"Flexible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a flexible-jointed saw and a small bottle of oil, and they were packed in my knapsack now. I asked Hinge if he would pass these to the prisoner, and he declared that he could do it easily and without the ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... expressions. In the tribune he was immovable. His self-possession never left him in the greatest disorders. He was always master of himself. His voice was full, manly, and sonorous, and pleased the ear; always powerful, yet flexible, it could be as distinctly heard when he lowered it as when he raised it. His knowledge was not remarkable, but he had an almost miraculous faculty of appropriating whatever he heard. He paid the greatest attention to his dress, and wore an enormous quantity of hair dressed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... made by the tuned crayons and tested by reference to the color sphere, have so trained the color judgment that children may now be trusted with more flexible material. They have memorized the equable degrees of color on the equator of the sphere, and found how lighter colors may balance darker colors, how small areas of stronger chroma may be balanced by larger ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... "Forgive me; forgive!" To leave him would have been so much easier if she had really hated him; but she did not. However difficult it may be to live with an artist, to hate him is quite as difficult. An artist is so flexible—only the rigid can be hated. She hated the things he did, and him when he was doing them; but afterward again could hate him no more than she could love him, and that was—not at all. Resolution and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... anecdotes, showing the knowledge the ancients had of steam, it is told that Anthemius, the architect of Saint Sophia, lived next door to Zeno. There existed a feud between them, and to annoy his neighbour, Anthemius had some boilers placed in his house containing water, with a flexible tube which he could pass through a hole in the wall under the floor of Zeno's dwelling; he then lit a fire, which soon caused steam to pass through the tube in such a quantity as to make the floors to heave as if by an earthquake. ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... T are glands which provide a water seal against the inleakage of air and the outleakage of steam. U represents the flexible coupling to the generator. V is the overload or by-pass valve used for admitting steam to intermediate stage of the turbine. W is the supplementary cylinder to contain the low-pressure balance piston. X and Y are reference letters used in text of this ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... medium height," was mamma's reply, "but her figure was slender, with small and well-shaped hands and feet. It was her pride that water could flow under the arch of her instep; and her fingers, notwithstanding the hard toil of daily life, remained so flexible, that, when fifty years old, she could still bend them ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... Her wet lips were almost touching his ear, as she confided, whisperingly, with the blue eyes averted: "Only published in editions de luxe: some bindings will be with blue ribbons, some with pink. All of them with flexible backs and gloriously illumined by the Master's brush. The authors' autographs will be on every copy to prove the collaboration, and every volume will be a poem in itself.... But there, Montague dear, I am a ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... years ago, given place to more showy and flexible vehicles; but long before such were invented the Jersey wagon was an established institution, and was handed down, with the family name, from father to son. It was the great original of the modern emigrant wagon of the West; but as I have elsewhere pictured its appearance upon the arrival of a ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... General Jackson done? In truth, this menace of nullification was the second string to the bow of the Vice-President. It was not yet ascertained which was going to possess and use General Jackson,—the placid and flexible Van Buren, or the headstrong, short-sighted, and uncomfortable Calhoun. Nullification, as he used daily to declare, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Where they once were the earth is hungry, white, and barren, though dressed in deceptive green by stunted fern and manuka. In the swamps and ravines, where they may thrust down their steel-pointed flexible spears as much as eight feet, the roaming diggers use that weapon to explore the field. In the hard open country they have to fall back upon the spade. Unlike the gold-seeker, the gum-digger can hope for no great and sudden stroke of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... together. He made connections with flexible cables and tucked the cable out of sight. He plugged in for power and ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... for the beginning. She heard him shut the library door, and then it seemed to her that her entire body was encircled by flexible hot bars of iron and her face, her mouth, were being flagellated. If he hadn't held her in that vise-like grip she would have fallen. She lay back on his arm as he kissed her and for the moment she forgot the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... good team work in both the spirit and the letter. Pourquoi, Worth, is your favorite word in French. Need I add that it means 'why'? And N'est-ce-pas—well, Watts would say N'est-ce-pas meant 'ain't it'? and more flexible translators find it to mean anything they are seeking to persuade you is true. Pourquoi is the inquirer and N'est-ce-pas the universalist. I trust Watts will ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... exquisitely. The Governor was an excellent musician, and accompanied her. His voice, a powerful tenor, had been strengthened by many a conflict with old Boreas on the high seas, and made soft and flexible by his manifold sympathies with all that is kindly and good ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sunlight, and he wore it brushed back from his forehead. His brow was so white and clear that the light seemed always to shine upon it, and his face had lost none of its pure, noble lines. His figure, too, was unusually symmetrical, at once flexible and strong. Although he was dressed in the coarse and unbecoming clothes of a villager, yet no stranger could pass him by without glancing a second time at such ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... into prosperity, and when they suited not the times, he suffered for having held them. They have become not only a part, but the very dearest part, of his existence. If he shows them not to you at first, in the flexible strength which they have acquired over his mind, do not believe that they are the less powerful. He who desires to make converts, must begin by degrees. But that he should sacrifice to an inexperienced ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Lorenzo de Medici Randall, thought ridiculous and good-for-naught by his associates, because he resembled them in nothing! If Riverboro could have been suddenly emptied into a larger community, with different and more flexible opinions, he was, perhaps, the only personage in the entire population who would have attracted the smallest attention. It was fortunate for his daughter that she had been dowered with a little practical ability from her mother's family, but if Lorenzo had never done anything ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not more likely to catch one of those creatures than I am," he said. "We must try what we can do in some other way. We need not starve in the midst of abundance, that's very certain." He looked about carefully on every side for a young sapling or a tree of some flexible character of which he might form a bow, but he was too ignorant of their nature to know which ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... chance he gave way to that impulse, which was never, except in reply to certain secret signs that seemed to pass between him and the elder stranger. This man was armed with a sword and dagger; and underneath his plain habit the Scotsman observed that he concealed a jazeran, or flexible shirt of linked mail, which, as being often worn by those, even of peaceful professions, who were called upon at that perilous period to be frequently abroad, confirmed the young man in his conjecture that the wearer ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... well known, that there sometimes occurs a sullen and hardy resolution, that laughs at all common punishment, and bids defiance to all common degrees of pain. Correction must be proportioned to occasions. The flexible will be reformed by gentle discipline, and the refractory must be subdued by harsher methods. The degrees of scholastick, as of military punishment, no stated rules can ascertain. It must be enforced till it overpowers temptation; till stubbornness becomes flexible, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... tell a man what to do to become an orator. The great orator has that wonderful thing called presence. He has that strange something known as magnetism. He must have a flexible, musical voice, capable of expressing the pathetic, the humorous, the heroic. His body must move in unison with his thought. He must be a reasoner, a logician. He must have a keen sense of humor —of the laughable. He must have wit, sharp and quick. He must have ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... cross with a fresh stock. This might, perhaps, have been expected, for the blending together of the sexual elements of two differentiated beings will affect the whole constitution at a very early period of life, whilst the organisation is highly flexible. We have, moreover, reason to believe that changed conditions generally act differently on the several parts or organs of the same individual (12/14. See, for instance, Brackenridge 'Theory of Diathesis' Edinburgh 1869.); and if we may further ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... feet—and is firmly blocked or anchored in line with the portable track, which is preferably 80 or 100 feet in length. The flying or gliding machine to be launched with its operator is placed on the platform-car at the leeward end of the portable track. The line, which is preferably a flexible combination wire-and-cord cable, is stretched between the winding-drum on the track and detachably secured to the flying or gliding machine, preferably by means of a trip-hoop, or else held in the hand of the operator, so that the operator may readily detach ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... arm, and old Herman saw the gleam of something gold on her wrist. He caught her hand in his iron grip and shoved up her sleeve. There was a tiny gold wrist-watch there, on a flexible chain. His amazement and rage gave her a moment to think, although ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... being mutually devised, and those specially designed for secrecy are often deciphered. So, if any one of the more conventional signs is not quickly comprehended, an Indian skilled in the principle of signs resorts to another expression of his flexible art, perhaps reproducing the gesture unabbreviated and made more graphic, perhaps presenting either the same or another conception or quality of the same object or idea ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... to moment, their features change with inconceivable quickness. On them you see the smile, the wish, the fear, spring into life, and pass away, like so many lightning flashes. Each time you seem to see a different countenance. They certainly have much more flexible facial muscles than ours. On the other hand, their dull eyes tell us almost nothing ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... worldly wisdom—her powers were unadapted to the practical business of life—she would fail to defend her most manifest rights, to consult her legitimate advantage. An interpreter ought always to have stood between her and the world. Her will was not very flexible and it generally opposed her interest. Her temper was magnanimous, but warm and sudden; her ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... after entering upon his fifty-second year. He is represented to have been somewhat above the middle stature, and well proportioned; his features large, his complexion dark, and his black, bushy eye-brows so flexible, as to admit of his giving an infinitely comic expression to his physiognomy. He was the best actor of his own generation, and by his counsels, formed the celebrated Baron, the best of the succeeding. He played all the range of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... Esnault-Pelterie, an invention of a young Frenchman. It's a monoplane with flexible, warped wings. It's made of steel tubes, welded together, and it has two wheels, one behind the other for contact ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... impression. Let me say at once, therefore, that delicate as he often was, and sweet as he was more often, although he could write melodies which are mere iridescent filaments of tone, he never became flabby or other than crisp, and could, and did, write themes as flexible, sinewy, unbreakable as perfectly tempered steel bands. And these themes he could lay together and weld into choruses of gigantic strength. The subject and counter-subject of "Thou art the King of Glory" (in the "Te Deum" in D), the theme ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... practically meant for our guidance, such and such a chapter (e.g., Jael and Sisera), long proscribed by the noble as a record of abominable perfidy, has at length been justified on the ground that it was never meant for anything else. Thus we might get rid of David, etc., were it not that for his flexible obedience to the clerus he has been pronounced the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a long flexible plank, and arranged eight tubs on it, close to each other, leaving a piece at each end to form a curve upwards, like the keel of a vessel. We then nailed them firmly to the plank, and to each other. We nailed a plank at each side, of the same length ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... measuring a little over a foot across its long axis, mounted in a steel bracket that held it horizontal with the ground. Down through its short axis ran a shaft on which was centered a light cross of aluminum wire, carrying four vanes of mica, one face of each coated with lampblack. A flexible cable led from the bottom of this shaft to the base of the bracket, where it was geared to a small electric motor driven by two dry cells. A rheostat-switch for delivering and controlling the current was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... combined a versatility of talent, usually found only in softer and more flexible characters. Though bred in the cloister, he distinguished himself both in the cabinet and the camp. For the latter, indeed, so repugnant to his regular profession, he had a natural genius, according to the testimony of his biographer; and he evinced his relish for it, by declaring, that ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... with the same hospitality by King Pamunkey, whose land was believed to be rich in copper and pearls. The copper was so flexible that Captain Newport bent a piece of it the thickness of his finger as if it had been lead. The natives were unwilling to part with it. The King had about his neck a string of pearls as big as peas, which would have been worth ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... toll houses long abandoned; of our leaders, Negro and white, in business, industry, education, religion and government; of our stalwarts of union labor whose vision, social comprehension and courage helped to bring a new day for all; of our cherished democracy, flexible and self-righting in a world where popular rule ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... whole thing had taken my breath away, and I must have stood there many seconds in confused thought, in which a flexible form and arched foot took a ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... Journey was very long and slow. The Traveling Salesman was rather short and quick. And the Young Electrician who lolled across the car aisle was neither one length nor another, but most inordinately flexible, like ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... command over the forces of nature which the advance of science had placed in the hands of man, by the application of science to industry in the development of manufacturing methods and of new modes of communication, and by the intricate and flexible organisation of modern finance. These changes were already in progress before 1878, and were already transforming the face of the world. Since 1878 they have gone forward with such accelerating speed that we have been unable to appreciate the ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... has behind the bourgeois assumptions which his story takes for granted, but he has probably been wiser not to. Sticking to familiar territory, he writes with the confident touch of a man unconfused by speculation. His style is still swift, still easy, still flexible, still accurate in its conformity to the vernacular. He attempts no sentimental detours and permits himself no popular superfluities. He has retained all his tried qualities of observation and dexterity while admitting to his work the element of ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... haft, made out of an enormous rhinoceros horn, was three feet three inches long, about an inch and a quarter thick, and with a knob at the end as large as a Maltese orange, left there to prevent the hand from slipping. This horn haft, though so massive, was as flexible as cane, and practically unbreakable; but, to make assurance doubly sure, it was whipped round at intervals of a few inches with copper wire — all the parts where the hands grip being thus treated. Just above where the haft entered the head were scored a number of little nicks, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... pair of beef-hide moccasins with puckered toes. In my belief a few paintings by Mr. Thomas Moran at a cost of fifteen thousand or twenty thousand dollars, or sets of the works of some of our more popular authors, with flexible backs, would be far more appropriate in the ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... hard but very hard, named from racler, French for "scrape." A thick, one-half-inch slice is cut across the whole cheese and toasted until runny. It is then scraped off the pan it's toasted in with a flexible knife, spread on bread and eaten like an open-faced Welsh ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... weight shall be near the place where the wings are attached. The feet, legs, head, and neck are light, and so arranged that they may be drawn up close to the body while the bird is flying. As the neck is long and very flexible, the body does not need to be pliant, as with most creatures having backbones; but it is important that the wings should have a firm support, so the bones of the back are united. The body of a bird must also be well protected from the cold; for, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... Riddhi-sakshatkriya, "the power of supernatural footsteps,""a body flexible at pleasure," or unlimited power over the body. ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... of her class. But who could trouble over Coralie's psychology when his eyes were dazzled by those smooth, round arms of hers, the spindle-shaped fingers, the fair white shoulders, and breast celebrated in the Song of Songs, the flexible curving lines of throat, the graciously moulded outlines beneath the scarlet silk stockings? And this beauty, worthy of an Eastern poet, was brought into relief by the conventional Spanish costume of the stage. Coralie was the delight of the pit; all eyes dwelt on the outlines ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... same breath, a strain of gallantry which was incorrigible in him, and to which his humor and his tenderness to women whom he liked gave variety and charm, would supervene upon his seriousness with a rapidity which her far less flexible temperament could not follow. Hence she, thinking him still in earnest when he had swerved into florid romance, had been dangerously misled. He had no conscientious scruples in his love-making, because he was unaccustomed to consider himself as likely to ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... well-muscled, well-proportioned body, whether lion, or antelope, or man, and it had ever been beyond him to understand how clothes could be considered more beautiful than a clear, firm, healthy skin, or coat and trousers more graceful than the gentle curves of rounded muscles playing beneath a flexible hide. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... her head, smiling. Her flexible smile was as charming as a child's. It dawned on the gravity of her face with an effect of spring moonlight. In it there was some of ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... suddenly come upon what looks like a real bit of the country planted there. The intervening space is beautified on both sides with dwarf plane-trees; beyond these is the acanthus-tree that is supple and flexible to the hand, and there are more boxwood ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... out to be composed of fried bacon and a yellowish edifice that proved up something between pound cake and flexible sandstone. The landlord calls it corn pone; and then he sets out a dish of the exaggerated breakfast food known as hominy; and so me and Caligula makes the acquaintance of the celebrated food that enabled every Johnny Reb to lick one and two-thirds Yankees for nearly ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... back to me shamelessly different, for our circle had promptly been joined by the all-knowing and all-imposing Mademoiselle Danse aforesaid, her of the so flexible taille and the so salient smiling eyes, than which even those of Miss Rebecca Sharp, that other epic governess, were not more pleasingly green; who provided with high efficiency for our immediate ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... demand is some flexible, malleable, rhythmic system which shall give an imaginative and yet a rational form to the sum total of those manifold and intricate impressions which make up the life of a real ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... bewitched. They conducted themselves as those supposed to suffer under maladies created by such influence were accustomed to do. They stiffened their necks so hard at one time that the joints could not be moved; at another time their necks were so flexible and supple that it seemed the bone was dissolved. They had violent convulsions, in which their jaws snapped with the force of a spring-trap set for vermin. Their limbs were curiously contorted, and to those ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... from the circumstances of the particular nation, to be permanently disposable for action, might prove redundantly effective, when pointed against a few personal authors of war, so presumably weak, and so flexible to any stern counter-volition as those must be supposed, whose wars argued so much of vicious levity. The inference is unexceptionable: it is the premises that are unsound. Anecdotes of war as having emanated from a lady's tea-table or toilette, would authorize such ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Life is enormously flexible—look at all that we've done to our dogs,—but we carry our hairy past with us wherever we go. The wise St. Bernards and the selfish toy lap-dogs are brothers, and some things are possible for them and others are not. So with us. There are definite limits to simian civilizations, due in part to ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... and persons) that they contract no ill habits, and take such plys as are so difficult to rectifie and smooth again without the greatest industry. For prevention of this in our seminary, the like care is requisite; whilst the young imps and seedlings are yet tender and flexible, and require not only different nourishment and protection from too much cold, heat, and other injuries; but due and skilful management, in dressing, redressing and pruning, as they grow capable of being brought ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... exposing the head and feet of the body, from which the bandages had decayed and fallen off. In the powerful glare of the electric light which we carried, the bare skull, with a golden vulture upon it, could be seen protruding from the remains of the linen bandages and from the sheets of flexible gold-foil in which, as we afterwards found, the whole body was wrapped. The inscription on the coffin, the letters of which were made of rare stones, gave the titles of Akhnaton, "the beautiful child of ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... noticed that in her arms she bore a bundle of white linen, and that her form was singularly attenuated. So preternaturally thin and flexible was Elfride at this moment, that she appeared to bend under the light blows of the rain-shafts, as they struck into her sides and bosom, and splintered into spray on her face. There is nothing like a thorough drenching for reducing the protuberances ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... blossom was supported by a long, flexible, writhing stem, and its base was composed of many and highly specialized leaves. There were saws and spears and mighty, but sinuous tendrils; there were slender shoots which seemed to possess some sense of ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... was keeping a diary of my adventures ... in a large, brown copybook, with flexible covers. I carried it, tightened away, usually, in the lining of my coat, but occasionally I left it under ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... her face was oval, with a straight, short nose, a short, but rather prominent and round chin, and a very expressive mouth, not very small, slightly depressed at the corners, with perfect teeth, and red lips that were unusually flexible. Her figure was remarkably athletic, with shoulders that were broad in a woman, and a naturally small waist. Her hands and feet were also small. She walked splendidly, like a Syrian, but without his defiant insolence. In her face, when it was in repose, there was ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... due to affectation or to ignorance, but in either case we could well do without it. In cases where the actual production of the voice is mechanically stiff, rigid, and therefore distorted, it is not likely that we can secure a free and flexible musical elocution. We do occasionally meet singers whose diction is delightful to hear because of its absolute freedom and complete naturalness, but these only serve to heighten by their excellence the shortcomings of ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... awful mess of it. Now let me think a moment. This young fellow has suggested an idea to me,—a general line of action which I think you can carry out. There is nothing like a good definite plan,—not cast-iron, you know, but flexible and modified by circumstances as you go along, yet so clear and defined as to give you something to aim at. Confound it, that's what's the matter with our military authorities. If McClellan is a ditch-digger let them put a general in command; or, if he is a general, give him what ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... opened, revealed bundles of numbered pieces of tough, thin flexible steel and packages of thick water-proofed canvas. Under the captain's skilled direction, the steel was quickly framed together, the canvas stretched over it, and in a short time two canvas canoes were floating lightly at their painters at the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... then that you are connected, as may happen, with a flexible business," I hazarded. "If you are in the ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... flexible back. GOLDEN DAYS stamped in gold letters on the outside. Full directions for inserting papers go with each Binder. We will send the HANDY BINDER and a package of Binder Pins to any address on receipt of *50 cents.* Every reader should ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... some writers. However, we would not hesitate making an attempt at relieving a favourite or valuable dog of this disagreeable deformity. We should first endeavour to clear out the nasal canal, either by means of a minute flexible probe, or by directing a stream of water from a suitable syringe through its course. A small silver or copper style may then be placed in the canal to keep it open, as also to direct the tears through the natural route. This being done, and the dog confined in such a way as not to be able to scratch ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... used; no word of slang, or even word of modern origin should be employed; the translator's aim should be never to dissipate the illusion of an exotic. If I were translating the "Assommoir" into English, I should strive after a strong, flexible, but colourless language, something—what shall I say?—the style of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... business ventures and other signs of impetuosity and unbalanced judgment. Furthermore, under the new civilization, the older men have become unfitted to do the required work. The younger and more flexible members of the rising generation can quickly adjust themselves to the new conditions, as in the schools, where the older men, who had received only the regular training in Chinese classics, were utterly incompetent as teachers of science. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... tall, and lovely and tender to regard: and hers was not the red and white comeliness of many ladies that were famed for beauty, but rather it had the even glow of ivory. Her nose was large and high in the bridge, her flexible mouth was not of the smallest; and yet, whatever other persons might have said, to Jurgen this woman's countenance was in all things perfect. And, beholding her, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... voice ceases. Again the hollow pulsing of the Indian drum, the purring, flexible step of cushioned feet. I lift my head, which has been bowed on the chair before me. It is St. Paul's after all—and the clear boy-voices rise above the rich ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... They must be proved to be less efficient than the Governments of Free Peoples, even in their favourite work of War, and their iron machinery—which at first brings outer prosperity and success—must be shown to be less lasting and effective than the living and flexible organisations of democratic Peoples. They must be proved failures before the world, so that the glamour of superficial successes may be destroyed for ever. They have had their day and their place in evolution, and have done their ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... soft, eyes, so common in novels, so rare in real life, had shyly glided like a dark, beautiful spirit into the corner of the room. A fringe of silken jet swept heavily upward from her dusky cheek, athwart which the richest color came and went like flashes of lightning. Her flexible lips curved slightly away from teeth like strips of cocoanut meat, with a mocking grace infinitely bewitching. She wore a cotton chemise,—disgustingly dirty, I must confess,—girt about her slender waist with a crimson handkerchief, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... structures. But while the effects of the inflammation in the membrane lining the walls of the ventricles may subside to such a degree as to cause little or no inconvenience, or even wholly disappear, yet after the valvular structures have been involved, causing them to be thicker, less flexible than normal, they usually remain, obstructing the free passage of the blood through the openings of the heart, thereby inducing secondary changes, which take place slowly at first, but ultimately ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... of coasting with toboggan sleds and bobsleds are all well known to boys who live where there are snow and hills. A sled can be steered either by dragging the foot or by shifting the sled with the hands. Sleds with flexible runners have recently been introduced and are a great improvement ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... the Committee— Sweet-breathed and smooth of skin And supple of spine and knee, With shining unpouched eyes And the blood, high-powered, Leaping in flexible arteries— The insolent, young, enthusiastic, undiscriminating Committee, Who would placard tombstones And scatter leaflets even in graves, ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... and left screw, were four-bladed and 16 inches in diameter. The total weight of the model with engine was 8 lbs. Its successful flight is ascribed to the fact that Stringfellow curved the wings, giving them rigid front edges and flexible trailing edges, as suggested long before both by Da Vinci and Borelli, but never before put ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... general, it may be said that the beginning of the arm movement, being from the body, is in the upper arm; the finish of it is at the tips of the fingers, with the forefinger leading, or bringing the gesture to a point. There is generally a slightly flexible, rythmical movement of the arm and hand. This should not, as a rule, be very marked, and in specially energetic action is hardly observable. In this arm action there is an early preparatory movement, which indicates or suggests, what is coming. Often ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... late 1978 the Chinese leadership has been trying to move the economy from the sluggish Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more productive and flexible economy with market elements, but still within the framework of monolithic Communist control. To this end the authorities switched to a system of household responsibility in agriculture in place of the old collectivization, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... period was mellow and flexible. He was a mimic, too; the brighter things he had seen, whether glories of nature or acts of man, had turned to pictures in this man's mind. He flashed these pictures one after another upon the trio; he peopled ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Congress must be allowed the discretion which "will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it, in the manner most beneficial to the people." In short, the Constitution of the United States is not a strait jacket but a flexible instrument vesting in Congress the powers necessary to meet national problems as they arise. In delivering this opinion Marshall used language almost identical with that employed by Lincoln when, standing on the battle field of a war waged ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... is then cupelled on a very fine cupel, as already described. The method of working last described destroys the crucible. If the gold is not quite so small this may be avoided. A small piece of lead foil should be hammered out until it is perfectly flexible. It is then shaped into a tray and the gold is transferred to it. The lead is then folded over, with the help of ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... said more kind things to him than he had heard for many moons. At once they put the scalp upon the Good Hunter's head, but it had grown so dry in the smoke of the warrior's wigwam that it would not fit. Here was a new trouble. What was to be done to make the scalp soft and flexible once more? The animals did their best, but their efforts were of ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... in English between the lady of the house and myself, we all commenced chatting in Spanish, which seemed to be the only language understood or cared for by the rest of the company; indeed, who would be so unreasonable as to expect Spanish females to speak any language but their own, which, flexible and harmonious as it is, (far more so I think than any other,) seemed at times quite inadequate to express the wild sallies of their luxuriant imagination. Two hours fled rapidly away in discourse, interrupted occasionally by music and song, when I bade farewell ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... sits smiling at Geniality, the President becomes a formality, and the burden of his duty is to make himself a pleasant nobody, yet natural to the position. Like the apprentice of the armorer, it is my task only to hold the hot iron on the anvil while the skilled craftsmen strike out the flexible sword-blade. There is no need for me to praise or analyze the character or fame of the great poet whose centennial we celebrate. This will be done presently by abler hands, in eloquent verse and prose. Tom Moore was a poet of all lands, and it is fitting that his centenary should be observed ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... consequence of this is that less power of blast is required to make them speak. With this mechanism the higher registers are very readily united with the lower ones, and the voices so produced are of a light and flexible kind. Where, on the contrary, the vocal ligaments of contraltos and basses are comparatively short, they are also thick in proportion, and the shield-pyramid muscles are more powerful than the opposing ring-shield muscles, so that ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... personating, the one Joseph of Arimathea, the other Nicodemus, approached the cross, and with a most solemn, concerned air, both of aspect and behaviour, drew out the great nails, and took down the feigned body from the cross. It was an effigies so contrived that its limbs were soft and flexible, as if they had been real flesh; and nothing could be more surprising that to see the two pretended mourners bend down the arms which were before extended, and dispose them upon the trunk in such a manner as is usual in corpses. The body being taken down from the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... the Musee des Religions she found the soil disturbed by workmen. There were paving-stones crossed by a bridge made of a narrow flexible plank. She had stepped on it, when she saw at the other end, in front of her, a man who was waiting for her. He recognized her and bowed. It was Dechartre. She saw that he was happy to meet her; she thanked him with a smile. He asked her permission to walk a few steps with her, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... various artistic sensibilities and aesthetic appreciations in carefully punctuated sentences and a large, clear voice. At Christmas he gave her a set of a small edition of Meredith's novels, very prettily bound in flexible leather, being guided in the choice of an author, as he intimated, rather by ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... black disk about as big as a watch, with a number of perforated holes in one face. Carelessly he tossed it into the top drawer of the chest under some old rubbish, shut the drawer tight and ran a flexible wire out of the back of the chest. It was a simple matter to lay the wire through some bins next the storeroom and then around to the passageway down to the subterranean den of Brixton. There Craig deposited a little black box about the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... Coal Measures, when they waved as thickly with graceful Sphenopteres as our existing hill sides with the common brake; and when every breeze that rustled through the old forests bent in mimic waves their slim flexible stems and light ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... and his Provang (which was a flexible whalebone from two to three feet long, with a small linen or silk button at the end, which was to be introduced into the stomach to produce the effect of an emetic), the reader may find some account in Wood's Athen. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... different qualities," replied Forester. "Some are light and soft, which are good qualities for certain purposes. Some are hard. Some are stiff, and some flexible. Some are brittle, and others tough. For a cane, now, do we want a hard wood ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... twinkling lights far up the avenue come nearer and nearer with lightning speed. The slide is lined on both sides with a joyous throng of their elders, who laugh and applaud equally the poor sled and the flexible flyer of prouder pedigree, urging on the returning horde that toils panting up the steep to take its place in the line once more. Till far into the young day does the avenue resound with the merriment of the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... or only hobbled. They like to forage about for themselves, and usually will eat more and better grass than when tied by a picket rope. During the first three or four days out, horse or mule is apt to wander back to the home pasture. Hobbles can be bought or made. When bought, they are broad, flexible strips of leather about eighteen inches long, with cuffs which buckle around each fore leg above the hoof. Hobbles can be made on the spot by twisting soft rope from fore leg to fore leg and tying the ends by lapping ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... trained to the business, supplemented by, and annexed to, a body of specially trained officers, who have been bred to banking all their lives. These mixed banks have quite beaten the old banks, composed exclusively of pure bankers; it is found that the board of directors has greater and more flexible knowledge—more insight into the wants of a commercial community—knows when to lend and when not to lend, better than the old bankers, who had never looked at life, except out of the bank windows. Just so the most successful railways in Europe have been conducted—not by engineers ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... of feeling more than ordinary interest in this performance, and almost held her breath as the clear, silvery voice caroled through the most intricate passages. Antoinette had been thoroughly trained, and certainly her voice was remarkably sweet and flexible; but as she concluded the piece and fixed her eyes complacently on Beulah, the latter lifted her head in ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... not want her to take lessons on the spinet. I was so glad she did not appeal to Chilian, though he was out. I said, 'No,' very decidedly, 'that she had a good many things to learn before she tackled that.' And she said she ought to be trained while her fingers were flexible, and I said I thought washing would make them flexible enough. And ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Senators Chandler and Morgan vied with each other in the richness of their toilets and the splendor of their diamonds, but the observed of all observers was Mrs. Charles Sumner, on the Senator's arm, wearing a becoming dress of black velvet, with a white lace shawl, and a flexible golden serpent ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... be that you are not familiar with a foreign language. At any rate you have some knowledge of English. Put this knowledge to use in paraphrasing; for thus you will enrich your vocabulary and make it surer and more flexible. The process of paraphrasing is simple, though the actual work is not easy. You take passages written in English—the more of them the better, and the more diversified the better—and both reproduce their substance and incarnate ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... crimson of the flexible covers, as soft and slippery to the touch as a snake's skin, was perhaps the fitting symbol of the darker story that lay coiled within. With a gesture of repulsion, as if some such fancy had flitted through his mind, Mr. Slocum ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... their impiety. The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, into the tender and flexible minds of children, such opinions as are both good in themselves and will be useful to their country, for when deep impressions of these things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole course of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace of the government, ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... they should be free from any strain which might in any way distort them. In strong and ponderous objects this can be easily accomplished by due care on the part of an intelligent workman. It is in operating by the lathe on delicate and flexible objects that the utmost care is requisite in the process of chucking, as they are easily strained out of shape by fastening them by screws and bolts, or suchlike ordinary means. This is especially the case with disc-like ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... house and the church, on which to step. Their house was Chiddingly Place, built by Sir John Jefferay, who died in 1577. Remains of this great mansion are still to be seen. It was during Sir John's time that Chiddingly had a vicar, William Titelton, sufficiently flexible to retain the living under Henry VIII., Edward VI., ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... a flexible band, sometimes carrying segments of wood blocks, is hung over a pulley rotated by the motor, the power of which is to be measured. If the pulley turns with left-handed rotation, the friction would carry the strap toward the left, unless the weight, Q, were ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... lecture I shall return again to the relations of pragmatism with religion. But you see already how democratic she is. Her manners are as various and flexible, her resources as rich and endless, and her conclusions as friendly ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... two systems appear to be almost identical, yet this small difference, the slightly milder nature of task work with a bonus, is sufficient to render it much more flexible and therefore applicable to a large number of cases in which the differential rate system cannot be used. Task work with a bonus was invented by Mr. H. L. Gantt, while he was assisting the writer in organizing the Bethlehem Steel Company. The possibilities of his system ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... following me at a short distance, a well-dressed man of about thirty-five. He wore a slouched hat, a gray coat and lower garments, and enormous high-top boots, to one of which was affixed a brass spur. Over his shoulder, holding the two ends in his hands, he carried a strong, flexible whip, silver mounted, and polished like patent leather. He was about six feet high, stoutly built, with a heavy, inexpressive face, and a clear, sharp gray eye. One glance satisfied me that he was ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... clinging fast around its supporting tree. Nor does the picture lack its moral. You might twist it to more than one grave purpose, as you saw how the knotted, serpentine growth imprisoned within its strong embrace the friend that had supported its tender infancy; and how (as seemingly flexible natures are prone to do) it converted the sturdier tree entirely to its own selfish ends, extending its innumerable arms on every bough, and permitting hardly a leaf to sprout except its own. It occurred to Kenyon, that the enemies of the vine, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Brunswick, next astern of Howe, and the Vengeur, both 74's. With the British vessel's anchors hooked in her opponent's port forechannels, the two drifted away to leeward, the Brunswick by virtue of flexible rammers alone able to use her lower deck guns, which were given alternately extreme elevation and depression and sent shot tearing through the Vengeur's deck and hull; whereas the Vengeur, with a superior fire of carronades and musketry, swept the enemy's upper deck. When the antagonists ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... only to be found far up in Higher Louisiana. These trees, it would seem, do not love heat; they do not grow so tall as the plum-trees; their wood is very hard and flexible; for the lower branches are sometimes so loaded with fruit that they hang perpendicularly downwards; and if you unload them of their fruit in the evening, you will find them next morning in their natural erect position. The fruit resembles ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... They all followed his example, took their guns out of the corners, examined the locks, stamped with their feet in order to feel themselves firmer in their boots which were rather hard, not having as yet been rendered flexible by the heat of the blood. Then they went out; and the dogs, standing erect at the ends of their lashes, gave vent to piercing howls while beating ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... invincible. The pilum and the broadsword had vanquished the Macedonian spear. The legion had broken the Macedonian phalanx. Even the elephants, when the surprise produced by their first appearance was over, could cause no disorder in the steady yet flexible battalions of Rome. It is said by Florus, and may easily be believed, that the triumph far surpassed in magnificence any that Rome had previously seen. The only spoils which Papirius Cursor and Fabius Maximus could exhibit were flocks and herds, ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were brusque, his hands all thumbs; very often he chanced to ruin everything by breaking his vessels. Samuel proposed to assist him in a manipulation requiring considerable dexterity; he had very flexible fingers, was as expert as a juggler, and the ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... PLASTER, that will not stick and remains flexible: Soak Isinglass in a little warm water for twenty-four hours, then evaporate nearly all the water by gentle heat. Dissolve the residue with a little Proof Spirits of Wine, and strain the whole through a piece ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... just begun to pall on his fancy, when the ANTIQUITIES fell into his hands. It was like a draught of some generous southern wine, after a course of barley-water. Here was Latin worth reading; rich, sinewy, idiomatic, full of flavour, masculine. Flexible, yet terse. Latin after his own heart; ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... that! In its capacity for the varied and exact expression of all moods of mind, all forms of thought, all kinds of emotion, a tongue unequaled by any other known to literature! A language of exhaustless variety; strong without ruggedness, and flexible without effeminacy. A manly tongue; yet bending itself gracefully and lovingly to the tenderest and the daintiest needs of woman, and capable of giving utterance to the most awful and impressive thoughts, in homely words that come from the lips, and go to the heart, of childhood. It would ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a long, thin plank, on which my tubs could be fixed, and the two ends of this I bent upward so as to form a keel. Other two planks were nailed along the sides of the tubs; they also being flexible, were brought to a point at each end, and all firmly secured and nailed together. I felt satisfied that in smooth water this craft would be perfectly trustworthy. But when we thought all was ready for the launch, we found, to our dismay, that the grand contrivance was so heavy and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the room gaily with the breezy assertiveness of persons who were assured of their welcome and very much at home. Hilda Ashhurst was tall, blonde, aquiline and noisy; the Countess, dainty, dark-eyed and svelte, with the flexible voice which spoke of familiarity with many tongues and rebuked the nasal greeting of her more florid companion. Hermia met them with a sigh. Only yesterday Mrs. Westfield had protested again about Hermia's growing intimacy with ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... to lift the big, warm, flexible body, exerting all her slender strength. It was useless. It was like attempting to lift the earth. The weight of the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... relaxing movements. When beginning to take systematic exercise, do not make the separate movements too vigorous or continue them too long. If any of them cause pain or considerable strain, omit them until the body becomes stronger and more flexible. The muscular soreness often resulting from exercise at the beginning is, as a rule, of little consequence and disappears before long. The different movements should be practiced in spite of it, because that is the only way to ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... the request. Lifting the tiny brass latch which alone secured it, he swung open the glazed door of the case, and, reaching in, drew forward the flexible ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... time, and for that reason is not often practised. The strips of bast are then drawn under a knife, the blade of which is three inches broad by six long, fastened at one end to the extremity of a flexible stick so that it is suspended perpendicularly over a well-smoothed block, and at the other end to a handle connected by means of a cord to a treadle, which can be pressed firmly down, as occasion requires. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... upper end of the line is spliced the "fore-ganger" of a "spanned harpoon," thus connecting the harpoon with all the lines in the boat. A "fore-ganger" is a piece of rope a few fathoms long, made of white or untanned hemp, so as to be more flexible and easily extended when the harpoon ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... and 10 inches in diameter, standing side by side. Each tube has a piston or plunger, called "dot-dot';" the packing ring of the piston is of wood covered with chicken feathers, making it slightly flexible at the rim, so it fits snugly in the tube. The lower end of the bellows tubes rests in the earth, 4 inches above which a small bamboo tube leads the compressed air to the fireplace from each bellows ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... either concentrated or sporadic action, our distribution will be dictated by the need of being able to deal with a variety of combinations and to protect a variety of objectives. Our concentrations must therefore be kept as open and flexible as possible. History accordingly shows us that the riper and fresher our experience and the surer our grip of war, the looser were our concentrations. The idea of massing, as a virtue in itself, is bred in peace and not in war. ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... the Fountain placed on her finger a little emerald ring, and the princess distinctly felt her arms change their shape—expand—become flexible, and form two light wings, clothed in the most brilliant colours. Her little feet quitted the earth, and as the window was open, she flew out, traversing the air, with a degree of rapidity which at first caused some sensations of fear. But soon the eager desire of seeing ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... post and reported his inability to get any further. Going out to the scene of difficulty I found the wagon at the base of a steep hill, stalled. Taking up a whip myself, I directed the men to lay on their gads, for each man had supplied himself with a flexible hickory withe in the early stages of the trip, to start the team, but this course did not move the wagon nor have much effect on the demoralized oxen; but following as a last resort an example I heard of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan |
