"Explosive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again; she might never have really loved him at all; but he would content himself with a benevolent toleration. Like her, he was afraid of love. The word meant too much or too little, he was not sure which. It was too explosive. Its dynamic force was at too high a pressure for the calm routine of married life. If Lois could find a substitute for love, he was willing to accept it, giving her his own substitute in return. All he asked was the privilege of seeing ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... dissect firmness of will, working at its steadiest repressive action—then, the mystery of Miss Minerva's inner nature might possibly have been revealed. As it was, nothing more remarkable exposed itself to view than an irritable temper; serving perhaps as safety-valve to an underlying explosive force, which (with strong enough temptation and sufficient ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... had many examples, had hitherto been practised with monotonous regularity. They had fired on the white flag and disregarded the sacred sign of the red cross. They had shot the hand that tended them, they had used Dum-Dum and explosive bullets, but on this occasion the triumph of originality in treacherous trickery was achieved. On the principle of "all is fair in love and war," the enemy utilised their ambulance for the purpose of removing their Hotchkiss gun from ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... safety precautions have been developed. Good plant housekeeping is paramount. This is essential, not only because of influence of dust and dirt on the maintenance of motors and equipment, but because of the highly explosive nature of shell dusts. The U. S. Bureau of Mines has cooperated closely with the Northern Laboratory in evaluating the explosive hazards of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... chaps down there know that every space-liner is equipped with emergency space-suits. Why pull the ship down with live men on board? That would naturally mean a fight, and we have no mean weapons, what with disintegrator ray-projectors and explosive electro-bullets." Then, again, for some reason, there were Ganymedans on board. They would very likely be whiffed out in the melee. The ship might be destroyed also, and they evidently are very careful about getting the ship down intact. ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... next group. The flamboyant Algerian removed the coffee cups. When we were alone again, I reiterated my explanation. At every stage of my knowledge I was held in the bond of secrecy. Lackaday's sensitive soul dreaded, more than all the concentrated high-explosive bombardment of the whole of the late German Army, the possibility of Lady Auriol knowing him as ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... deprived of a large part of their humanity. This unhappiness goes on smouldering in the subconscious mind of the community till its life is reduced to ashes or a sudden combustion is produced. The repressed personality of man generates an inflammable moral gas deadly in its explosive force. ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... He knew too much, as a wise Italian, to give a sick man bread and beef. Then he made promises of blankets, and of more soup to-morrow, tucked the invalid up again, and prepared to go home. On the way down the hill he was explosive in his excitement; surely the Signorina must ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... o'clock in a dugout at Vieville-en-Haye. Carefully hidden in a forest immediately south of this village were then located three of our large guns. The boys had proudly named them, "President's Answer," "Theda Bara" and "Miss McCarthy." They were throwing high explosive shells along the Metz highway. The enemy was frantically replying with eight-inch Howitzers from points some six kilometers north, dropping shells at two-minute intervals into Vieville-en-Haye ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... well ventilated. Interior slopes were revetted with gabions, crowned by fascines and sand bags. Gabions were also employed to repair the damage caused by the enemy's artillery. Abattis, military pits, caltrops and spikes, stuck through planks, and explosive machines were employed in front of different parts of the defences. Mines were resorted to in front of the Flag-staff Bastion to retard the French approaches. They were made in rocky soil with craters from twelve to fifteen feet deep. The Russian counter-approaches generally consisted ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... Bacon blew up his first batch of gunpowder one might have supposed that men would have gone at once to the explosive engine. But they could see nothing of the sort. They were not yet beginning to think of seeing things; their metallurgy was all too poor to make such engines even had they thought of them. For a time they could not make instruments sound enough to stand this new force even for so rough ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... vision was gladdened by a magic clarity extending over all the heavens, and even to the source of the reviving winds. The sea was blown clear of ships. In the harbor a few still sat like seabirds drying plumage. Against the explosive whiteness of wind clouds, their sails looked like wrinkled parchment, or yellowing Egyptian cloth; the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... its maximum of brightness it will not impress us as being crimson at all, but rather a dull, coppery red. Its spectrum indicates that it is smothered with absorbing vapors, a sun near extinction which, at intervals, experiences an accession of energy and bursts through its stifling envelope with explosive radiance, only to faint and sink once more. It is well to use our largest aperture in examining ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... such kindly reminiscences of old-time benevolence, rather than with explosive archaeological matters, that I kept the Vidame from falling again a-fuming—while we waited through the dusk for the coming of seven o'clock, at which hour the festivities at the Mazet were to begin. Our waiting place was the candle-lit ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... Scripture, their most telling words given with strong emphasis, the others indistinctly; some in tones of solemn rebuke, others in those of heart-broken pathos, but most distinctly audible in detached fragments. There was one exception,—a few words uttered brokenly, with a half-explosive force, from James ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... principal suite of offices; it had been occupied by a banking firm, to judge from the desk fittings and the long array of safes and vaults. These latter were open and empty, the doors having been shattered by some powerful explosive. In all probability the vaults had been closed and locked by their owners, and had afterwards been looted by the criminals who thronged the doomed city and who would naturally seek their richest booty in the financial district. The floor was literally knee-deep ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... increased the circulation of the Scriptures, the Greek and Latin classics, and all other valuable works, which, by the industry of the monkish copyist, had been preserved from the ravages of time and barbarism. Gunpowder, whose explosive power had been perceived by Roger Bacon as early as 1280, though it was not used on the field of battle until 1346, had completely changed the art of war and had greatly contributed to undermine the feudal system. The polarity of the magnet, also discovered ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... that he was deep. The pressure on his ear-drums was a pain, and there was a buzzing in his head. His endurance was faltering, but he compelled his arms and legs to drive him deeper until his will snapped and the air drove from his lungs in a great explosive rush. The bubbles rubbed and bounded like tiny balloons against his cheeks and eyes as they took their upward flight. Then came pain and strangulation. This hurt was not death, was the thought that oscillated through his reeling consciousness. Death did not hurt. It was life, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... near us, therefore all hands turned out to cut him up, delighted at the idea of fresh meat. There was about an acre of high and dry ground that bordered the marsh in one spot; to this the carcase of the hippopotamus was towed. I was anxious to observe the effects of the explosive shell, as it was an invention of my own that had been manufactured by Mr. Reilly, [*] the gunmaker, of London. This shell was composed of iron, covered with lead. The interior was a cast-iron bottle (similar in shape to a stoneware Seltzer water bottle); ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... is smokelessness, and to accomplish it recourse is had to the high explosive field, mechanically mixing various substances with them to reduce and regulate their rapidity of action. Just now some form of gun-cotton is most in use mixed with nitrate of ammonia, camphor and other articles. The tendency of these mixtures is to absorb moisture, and the gun-cotton in them to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... town, the grocer had a large brass plate on his door, with Appleditch engraved upon it in capitals: it saved them always looking at the numbers. The boy ran on before, and assailed this door with a succession of explosive knocks. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... "is that we can't give him much of our science, because it would be like giving a baby a high explosive to play with. His race is much too primitive to handle it wisely. Either he, or someone to whom he imparts what we teach him, would be certain to bring catastrophe to his world. And if we let him learn less, but still remember ...
— Vital Ingredient • Charles V. De Vet
... seventeenth-century England is to discuss the main currents in embryological thought at a time when those currents were both numerous and shifting. Like every other period, the seventeenth century was one of transition. It was an era of explosive growth in scientific ideas and techniques, suffused with a creative urge engendered by new philosophical insights and the excitement of discovery. During the seventeenth century, the ideas relating to the generation ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... be made by tying the stone to the end of the stick, and as murder developed into a fine art the stick was converted into the bow and this into the catapult and finally into the cannon, while the stone was developed into the high explosive projectile. The first music to soothe the savage breast was the soughing of the wind through the trees. Then strings were stretched across a crevice for the wind to play upon and there was the AEolian harp. The second stage was entered when Hermes strung the tortoise shell and plucked it with ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... winter of 1778 he formed the project of crossing the ice and setting fire to the English squadron. The Delaware not being frozen that year hard enough for his purpose, he invented explosive boats, and he was engaged in constructing them when he received orders to join the Army of the North. (Certified by General Washington ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... four Mr. Uhl scratched his head and said something very explosive in German. He started up the stairs, got halfway up—and came down. It had occurred to him very suddenly that three men had already gone up the stairs and had failed to return. He called a fireman and gave him some very explicit orders in German; ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... at one another a moment and then began laughing. Arthur seemed crestfallen, while Uncle John handled his small box as gingerly as if he suspected it contained an explosive. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... chair and rocked back and forth with the sleeping baby in her arms, showing that she was enjoying the little explosive she had dropped in the midst of her family circle. There was silence for a few moments; then ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... her bizarre outline demands, but doesn't shirk the pains to make her situations possible within the pleasantly impossible frame. What is all-important is that she does shake the house with genuinely explosive humour. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... bring peace to my soul; songs more sweet than morning, I hear again! My tears spring forth, the earth has won me back." He dropped his head upon his breast and wept. As he sat thus, in tender mood, a strange happening took place. A queer, explosive sound, and a jet of flame, and—there stood the devil, all in red, forked tail, horns, and cloven hoof! He stood smiling wickedly at the softened old man, while Faust ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... boy, and did not care for books. He was drawn towards machinery of all kinds, and spent his spare time in dabbling in scientific experiments or in watching trains go by on the Great Western line. Once he blew off his eyebrows while making some experiment with explosive chemicals; his hands were always smudged with dark, mysterious stains, and his room was like that of a mediaeval alchemist, littered with retorts, bottles, and test-glasses. Before leaving school ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... Commissioner's wife clapped her hands. Though fat and forty, and phlegmatic of temperament, between exclamations and hand-clappings her waking existence was mostly explosive. Her husband secretly averred that did God Himself deign to meet her face to face, she would smite together her chubby hands ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... a previous one stirred Florence, who had been sitting quietly, according to request, and "resting", but not resting her curiosity. "Who's disappointed in love, papa?" she inquired with an explosive eagerness that slightly startled her preoccupied parents. "What is all this about Aunt Julia, and grandpa goin' to live alone, and people committing suicide and prohibition and everything? What is all ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... intimate world had come with an effect of dramatic and incalculable authority. Like a blast of air that drives the furnace to new heat and turns the metal white, his mind now suddenly saw clear and sure. The effect of the incident was too explosive, however, for him to find expression. Action he found in a measure, but no words. He took Miriam passionately into his arms as they stood there in the gathering dusk upon the staircase of that haunted and terrible building, and Miriam it was who found the words upon ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... to my hand,—all obtainable from natural sources close by; but the result of all my efforts (and I tried mixing the ingredients in every conceivable way) was a very coarse kind of powder with practically no explosive force, but which would go ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... day and by night, these two halves of war continue to lie in wait for each other afar, to dig their graves at their feet, and I am helpless. They are separated by frontiers of gulfs, which bristle with weapons and explosive snares, impassable to life. They are separated by all that can separate, by dead men and still by dead men, and ever thrown back, each into its gasping islands, by black rivers and consecrated fires, by heroism ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... on that point when you came in. He reserved his opinion. My own view is that, by accident or design, some explosive substance found its ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... a short, explosive laugh, fixed a pair of eyeglasses on the bridge of her nose, and looked at Lesley as if ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... for a moment, the exact situation at Paris on April 29th, when the Japanese-Chinese crises reached the explosive point. ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... even the uproar that was about us, came the wild joy of the rush past a station. It was something in the nature of a triumphal procession conducted at thrilling speed. Perhaps there was a curve of infinite grace, a sudden hollow explosive effect made by the passing of a signal-box that was close to the track, and then the deadly lunge to shave the edge of a long platform. There were always a number of people standing afar, with their ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... of aerial navigation had in the United States one of its periodical revivals. Mr. Cooper, believing that a motive power developed from materials of small weight was essential to the solution of the problem, resolved to employ the explosive force of chloride of nitrogen,—one of the most dangerous compounds known to chemists. The result of his experiments in this direction was an explosion which blew his apparatus to pieces, and nearly cost the audacious inventor an eye. In fact, though the organ was saved from total ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... again, still more heartily. "Explosive bullets! —Good Lord, it was all we could do to get percussion caps. Do you know how we got percussion caps, seh? Three of our officers—dare-devils, seh —floated down the Mississippi on logs. One fellow made his way back with two hundred thousand. He's the pride of our Vicksburg ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... report of a gun, and there responded to that explosive noise, from roof to basement of my residence, a formidable tumult. It was so sudden, so terrible, so deafening, that I recoiled a few steps, and though I knew it to be wholly useless, I pulled my revolver out ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... was not to be given unadvisedly, such was the moral effect of the question. It hadn't been asked in a casual way, but showed, by its explosive form of utterance, that it was the result not so much of a pent-up curiosity as of a careful speculation as to the manner in which I would receive it. So I tried to look unconscious, and at this critical juncture the thunder of an elevated ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... my son Gildart pressed Miss Puff to attempt another tart, and whispered something impertinent in her ear, for the poor thing's pink round face suddenly became scarlet, and she puffed out in a dangerously explosive manner with suppressed laughter. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... their stay together. It halted, it ran on, it stopped again to consider, but always it was of Dick and incidentally of himself who didn't matter so much, but who had to be in it all. Were they at one in this epidemic of world sickness? As the great explosive forces of destruction and decay seemed to have released actual germs to attack the physical well-being of races, had the terrible crashes of spiritual destinies unsettled the very air of life, poisoned it, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... has outrun our expectations. Atomic science is in the full tide of development; the unfolding of the innermost secrets of matter is uninterrupted and irresistible. Since Alamogordo we have developed atomic weapons with many times the explosive force of the early models, and we have produced them in substantial quantities. And recently, in the thermonuclear tests at Eniwetok, we have entered another stage in the world-shaking development of atomic energy. From now on, man moves into a new era of destructive power, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... in Europe after the end of the Dark Ages was the industrial revolution, which led to fundamental changes in the means of production at the same time that advances in natural and social science produced their practical counterpart—an explosive expansion of technology. ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... reputation of a Doctor Faustus in the popular mind. Even educated people in this very place shake their heads and pity my daughter there for living with an alchemical parent, within easy smelling-distance of an explosive laboratory. Excessively ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... the moulding, in space, of this plastic intermediary projected beyond the limits of her bodily organism. Certain it is that such a projection does at times take place, and it seems rational to suppose that "raps" may be due to the explosive expulsion of this neural energy after it has reached a certain "tension." One quite striking incident which has been narrated to me by a physician of my acquaintance tends rather to confirm this view. It is that, when he was trying on various occasions to move a table, a la Palladino, he failed ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... their young professor—in fact, to treat me as they had treated their tutors. Any mistake made by a student at a quiz elicited from sundry benches expressions of regret much too plaintive, or ejaculations of contempt much too explosive; and from these and various similar demonstrations which grew every day among a certain set in my class-room, it was easy to see that a trial of strength must soon come, and it seemed to me best to force the fighting. Looking over these ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... extensive slave insurrection, is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... became visible and more visible, disclosing rugged country, rising high from out of the water's edge. The country, moreover, appeared waste and devastated; the land being covered with wrecked buildings that showed signs of explosive force. ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... were called upon to give a formula for the creation of a successful vaudeville writer, I would specify: The dramatic genius of a Shakespere, the diplomatic craftiness of a Machiavelli, the explosive energy of a Roosevelt, and the genius-for-long-hours of an Edison: mix in equal proportions, add a dash of Shaw's impudence, all the patience of Job, and keep boiling for a lifetime over the ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... tests are made as occasion demands. One kind consists of barrels and liquid containers, match-boxes, and explosive containers. These articles are subjected to shocks such as they would receive in transit and in handling, and also ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... guncotton, are also ignited by the electric spark from an induction coil or the incandescence of a wire. Figure 97 shows the interior of an ordinary electric fuse for blasting or exploding underground mines. It consists of a box of wood or metal primed with gunpowder or other explosive, and a platinum wire P soldered to a pair of stout copper wires W, insulated with gutta-percha. When the current is sent along these wires, the platinum glows and ignites the explosive. Detonating fuses are primed with ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... the guns that were advanced from the camp to cover the retreat, but as this does not appear in the reports, perhaps it is not true. Our loss was about 200 killed and wounded, including Sir George Colley, Drs. Landon and Cornish, and Commander Romilly, who was shot with an explosive bullet, and died after some days' suffering. When the wounded Commander was being carried to a more sheltered spot, it was with great difficulty that the Boers were prevented from massacring him as ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... Himes's voice hissed across the loud explosive tones. "No need to tell your business to the town. I'll bet Pros ain't thought about no options yit. He may need friends to he'p him out on such matters; and here's you and me, Buck—God knows he couldn't ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... McCall had been in a state of suppressed revolution. He had smouldered, but had not dared to blaze. But this startling upheaval of his fellow-sufferer, Washy, had acted upon him like a high explosive. There was a strange gleam in his eye, a gleam of ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... he shouted, as they neared the bank above the danger spot. He was a few yards in advance of Jack's father and "Old Mack." Then suddenly he stood stock still, gave vent to a long, explosive whistle, and yelled, "Well, I'll be gin-busted! Look a' there, boys!" And following his astounded gaze, they saw, on the brink of the river, an old grey horse, with down-hanging head, his back to the gale, and about his neck a boy's coat, from the knotted ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... ship like the Lusitania would remain above water long enough, even after the torpedoing, to permit passengers to enter the ship's boats. Circumstances of a very peculiar kind, especially the presence on board of large quantities of highly explosive materials, defeated this expectation. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... apprehension,—it would be unjust to style it fear,—let them try to imagine how they themselves would feel if they knew that there were scores of desperate men and women who had sworn to take their lives by means of bullets or explosive bombs, fired or hurled from the centre of some dense crowd, which would destroy the life of the victim of such an outrage without a moment's warning, or without being able to even so much as ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... that that house was levelled to the ground next morning—a shrapnel shell on each side of it to get the range—a high explosive into it to burst it up—and an incendiary shell to burn the rubbish; and one more French ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... metal and explosive were being hurled through the air as if Atlas were hurling stars about. There was something elemental, and superhuman about such colossal force. One felt like a pygmy in a Battle ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... London, and had made the Italian tour with Angelo Neumann's Wagner company which Seidl conducted in 1882. Earlier in life he had been an artillery officer in the German army, which fact coupled with his explosive manner of singing prompted one of Dr. von Blow's witticisms. The doctor had been conductor of the opera in Hanover when Schott was there and had conceived a violent dislike for him. Some years after the latter's New York season, conversing socially ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... reforms which I had suggested, I put the card in my pocket and set about the task. It was only a small card, a visiting card, and when, in my ignorance of official life, I walked in on the Secretary with that tiny slip of pasteboard in my hand, I had no idea of its explosive power. The Secretary who was lounging at his desk like a tired and discouraged old man, did not think me important enough to warrant a rise out of his chair, until he read the card which I handed to him. After that I owned ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Everything I might need for the job was in my luggage. Some of it quite lethal and explosive, and very embarrassing if it was discovered in my bags. In the safety of my hotel suite I made a change of clothes and personality. After the robot had checked the ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... Duchess of Snowdon, and we are not precisely congenial; besides, I had much to do in the laboratory. I'm working for that new explosive of which I told you. There's fame and fortune in it, and I'm on the way. I feel it coming"—his eyes sparkled a little. "I made it right with the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of saltpetre as a source of power is seen in the adaptation of its explosive force to special purposes. It performs that work well which we cannot carry on so perfectly by means of any other agent, and the great mining and engineering works of a country are dependent on this source for their success, and for overcoming obstacles where ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... reply was, "He says he does not remember." At this I remarked guardedly to the doctor, "I asked Alfred when he last saw Harvey, and he replies that he doesn't remember, but he must have seen him on board the boat." To this she instantly replied, with an explosive laugh, "He says that if he did it was all blown out of him!" I will only comment on this reply, that it was quite in accordance with the character of my brother to joke on the most serious subjects—he ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... about a teaspoonful of the powder, and placed it in a short piece of iron pipe which he laid on the window-sill, and then taking the rest of the explosive, he gave it a jerk and scattered ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... was to shoot the fellow where he stood. He had no doubt that the fellow had put enough explosive under the floor to kill every person in it. That would be murder, and the boy's impulse was to deal out to the ruffian the fate of ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... fellow. I was speaking in the abstract, I tell you. It occurred to me how easy it would be for some enemy to so place a charge of explosive. I don't see why the Canal is not better guarded. You ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... GUN-COTTON. An explosive compound, having some advantages over gunpowder, but so irregular hitherto in its action that it is at present used only for mining purposes. It consists of ordinary cotton treated with nitric and sulphuric acid and water, and has been named ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... you," he replied. "It is something much more subtle than an explosive bullet—which would really be a rather crude appliance—admirably thought out and thoroughly well executed. We have to deal with a most ingenious ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... round as he went on his explosive way to the gulch, but Roy Beaudry crouched lower behind the cactus until the man had disappeared. Then he crawled back to the grove, slipped through it, and crept to the ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... the canal against such an attack we need guns that can shoot farther, straighter and more powerfully than any at present in use, and we've got to have the most powerful explosive. In other words, we've got to beat the biggest guns that are now in existence. And I'm going ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... aggressive passages, and some sallies which ought to have been avoided, because they gave pain to good people. There was perhaps too much of the particular excitement of the time. It was the date when Essays and Reviews was still thought a terrible explosive; when Bishop Colenso's arithmetical tests as to the flocks and herds of the children of Israel were believed to be sapping not only the inspiration of the Pentateuch but the foundations of the Faith and the Church; and ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... a highly eccentric hat, a small green velvet, outrageously tilted off the rear of its bandeau, and a wide black streamer flowing down over one shoulder. It was the match to the explosive effect of the trotteur gown. She was Fashion's humoresque, except that Fashion has no sense of humor. Very presently Minneapolis would appraise her at two hundred and seventy-five as is. Miss Delehanty ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... an explosive "Humph!" and grabbed the meat-platter. As she left the kitchen, she sent an insulted glance at her mistress, but the recent correction in speech made her forget the hornet. The watchful insect had been ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Picardy. From the hill where later I watched the attack of July 1st, on one day in August of the previous year I had such a broad view that if a shell were to explode anywhere along the front of five miles it would have been visible to me, and I saw not a single burst of smoke from high explosive or shrapnel. Apparently the Germans never expected to undertake any offensive here. All their energy was devoted to defensive preparations, without even an occasional attack over a few hundred yards to keep in their hand. Tranquillity, which amounted to the simulation of a truce, was ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... interfered. Mounted Police-Constable Wight, who was some distance away, was awakened and told of the situation. Meantime, Mr. Winning, who had not committed any overt act, had retired to a camp near by with his high explosives. But Constable Wight got an information sworn out against him for having an explosive in his possession with intent to endanger life, which was putting it mildly enough when he was in fact dealing with a man running amuck with dynamite playthings. However, this served the purpose of Constable Wight, who rode ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... words, the explosion the harmless-looking cylinder could produce was equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT, a chemical explosive no longer in actual use but still ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... an explosive cap, to which five or six wires are attached and staked down on the ground. Any one stumbling over one of these wires explodes the bomb and throws a charge of broken iron to a distance of fifty feet. How the Spaniards are going to prevent stray cattle and their own soldiers from wandering ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... window of her sitting-room in the twilight—a cold evening in early winter. Sibylla was in an explosive temper. It was nothing unusual for her to be in an explosive temper now; but she was in a worse than customary this evening. Sibylla felt the difference between Verner's Pride and Deerham Court. She lived but in excitement; she cared but for gaiety. In removing to Deerham Court ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... one day, if he believed he could make gold. He looked at me with his frightful grin, and said, "Yes, and diamonds too, with time and money to help me." He not only believes in The Philosopher's Stone; he says he is on the trace of some explosive compound so terrifically destructive in its effect, that it will make war impossible. He declares that he will annihilate time and space by means of electricity; and that he will develop steam as a motive power, until travelers can rush over the whole habitable globe ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... foundations,' said Lane. 'It could be stopped right here if some one would dynamite all the block beyond Van Ness Avenue. It could never jump across a strip so broad.' 'But they've forbidden any more dynamiting,' said Anderson. 'Never mind; I'd take the chance myself if we could get any explosive,' replied Lane. 'Well, there's a launch full of dynamite from Contra Costa County lying right now at Meigs's Wharf,' said Anderson. Just then Mr. and Mrs. Tom Magee arrived, driving an automobile on the wheel rims. Lane despatched them to Meigs's Wharf for the dynamite. He and Anderson ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... in the midst of this quiet inland town, where a mere accident had placed Mr. Bernard Langdon, there was a concentration of explosive materials which might at any time change its Arcadian and academic repose into a scene of dangerous commotion. What said Helen Darley, when she saw with her woman's glance that more than one girl, when she should be looking at her book, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a crash, and a shriek from Scissors, who had tripped, and plunged headlong. Paul saw a blaze of light; and he knew that the lamp had broken, depositing its dangerous fluid all around. Kerosene in these days is not the same deadly explosive it used to be in other times; still, it will catch fire under certain conditions; and he saw that unless prompt measures were ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... the hotel, and then there was unlimited consumption of beer, nominally (glycerine really, for, let me explain, beer does not stand a hot climate unless a large percentage of glycerine is added to it), and of highly-explosive champagne and French wines, Chateau this ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... see at a glance something of the dash and often the repose of the cavalier from whom he had sprung. And the sympathy, kindness, and courtesy of the man that showed in every glance of his eye and every movement of his body—despite his occasional explosive temper—a sympathy that drifted in to an ungovernable impulse to divide everything he owned into two parts, and his own half into two once more if the other fellow needed it; a kindness that made every man his friend, and a courtesy which, even in a time when ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... speaking very low, and another voice answered it. At that Georgie's heart sank, for this proved that there must be at least two burglars, and the odds against him were desperate. After that came a low, cruel laugh, the unmistakable sound of the rattle of knives and forks, and the explosive uncorking of a bottle. At that his heart sank even lower yet, for he had read that cool habitual burglars always had supper before they got to work, and therefore he was about to deal with a gang of professionals. Also that explosive uncorking clearly indicated ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... the god has separated himself from his worshippers, and assumed an anthropomorphic form. Indra, while still retaining traces of his 'weather' origin, is no longer, to borrow Miss Harrison's descriptive phrase, 'an automatic explosive thunder-storm,' he wields the thunderbolt certainly, but he appears in heroic form to receive the offerings made to him, and to celebrate his victory in a solemn ritual dance. In Greek art and literature, on the other hand, where ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... gunpowder; but scientific witnesses who were subsequently examined showed that it was possible that certain chemicals stored in the warehouse, when suddenly combined, as by the falling of the floors, would be quite as explosive as gunpowder itself. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... without any warning, a fearful explosive bark, or roar, that to visitors is as startling as the report of a gun. The commonest expressions are "Wah!" and "Wah'-hoo!", and the visitor who can hear it close at hand without jumping ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... report, to see the puffs of smoke two or three miles off. The Germans have been firing salvoes of four shots over a little village where the French batteries are stationed, shrapnel that burst in little puffs of white smoke; the French reply with explosive shells that raise columns of dust over the German lines. Half of our regiment have left already for the trenches. We may go tonight. We have made a march of about 75 kilometers in four days, and are now on the front, ready to be called on at any moment. I am feeling fine, ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... to-day in an age of machinery, which is a result of turning to our use the metals from the depths of the earth and the power derived from the forces of nature, as in the application of steam, electricity, and the explosive force of gasoline. Many have had a part in this work of establishing relations with the land: explorers; scientists who have discovered the uses of our varied mineral and vegetable resources and how to make the forces of nature serve us; engineers who ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... with a message of relief, yet it justified my worse fears. She was here, and the place was about to be blasted by some titanic explosive of the Croen science creation! Her words were indistinct, but the tone was almost mocking, and I thought I ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... sphere you saw on top. It is the collecting end of an electrical system for extracting nitrogen and other elements, from the air. This extraction goes on constantly while we are in the atmosphere and my fuel is an extremely powerful explosive of which nitrates are the base. The supply is replenished continuously, so we have no fear of running short even ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... newest improved magazine rifles. The use of the white powder reduces very much the size of the cartridges; the bullets are also much smaller than they were formerly, but they are each charged with a most deadly and powerful explosive, which tears the body of the victim it strikes to pieces. These small cartridges are stored in the steel stock and barrel of the rifles, which will hold about one hundred of them; and every soldier ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... truth, the iron will rises up and takes possession of the feeble body, the doubting soul shakes off its hesitating weakness, is drawn back upon itself like a strong bow bent double, is compressed and full of a terrible latent power, like the handful of deadly explosive which, buried in the bosom of the rock, will presently shake the mighty cliff to its roots, as no thunderbolt ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... wind to the camp of the Yellow-Eyes. Looking out across the plains, they saw the herd break into a wild stampede, while behind them sped the Bat and Red Arrow, waving long-lashed whips, to the ends of which were suspended blown-up buffalo-bladders, which struck the hard ground with sharp, explosive thumps, rebounding and striking again. The horses were terrorized, but, being worn down, could not draw away from the swift and supple war-steeds. There were more than two hundred beasts, and the white men ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... the sexual sphere. The desire for gratification in normal or abnormal channels was perhaps attached by the mind to some group of objects. It was completely suppressed but it left an abnormal tension in the central system. If now a chance experience touches on this group of ideas, there results an explosive reaction; and movements, convulsions, spasms, obsessions, and fears set in which get their particular character not through the secondary intrusion but from the primary desire. To discharge that intrusion leads therefore only to ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... Kerk reached under the dash and pulled out a gun that was the twin of the monster strapped to his arm. "Use this instead of your own," he said. "Rocket-propelled explosive slugs. Make a great bang. Don't bother shooting at anyone—I'll take care of that. Just stir up a little action and make them keep their ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... many adventurers with whom Janina was filled penetrated to the pacha's presence, and offered to sell the secret of a powder whereof three grains would suffice to kill a man with a terrible explosion—explosive powder, in short. Ali heard with delight, but replied that he must see it in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the human race if it goes too far. He is trying to discover a psychic ray that will explode all the explosive at the ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... officer to see to the safety of the flag-ship and her immediate neighbours, and this brave man had obtained permission to try a little plan of his own, if assailed by any adventurous British boats in charge of the vessels explosive. In the bows of some stout but handy boats he had rigged up a mast with a long spar attached, and by means of a guy at the end of that spar, a brace of heavy chain-shot could be swung up and pitched headlong into any boat alongside. While the crew of Scudamore's ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... doubtless never have been cleared away if, on the 30th of November, Neb, strolling on the beach, had not found a piece of a thick iron cylinder, bearing traces of explosion. The edges of this cylinder were twisted and broken, as if they had been subjected to the action of some explosive substance. ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... Jack declared. "One stick is enough to blow the Fortuna to pieces. Here are one, two, three, four, five, six—six sticks of high powered explosive lying right next to our engines. Where would the good ship have been if that stuff had let go? I tell you, ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... said, "by hurling that explosive ahead of the proper time. Do you want the Boches to pick it up, fire it back here and blow us all ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... Congreve and Olive came from, they had a serious talk on the way home. Something evidently disturbed the old gentleman's mind, and he fidgetted nervously, until he had relieved himself with the explosive remark: ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... doubts confirmed. A short time after this I made a more unexpected and astonishing discovery. I found that this complex and hitherto misunderstood gas could, under the influence of certain high-frequency electrical discharges, be made to combine with explosive violence with the nitrogen of the atmosphere, leaving only a harmless residue. We wired the surrounding region for the electrical discharge and, with a vast explosion of weird purple flame, cleared the whole area of the century-old ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... The mistakes they make in their own families open their eyes to those of others, and then they are often very impatient. I know one gentleman who has excellent knowledge of the proper training of the young, but as a parent he is a total failure. He is so explosive and lacking in patience and firmness, perhaps also in love, that his knowledge has not helped him. It is not what we know, but what we apply, ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... is evenness of temper. In the wooing days everyone is a lamb, and only becomes the howling wolf after marriage. Circumstances that ruffle the temper in the presence of the intended are but like the harmless squib, but would become like the explosive torpedo in his or her absence or in after-marriage. Quarreling caused by matrimonial differences is the most frequent cause of infelicity, and most of it is caused by an innate irate temper of either ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... satisfactory excuse for declaring war. This came in 1858 from an attempt at assassination. Felice Orsini, a fanatical Italian patriot, incensed at Napoleon from his failing to come to the aid of Italy, launched three explosive bombs against his carriage. The effect was fatal to many of the people in the street, though the intended victim escaped. Orsini while in prison expressed patriotic sentiments and a loud-voiced love for his country. "Remember that the Italians shed their blood ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... evident to Jahleel Woodbridge. Before this man returned, of whose growing and rival influence he had already so much reason to be jealous, he must have put an end to anarchy in Stockbridge, and once more stand at the head of its government. Sedgwick had warned him of the explosive state of popular feeling: he had resented that warning, and the event had proved his rival right. The only thing now left him was to show Sedgwick that if he had not been able to foresee the rebellion, he had been able to suppress it. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... off, and countless hundreds of fish were stunned or killed by the terrific force of the explosive, but no body of a hapless sixteen-year-old boy rewarded the anxious searchers. Up and down the river combed the dynamiters, and glare and crash rent the night for a mile down the stream. It began to look as if other means would have to be resorted to—the saddest of all, perhaps—time. ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... became an object of suspicion to his brethren. They perceived that the fire of the new philosophy burned in his powerful nature with incalculable and explosive force. He moved restlessly from place to place, learning and discussing, drawing men towards him by the magnetism of a noble personality, and preaching his new gospel with perilous audacity. His papers were seized at Bologna; and at Rome the Holy ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... (Einkreisungspolitik). Furthermore, had we pursued the Western Policy, we should have had to reckon with the possibility of England's wishing to moderate, even in a perfectly friendly manner, our somewhat explosive economic development. I should not, however, have regarded this altogether as a disadvantage. For, truth to tell, we grew a little too rapidly. We ought, as "junior partners" in Britain's world-empire, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... methods of the Emperor William with those of Edward VII. Nothing illustrates better the differences between the characteristics of English and German diplomacy than the dramatic contrast between the bragging, indiscreet, impulsive, explosive manner of the Kaiser and the quiet, courteous manner of the English monarch. Nothing explains better the striking success which has attended English policy and the no less striking failure which has attended German ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... genius of Queen's Who was fond of explosive machines; He blew open a door, But he'll do so no more— For it chanced that that door was ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... these stories, temporarily forgotten, were recalled, written, and published as the second volume of the New Arabian Nights series. As there was only enough for a thin book he wrote another, The Explosive Bomb, to fill up. It came out at first under the title of More New Arabian Nights, but afterwards appeared as The Dynamiter. Of the stories in this second series only one, The Explosive Bomb, was entirely the work of Mr. Stevenson's ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... seven bullet holes in his clothing, two of them through his hat; and yet his skin was not broken. The nearest approach to a wound was a big triangular bruise on his shoulder, made by a piece of spent high explosive. One of the bullets had gone through his hat and tipped it over his eyes as his unit was falling back from one trench to another; he said that he was positive he had broken the world's record for a hundred yards ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... Springfield looked to me when I arrived there on an early spring day! How clean, orderly, leisurely, and respectable after the untidiness and explosive anarchy of New York! I made for the river, as I always do wherever a river is, and watched it flowing down in the silver-gray light and catching bits of the rain-washed blue sky. The trees had lost the brittleness and sharpness of winter's drawing and their outlines ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... ejaculated. "I've never known of such a wound before. One would almost suspect an explosive bullet, if it were not for the clean incised wound on the exterior. The ribs seem grazed, yet the manner in which such a hurt has been inflicted ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... characteristic caterpillar tread; their eight faces were so linked together that the entire affair could roll, after a jolting, slab-sided, flopping fashion. Inside were curious engines, and sturdy machines designed to throw the cannon-shells they had seen; no explosive was employed, apparently, but centrifugal force generated in whirling wheels. Apparently these cars, or chariots, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... powerful machine puffed out on its flaring way through the night. Faster and faster came the big explosive breaths, until they blended in a long steady roar, and the train was sweeping northward at forty miles an hour. The clouds had broken; the night had grown colder; the gibbous moon gleamed over the vast and solitary landscape. ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... notably the Parisian Press. On the other hand, our own journalists have not been altogether free from this taint. Let us take one or two concrete instances, e.g., violation of the white flag, firing on ambulances, the use of "explosive" bullets, looting. Just after the first reverse at the Tugela, a correspondent wired home that the Boers were "shooting horses and violating all the usages of civilised warfare". A man who would write such tomfoolery about horses ought to ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... peace of their own country and of Europe to their personal plans have resigned, and others have taken their places of whom we need not fear this. I believe, therefore that I may state that our outlook toward France is more peaceful and less explosive today than it was a year ago and I am glad to do this, because I wish to quiet, not to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... and Slippery, each carrying a heavy satchel filled with the tools Slippery had so carefully looked after, followed by Joe, around whose left leg they had bandaged, despite his most vehement protests, the small bottle containing the deadly explosive, left the flat. They took a street car to the railroad station, where Boston Frank purchased tickets to Dixon, one of the prettiest and most hustling cities in western Illinois. Soon they were rolling out of the railroad yards and across the fertile plains and arrived at ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... thoughts in any consecutive order, though he tried several methods of self-analysis, and repeated to himself that he had experienced a great happiness and was probably on the threshold of a great success. These two reflections did not help him much. The happiness had been of the explosive kind, and the success in the business matter was more than problematic, as well as certainly ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford |
