"Quicksilver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... valley, a wonderful panorama of vine-clad slopes and meadows, starred with many-coloured wild flowers, through which the river wound its way, now hidden, now visible, a thin line of gleaming quicksilver. Tall poplars fringed its banks, and there were white cottages and farmhouses, mostly built in the shelter of the vine-covered cliffs. To the left a rolling mass of woods was pierced by one long green avenue, at the summit of which stretched the grey front and towers ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Devil, hast thou to bestow? Was ever mortal spirit, in its high endeavour, Fathom'd by Being such as thou? Yet food thou hast which satisfieth never, Hast ruddy gold, that still doth flow Like restless quicksilver away, A game thou hast, at which none win who play, A girl who would, with amorous eyen, E'en from my breast, a neighbour snare, Lofty ambition's joy divine, That, meteor-like, dissolves in air. Show me the fruit that, ere ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... plugged either with wax or soft metal that was easily melted. Again, pieces of lead were used which had been plugged with lumps of gold carefully covered over; and a very simple and impressive demonstration was making use of a nugget of gold that had been coated over with quicksilver and tarnished so as to resemble lead or some base metal. When this was thrown into acid the coating was removed by chemical action, leaving the shining metal in the bottom of the vessel. In order to perform some of these tricks, it ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... blocks, 3 inches thick, so laid as to make a cavity or pocket at the corner of the blocks. After passing the first sluice box the water and gravel would be run in a bed rock sluice again, and then into another sluice box and so on for a mile, passing through several sluice boxes on the way. Quicksilver was placed in the upper sluice boxes, and when the particles of gold were polished up by tumbling about in the gravel, they combined with the quicksilver making ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... surrounded with the curious and costly figures of birds and quadrupeds. In a lofty pavilion of the gardens, one of these basins and fountains, so delightful in a sultry climate, was replenished not with water, but with the purest quicksilver. The seraglio of Abdalrahman, his wives, concubines, and black eunuchs, amounted to six thousand three hundred persons: and he was attended to the field by a guard of twelve thousand horse, whose belts and cimeters were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... ancient Roman world; at another, on its surface it floated peaceably the fir-trees of Murg and of Saint Gall, the porphyry and the marble of Bale, the salt of Karlshall, the leather of Stromberg, the quicksilver of Lansberg, the wine of Johannisberg, the slates of Coab, the cloth and earthenware of Wallendar, the silks and linens of Cologne. It majestically performs its double function of flood of war and flood of peace, having, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... liquid to one lighter than cork, the cork will sink in it as does iron in water; in the second instance, if we change the liquid to one heavier than iron, the iron will float on it as does cork on water, and exactly as an ordinary flat-iron will float on quicksilver, bobbing up and down like a cork in a tumbler of water. If, therefore, solutions of known but varying densities are compounded, it is possible to tell almost to exactitude the specific gravity of any stone dropped into ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... the bones from the meat; boiling it to nearly as great a degree as if intended for immediate consumption; putting it into jars; filling up the jars completely with a broth or jelly prepared from portions of the same meat; corking the jars closely; incasing the corks with a luting formed of quicksilver and cheese; placing the corked jars in a boiler of cold water; boiling the water and its contents for an hour; and then allowing the cooling process to supervene ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... recognised by its smell when burning. This gave rise to the sulphur theory, while the presence of mercury was inferred doubtless from the resemblance of the more commonly molten metals, silver, tin, and lead, to quicksilver. The properties of each metal were then put down to the presence of these substances. The list of seven metals is that of the most ancient times—gold, electrum, silver, copper, tin, lead, iron; but it is clearly recognised that electrum is an alloy ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... gentlemen who had brought the sample of gold, and they departed. That gold was the first discovered in the Sierra Nevada, which soon revolutionized the whole country, and actually moved the whole civilized world. About this time (May and June, 1848), far more importance was attached to quicksilver. One mine, the New Almaden, twelve miles south of San Jose, was well known, and was in possession of the agent of a Scotch gentleman named Forties, who at the time was British consul at Tepic, Mexico. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... opposite direction. I heard Bud and Bill yelling, and the angry crack and hiss of the fire. A few rods down I stopped, struck another match, and lit the grass. There was a sputter and flash. Then the flame flared up, spread like running quicksilver, and, meeting the pine-needles, changed to red. I ran on. There was a loud flutter behind me, then a crack almost like a shot, then a seething roar. Another pine had gone off. As I stopped to strike the third match there came three distinct reports, and then others ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... me one day, and showed me a little gold ring which had been discoloured by quicksilver, saying at the same time: "Polish up this ring for me, and be quick about it." I was engaged at the moment upon jewel-work of gold and gems of great importance: besides, I did not care to be ordered about so haughtily by a man I had never seen or spoken to; so I ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... flashed slipped unseen from Maria Angelina's vision. Johnny Byrd was nice, but it was a gay, cheery, everyday sort of niceness, she thought, with none of the quicksilver charm of the young man at the dinner dance. . . . And she was unimpressed by Johnny's money. She took the millionaires in America as for granted ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... landscape I turned to look at the army. Never had I seen them so joyous. It would be impossible to convey any idea of the afflatus which buoyed them up. Every man's veins seemed to run with quicksilver, instead of blood. Every cheek was glowing. Every eye flashed with superb joy and defiance. You would have supposed, indeed, that the troops were under the effect of champagne or laughing gas. "I never even imagined ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Battle Marion's Tower Clark and his Men Daniel Boone and his Grapevine Swing Daniel Boone's Daughter and her Friends Decatur and the Pirates Stories about Jefferson A Long Journey Captain Clark's Burning Glass Quicksilver Bob The First Steamboat Washington Irving as a Boy Don't give up the Ship Grandfather's Rhyme The Star-spangled Banner How Audubon came to know about Birds Audubon in the Wild Woods Hunting a Panther Some Boys who became Authors Daniel Webster and his Brother Webster and the Poor Woman The ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... shows whether the air[4] is getting lighter or heavier, or is remaining in the same state. The quicksilver falls as the air becomes lighter, rises as it becomes heavier, and remains at rest in the glass tube while the air is unchanged in weight. Air presses on everything within about forty miles of the world's surface, like a much ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... vessel, P,—the extreme ends of the wood resting upon its edge—on which the acid with which it is charged has no effect. The jar is charged with sulphuric acid, (common oil of vitriol) diluted in eight parts its bulk of water. The zinc plates of the battery have been amalgamated with quicksilver, and when the battery is set into the jar of acid there should be no action percieved upon them when the poles F, G, are not in contact. Should any action be percieved, it indicates imperfect amalgamation; this can be easily remedied by pouring a little mercury upon them ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... said Gluck at length, after watching the water spreading in long, quicksilver-like streams over the floor for a quarter of an hour; "mayn't I take ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... himself loose in a vein of pure fantasy,—he ventured on the whimsical, the sprightly, the paradoxical. The poor fellow sent to interview him might as well have tried to grasp a bundle of sunbeams or a handful of quicksilver. His report turned out a frightful bungle; the wretched Bond, made clumsy, fatuous, pointless, sodden, when he had meant to show himself as witty and brilliant as possible, was completely crushed. With Joyce going for next to nothing and Bond for worse than nothing, the ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... a glimpse of Leonardo again, at Rome in 1514, surrounded by his mirrors and vials and furnaces, making strange toys that seemed alive of wax and quicksilver. The hesitation which had haunted him all through life, and made him like one under a spell, was upon him now with double force. No one had ever carried political indifferentism farther; it had always been his philosophy ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... and 16 represent two different forms of specula. The one represented by Fig. 15 consists of a tube of glass coated with quicksilver and covered with India rubber, which is thoroughly varnished. That represented by Fig. 18 is made of metal and plated. By using one of these instruments, the condition of the mouth of the womb ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the reader some little insight into the habits of the woodcock, and the mode of snaring them in the forests of Le Morvan, during the month of November. At the close of this month, Dame Nature's barometer, their instinct, far better than the quicksilver, tells them the December rains are close at hand; and that if they remain in their hiding-places in the low grounds, they will be driven out by the approaching deluge. They at length make up their minds to set forth on their ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... ancient inferior planets, and the nearest to the sun, as far as we yet know. (See TRANSIT OF.) Also, a name for quicksilver; the fluid metal so useful in the construction of the marine ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Monsieur le Gros!" he exclaimed, waving his hand. "We meet to-night, I trust. I will show you a new dance—the Dance of Death, I shall call it. I seem calm, but I am on fire with excitement. To-night I shall dance as though quicksilver were in my feet. You must not miss it. ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a quicksilver ball, that was put in the middle of the yard and reflected all the glory of its owner, albeit in a somewhat distorted form. This effort of human ingenuity filled the Bilton children with admiration ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... and solidly paved. The houses were frescoed and carpeted; they were warmed in winter by furnaces, and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by underground pipes from flower-beds. They had baths, and libraries, and dining-halls, fountains of quicksilver and water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Instead of the drunken and gluttonous wassail orgies of their Northern neighbors, the feasts of the Saracens were marked by sobriety. Wine was prohibited. The enchanting ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Yorker, I am well aware, is not "the American." But who is "the American?" I turn to Mr. G.W. Steevens, and find that "the American is a highly electric Anglo-Saxon. His temperament is of quicksilver. There is as much difference in vivacity and emotion between him and an Englishman as there is between an Englishman and an Italian." Well, Mr. Steevens is a keener observer than I; when he wrote this, he had ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... something else. I reckon perhaps he likely was, for he was splendidly educated, with rows on rows of books in his cabin, and a cyclopediar six feet long. The mate said he knew everything in it up to R, not to speak of working lunars in a saucer of quicksilver, and reckonizing ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... exchequer for those islands are so consuming and reducing that account and fund, to such an extent, and with so injurious effect, that it hardly comes in but it must be paid out. Considering that what is carried in exchange for the quicksilver [35] is revenue derived from the same merchandise that was sent, while the receipts from the bulls for the crusade are (as you know) but moderately successful, you are accordingly informed of this in such detail, so that you may understand ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... had come up over an obstructing roof and now flashed down upon them; a ripple of light began to swim across the star-eyes in the inky waters; a finger of quicksilver seemed to be playing over the scarred ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... depositing me at the front door of the house at Hyde Park Gate. I told Clarence so, to his great astonishment, and walked across the road in an opposite direction to home, as though my feet were winged with quicksilver. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Cairo,[FN215] in the days of Salah the Egyptian, who was Chief of the Cairo Police and had forty men under him, a sharper named Ali, for whom the Master of Police used to set snares and think that he had fallen therein; but, when they sought for him, they found that he had fled like zaybak, or quicksilver, wherefore they dubbed him Ali Zaybak or Mercury Ali of Cairo. Now one day, as he sat with his men in his hall, his heart became heavy within him and his breast was straitened. The hall-keeper saw him sitting with frowning ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... of different kinds of tools—a lathe, an anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers, chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone, borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken, without premium, an apprentice, the child of very poor people, to help him. He would have been very glad to put the rest of his money out to interest again; but he had to provide the means ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... open. The plan they pursued, as I have heard, was very simple. Six or seven clerks of the post-office picked out the letters they were ordered to break open, and took the impression of the seals with a ball of quicksilver. Then they put each letter, with the seal downwards, over a glass of hot water, which melted the wax without injuring the paper. It was then opened, the desired matter extracted, and it was sealed again, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... aspect of man and woman was not so much the form of the body as the expression of the face. What was fantastic and weird fascinated him. At Windsor are designs he made for the construction of an imaginary beast with gigantic claws. He once owned a lizard, and made wings for it with quicksilver inside them, so that they quivered when the lizard crawled. He put a dragon's mask over its head, and the result was ghastly. The tale gives us a side light on this extraordinary personage. When you are led to read more about him you will feel the fascination ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... be of help. The wrestler dropped at last; and Alan, leaping back to get his distance, ran upon the others like a bull, roaring as he went. They broke before him like water, turning, and running, and falling one against another in their haste. The sword in his hands flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of our fleeing enemies; and at every flash there came the scream of a man hurt. I was still thinking we were lost, when lo! they were all gone, and Alan was driving them along the deck as ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by the phosphorescence caused by our movements. I watched the luminous waves that broke over my hand, whose mirror-like surface was spotted with silvery rings. One might have said that we were in a bath of quicksilver. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... she said apart to Anne. "I haven't danced since I was sixteen—but I love it. The music seems to run through my veins like quicksilver and I forget everything—everything—except the delight of keeping time to it. There isn't any floor beneath me, or walls about me, or roof over me—I'm floating ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cavern in the steep sides of the mountain, or, at most, opened a horizontal vein of moderate depth. They were equally deficient in the knowledge of the best means of detaching the precious metal from the dross with which it was united, and had no idea of the virtues of quicksilver, - a mineral not rare in Peru, - as an amalgam to effect this decomposition. *22 Their method of smelting the ore was by means of furnaces built in elevated and exposed situations, where they might be fanned by the strong breezes of the mountains. The subjects of the Incas, in short, with ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... of many kinds of goods peculiar to their country, in order to arrange the price at which they can be sold—such as quicksilver, powder, pepper, fine cinnamon, cloves, sugar, iron, copper, tin, brass, silks in textiles of many kinds and in skeins, realgar, [86] camphor, various kinds of crockery, luscious and sweet oranges; and a thousand other goods and trifles quite as many as the Flemings bring. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... were at Tobolsk, on the 12th of September, whence they travelled on sledges, the cold being at 40 degrees Reamur, so that frozen quicksilver could be cut ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... principle of it is as follows: Let the micrometer be placed close to the object-glass, the frame of the micrometer being firmly connected with the object-glass cell, and a reflecting eye-piece being used with no material tube passing over the object-glass: and let a basin of quicksilver be placed below the object-glass, but in no mechanical connection with it, at a distance equal to half the focal length of the object-glass. Such an instrument would at least be free from all uncertainties of twist of plumb-line, viscosity of water, attachment of upper plumb-line microscope, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... excuse—none. And I am astonished how a boy of thy sense could think of such nonsense. Birth, Morton, what the devil does that signify so long as it is birth in another country? A foreign damsel, and a Spanish girl, too, above all others! 'Sdeath, man, as if there was not quicksilver enough in the English women for you, you must make a mercurial exportation from Spain, must you! Why, Morton, Morton, the ladies in that country are proverbial. I tremble at the very thought of it. But as for my consent, I never will give it,—never; and though I threaten ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you are like quicksilver. Well have I named you Allegro! It suits you to perfection. Sit down—anywhere! I really can't attend to you for a few minutes. This is the beastliest thing I've ever read. You shall have it when I've finished. It's all about the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... city. Then we were as near to one another as firmly grasped hands could render us; now sixteen thousand miles effectually divide us; and whilst I sit silently wishing you ages of health and mortal happiness, the mercury of my thermometer stands lazily at freezing point, whereas your own sprightly quicksilver rushes up to 92. All things tell me of our separation. We sailed, as you will find by referring to your pocket-book—for you made a memorandum at the time—on the 14th day of November last from Cork; sighted Madeira—about thirty miles abreast—in eight days, and out of sight of it on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... committing him to nothing, might tend to calm her feelings and by its vaguely reassuring influence help to stave off a crisis for the remainder of their walk. He did not, however, succeed in carrying out the scheme; for at the moment of contact her hand eluded his, as quicksilver glides from the grasp. There was no hint of coquettish hesitation in its withdrawal. She snatched it away as if his touch had burned her; and although she did not at the same time wholly relinquish his arm, that was doubtless to avoid making the situation, on the street as they ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... that's a good deal a matter of temperament," said the American. "A fellow like Nap, for instance, all hustle and quicksilver, might be expected to kick now and then. One makes allowances for a fellow ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... condition (which, however, has been amply proved to exist) that the mean density of the fluid mass is less than the mean density of the earth. Everything else remaining the same, if we substituted an ocean of quicksilver for the actual ocean, this stability would disappear. The fluid would frequently overflow its boundaries, to ravage continents even to the height of the snowy peaks which lose themselves ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... says]—, "Gold Hill" sells at $5,000 per foot, cash down; "Wild Cat" isn't worth ten cents. The country is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, coal, iron, quicksilver, marble, granite, chalk, plaster of Paris (gypsum), thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers, Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpens; coyotes (pronounced ki-yo- ties), poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits. I overheard a gentleman say, the other day, that it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... notice of the icy sidewalks than if they had been strewn with cotton wool. If he followed close to pick her up, Wych Hazel took no notice and gave him no chance. In like manner she did her work with an executive force and gravity which made the clerks into quicksilver and drove one or two old admirers whom she met nearly frantic. They hailed her by her old name; and Hazel got rid of them she hardly knew how, except that it was in a blaze of discomfort for herself. And after that she kept furtive watch; quitting counters and stores, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... through Creation's veins Running, Quicksilver-like eludes your pains; Taking all forms from Mah to Mahi; and They change and ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... round the hat." Lamartine boldly proclaimed that he hated arithmetic, "that negative of every noble thought." He was accordingly driven to very shabby shifts to live. The Cours de Litterature alone brought him in 200,000 francs a year, yet 'the money ran through his hands like quicksilver. His debts are said to have amounted to three millions of francs; yet his style of living remained unchanged. One of his enthusiastic admirers, having stinted himself in subscribing towards the repurchase of the Lamartine estates, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... and many another of his sex, he never for an instant suspected that he spent the greater part of his time carrying out ideas implanted within him by a lady-friend. Florence was ever the imaginative one of those two, a maiden of unexpected fancies and inexplicable conceptions, a mind of quicksilver and mist. There was within her the seedling of a creative artist, and as she sat there, on the ice-cream freezer in Herbert's cellar, with the slowly growing roseate glow of deep preoccupation upon her, she looked strangely sweet and good, and even ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... he not have deceived us? Did you suspect him sufficiently to observe him? Did you examine the ball before it was put into the pistol? May it not have been one of quicksilver or clay? Did you take notice whether the Russian officer really put it into the barrel, or dropped it into his other hand? But supposing that he actually loaded the pistols, what is to convince you that he really took the loaded ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... numbers of men and horses were walking round and round upon the "tortas," tarts or pies, as they are called, consisting of powdered ore mixed with water, so as to form a circular bed of mud a foot deep. To this mud, sulphate of copper, salt, and quicksilver are added, and the men and mules walk round and round in it, mixing it thoroughly together, a process which is kept up, with occasional intervals of rest, for nearly two months. By that time the ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... from the Canon's Yeoman's Tale in Chaucer, that many of those who professed to turn the base metals into gold were held in bad repute as early as the 14th century. The "false chanoun" persuaded the priest, who was his dupe, to send his servant for quicksilver, which he promised to make into "as good silver and as fyn, As ther is any in youre purse or myn"; he then gave the priest a "crosselet," and bid him put it on the fire, and blow the coals. While the priest ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... thrush, Turdus philomelus the songster, but big and dull and dark for his kind, and he had come from—well, behind him, all shimmering and restless in the moonlight, like a fountain-basin full of quicksilver, lay the North Sea; ahead and beneath lay England; and across that sea, three hundred miles, as I count it, at the very least, to the lands of melting snow, he was going when late cold weather had caught him and warned him to come back. And alone? No, sirs, not quite. Ahead, just visible, blurredly—a ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... and so make up the measure," the passengers had all the more for their money, and were incomparably better off as to time than they had ever been before. But after this many years elapsed before "old Quicksilver" made good its ten miles an hour in one unbroken trot to Exeter, and was rivalled by "young Quicksilver" on the road to Bristol, and beaten by the light-winged Hirondelle, that flew from Liverpool to Cheltenham, and troops ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... valued in certain countries of Asia as Eastern cotton and silk goods were in Italy, France, Germany, and England. Certain Western metals and minerals were highly valued in the East, especially arsenic, antimony, quicksilver, tin, copper, and lead. [Footnote: Birdwood, Hand-book to the Indian Collection (Paris Universal Exhibition, 1878), Appendix to catalogue of the British Colonies, pp. 1-110.] The coral of the Mediterranean ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... metallic solutions. Sulphur in certain forms had long been known to exercise a prejudicial effect upon the amalgamation of gold, but this had always been attributed to the combination of the sulphur with the quicksilver used. Now, however, it is certain that the sulphurising of the gold must be taken into account. We must remember that the particles of gold in the stone may be enveloped with a film of auriferous sulphide, by which they are protected from the solvent actions of ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... morning."—"That's so. Hear what happened to Joe?"—"No, I didn't."—"Well, the doctors had ben givin' him one thing another with merc'ry in't, and he walked out down to the Post-Office and back, and when he come home he kind o' felt somethin' hard in his boots. Come to pull 'em off, they found a lump o' quicksilver in both on 'em."—"Sho!"—"Fact; it had shrunk clean down through him with the cold." This rapid power of dramatizing a dry fact, of putting it into flesh and blood, and the instantaneous conception of Joe as a human ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... a great deal of quicksilver in this glass ball, and we can play with it. I'll show you how." And away they went downstairs ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... industry, the value of tin exported in 1908 being L600,000. Tin is also mined in Hai-nan and lead in Yun-nan. Antimony ore is exported from Hu-nan; petroleum is found in the upper Yangtsze region. Quicksilver is obtained in Kwei-chow. Salt is obtained from brine wells in Shan-si and Sze-ch'uen, and by evaporation from sea water. Excellent kaolin abounds in the north-eastern part of Kiang-si, and is largely used ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... that of Europe, with a far more genial sun and fertile soil, and capable of yielding more than double the amount of agricultural products and of sustaining more than twice the number of inhabitants. We have a greater extent of mines than all Europe, especially of coal, iron, gold, silver, and quicksilver. Our coal alone, as stated by Sir William Armstrong (the highest British authority), is 32 times as great as that of the United Kingdom, and our iron ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... theory of coral wells examined (note) The soil of Ceylon generally poor "Patenas," their phenomena obscure Rice lands between the hills Soil of the plains, "Talawas" IV. Metals.—Tin Gold, nickel, cobalt Quicksilver (note) Iron V. Minerals.—Anthracite, plumbago, kaolin, nitre caves List of Ceylon minerals (note) VI. Gems, ancient fame of Rose-coloured quartz (note) Mode of searching for gems Rubies Sapphire, topaz, garnet, and cinnamon stone, cat's-eye, amethyst, moonstone 37, Diamond not found in Ceylon ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... horses, mules, wool, oil, figs, wine, corn, honey, beer, flax, linen, beside mines of copper, silver, gold, quicksilver, tin, lead, and steel. Gaul was so cultivated that there was little waste land, and produced the same fruits and vegetables as at the present day. Its hams and sausages were much prized. Sicily was famous for wheat, Sardinia for ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... little figure, with big blue eyes, and long, black curved lashes and eyebrows, which made her eyes the most beautiful feature in her face. Very soft, fine curly hair surrounded a rather pathetic-looking little face; but her movements were like quicksilver, and though all the little Stuarts were noted for their mischievous ways and daring escapades, Betty ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... men, under the type of a Master who builds labyrinths, and makes images of living creatures, for evil purposes, or for none; and pleases himself and the people with idle jointing of toys, and filling of them with quicksilver motion; and brings his child to foolish, remediless catastrophe, in fancying his father's work as good, and strong, and fit to bear sunlight, as if it had been God's work. So, again, they represent the foresight and kindly zeal of men by a most rueful figure of one chained ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... girl!" he thought. "Beauty and gift and a divine despair. Everything ready to make the great artist. And then the heart of a woman, which is like quicksilver, to reckon with. I spoke bravely about her forgetting, but I have doubts. Sometimes I wonder if it be possible for a person with a fine and generous nature to become a really great artist. Perhaps it is necessary to have great egotism and selfishness for the arts' development. I ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... inviting him to settle in his states. They add that Lulli gladly accepted the invitation, and had apartments assigned for his use in the Tower of London, where he refined much gold; superintended the coinage of "rose-nobles," and made gold out of iron, quicksilver, lead, and pewter, to the amount of six millions. The writers in the Biographie Universelle, an excellent authority in general, deny that Raymond was ever in England, and say, that in all these stories of his wondrous powers ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... near the river from which it derives its name, 136 m. E. of the town of Ekaterinoslav. It owed its origin in the latter half of the 17th century to the discovery of salt-springs, and now produces coal, salt, alabaster and quicksilver, and manufactures ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... merchants of Bhot or Thibet brought for sale to Kathmandu paper, coarse woollen cloths, horses, Shawl goats, common goats, sheep, Chaury cattle, chauries, (changwari or chaungri,) musk, salt, sal ammoniac, hurtal or yellow arsenic, borax, quicksilver from China, gold-dust, silver, preserved fruits, such as almonds, walnuts, raisins, and dates, and drugs, such as Indian madder or manjit, chirata, and charas, or extract of hemp. Formerly the Lamas of Degarchi (Teeshoo) and Lassa sent much bullion to the mint at ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... wall without end. It seemed to him that he had become light and ethereal; that it was he that was in motion; that he was being driven with inconceivable velocity through unending solidness. The wind was no longer air in motion. It had become substantial as water or quicksilver. He had a feeling that he could reach into it and tear it out in chunks as one might do with the meat in the carcass of a steer; that he could seize hold of the wind and hang on to it as a man might hang on to the face ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... weaver, would bring half the chivalry in England round us, to break lances, vow vows, display love-liveries, and I know not what follies besides.—Think you such gallants, with the blood flying through their veins like quicksilver, would much mind my bidding ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... squinance with a stitch in your side and the wolf in your stomach truss you, the bloody flux seize upon you, the cursed sharp inflammations of wild-fire, as slender and thin as cow's hair strengthened with quicksilver, enter into your fundament, and, like those of Sodom and Gomorrah, may you fall into sulphur, fire, and bottomless pits, in case you do not firmly believe all that I shall relate unto you ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Mr. Merryweather. "You all have quicksilver in your heels, I believe. Seven and Twelve! Come ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... see: Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think Thou call'st for more, And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink; And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie A verier ghost than I. What I will say, I will not tell thee now, Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent, I'd rather thou should'st painfully repent, Than by my threatenings rest ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... been Attorney-General. But this was not satisfactory to the agents of the New Idria Company, as Mr. McCrary had on one occasion expressed a favorable opinion on the claim of William McGarrahan to the quicksilver mine of which the New Idria had obtained possession. So a pressure was brought to bear upon the President, the result of which was the transposition of Devens and McCrary. The soldier was made Attorney-General, and the country lawyer, ignorant of military ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... stationed quietly a few paces in the rear of the line of guns. I saw his eye going watchfully from one point to another of his charge; his head making quick little turns to right and left to see if all were doing properly; the horse a statue, the man alive as quicksilver, though nothing of him moved but his head. I was sure, very sure, that he would not see me. He was intent on his duty; spectators or the whole world looking on were nothing to him. He would not even perhaps ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... eat them. And then I felt altogether the force of the maxim of St. Ambrose, "Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum;"—I had a great dislike of paper logic. For myself, it was not logic that carried me on; as well might one say that the quicksilver in the barometer changes the weather. It is the concrete being that reasons; pass a number of years, and I find my mind in a new place; how? the whole man moves; paper logic is but the record of it. All the logic ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... to see one half of the broad expanse of the Pacific, which glistened with the brightness of quicksilver or ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... pesh—pish—posh—poosh—push—pud—pod—por—with the wind all out and the powder compressed hard down by the wad. Next a little cylindrical shovel full of shot was extracted from the belt, whose spring closed as the measure was drawn out, and the shot trickled gently into the barrel, glistening in the moonlight like globules of quicksilver. Another wad was rammed down; the pan opened and found full of the black grains, and the ramrod replaced in its loops behind the barrel, the gun being stood in the corner beside the bed ready for emergencies in ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... my secure hour thy uncle stole, With juice of cursed Hebenon in a vial, And in the porches of my ear did pour The leperous distilment; whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man That swift as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body, And with a sudden vigour it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine; And a most instant tetter bark'd about, Most lazar-like, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... not long but Perkin, who was made of quicksilver, which is hard to hold or imprison, began to stir. For, deceiving his keepers, he took him to his heels, and made speed to the sea-coasts. But presently all corners were laid for him, and such ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... trembled over the purple hills. Below, the river quivered like quicksilver. In the air was the nutty odor of dried grasses, the clear tang of coming frosts crystal to the taste as water; and if one listened, almost listened to the silence, one could hear above the lapping of the tide the far echo of the cataract. To Cartier the scene might have been ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... man who was 'salivated' in a quicksilver mine, and who, as a result, turned into a living barometer. If his head was clear and his feet were heavy, it was a sure sign of rain in Summer or frost in Winter. If, on the contrary, he seemed depressed mentally and yearned for exercise, ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... fell ill, took no precautions, and died,—in his fiftieth year. A marvelous mausoleum was built for him: a palace, with a mountain heaped on top, and the floor of it a map of China, with the waters done in quicksilver. Whether his evil deeds were interred with his bones, who can say?—certainly his living wives were, and the thousands of living workmen who had built the mausoleum. Ts'innish doings, not Chinese. In the Book of Odes, Confucius preserved a Ts'in ballad mourning over men so ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... too! He never lets it be seen that he is driving them. He carries a little switch, rather, it would appear, for form's sake; for he seldom does more with it than tickle the gravely striding posteriors of the quaint little people. He is wise as he is kind, for he knows that he is driving quicksilver. The least undue coercion, the least sudden start, and they will be off like spilled marbles, in eleven different directions. Sometimes occasion arises for prompt action: when the poet of the family dreams he discerns the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... mystery to the world.' Personally, I'm a bit of a fatalist regarding love. I think hearts are mated when they're fashioned, and when they get together you can no more keep them apart than you keep two drops of quicksilver from running into each other when they touch. It's as good a theory as any, ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... adventures—not in the least understanding, in spite of their bright wits, what the burdens, fortunes, adventures might mean. The two sisters' enthusiasm was just kept within bounds by two drags on its quicksilver quality. These laggard spirits, Dora and May, weighed upon their more enterprising companions. Neither could Annie and Rose quite shut their eyes to the increase of wrinkles on their father's face, and to their mother's ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... roused himself a little, and said, without opening his eyes: "Hi yo, Quicksilver, away." And ...
— The Bramble Bush • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of them he would dash against and push out of their places; others he would burn up and consume to ashes: and others again he would split into fritters, and their fragments would instantly take a globular form, like spilled quicksilver, and become satellites to whatever other worlds they should happen to meet with in their career. In short, the whole seemed an epitome of the creation, past, present, and future; and all that passes among the stars during one thousand ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... a touch of vexation in his voice, but Theos heeded it not. His heart gave a great bound against his ribs as though pricked by a fire-tipped arrow,—something swift and ardent stirred in his blood like the flowing of quicksilver, . . the picture of the dusky-eyed, witchingly beautiful woman he had seen that morning in her gold-adorned ship, seemed to float between him and the light,—her face shone out like a growing glory-flower in the tangled wilderness of his thoughts, and his lips trembled a little ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... say, let us understand our terms. I suppose, there are few of the keywords of the New Testament which have lost more of their radiance, like quicksilver, by exposure in the air during the centuries than that great word Grace, which is always on the lips of this Apostle, and to him had music in its sound, and which to us is a piece of dead doctrine, associated with certain high Calvinistic theories which we enlightened people have long ago grown ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... sir," said Gluck at length, after watching the water spreading in long quicksilver-like streams over the floor for a quarter of an hour; ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Siberia," one of the boat-pullers said. "They put you into the salt-mines and work you till you die. Never see daylight again. Why, I've heard tell of one fellow that was chained to his mate, and that mate died. And they were both chained together! And if they send you to the quicksilver mines you get salivated. I'd rather ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... Prepare the Battery Fluid by mixing twelve parts, by measure, of water with one part of sulphuric acid, (good commercial acid is pure enough), sufficient to fill the cell two-thirds or three-fourths full, and place in it about one-third of an ounce of quicksilver. ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... raisins, wine of inferior quality, dates, liquorice, Seville oil, grain, Castile soap, wax, iron, wool, goat skins, saffron, and quicksilver; the most of these were exported to Bruges. The chief imports of Spain were Flemish woollen cloth and linen. This account, however, of the commerce of Spain, does not appear to include Barcelona. The exports of Portugal were wine, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... Great Gawd!" he repeated over and over. There was a flickering look about the eyes that made Brent catch his breath. It seemed for just a passing second that they had been converted into little balls of trembling red quicksilver; that was the only thing to which he could liken those eyes just then—red quicksilver. But this passed so quickly that it might have been a reflection from the lamp. At any rate, Dale was continuing: "Why, Brent, I can't go to jail! Nor I can't run away! Miss ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... his custom always in the afternoon, his treasonous brother stole upon him in his sleep and poured the juice of poisonous henbane into his ears, which has such an antipathy to the life of man that, swift as quicksilver, it courses through all the veins of the body, baking up the blood and spreading a crust-like leprosy all over the skin. Thus sleeping, by a brother's hand he was cut off at once from his crown, his queen, and his life; and he adjured Hamlet, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... go, and the breeze fell from fresh to light, until at last, shrouded in a thick fog, one Sunday morning, when there was no air at all, only a flat calm, the sea as smooth as a glass mirror with the quicksilver clouded. ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... table and followed up the sound. Physically, I merely walked around the bungalow and approached the edge of the jungle at a point where we had erected a small outhouse a day or two before. But this two hundred feet might just as well have been a single step through quicksilver, hand in hand with Alice, for it took me from a world of hyoids and syrinxes, of vials and lenses and clean-smelling xylol, to the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... within us—the tiger, the ape, the peacock, the ass, the goose, the sheep the hyena, and all the rest. And we have been letting these animals rule us. Even our Intellect is erratic, unstable, and like the quicksilver to which the ancient occultists compared it, shifting and uncertain. If you will look around you you will see that those men and women in the world who have really accomplished anything worth while have trained their minds to obedience. They have asserted the Will ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... thermometers, though of various sizes, are in general much smaller than these; the tube too is hermetically closed, and the air excluded from it. The fluid most generally used in thermometers is mercury, commonly called quicksilver, the dilatations and contractions of which correspond more exactly to the additions, and subtractions, of caloric, than those of ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... compare with these here," Mr. Opp announced, out of the depths of his wide experience. "Just look at the sunshine pouring forth around the point of the island. It spills through the trees and leaks out over the water just like quicksilver. Now, that's a good thought! It's perfectly astounding, you might say surprising, how easy thoughts come to me. I ought to been a writer; lots of folks have said so. Why, there ain't a day of my life that I don't get a ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... felt that must be the true solution of it all!" cried uncle Phaeton, squirming about pretty much as one might into whose veins had been injected quicksilver in place of ordinary blood. "The outlet! Where the surplus waters drain ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... be digested, like food, but to pass directly from the stomach into the blood-vessels, and dilute and temper the blood, rendering it more fit to answer the great purpose of sustaining life and health. Now, there is nothing that can do this but water. Alcohol cannot do it, nor can turpentine, oil, quicksilver, melted lead, or any ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... a bore it is to lose the one bit of quicksilver in the house!' said he, yawning. 'I shall only drag on my existence ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... There could, and ought to, blow through the song that cold winter air, that fresh Northern wind which characterizes so much both the climate and the temperament of the North. But neither should the storm howl till the very quicksilver froze and all the more tender emotions of the breast ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... as quiet as Dubbs himself during school hours. Even Henderson and such mercurial spirits were awed into silence and sobriety. You would hardly have known that in that quarter of the room there was a form at all. Quicksilver itself would have lost its volatility ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... attributes do not belong exclusively to the solid and the liquid states of matter can be seen at once by observing the different reactions of certain liquids to a solid surface which they touch. One need only recall the difference between water and quicksilver. If water runs over a surface it leaves a trail; quicksilver does not. Water clings to the side of a vessel; again, quicksilver does not. A well-known consequence of this difference is that in a narrow tube the surface of the liquid - the so-called meniscus ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... continued, but in the afternoon and at night they had mixed something heavy, like a stone ball, into his drinking-cup, and waves of warmth had flowed to the toes of his healthy foot from the cup. Thoughts chased one another swiftly, like tiny quicksilver balls through some corner of his brain, and while he lay bathed in perspiration, and his eyelids closed of their own accord, not in sleep but in unconsciousness, he had been pursued ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... had James spooted this bloody story, that notwithstanding my sleepiness, his words whiles dirled through my marrow like quicksilver, and set all my flesh a grueing. In the middle of it, he was himself so worked up, that twice he pulled his Kilmarnock from his head, silk-napkin, bandage and all, and threw them down with a thump on the table, which once wellnigh capsized ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... dropped in great splashes from pine and palm; dew powdered the sparkle-berry bushes and lay like a tiny lake of quicksilver in the hollow of every broad palmetto frond; and all around them earth and grass and shrub exhaled the scented freshness ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... flowers, above all verbena and valerian, finally, various parts of the body of the turtle-dove and the goat. Other leeches consider that when the liver is diseased it is necessary to cure it with just the opposite remedies, and the opponent of Peneter-Deva being Sebek, [Planet Mercury] to give quicksilver, emerald, and agate, hazel-wood and coltsfoot, also parts of the body of a toad and ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... said he, 'for the Chassediane—you are aware, Richie, poor Jorian is lost to her?—he has fallen at her quicksilver feet. She is now in London. Half the poor fellow's income expended in bouquets! Her portrait, in the character of the widow Lefourbe, has become a part of his dressing apparatus; he shaves fronting her playbill. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... may their bones inter In shrouds of neat post-obit paper; While, for their beirs, we've quicksilver, That, fast as heart can wish, will caper. For aldermen we've dials true, That tell no hour but that of dinner; For courtly parsons sermons new. That suit alike both saint and sinner. Who'll buy? ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... am of Pliny's opinion, I think he was begot by the wind; he runs as if he were ballass'd with quicksilver. ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... the shrieking wind, when the black clouds had been flying over his head, and the roar of the angry sea had filled the air with thunder. And these things had stirred him—one of nature's sons—in many ways. Yet none of them had sent the warm blood coursing through his veins like quicksilver, or had stolen through his senses with such sweet heart-stirring impetuosity as did the presence of this tall, fair girl, walking serenely by his side in thoughtful silence. Once, when too near the edge of the cliff, she put her ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... him; a gilder that hath his brains perished with quicksilver is not more cold in the liver. The great barriers moulted not more feathers, than he hath shed hairs, by the confession of his doctor. An Irish gamester that will play himself naked, and then wage all ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... intensely hot during part of my stay at Paris, the quicksilver being occasionally at 26 deg. Reaumur, equal to 90 deg. of Fahrenheit's scale, and the sky without a cloud, there not being, in general, such a cloud of smoke over Paris as generally obscures the atmosphere of London. Yet, I believe, the best accounts allow that London ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... first class and Mrs. Sykes to the second. Its brilliant blue skies, and sunshine, and warmth, the lovely flowers, the good opera and better restaurants, the infectious gayety of the people, as light about the heart as the heels, with enough Gallic quicksilver in their veins to give them a genius for being and looking happy, and, lastly, the warmth of his reception, and a hospitality as refined as limitless, delighted this most amiable of baronets. He ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... lifted into the upper end by manual labour; when stiff it must be stirred or shovelled, and a stream of water does the rest. The greater gravity of the gold causes it to be arrested by the riffles. Instead of the bars grooves may be cut and filled with quicksilver. When the sludge is very rich, rough cloths rubbed with mercury, or even sheepskins, the lineal descendants of the Golden Fleece, may be used, 'Broad Tom,' alias the 'Victoria Jenny Lind,' is made about half the length of its long ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... make me hot!" Anstice threw himself back into his corner and drew a long breath. "It's always a mystery to me how people who live in hot climates are so beastly energetic! They seem to have quicksilver in their veins, ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Barometer. The two travellers greet each other, not exactly as old acquaintances, but each has heard very frequently about the other, and their relatives have been often associated. "We have a good deal in common," says the Barometer. "Of the same blood, as we may say; quicksilver is thicker than water." "Yes," says the little Fahrenheit, "and we are both of the same mercurial temperament." While their columns are dancing up and down with laughter at this somewhat tepid ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... waist-coat chortled; and she laughed. This dragon didn't spout flame but gentle ridicule, which was elusive as quicksilver slipping ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... to have a hurricane, I fear, Captain. Just see how the quicksilver has dropped in the barometer, and we are right upon this accursed island with its coral reefs. God have mercy on us or we ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... painful before, not even in his passage of arms with Albert. He came out of the encounter with a swollen lip and a feeling that one of his ribs was broken, and he had not had the pleasure of landing a single blow upon his slippery antagonist, who flowed about the room like quicksilver. But he had not flinched, and the statement of Francis, as they shook hands, that he had "done varry well," was as balm. Boxing is one of the few sports where the loser can feel the same thrill of triumph as the winner. There is no satisfaction equal to that which comes when one has forced oneself ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... copper mining is rapidly becoming of great importance. A continuous copper belt, the largest yet discovered in the world, exists under her soil, and while a comparatively small depth has been so far attained, the profit has been considerable. One of the largest quicksilver mines in the world is at New Almaden. The value of the output of the borax mines is over a million dollars a year. There were mined in California in 1907 over fifty different materials, most of them at a value of several thousand dollars a year, ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... a second it stood, then began swiftly to change, melting with quicksilver quickness from one outline into another as square and triangle and spheres changed places. Their shiftings were like the transformations one sees within a kaleidoscope. And in each vanishing form was the suggestion of unfamiliar harmonies, of a subtle, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... even mercury; with this difference, that the atmosphere formed in the receiver by alkohol only supports the attached barometer about one inch in winter, and about four or five inches in summer; that formed by water, in the same situation, raises the mercury only a few lines, and that by quicksilver but a few fractions of a line. There is therefore less fluid evaporated from alkohol than from ether, less from water than from alkohol, and still less from mercury than from either; consequently there is less caloric ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... and wheels, and grooved blocks, The elements of what will stand the shocks Of wave and wind and time.—Upon the table More knacks and quips there be than I am able 55 To catalogize in this verse of mine:— A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine, But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink When at their subterranean toil they swink, Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who 60 Reply to them in lava—cry halloo! And call out to the cities o'er their head,— Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead, Crash through the chinks of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... insensibly such corruption creeps in to a community. You cannot embody an idea in a form or in an external association without immediately dragging it down, and running the risk of degradation. It is just like a drop of quicksilver which you cannot expose to the air but instantaneously its brightness is dimmed by the scum that forms on its surface. A church as an outward institution is exposed to all the dangers to which other institutions are exposed. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Quicksilver is abundant from extensive veins of cinnabar in the province of Mancha. In Galicia tin has been produced from very early times. Iron ore is very abundant, and silver mines, for many centuries abandoned, are now again being reworked. Gold was at one period discovered in large quantities, ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... with black, velvety hair. Putting its tail out of the water, it collects much air in the interstices of the velvet. It then descends, when all this air, drawn down beneath the surface, collects into a single bubble, covering its tail and breathing holes like a coat of quicksilver. This supply the spider uses up when at work below, until it dwindles to a single speck, when it once more ascends and collects a fresh store. The writer has seen one of these spiders spin so many webs ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... came bustling in from his laboratory a few minutes later, half frozen, but burning with enthusiasm over some experiments he was making with quicksilver, he brought his coffee to my warm corner, and I at once simulated the deepest interest in his account of his morning's work—though I confess I have never taken any great interest in science, and from what he seemed to expect the quicksilver to do I did not feel altogether ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... mutability, inconstancy; versatility, mobility; instability, unstable equilibrium; vacillation &c. (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... over his horse's head and started across, leading his beast. The animal snorted as he felt the foot-hold giving way beneath him, but Nimrod pulled him along. It was impossible to stand still. It would have been as easy for quicksilver to remain at the top of an incline. Amid rattling stones and sliding earth they landed on the firm bank beyond, fully ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... many persons of that trade, by fire and the smoke of quicksilver, had lost their sight, and that others of them by working in that trade became so crazed and infirm that they were disabled to subsist but of relief from others; and that divers of the said city, compassionating the condition ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... and to one of these the witch and her faithful Harold repaired. A cloud gives quite reasonable support to magic people, and most witches and wizards have discovered the delight of paddling knee-deep about those quicksilver continents. They wander along shining and changing valleys under a most ardent sky; they climb the purple thunderclouds, or launch the first snowflake of a blizzard; they spring from pink stepping-stone to pink stepping-stone of clouds each no bigger than a baby's hand, across ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... another sits by a cold hearth. But in the sovereign commune all will be centralised and sensitive. When jealousy springs up, when (let us say) the commune of Poole has overreached the commune of Dorchester, irritation will run like quicksilver throughout the body politic; each man in Dorchester will have to suffer directly in his diet and his dress; even the secretary, who drafts the official correspondence, will sit down to his task embittered, as a man who has dined ill and may expect to dine ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in England great plenty of quicksilver, antimony, sulphur, black lead, and orpiment red and yellow. We have also the finest alum (wherein the diligence of one of the greatest favourers of the commonwealth of England of a subject[1] hath been of late egregriously abused, and even almost with barbarous incivility) ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... toward him. He seemed to be drawing her soul to his unconsciously. Tingling in every nerve, athrob with an emotion new and inexplicable, she drew a long slow breath and turned her head away. A hot shame ran like quicksilver through her veins. She whipped herself with her own scorn. Was she the kind of girl that gave her love to a man ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... England, and raised, as if by magic, the enthusiasm of the English; how one fortune after another has been swallowed up in the dark, deep gulf of speculation; how expectations have been disappointed; and how the great cause of this is the scarcity of quicksilver, which has been paid at the rate of one hundred and fifty dollars per quintal in real cash, when the same quantity was given at credit by the Spanish government for fifty dollars; how heaps of silver lie abandoned, because the expense of acquiring quicksilver ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... spirit is Love. The drive of spirit is ever upward towards progress, aspiration, and unity. If we take a drop of quicksilver and separate it into smaller particles, as soon as ever the conditions allow, these smaller globules will amalgamate themselves with the larger body from which they have been temporarily divorced. We can almost imagine we hear them utter a fervent "thank goodness" as they reach ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt |
