will its "line of sight,") revolve in a perfectly horizontal plane. It is ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... him, nevertheless; for whatever he did, he always had a vision of doing something else; and wherever he was, he was always fancying himself to be somewhere else. That was the strain of romance in him which came from his mixed ancestry. It was the froth and bubble of a dreamer's legacy, which had made his mother, always unconsciously theatrical, have a vision of a life on the prairies, with the white mountains in the distance, where her beloved son would be master ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Alice, "that they are generally made by springs that bubble up from the bottom. These springs come from the earth, and the water is so warm that it gradually thaws the ice over them. The fish often finish the process by jumping up through the ice before it has entirely melted. When the ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... winter everywhere; only ours is in the summer. Mark my words: there will be a winter in heaven - and in hell. CELA RENTRE DANS LES PROCEDES DU BON DIEU; ET VOUS VERREZ! There's another very good thing about Vailima, I am away from the little bubble of the literary life. It is not all beer and skittles, is it? By the by, my BALLADS seem to have been dam bad; all the crickets sing so in their crickety papers; and I have no ghost of an idea on the point myself: verse is always to me the unknowable. You might tell me ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a foot or two. I never saw anyone else able to get saliva bubbles right away from him and, though I have endeavoured for some fifty years and more to acquire the art, I never yet could start the bubble off my tongue without its bursting. Now things like this really do relieve the tedium of church, but no missal that I have ever seen will do anything ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... come up frequently of its {37} own volition, the gases forming in its body bring it to the surface. The little kayaks would circle out silent as shadows over the silver surface of the sea. A round head would bob up, or a bubble show where a swimmer was moving below the surface. The kayaks would narrow their surrounding circle. Presently a head would appear. The hunter nearest would deal the death-stroke with his steel gaff, and the quarry would be drawn in. But it was in the storm hunt over the kelp-beds that the ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... John Law flashed meteor-wise across the world with his huge scheme to finance France out of difficulty with his Mississippi Bubble. Among other considerations mentioned in the charter for twenty-five years, which he obtained from the gullible French government, was the stipulation that before the expiration of the charter, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... valley, Kar-Rah, the city of the rodents, came into view—a crystalline maze of low, bubble-like structures, glinting in the red sunshine. But this was only its surface aspect. Loy Chuk's people had built their homes mostly underground, since the beginning of their foggy evolution. Besides, in this latter day, the nights were very ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... important-appearing person when there was no one to prick his little bubble. Twombley eyed ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... of Warwick, with the color scarcely faded out of his cheeks, his eyes a little sunken, but in other respects looking as natural as if he had died yesterday. But exposure to the atmosphere appeared to begin and finish the long-delayed process of decay in a moment, causing him to vanish like a bubble; so, that, almost before there had been time to wonder at him, there was nothing left of the stalwart Earl save his hair. This sole relic the ladies of Warwick made prize of, and braided it into rings and brooches for their own adornment; and thus, with a chapel and a ponderous tomb ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... capered round him, snatching, and leaping into the air like an excited little dog. It was a festive little scene until my head came peeping round the corner of the door, and then the fun collapsed like the pricking of a bubble. The Squire's face fell, likewise his hand; he jerked stiffly to attention, stiffly handed over the chocolates, stiffly bowed to me, stared at my ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fairies (big dolls in street dress), twelve rubber dolls (in woollen jackets), four railroad trains, twenty-eight base-balls, twenty rubber balls, six big painted (Scotch plaid) rubber balls, six still bigger ditto, seven boxes of blocks, half a dozen music-boxes, twenty-four rattles, six bubble (soap) toys, twelve small engines, six games of dominos, twelve rubber toys (old woman who lived in a shoe, etc.), five wooden toys (bad bear, etc.), ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the air-chambers were accordingly thrown open to their full extent, when, with a screaming roar, the highly compressed air at once rushed forth, and in less than half a minute the huge bulk of the ship was lying poised as lightly as an air-bubble on the surface of the heaving water. The main vapour-valve was then cautiously opened, and a partial vacuum produced, when, as easily as a sea-bird, the Flying Fish rose at once into the air. The engines were next turned ahead, the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... chose a hollow stem from among a cluster of scented rushes, cleared it with a vigorous breath, soaped one end, and, touching it to the water, blew from it a prodigious bubble, all swimming with ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... immediately from each of them, and these are the two gases of which the water is composed. The oxygen is always liberated on the one wire, the hydrogen on the other. The gases may be collected either separately or mixed. I place upon my hand a soap bubble filled with the mixture of both gases. Applying a taper to the bubble, a loud explosion is heard. The atoms have rushed together with detonation, and without injury to my hand, and the water from which they were extracted is ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall |
