"Tonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other professions which call for a fiercer display of energy, but for the man with a private income who has loitered through life at his own pace, a little school-mastering is brisk enough to be a wonderful tonic. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... eternal youth, as they fill the room with perfume, tenderness, love, optimism, and hope in immortality. Coffee suggests taverns, cafes, sailing vessels, yachts, boarding-houses-by-the-river-side, and pessimism. Tea suggests optimism. Coffee is a tonic; tea, a comfort. Coffee is prose; tea is poetry. Whoever thinks of taking coffee into a sick-room? Who doesn't think of taking in the comforting cup of tea? Can the most vivid imagination picture the angels (above the stars) drinking coffee? No. Yet, if I were to show ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... and helps to weave the strands of organization into a more compact fabric. The toning energies of the volitive faculties are better than quinine to fortify the system against miasma or malaria, and they co-operate with all tonic remedies in sustaining organic action. Fig. 91 is a portrait of Prof. Tyndall, the eminent chemist, whose likeness indicates volitive innervation, showing great strength of character and of constitution; he is an earnest, thorough, and intense mental toiler; ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... mask and exposes the real man. No stimulus, perhaps more mercifully and effectually breaks the surface tension of consciousness, thereby conditioning the mind for a stronger forward movement, than that of humor. It is the one universal dispensary for human kind: a medicine for the poor, a tonic for the rich, a recreation for the fatigued and a beneficient check to the strenuous. It acts as a shield to the reformer, as an entering wedge to the recluse and as a decoy for ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... her head to the dark heaven, the deep guttural note of the sea in her ears, chanted low, "Some pain is tonic.... Though to-night we are together, one and undivided—for the last time, the last time," she whispered, "yet I cannot ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... dry with towels and give him a run on grass. Big dogs must be washed in a yard, but you can put a little one in the tub indoors. All dogs are better for something to eat after a bath. To swimmers a plunge in a pond or river is good exercise and a tonic; but dogs should not ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Sir Brian Strange, R.A., if you please, Miss Marden. Sir Brian Strange, R.A., writes: "Your Sanogene has proved a most excellent tonic. After completing the third acre of my Academy picture, 'The Mayor and Corporation of Pudsey,' I was completely exhausted, but one bottle of Sanogene revived me, and I finished the remaining seven acres at ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... the tree-planters, the day of the celebration at Solaris, proved exceptionally fine! No one could resist the exhilarating tonic of such a perfect day! A day made more glorious by a cloudless expanse of blue sky, a flood of golden sunlight, and breezes, soft as the balmy breath of gentle spring ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... drink water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wine agreeable to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; every other kind of wine would be bad for her. Never allow her to drink water alone; if you do, you ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... fixed etiquette of the hills, wiped the mouth of the bottle on the palm of her hand, then, kneeling once more on the stones, she lifted the stranger's head in her supporting arm, and pressed the flask to his lips. After that, she chafed the wrist which was not hurt, and once more administered the tonic. Finally, the man's lids fluttered, and his lips moved. Then, he opened his eyes. He opened them waveringly, and seemed on the point of closing them again, when he became conscious of a curved cheek, suddenly coloring to a deep flush, a few inches from his own. He saw in the same ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the time of transition to womanhood, and its results are then different, though much graver. In cases of this kind, lessening the mental strain is almost always followed by a cessation of the movements; change of air, country amusements, and a generally tonic treatment perfect the cure, and dancing and gymnastics overcome the remains ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... absence (with a relative in the Foot Guards) of Millers. And more needles were missing than it could be regarded as quite wholesome for a patient of such tender years either to apply externally or to take as a tonic. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... sheet of paper and wrote home. "I was so discontented—such a peevish wretch, this morning, but I have had a tonic, and now I am so unspeakably satisfied with my lot in life that I believe I am the happiest girl in England to-night. I would not change places with a hundred old Aunt Pennys, only I know, alas! that I am not half good enough to be a nurse. Yet I would rather be a nurse ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Matt Fay—that he's terrific. He represents a terrific movement, doesn't he? and one we can't ignore. When I say terrific I don't mean that I'm afraid of it. I'm not. It seems to me too strengthening to be afraid of. With all you can say against it, it strikes me as a tonic in our rather flaccid life, like iron in the blood. I've sympathy with it, too, to some extent; I've sympathy with him. You know, I do belong to the people. I'm glad we know him, and that in a way we've a right to get near to him. It puts us in touch with ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... He paused and sat down, motioning me to do the same. Then, after taking a tablespoonful of the blood-and-iron tonic in a bottle beside Him, He bade me be quick with my questions as He ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... things, as I have said, had acted like a tonic on the colonel, bracing him up to renewed efforts, and reacting on his guests, who in return did their best to make the breakfast a ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... something better still; between satisfaction in harmony and craving for it. The life whose rhythm is that of happiness actual and happiness ideal, alternating for ever, for ever pressing one another into being, as the parts of a fugue, the dominant and the tonic. Being, becoming; becoming, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... and the tonic in being absent from your home and country are administered by difference. In gulping that three thousand miles the taste is austere, but the stimulus is wholesome. We learn to appreciate, but also to correct, the fare we have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... It was a mere shadow, something vague and dark and uncertain in outline. But it existed, and would assume recognizable shape when an active imagination had fitted some shreds of proof to that which was yet without form and void. At that crisis, contradiction was a tonic. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... is O.K., and that you are still smiling. Thank God for that. Whatever happens, still keep smiling. The greatest tonic out here is to know the girls are working so hard, and all the time willingly and smilingly. We know you all miss the boys as they do you, and to read that our friends at home are enjoying themselves is enjoyment to us. We are out to have the harder tasks, and we want you all at home to have ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... of vindictive sniping and shelling, this little episode came as an invigorating tonic, and a welcome relief to the daily monotony of antagonism. It did not lessen our ardour or determination; but just put a little human punctuation mark in our lives of cold and humid hate. Just on the right day, too—Christmas Eve! ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... in command, however, looked over the flash and glitter of the first success, to the sterner realities beyond; and they drew the bands of discipline only tighter—and administered the wholesome tonic of regular drill—the nearer they saw the approach ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... rocky bedchamber. The fire had died out completely, there was frost on the stones. To build up another fire and to bathe my face in the ice-water of the brook were my first tasks. The air was sweet; it seemed to freeze as I breathed, and was a bracing tonic. I was tingling all over, and as hungry as ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... were frightful. It was apprehended at one time that there would be very few fat little girls, and no fat little boys at all, left in the kingdom. And what made matters worse, at that time the Giant commenced taking a tonic to increase ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... and garlic, failed him suddenly, received an unexpected and pleasurable stimulus from the New England rum, which was the basis of the Jones Bitters? Had not the baker, tremulous from excessive aguardiente, been soothed and sustained by the invisible morphia, judiciously hidden in Blogg's Nerve Tonic? Nor had the wily Ezekiel forgotten the weaker sex in their maiden and maternal requirements. Unguents, that made silken their black but somewhat coarsely fibrous tresses, opened charming possibilities ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... common occurence to find a mother worrying over her child's cold, dosing it with cod liver oil or some other unnecessary tonic, rubbing it with camphorated oil or plastering it over with certain useless patent plasters, dressing it with extra pieces of flannel on its chest and extra clothes pinned snugly around it, then shutting it up in a warm, stuffy, unsanitary, ill-smelling room, in order to keep it ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... Chinaman discovers a fossil bed he guards it zealously for it represents an actual gold mine to him. The bones are ground into a fine powder, mixed with an acid, and a phosphate obtained which in reality has a certain value as a tonic. When a considerable amount of faith and Chinese superstition is added its efficacy ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... evergreen breathing into the night. The deep forest seemed to tremble with the presence of an invisible and mysterious life—life that was still, yet wide-awake, breathing, watchful, drinking in the rejuvenating tonic of the air which had so quietly followed thunder and lightning and the roar of wind and rain. And the moon, like a queen who had so ordered these things, looked down in a mighty triumph. Her radiance, without dust ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... might have taken cold during the wet chill of the previous night. But Emily declared she was very well indeed; that the very sight of the sunlit sea through the dining-room windows had acted like a tonic. ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... expectoration. On the 4th of June, Dr. Darwin,[4] was called to her. I have not heard what was then done for her, but, between the 15th of June, and 25th of July, the Doctor, at his different visits, gave her various medicines of the deobstruent, tonic, antispasmodic, diuretic, and ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... for a week or two," he promised. "We must make the little creature believe American air is the best tonic in ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... She was a sea-child, living inland for the first time, and there came upon her a great yearning for the sight and sound of moving waters. She sniffed the land-breeze, and found it sweet but insipid in her nostrils after the tonic freshness of the sea-air. She heard the voice of her beloved in the sough of the wind among the trees, and it made her inexpressibly melancholy. Her energy began to ebb. She did not care to move about much, but would sit silently sewing by the hour together, outwardly calm, inwardly ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... ago was curiously mingled now with an enervating tenderness. He was still confident of himself, but he became suddenly conscious that these women were necessary to his happiness and his success, that his nature demanded the constant daily tonic of their love and service. He understood now the primal necessity of woman, not as an individual, but as an incentive and an appendage to the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... out from its dizzy sides into the lake of air between them upon a platform, used for an aerial elevator. Chapman clung nervously to me, and complained of a light nausea and dread. I felt only a tonic exhilaration, and as we slowly sank through the shaft of air, crossed by sunlight for some distance, and then passed into the cooler shadows of its deeper parts, where the yet level sun failed to penetrate, I cried aloud with delight, and the abyss around us shouted its ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... abandoned the principal part of the superfluous remnant, to the enjoyment of additional comfort and the increase of self-complacency. As a final violation of my reserve be it proclaimed that to the super-excellence of the air of the Island, to the tonic of the sea, and to the graciousness of his Majesty the Sun—in whose radiance have I gloried—do I owe, perhaps, salvation from that which tributary friends in their meed ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... trade unionism has already established a minimum wage limit for thousands of women who are receiving the protection and discipline of trade organization and responding to the tonic of self-help. Low wages will doubtless in time be modified by Minimum Wage Boards representing the government's stake in industry, such as have been in successful operation for many years in certain British colonies and are now being instituted in England itself. As yet ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... matter to find shelter. All the members of the little group were wet and cold, and a bitter wind with snow began to whistle once more across the plain. But every one strove to be cheerful and the relief that their escape had brought was still a tonic to their spirits. Yet they were not without comment ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and blame your "make" if you "go down," though your play may have been exceptionally good and the loss even occasioned by wrong information which he himself gave you. Also, to be continually found fault with makes you play your worst; whereas appreciation of good judgment on your part acts as a tonic and you play seemingly ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... how patiently and earnestly DeLancey is trying to teach us! If it were any one but he, we might learn faster. But he sort of figures as a horrible example. It's like a battered and yellowed wreck advocating cigarettes, or a bald-headed barber pushing his own hair tonic. ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... would recommend it for children, to whom a stronger wine is generally distasteful; but Port is generally prescribed as a tonic for adults. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... horses, however, we came across a "patch" of Golden Seal. This is a graceful plant, each one having a single calyx enclosing the seeds, somewhat in the shape of a button or seal of a bright yellow color; hence its name. "The root of this plant," said he, "is an excellent alterative and tonic." We dug up the yellow roots with zest; but being by this time very hungry, I began to fear that we might come across a "patch" of something else that might still longer delay our return. But he seemed satisfied with his success, and we found our horses all right. "Old Nell" had, however, loosed ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... "my doctor has recommended a tonic, and I shouldn't wonder if a spice of information might be a mental stimulant. Anyhow, I intend to try it, and ask questions of ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... administer a tonic to the Conference in Milan," he said airily. "Its deliberations upon international action for the suppression of political crime don't seem to get anywhere. England lags. This country is absurd with its sentimental regard for ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... to that kind of a hair-raising," objected the Nebraskan's roommate, who was from Boston. "I think that Mary has invented a hair tonic and is going to try it on us before she has ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... dehumanised by war; the kindliness and tenderness of their natures are unspoiled by all their daily traffic in horror. But they have won their souls; and when the days of peace return these men will take with them to the civilian life a tonic strength and nobleness which will arrest and extirpate the decadence of society with the saving salt of valour ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... taking one's home on trek is (we can argue) a stirring tonic, a kind of private rehearsal of the Last Judgment, when the sheep shall be divided from the shoats. What could be a more convincing reminder of the instability of man's affairs than the harrowing upheaval of our cherished properties? Those dark angels, the moving ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... tonic which you will have made up," he explained, picking up his gloves and hat and moving toward the door; "the other is a diet which you are to observe. As I told her just now, she must remain in bed and see no one but her immediate family; you must see ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... the Canadians call spice-berry, she showed them was good to eat, and she would crush the leaves, draw forth their fine aromatic flavour in her hands, and then inhale their fragrance with delight. She made an infusion of the leaves, and drank it as a tonic. The inner bark of the wild black cherry, she said was good to cure ague and fever. The root of the dulcamara, or bitter-sweet, she scraped down and boiled in the deer-fat, or the fat of any other animal, and made an ointment that possessed very healing qualities, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... include giving him his bath by sheer physical force. He was deft, calm, amenable. He led Tembarom down the corridor to the bath-room, revealed to him stores of sumptuous bath-robes and towels, hot- and cold-water faucets, sprays, and tonic essences. He forgot nothing and, having prepared all, mutely vanished, and returned to the bedroom to wait—and gaze in troubled wonder at the speckled tweed cutaway. There was an appalling possibility—he was aware that he was entirely ignorant of American customs—that ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... need of a scolding occasionally, it acts as a tonic. I should rather like to be braced up myself for ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... impossible hull, knowing full well—poor misguided heroes—that we were only fashioning a death trap! There could be no doubt about it. The free information bureau was unanimous. It was all very pathetic. Nothing but the tonic of an habitual morning swim in the clear cold river kept us game in the face ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... American literature that shows much advance beyond the merely conventional and scholastic,—little, I mean, in which one gets a whiff of the strong, unbreathed air of mountain or prairie, or a taste of rude, new power that is like the tonic of the sea. Thoreau occupies a niche by himself. Thoreau was not a great personality, yet his writings have a strong characteristic flavor. He is anti-scorbutic, like leeks and onions. He has reference, also, to the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... notion to do it." Pete's laugh was a tonic in itself. "Here you and your horse are both down, and you can't stand on one of your feet. I'll bet it's froze, and you about to go over the River; and when a fellow tries to pull you back you say, 'Oh, let me go!' You darned ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... a great physical as well as mental tonic, and tends to strengthen the will-power. Dr. Johnson says: "Resolutions and success reciprocally produce each other." Strong-willed men, as a rule, are successful men, and great success is almost impossible ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... good an artist not to feel the artistic skill of his own work, and the success reacted on his health, giving him fresh life, for with him as with most men, success was a tonic, and depression a specific poison; but as usual, his troubles nested at home. Success doubles strain. President McKinley's diplomatic court had become the largest in the world, and the diplomatic relations required far more work than ever before, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... be the best kind of a tonic for every soul under this roof. 'All the world loves ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... a tonic to hear Clark in the House. Like Carlyle he breathed a certain inexorable vitality into public affairs. To meet Clark in the corridors was to get a breeze that swept like a chinook across the frozen waste of old-line politics. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... here pretty vigilantly, with what good and hopeful spirits you can imagine. When you return do pay me a visit. There's nobody who would be such a tonic to an octogenarian. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... be glad to see "the mare," and I longed for the free sunlit world of which she was a part, as for a tonic. But this was, of course, impossible. So long as hard undiscerning materialism ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... my dear," she said demurely, "—though I have heard some people call her a tonic. ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... the glow of the fire and hot strong tea he forgot all about his uncomfortable premonitions of age. Now it seemed to him that he had never been younger in the sense of being merely alive; after the tonic of the cold his nerves were strung like steel, his blood was in a full tide. Lee was aware of a marked sense of pleasure at the closeness to him of Anette; settling back, she willingly, voluntarily, leaned her firm elastic body against him; her legs, as evident in ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... death. He confessed that the news was no surprise to him. In fact, not only had he suspected her sex, he had so far persuaded himself of the truth of his suspicions as to fall in love with one of his own crew. The tonic effect of such avowals is well known. The fever-stricken patient recovered, and on the return of the ship to home waters the officer in question made his late foremast hand his wife. [Footnote: Naval Chronicle, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... came from Salonika. Unfortunately it had been doing duty in a fever-stricken area and malaria had weakened its ranks. A little while before the autumn operations began, as many as 3000 of its men were down at one time with malaria, but care and tonic of the battle pulled the ranks together, and the Irish Division, a purely Irish division, campaigned up to the glorious traditions of their race. They worked like gluttons with rifle and spade, ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... absence, the morning vespers of song-birds seed almost to be issuing, like flowers, from the ground. There is an indescribable charm about this morning's experience on the desert; dawn appears, the moon hangs low-suspended in the heavens, the birds carol merrily, and every inspiration one takes is a tonic to stimulate the system. Half an hour later the sun has risen, the song-birds have one and all lapsed into silence, the desert is itself again, stern, silent, uncompromising, and apparently destitute ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... has 'most as good a time as other folks. We can't let Lovey Mary go on with these here nerves; no tellin' where they'll land her at. If it was jes springtime, I'd give her sulphur an' molasses an' jes a leetle cream of tartar; that, used along with egg-shell tea, is the outbeatenest tonic I ever seen. But I never would run ag'in' the seasons. Seems to me I've heared yallerroot spoke ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... me, and, unable to resist the seductive thought of a midnight stroll across the bracken-covered hills, I borrowed a latchkey, and, armed with a flask of whisky and a thick stick, plunged into the moonlit night. The keen, heather-scented air acted like a tonic—I felt younger and stronger than I had felt for years, and I congratulated myself that my friends would hardly know me if they saw me now, as I swung along with the resuscitated stride of twenty years ago. The landscape for miles around stood out with startling clearness in ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... since the first time I went to the circus, and if there's anything better for the insides than laughing, I've never took it. Seems to me it clears out low-downness and sour spirits better than any tonic you can buy, and for plum wore-outness a good laugh's more resting than sleep. When you're ready to have the hot things brought up, let me know, Miss Dandridge. Martha's down-stairs and everything's ready and just waiting ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... As a digestive tonic the following is good: Glauber's salt, 2 pounds; common salt, 1 pound; baking soda, one-half pound. Of this a heaping tablespoonful may be given in each feed. If diarrhea exists, the treatment advised below may ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... photograph and not a memorial card. I took a firm stand, and said that if he wasn't satisfied with that one he could go without altogether, and he said in the most insulting way that he supposed he should be himself again in time if he took a tonic. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... said Sedgwick, "and I have been dreading such a report as you have made me, for the last seven days. If you can keep his life from going out until we can reach Naples, I believe we can then find a tonic that will ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... was to be the real Lincoln whenever he spoke out, to the end. His tonic was struck by his first significant utterance at the age of twenty-eight. How inevitable that it should have no significance to the congregation of good fellows who thought of him merely as one of their ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... from my sickness and was not entirely devoid of a desire for excitement—the best tonic of the explorer. The two young hunters with bows and arrows halted before the Chief. They were gesticulating wildly; and although I could not understand what they were talking about, I judged from the frown of the Chief that something serious was ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... is significant of Edwards' unique position. The doctrine of Calvinism, by whatever name it may be called, is a mental tonic of tremendous potency. Whether in its theological dress, as attributing all events to the absolute decrees of the Almighty, or in its metaphysical dress, as declaring that some abstract necessity ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the Human Voice, has exhibited some acuteness of observation, and has written with commendable originality. But his accuracy is certainly not greater than his confidence. On page 57th, he says, "The m, n, and ng, are purely nasal;" on page 401st, "Some of the tonic elements, and one of the subtonics, are made by the assistance of the lips; they are o-we, oo-ze, ou-r, and m." Of the intrinsic value of his work, I am not prepared or inclined to offer any opinion; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... low perches or soared a little way in the air to tell the world how glad they were on that bright summer morning. The splendour of the hills was on all things, and Jim on Blazing Star was filled with the glad tonic. For five miles they ambled along, and when the doctor stopped at a watering place—he had been told to stop there—the others caught up with him. Hereupon there was a readjustment, and their next going found the Collins rig leading with Blazing Star behind, and Belle ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... they had a concert, accompanied by Hussey on his "indispensable banjo." This banjo was the last thing to be saved off the ship before she sank, and I took it with us as a mental tonic. It was carried all the way through with us, and landed on Elephant Island practically unharmed, and did much to keep the men cheerful. Nearly every Saturday night such a concert was held, when each one sang a song about some ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... could have been a lawyer or a banker, was smoking a cigar over a glass of port, and beside him sat a plump and slightly too well groomed individual who had a tall colorless drink, probably gin-and-tonic. The fifth man, separated from him by a vacant chair, seemed to be dividing his attention between a book on his lap and the conversation, in which he was taking no part. I sat down beside the sandy-haired man; as I did so and rang ...
— Crossroads of Destiny • Henry Beam Piper
... went outside to Langley, whom he found sitting down near the fire, looking, if possible, more ghastly than before. The presence of Whitson seemed, however, to act on him as a kind of tonic, and he soon pulled himself together sufficiently to assist in piling a quantity of fuel upon the already sinking fire, which soon blazed brightly, lighting up the mouth of the cavern and the space in front of it. One of the bodies of the men who had been shot was lying ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... off Vigo, deucidly sea—sick was told that fat pork was the best specific, if bolted half raw; did not find it much of a tonic passed a terrible night, and for four hours of it obliged to keep watch, more dead than alive. The very second evening we were at sea, it came on to blow, and the night fell very dark, with heavy rain. Towards eight bells in the middle watch, I was standing on a gun well forward on ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... rights movement and its advocates. I was too ill at the time to leave home, but the difference between my anxious efforts three years before to be heard, and this more than cordial assurance of a waiting audience, was a happy tonic. It was from persons who knew me only through my advocacy of woman's equality, and evidenced ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... it appeared to induce a steady breeze through the house, rising to a moderate gale when meals were toward—Aunt Hannah's presence acted like a tonic on all. She presented to Mr. Sam a weather-ruddied cheek, receiving his kiss on what, in so round a face as hers, might pass for the point of the jaw. In saluting Master Calvin she had perforce to take the offensive, and did so with equal aplomb. After a rapid ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a beautiful little village at the mouth of a tiny river, where artists used to come to paint pictures and sick folks to breathe the tonic balsam of the hills, we got rooms for the night in a smart, clean tavern. Here was quartered a captain of cavalry, who found time—so brisk was he and so high-spirited—to welcome us to the best the place afforded, to help set the table for our belated ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... abortion" WEG christened our party; At present, as JOE hints, that sounds quite ironic. True, lately our health did appear far from hearty, But Aston has acted As-tonic! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... mind that there are many other useful substances not listed above. For example, every day I have a "green drink," an herbal preparation containing numerous tonic substances like ginseng and also various forms of algae and chlorophyll extracts. My green drink makes my body feel very peppy all day, so it certainly enhances my life and may extend it. It costs about $25,00 a month to enjoy that. ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... first train in the morning. I have heard from Rivers, and——What is it, my love? You really do look very pale. You are overdoing yourself, and I cannot allow it. Now that Judy is better you must rest. I shall get Dr. Pettifer to look you up and give you a tonic when we get ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... what he considered pleasure. You see—poor, giddy flutterer—he did not like to hear the plain truth spoken; flattery would have pleased him better, yet truth, though sometimes bitter, is a wholesome tonic ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... yet it is usual to read this with an accent on the penultima. I never observed any of those who read Saboth, Zablon, and sabachthni, read either Samara or Cesrea. The Greek accents on Hebrew words always accord, as Hebraists know, with the tonic ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... my eyes was the nature of his courage. There was never a braver man: he went out to welcome danger; an emergency (came it never so sudden) strung him like a tonic. And yet, upon the other hand, I have known none so nervous, so oppressed with possibilities, looking upon the world at large, and the life of a sailor in particular, with so constant and haggard a consideration of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it. This merry, pleasant mood is brought on by the blood tonic. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... management to resurrect "La Favorita." Even up-to-date ear-tickling is not popular now in the opera-house: we go to the music-hall for it; and we don't want to pay a guinea at the opera to be tickled in a way that arouses no pleasurable sensations. Those terrific tonic and dominant passages for the trombones, sounding like the furious sawing of logs of wood, only make us laugh; and pretty tootlings of the flutes have long been done better, and overdone, elsewhere. Donizetti is amongst the dead whom ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... strong combative force there is no tonic like the presence of a secret and powerful enemy, and the stealthy glances of Father Johannes's serpent eye did more towards restoring Father Francesco to self-mastery than the most conscientious struggles could have done. He grew calm, resolved, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... the Downs was so springy on this morning that one felt uplifted by it in walking. Each separate blade of the clover-scented carpet seemed surcharged with young life. The downland air was as a tonic wine to every creature that breathed it. The joy of the day was voiced in the liquid trilling of two larks that sang far overhead. The place and time gave to the Nuthill party England at her best and ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... which the ear receives from rime at the end of a verse has been aptly compared to the pleasure we feel when a long arch of melody returns to the dominant and then the tonic. More elaborate is Oscar Wilde's praise of rime—"that exquisite echo which in the music's hollow hill creates and answers its own voice; rhyme, which in the hands of a real artist becomes not merely a material ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... professional play which came to Gopher Prairie that spring. It was a "tent show, presenting snappy new dramas under canvas." The hard-working actors doubled in brass, and took tickets; and between acts sang about the moon in June, and sold Dr. Wintergreen's Surefire Tonic for Ills of the Heart, Lungs, Kidneys, and Bowels. They presented "Sunbonnet Nell: A Dramatic Comedy of the Ozarks," with J. Witherbee Boothby wringing the soul by his resonant "Yuh ain't done right by mah little gal, Mr. City Man, but yer a-goin' to find that back in these-yere hills there's honest ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... some stiff fighting on hand both at the start and afterwards. Many a life would thereby be radically changed. For example, I know a christian storekeeper who has on his shelves a certain article bearing the label of a tonic medicine, but he knows perfectly well, as does anyone who stops to think about it, that the stuff back of the label is one form of an intoxicant. There can be no question of what the Master would say about it. But it brings a good profit. And his ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... rain, that year was breaking the records of a century and a half. Thirty yards in front of each boat an unhappy skeleton of a horse floundered its best in the quagmire. The honest endeavour of one of the animals received a frequent tonic from a bare-legged girl of seven who heartily curled a whip about its crooked large-jointed legs. The ragged and filthy child danced in the rich mud round the horse's flanks with the simple joy of one who had been rewarded for good behaviour by the unrestricted ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... poison. However," and the doctor's face twinkled with humorous sympathy; "it's just about as well to keep it in solution for the present. Therefore, both as your medical adviser and as your senior warden, I'm going to give you a tonic to that end. Moreover, I want you to eat lots of underdone beef, to drink lots of good beer, and spend a good half your time out-doors. Then, if the doubts hang on, come back to me and I'll take another whack at them. They're harmless ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... see and grasp, and can obey simply, where mere mental keenness fails. There is no tonic for the brain like love in the heart. No brain ever does its best work, nor can, until the heart is fired by some tender, noble passion. It was to Mary Magdalene who had such reason to love tenderly that Jesus showed ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... loneliness to-night she distrusted. Detached, it was not impossible that she would be forced to leave the dining room because of invading tears. To be near someone, even someone who made a pretense of friendliness, to hear voices, her own intermingling, would serve as a rehabilitating tonic. The world had grown dark and wide, and she was very small. Doubts began to rise up all about her, plucking at her confidence. Could she go through with it? She must. She ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... melody. In the grass he sees a lizard which is as intent on Pan as Pan is on him. Care-free Pan with pointed ear and horned brow, we love thee, for dost thou not give us all our jollity and fun, the tonic for ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... mind is capable of. I argue on no sectarian, no religious grounds even. Is it possible to make a man's self his most precious possession? Anyhow, I work to that end. A doctor purges before building up with a tonic. I eliminate cant and hypocrisy, and then introduce self-respect. It isn't enough to employ a man's hands only. Initiation in some labour that should prove wholesome and remunerative is a redeeming factor, but it isn't all. His mind must work also, and awaken ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... exaggerate it. He may be reassured on one point—namely, that success in the role of merchant will never impair any self-satisfaction he may feel in the role of artist. The late discovery of a large public in America delighted Meredith and had a tonic effect on his whole system. It is often hinted, even if it is not often said, that great popularity ought to disturb the conscience of the artist. I do not believe it. If the conscience of the artist is not disturbed during the actual work itself, no ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... man who really has something to say. The specialist is inclined to lack the broad outlook of one who is interested in many things; he acquires a jargon of his own; his mind runs in the narrow channel to which that jargon corresponds; the language he uses becomes stilted and dead. There is no tonic in the truths he tries to proclaim, no relevance to the rest of knowledge. In other words, what he has to say may be scientifically valuable, but he fails to convey it ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... so," replied the old lady. "In each barrel are two thimblefuls of powder, and half-a-box of Windfall's Teaberry Tonic Pills, each one of them as big and as hard as a buckshot. They were brought here by a travelling agent, who sold some of them to my people; and I tell you, sir, that those pills made them so sick that one man wasn't able to work for ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... notes of a scale; sharp, flat, natural; high note &c.(shrillness) 410; low note &c. 408; interval; semitone; second, third, fourth &c.; diatessaron[obs3]. breve, semibreve[Mus], minim, crotchet, quaver; semiquaver, demisemiquaver, hemidemisemiquaver; sustained note, drone, burden. tonic; key note, leading note, fundamental note; supertonic[obs3], mediant[obs3], dominant; submediant[obs3], subdominant[obs3]; octave, tetrachord[obs3]; major key, minor key, major scale, minor scale, major mode, minor mode; passage, phrase. concord, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... smile a little, All along the road; Every life must have its burden, Every heart its load. Why sit down in gloom and darkness, With your grief to sup? As you drink Fate's bitter tonic, Smile across ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the cold plunge revived Raymond; and the sense of space above him, the star-spangled sky overhead, the free sweet air around him, even the unfettered use of his weakened limbs, as he swam with his brother's strong supporting arm about him, acted upon him like a tonic. He hardly knew whether or not it was a dream; whether he were in the body or out of the body; whether he should awake to find himself in his gloomy cell, or under the cruel hands of his foes in that dread chamber he had ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... had been so long housed.—In that seclusion she had suffered certain original tendencies to increase upon her; her nerves were more sensitive and electrical; her apprehensions had multiplied quite beyond the ratio of the dangers that beset her; and Basil had counted upon a tonic effect of the change the journey would make in their daily lives. She looked ruefully out of the window at the familiar suburbs whisking out of sight, and the continental immensity that advanced devouringly upon her. But they had the best section in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... you like, but tonic. This view will suit our mood. For we shall be making and the makers of history will become more real to us. Instead of urging that issues are inevitable, instead of being swamped by problems that are unavoidable, we may stand up and affirm the issues ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... intellectual invigoration. Indeed, I only know old McQuhatty who has it, and a sportive Providence has carefully excluded mankind from its benefits for half a century. Stay: it once fostered a genius who arose in Campsie, and sent him strung with tonic to Edinburgh to become a poet. But the poor lad drank whisky for two years without cessation, so that he died, and McQuhatty's inspiration was wasted. What intellectual stimulus can he afford, for instance, to Sandy McGrath, an elder of the kirk whom I saw coming up the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... acquiescence. "What on earth should I do without you, Penny, to bully me and generally lick me into shape?" She dropped a light kiss on the top of Penelope's bent head. "But, truly, I hate to miss Kit Seymour. She's as good as a tonic—and just now I feel like a bottle of champagne that's been uncorked for ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... foot. It was a piece of gravel that had somehow worked its way in, and was rubbing through the skin into the flesh. "That's good," he said, aloud. The pebble was eating the numbness away, and Cumnor drove it hard against the raw spot, and relished the tonic of its burning friction. The Apaches had drawn into a circle. Standing at some interval apart, they entirely surrounded the arena. Shrewd, half convinced, and yet with awe, they watched the dancers, who clashed their cans slowly ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Grimbal lifted him slowly but steadily from the ashes of disappointment; even his natural humility helped him, and he told himself he had no more than his desert. Presently, with efforts the very vigour of which served as tonic to character, he began to wrestle at the granite again and resume his archaeologic studies. Speaking in general terms, his mind was notably sweetened and widened by his experience; and, resulting from his own failure to reach happiness, there awoke ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts |
