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More "Variable" Quotes from Famous Books



... these Isles on the 10th of June, after experiencing faint and variable winds for several days: and a more dreary scene can scarcely be imagined than they present to the eye, in general. No tree or shrub is visible; and all is barren except a few spots of cultivated ground in the vales, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... religious belief is undergoing a sure process of change from the dogmatic distinctness of the past to some at present dimly descried creed of the future. Such periods of transition are of necessity full of discomfort, doubt, and anxiety, vague, variable, and unsatisfying. The men in whose spirits the fermentation of the change is felt, who have abandoned their old moorings, and have not yet reached the haven for which they are steering, cannot but be indistinct and undecided in their faith. The universe of which ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... is true that [time and] labor do not receive a uniform remuneration; because labor is more or less intense, dangerous, skilful, &c., [and time more or less valuable.] Competition establishes for each category a price current: and it is of this variable price that ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... not by the moon, th' inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... very variable in its density, and had been lifting and settling at times during the day of the capture. By the time the two vessels were ready to get under way, it had become more solid than before. The night had come, and the darkness with it, at about the same time. The lookouts were still in their places; ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic

... of words that have a variable accentuation: first, those in which an unaccented weak vowel is followed by an accented strong vowel, e.g. majestu^oso, majestu|oso; second, those in which an accented strong vowel is followed by an unaccented ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... May 5th, 71 deg. 46' North, and the course, "east, and by south and east," and continues: "After much trouble, with fogges sometimes, and more dangerous ice. The nineteenth, being Tuesday, was close stormie weather, with much wind and snow, and very cold. The wind variable between the north north-west and north-east. We made our way west and ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier

... near the mouth of the Rio Grande a continuous sand reef draws its even curve for a hundred miles to Corpus Christi Pass, and the reefs are but seldom interrupted by inlets as far north as Galveston Harbor. On this coast the tides are variable and exceptionally weak, being less than one foot in height, while the amount of waste swept along the shore is large. The lagoon is extremely shallow, and much of it is a mud flat too shoal for even small boats. On the coast of New Jersey strong tides are able to keep open ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... planet of the Gettler Beta system, 23,000 miles in circumference, rotating on its axis once in 22.8 Galactic Standard hours and making an orbital circuit around Gettler Beta once in 372.06 axial days, and that Alpha was an M-class pulsating variable with an average period of four hundred days, and that Beta orbited around it in a long elipse every ninety years. He didn't believe there was going to be a Last Hot Time. He was ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper

... [b] is a variable, changing from magnitude 3.4 to 4.4 in twelve days. At its brightest it is about equal to its near neighbor ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott

... four or five hundred roots which remain, the insoluble residuum (so thought by Professor Mueller) of Language, after eliminating the immense mass of variable and soluble material, he says: 1. That 'they are phonetic types produced by a power inherent in human nature;' 2. 'Man, in his primitive and perfect state, was not only endowed like the brute with the power of expressing his sensations by interjections, and his perceptions by onomatopoieia ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... was variable, but the barometer did not fluctuate by sudden movements, and they could therefore count on tolerable weather. However, during the first week of April, after a sudden barometrical fall, a renewed rise was marked by a heavy gale of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... fixed the law of language, and developed its rule, which was no longer determined on the basis of experience, but made the claim to determine experience. The endings of declension, which hitherto had in part been variable, were now to be once for all fixed; e. g. of the genitive and dative forms hitherto current side by side in the so-called fourth declension (-senatuis- and -senatus-, -senatui-, and -senatu-) Caesar recognized exclusively as valid the contracted forms (-us and -u). In orthography ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... our solar system. Like the. planets, they revolve about the sun, traversing with very variable velocities extremely elongated orbits."[2] ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... Great Adventure of Max Breuck Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok Clear, with Light, Variable Winds The Basket In a Castle The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde The Exeter Road The Shadow The Forsaken Late September The Pike The Blue Scarf White and Green Aubade Music A Lady In a Garden ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... broad-brimmed hat and shaggy eyebrows as would make timid country-folk hasten on their way filled with vague thoughts and fears of the evil eye. Mr. John Murray has referred to this love of mystery on the part of his father's friend, and also to his moody and variable temperament; while Mr. G. T. Bettany has related how he enjoyed creating a sensation by riding about on a fine Arab horse which he brought home with him from Turkey ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... whole, so the child at this stage can distinctly hear single words, can grasp the purport of them, and divine correctly a whole sentence from the looks and gestures of the speaker, although the child himself makes audible no articulate utterance except his own, for the most part meaningless, variable babble of ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... anguish of hope deferred created a fresh torture for him. Minds that have the habit of imaginative contemplation and poetic dreaming attribute to inanimate objects a soul, sensitive and variable as their own, and recognise in all things—be it form or colour, sound or perfume—a transparent symbol, an emblem of some emotion or thought; in every phenomenon and every group of phenomena they claim to discover a psychical condition, a moral significance. At ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... substance of freedom to a groping for an understanding of the adequate external conditions of liberty. Thus he set himself another of the insoluble problems he seems to delight in by neglecting the most important factor in the equation. Yet the invisible soul of man, ignored, as a variable, varying quantity, has upset all societies and constitutions, and all schemes of bondage as ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... up population of a species as supply of food and other favourable conditions, because the numbers of a species constantly vary greatly in different parts of its area, whereas the average number of offspring is not a very variable element. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... who, according to the Hawaiian mythology, presides over Kilauea, is, as some say all her sex are, variable, changeable, mutable. What I shall tell you about the appearance of the crater and lake is true of that time; it may not have been correct a week later; it was certainly not true of a month before. We climbed into the deep pit, and then stood upon a vast floor of lava, rough, jammed ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... katakekaumegae]. A Heath is a level covered with the plants to which that name has been applied. Finally, a Prairie differs from a savanna only in being under a zone where the seasons are not marked as wet and dry, but where the herbage corresponds to a variable moisture.] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... Bob in the Hut, soon," he added, "and this will repay us all for more than twice the risks—all but you, little vixen; for your mother tells me you are getting, through some caprice of that variable humour of your sex, to be a little estranged from the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... a golden drink, flooded, up to a variable point, with an inimitable gaiety. In comparison whiskey was brutalizing; sherry was involved with a number of material accompanying pleasures; port was purely masculine and clarets upset him; beer was a beverage and not a delight; ale a soporific; and Rhine wines he ignored. Champagne ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Bolter—quite as instantly, just as visibly and as audibly—was there upon the platform. Listening to him, though we were all of us perfectly conscious of doing, through the Protean voice, and looking at him through the variable features of the Novelist, we somehow saw, no longer the Novelist, but—each time Noah Clay-pole said a word—that chuckle-headed, long-limbed, clownish, sneaking varlet, who is the spy on Nancy, the tool of Fagin, and the secret evil-genius of Sikes, hounding the latter on, as he does, unwittingly, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... unavoidable nuisance; the state, he thought, was the aristocracy, whose business it was to keep the people down and hold the king in check. His career—now supporting the royalists, now the roundheads, now neither—seems incoherent and unprincipled; but in truth he was one of the least variable men of his time; he held to his course, and king and parliament did the tacking. He was an incorruptible judge, though he took bribes; and an unerring one, though he disregarded forms of law. He was tried for treason, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... of rain fell, which lasted for an hour and a half. When the rain ceased, the day continued cloudy with variable wind. The body of the hippopotamus was discovered at daybreak floating near us, therefore all hands turned out to cut him up, delighted at the idea of fresh meat. There was about an acre of high and dry ground that bordered the marsh in one spot; to this the carcase of the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... we reached a warmer temperature, when the wind falling light and becoming variable we crossed our topgallant and royal yards again, spreading all the sail we could so as to make the best of the breezes we got. These were now mingled with occasional showers of rain, as is customary with the south-west monsoon in those ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... and his ministers tried to grapple with the altered circumstances, and strove to substitute and equitable Crown rent or money payment for the existing and variable claims which were collected by the Court of Ward and Livery. The knight's fee then consisted of twelve plough-lands, a more modern name for "a hide of land." The class burdened with knight's service, or payments in lieu thereof, comprised ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... line be drawn between that eternal trade-wind, which, originating in well-understood physical causes, sweeps, like the breath of Destiny, slowly, and solemnly, and everlastingly over the Pacific Ocean, and the variable gusts into which it degenerates in more northerly and southerly regions—gusts which seem to come without any cause, and to pass away without leaving any trace? In what latitude is it that the domain of the physical ends, and ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... observation. All effects follow not with like certainty from their supposed causes. Some events are found, in all countries and all ages, to have been constantly conjoined together: Others are found to have been more variable, and sometimes to disappoint our expectations; so that, in our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... Hooper, and myself, left Cape Evans with two motor sledges as planned. We had with us three tons of stores, pony food, and petrol, carried on five 12 ft. sledges, and our own tent, etc., on a smaller sledge. The object of sending forward such a weight of stores was to save the ponies' legs over the variable sea ice, which was in some places hummocky and in others too slippery to stand on. Also the first thirty miles of Barrier was known to be bad travelling and likely to tire the ponies unnecessarily unless they marched light, so here again it was desirable to employ the motors for ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... beauty into forms expressible by simple lines—therefore expressible by thread—you might then have a series of fern-patterns which would each contain points of distinctive interest and beauty, and of scientific truth, and yet be variable by fancy, with quite as much ease as the meaningless Indian one. Similarly, there is no form of leaf, of flower, or of insect, which might not become suggestive to you, and expressible in terms of manufacture, so as to be interesting, and ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... the inquiry of demonstrative science does not go on indefinitely, because one can come to principles that are self-evident, which are absolutely certain. But such like certainty is not to be had in contingent singulars, which are variable and uncertain. Therefore the inquiry of counsel ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... hundred yards away, at a drug store, was one of those fickle-minded, variable thermometers, showing a temperature that ranged from fifty-five on downward to forty; but the hotel thermometer stood firm at sixty-one, no matter what happened. In a season of trying climatic ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... than six or seven leagues to leeward. But through the delays inseparable from getting a large and encumbered fleet to sea, it was four o'clock before all the ships were under sail; and as night was fast closing in, and the wind becoming variable, the Admiral determined not to attempt the narrow and dangerous passage he had fixed on, but to steer for the open entrance in front of the harbour, the Passage d'Iroise. Accordingly, he altered his own course, and made signal for the fleet to follow; but neither was generally ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... Anita several times, each time with a carefully-framed remark ready; each time I found her gaze on me—and I could say nothing, could only look away in a sort of panic. Her eyes were strangely variable. I have seen them of a gray, so pale that it was almost silver—like the steely light of the snow-line at the edge of the horizon; again, and they were so that evening, they shone with the deepest, softest blue, and made one think, as one looked at her, of a fresh violet frozen ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... continually tends; and when the Academy asks that we DETERMINE THE OSCILLATIONS OF PROFIT AND WAGES, it asks thereby that we DETERMINE VALUE. Now that is precisely what the gentlemen of the Academy deny: they are unwilling to admit that, if value is variable, it is for that very reason determinable; that variability is the sign and condition of determinability. They pretend that value, ever varying, can never be determined. This is like maintaining that, given the number of oscillations of a pendulum ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... Chinese, however have made use of no mythological allusion in naming this hurricane. They call it Ta-fung which literally signifies a great wind. The wind was certainly high the whole of the night and the following day, the thunder and lightning dreadful, and the variable squalls and rain frequent and heavy; the depth of the sea from 25 ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... Florida, mainly near the coast, preferring dry and sandy soil. It is often found by the roadsides. According to Britton and Brown's "Illustrated Flora" it is glabrous or pubescent, with several or many stems, ascending or nearly erect; with green or red leaves, which are wonderfully variable in outline, from linear to orbicular, mostly opposite, the upper sometimes whorled, the lower often alternate. The glands of the involucres are elliptic or oblong, and even the seeds vary ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... a thing, not amounting to its total removal, that is, a change which leaves it still the same thing it was, must be a change either in its quantity, or in some of its variable relations to other things, of which variable relations the principal is its position in space. In the previous example, the modification which was produced in the antecedent was an alteration in its quantity. Let us now suppose the question to be, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... Academician. Fully to realise the capacity for indicating emotion latent in them, and informing his whole frame—his hands for example, in their every movement, being wonderfully expressive—those who attended these Readings soon came to know, that you had but to listen to his variable and profoundly sympathetic voice, and to watch the play ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... but a touch to restore them. For while his intellectual life had ranged far and wide, his business career had run along a single channel, his circle of intimates had not been very large nor very variable, nor was his memory so overlaid that he could not push aside its later impressions in favour of those graven there so deeply ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... its equal in desirability. It grows rapidly under favorable environment, often becomes a handsome ornamental, comes into fruit while young, and bears freely but seldom heavily. The nuts are small, variable in character, and not particularly popular on the market. In flavor the kernels resemble butternut, but are much more mild. The nuts of this species are of two distinct types, the larger being shaped like a guinea egg, having a rather thick shell, and of doubtful ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... hypothetical, and variable portions of the craft—or, if you will, of the science—depending on ten thousand varying and variable circumstances—depending on persons, passions, fancies, whims; caprices royal, national, parliamentary, and personal, is above theory, and beyond the reach of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... declination circles could be read by optical systems from the operators' seats—circles fully forty feet in diameter, graduated with incredible delicacy and accuracy into decimal fractions of seconds of arc, and each driven by variable-speed motors through gear-trains and connections having ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... thus: " My body of reference (the carriage) remains permanently at rest. With reference to it, however, there exists (during the period of application of the brakes) a gravitational field which is directed forwards and which is variable with respect to time. Under the influence of this field, the embankment together with the earth moves non-uniformly in such a manner that their original velocity in the backwards ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein

... things, the "genus asininus" is very variable, almost as much so as the barometer, and those "on hire" for riding purposes were quite as obstinate as their relations in other countries; at least so the ladies declared who tried them, and they ought to know. Their bitter experience was gained in a trip up the Monne, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... agree that usually, but not always, pistillate flowers are produced several years before the occurrence of catkins. Generally, Persian varieties do not adequately pollinate themselves but exceptions are reported. The problem is one of variable dichogamy. Some varieties shed pollen before pistillate flowers are receptive; others shed pollen when pistillate flowers are no longer receptive. This unfortunate situation probably explains the low yields ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... winter when they hibernate; such are the hedgehog, bat and dormouse. John Hunter suggested that two groups should be known as "animals of permanent heat at all atmospheres" and "animals of a heat variable with every atmosphere," but later Bergmann suggested that they should be known as "homoiothermic" and "poikilothermic" animals. But it must be remembered there is no hard and fast line between the two groups. Also, from work recently ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... drinking; in Thessaly, ever on horseback; and when he lived with Tissaphernes, the Persian satrap, he exceeded the Persians, themselves in magnificence and pomp. Not that his natural disposition changed so easily, nor that his real character was so very variable, but whenever he was sensible that by pursuing his own inclinations he might give offence to those with whom he had occasion to converse, he transformed himself into any shape and adopted any fashion, that he observed to be most agreeable to them. So ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... leafless scape 4 in. to 4 ft. tall. Calyx of 3 sepals; corolla of 3 rounded, spreading petals. Stamens and pistils numerous, the former yellow in upper flowers; usually absent or imperfect in lower pistillate flowers. Leaves: Exceedingly variable; those under water usually long and grass-like; upper ones sharply arrow-shaped or blunt and broad, spongy or leathery, on ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... representing the day of quickening, nineteen weeks after the beginning of the last menstruation, with seven days added; and the third column still twenty weeks later. The date of quickening is still more variable than that of delivery, from one ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery

... we were upon the coast we had more calms than storms, and the winds so variable, that I question if a passage might not have been made from east to west in as short a time as from west to east; nor did we experience any cold weather. The mercury in the thermometer at noon was never below ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... religion involves, first, a belief in superhuman beings who rule the world, and, second, an attempt to win their favour, it clearly assumes that the course of nature is to some extent elastic or variable, and that we can persuade or induce the mighty beings who control it to deflect, for our benefit, the current of events from the channel in which they would otherwise flow. Now this implied elasticity ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... and a hard return at the end of each definition. This means that this section could easily be cut and pasted into its own text file and imported into a database or spreadsheet as a comma separated variable file (.csv file). Failing that, you could do a search and replace for commas in this section (I have not used any commas in my words, definitions or notes) and replace the commas with ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... THE ANKLE-JOINT, OR SYME'S AMPUTATION.—This operation is one of much interest and great practical importance. In our cold variable climate caries of the bones of the tarsus, and strumous disease of the ankle-joint, are very common and very intractable maladies, and for both of these, when far advanced, Syme's amputation is the only justifiable procedure. When properly done, according to the exact plan of its proposer, ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... mechanical logic. The advantage lay with MacMaine, for, while the computer could not logically fathom the intuitive processes of its human opponent, MacMaine could and did have an intuitive grasp of the machine's logic. MacMaine didn't need to know every variable in the pattern; he only needed to know the pattern as ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett

... that followed was rife with the sweet and balmy air and the gay sunshine, so duly prized in our variable climate, because of the rarity of their occurrence; more especially when the year is yet too young to assist with vigour the energies of all-industrious nature. The trees, in their faint greenery, looked cheerful as the face ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... Opitz, proved capable of enduring for centuries; a connection was established between the accent of verse and natural accent, which at the same time, by means of more stringent rules, created barriers against variable accent. It was merely a question of arranging the words in such fashion that, without forming too great a contradiction to the common-place order of words, the way in which the accents were placed upon them should result in a regularly alternating rise and fall. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... that—as was said at the outset—*all ethical systems resolve themselves into the two classes of which the Epicureans and the Stoics furnished the pristine types,*—those which make virtue an accident, a variable, subject to authority, occasion, or circumstance; and those which endow it with an intrinsic right, immutableness, validity, and supremacy. On subjects of fundamental moment, opinion is of prime importance. Conduct results from feeling, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... almost as variable as his mind, and when he sat down to compose plays for the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, in his room adjacent to the Miter Tavern, he dashed off chunks of thought for pressing and waiting actors and managers, piecing them together ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... the attitude of devout souls in Israel at a late era of the national life. And if they show us their high-water mark, we need not suppose that similar souls outside the Old Testament circle had solid certainty where these had but a variable hope. We know how large a development the doctrine of a future life had in Assyria and in Egypt, and I suppose we are entitled to say that men have always had the idea of a future. They have always had the thought, sometimes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... 6. in the afternoone, the wind came to the West northwest for the space of one houre, and presently to the East againe, and so was variable all the same night. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... Madarmali, there is a wretched small silver coin called Dama, of which the value in exchange is variable; but commonly 136 Damas ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... influence of these miasma, they would exert a marked action on the animal economy, and cause diseases among the greater number of those who breathe the infected air. But numerous experiments prove that, as a rule, the air contains free ozone, though in very variable proportions; from which we may conclude that no oxidizable miasm—sulphuretted hydrogen, for example—can exist in such an atmosphere, any more than it could exist in air containing but a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... "The amount contained is variable," said Challenger, "depending upon the pressure and care with which it has been bottled. I am inclined to agree with you, Roxton, that this one ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... variable character, travelling near the river being exceedingly heavy on account of the sand. The morning had been calm and sultry, but towards noon a strong breeze set in from the north, bringing with it a dense cloud of fine red dust, against which it was no easy matter ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... bottles and of classifying them according to the degree of such resistance. After numerous experiments, it has been found that first class bottles easily support a pressure of twelve atmospheres without distortion, while in those of an inferior quality the resistance is very variable. The champagne wine industry should therefore use ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... Glacier on the east and delimited on the west by more or less compact ice, has been named the D'Urville Sea. We found subsequently that its freedom from obstruction by ice is due to the persistent gales which set off the land in that locality. To the north, pack-ice in variable amount is encountered before reaching the wide ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... its abode; and these were the oracles of thought. "Throw aside your books of chemistry," said Wordsworth to a young man, a student in the Temple, "and read Godwin on Necessity." Sad necessity! Fatal reverse! Is truth then so variable? Is it one thing at twenty, and another at forty? Is it at a burning heat in 1793, and below zero in 1814? Not so, in the name of manhood and of common sense! Let us pause here a little.—Mr. Godwin indulged in extreme opinions, and carried with him ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... Studies.—The quantity of food which different families purchase varies between wide limits; a portion being lost mechanically in preparation and a still larger and more variable amount in the refuse and non-edible parts. If a record is made of all foods purchased and the waste and non-edible portions are deducted, the nutrients consumed by a family may be calculated by multiplying ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... this Parisian fete, to compare with the novel faces and picturesque surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he meant to spend a few days before presenting himself at his post. He seemed to be drawing the comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as you study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known to him as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical cast, albeit hackneyed ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... of this family, I have promised to ride on Friday, wind and weather permitting; at present both are more variable than I can describe, the extreme changes of the temperature, and the suddenness of these, utterly surpassing all my experience. One day I have a large fire, and the next, windows and doors open in search ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... Variable valence. Many elements are able to exert different valences under differing circumstances. Thus we have the compounds Cu{2}O and CuO, CO and CO{2}, FeCl{2} and FeCl{3}. It is not always possible to assign a fixed valence to an element. Nevertheless each element tends to ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... lofty theme called her for awhile out of herself. Her beauty grew as a rose, which, opening to the summer wind, discloses leaf after leaf till the sense aches with its excess of loveliness. A slight and variable colour tinged her cheeks, and her motions seemed attuned by some hidden harmony of surpassing sweetness. We redoubled our tenderness and earnest attentions. She received them with grateful smiles, that fled swift as sunny beam ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... reigned victoriouslie for the space of 48 yeeres, and then departed this life, as in place afterwards it shall appeere. But for that the contrarietie in writers in such points may sooner be perceiued than reformed, to the satisfieng of mens fansies which are variable, we will leaue euerie man to his libertie to thinke as seemeth him good, noting now and then the diuersitie of ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed

... height of the waves which were broken against it, by meeting with such a sudden resistance, that they rose considerably higher. In the evening we were in latitude of 59 deg. 58' S., longitude 118 deg. 39' E. The 7th, the wind was variable in the N.E. and S.E. quarters, attended with snow and sleet till the evening. Then the weather became fair, the sky cleared up, and the night was remarkably pleasant, as well as the morning of the next day; which, for the brightness of the sky, and serenity and mildness of the weather, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... must bear leaves. The marked stems of seedlings show greater growth towards the top of the growing phyton. It is only young stems that elongate throughout. The older parts of a phyton grow little, and when the internode has attained a certain length, variable for different stems and different conditions, it does not ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell

... subsistence increased only in an arithmetical ratio. The food available for each unit would therefore diminish as the population increased. The so-called law obviously states only a possibility. It describes a "tendency," or, in other words, only describes what would happen under certain, admittedly variable, conditions. It showed how, in a limited area and with the efficiency of industry remaining unaltered, the necessary limits upon the numbers of the population would come into play. If, then, the law were taken, or in so far as it was taken, to assert that, in point of fact, the population must ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... a level floor, which includes details of a very remarkable character. The adjoining Alphonsus is another, but somewhat smaller, object of the same type, as are also Albategnius, and Arzachel; and Plato, in a high northern latitude, with its noble many-peaked rampart and its variable steel-grey interior. Grimaldi, near the eastern limb (perhaps the darkest area on the moon), Schickard, nearly as big, on the south- eastern limb, and Bailly, larger than either (still farther south in the same quadrant), ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... this circle had, in the mean time, been disputed with variable success, between Count Tilly and the Swedish General Horn, whom Gustavus had left there with 8,000 men; and the Bishopric of Bamberg, in particular, was at once the prize and the scene of their struggle. Called away to the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... success, and the attainment of the results so eagerly desired. All the experiences of preceding navigators, in the latitudes through which we were to pass, all that theories and reasoning could suggest, had been called into requisition. Most accurate calculations of the variable winds, monsoons, and currents had been made, and the misfortunes which overtook us were in every case due to our deviation ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... spirits had been very variable, his frequent fits of gloom, alternating with unnatural gayety, exciting Walter's ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley

... J. cordiformis, the Japanese heart nut, is also promising. This nut can be recommended for planting for its own sake as the tree is hardy, a rapid grower, comes into bearing early and bears a fairly good nut. There are no grafted trees, however, so the variable seedlings will have to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... far from being able to appreciate all these powers of affinity, or to express their proportional energy by numbers, we are certain, that, however variable they may be when considered in relation to the quantity of caloric with which they are combined, they are all nearly in equilibrium in the usual temperature of the atmosphere; hence vegetables neither contain oil[25], water, nor carbonic acid, tho' ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... generally a small tree which produces nuts of variable size, form and flavor. The kernel may be bitter or it may be sweet and the nuts ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... the summer time in the southern hemisphere, the weather was very variable; now, when the wind came from the antarctic pole, bitterly cold; or drawing round and blowing from the north, after it had passed over the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... who was so introspective, often complained of "the duality of my nature." In the midst of affairs, financial or worldly, on questions of criticism, personal conduct and the like, the great artist was variable and uncertain. Though humble and self-deprecatory to an extreme degree, he made mistakes from which he could escape only with great difficulty; and he suffered much from depression and melancholy. This man, however, never appears in the pictures; when once in his studio, alone facing his canvas, ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare

... producing good bread, because they guess at the quantity of material to be used, particularly the flour, and with the same quantity of liquid will one time use much more flour that at another, thus making the results exceedingly variable. With this same brand of flour, this same quantity should always be used to produce a given amount of bread. This amount will depend upon the quality of the material used. Good flour will absorb a larger quantity of liquids than that of an inferior quality, and the amount of liquid ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... would be a form of polygamy, but Hinton was careful to point out that by "polygamy" he meant "less a particular marriage-order than such an order as best serves good, and which therefore must be essentially variable. Monogamy may be good, even the only good order, if of free choice; but a law for it is another thing. The sexual relationship must be a natural thing. The true social life will not be any fixed and definite relationship, as of monogamy, polygamy, or anything else, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... countries where her worship subsequently became identified with that of the moon, Luna was adored as the producer of the sun. According to the Babylonian creation tablets, the moon was the most important heavenly body. In later ages, the gender of the sun and the moon seems to be exceedingly variable. The Achts of Vancouver's Island worship sun and moon—the sun as female, the moon as male.(37) In some of the countries of Africa the moon is adored as female and sun-worship is unknown. Among various peoples the sun and the moon are regarded as husband and wife, ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... corrected only when unambiguous ("Symrna"), or when the expected spelling occurs many times in the book. A few variable forms such as "handsom : handsome" ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... truly, as Froebel puts it, "the finest and most variable material that can be offered a boy for purposes of representation." The little boxes associated with the Kindergarten were originally planned for the use of nursery children two to three years of age, and in most if not in ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... preparation in that dark region of the soul which to-day is called the subconscious. Now nobody has more lived his ideas than did Augustin at this time of his life. He took them, left them, took them up again, persisted in his desperate effort. They reflect in their disorder his variable soul, and the misgivings which troubled it to its depths. And yet it cannot be that this interior fact should be in violent contradiction with logic. The head ought not to hinder the heart. With the future believer, a parallel ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... believe, becoming daily more passionate, and more common. And no wonder that all our information, public and private, is to the same effect—that the recent converts have found peace in Rome; for the secret of the power of Rome is this—that she grounds her teaching, not on variable feelings and correct opinions, but on facts. God is not a highly probable God, but a fact. God's forgiveness is not a feeling, but a fact; and a material symbolic fact is the witness of the invisible one. Rome puts forward her absolution—her false, priestly, magical absolution—a ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... hair and delicate skin of the Queen of Castile deprived her, somewhat remarkably, of all the characteristics of a Spaniard, but, from their very novelty attracted the admiration of her subjects. Beautiful she was not; but her charm lay in the variable expression of her features. Peculiarly and sweetly feminine, infused, as Washington Irving observes, with "a soft, tender melancholy," as was their general expression, they could yet so kindle into indignant majesty, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... less than 2 in. in diameter, cylindrical in shape, bright green, simple when young, tufted in old specimens. Ribs shallow, broad, irregular on the top, with spine-cushions on the projecting parts; spines straight, yellowish-white, semi-transparent, variable in length, longest about 1 in. There are frequently as many as twelve spines in a tuft, although the specific name implies eight spines only. Flowers on the ridges near the top of the stem, with spiny tubes, spreading petals of a deep purple colour, and yellow stamens and pistil. They are developed ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... spiritual eyes of clairvoyant consciousness, when looking back upon these events. With regard to the Moon evolution this cannot be done in such sharp and definite outlines as are characteristic of earthly perceptions. In the Moon period we are mainly concerned with variable, changing impressions, with shifting, moving pictures and their transitory stages. We have, moreover, to bear in mind that we are contemplating an evolution continuing through long, long periods of time, and that out of all that presents ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... she has a passion for battles and bloodshed. I judged from your father's point of view. She has money, and you are to have money; and the union of money and money is supposed to be a good thing. And besides, you are variable, and off to-morrow what you are on to-day; is it not so? and heiresses are never jilted. Colonel Barclay is only awaiting your retirement. Le roi est mort; vive le roi! Heiresses ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... greatest, and is called the arepootee monsoon. Their manner of dealing is this: A small bahar is ten cattees of mace, and 100 of nutmegs; a great bahar being 100 cattees of mace, and 1000 of nutmegs. The cattee is five libs. 13-1/2[150] ounces English, and the prices are variable. The commodities in request at these islands are, Coromandel cloth, cheremallay, sarrasses, chintzes or pintadoes of five colours, fine ballachos, black girdles, chellyes, white calicos, red or stammel broad-cloths, gold in coin, such ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... succeeded in giving an indisputable mechanical representation of the whole physical world. Even were we disposed to admit the strangest solutions of the problem; to consent, for example, to be satisfied with the hidden systems devised by Helmholtz, whereby we ought to divide variable things into two classes, some accessible, and the others now and for ever unknown, we should never manage to construct an edifice to contain all the known facts. Even the very comprehensive mechanics of a Hertz fails where the classical mechanics ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... crinolines, and low dresses! Their poor little waists are drawn in tight, so that they can scarcely breathe; their dresses are very low and short, the consequence is, that a great part of the chest is exposed to our variable climate; their legs are bare down to their thin socks, or if they be clothed, they are only covered with gossamer drawers; while their feet are encased in tight shoes of paper thickness! Dress! ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... middle of the foresaid month of December the thermometer was 86 deg. at breakfast time, and before dinner down to 63 deg. These memoranda, gained from undoubted sources, would show the climate—in summer at least—to be more variable than my reference proves it; yet I am told that even in summer time you hear of little sickness amongst grown up people. New comers suffer from dysentery, and children are attacked in the same way. I have had two visitations, from which I rallied in the course of four and twenty hours, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... return of Armstrong, all traces of violent emotion had disappeared, and given place to exhaustion and lassitude. Faith had, by this time, become so accustomed to the variable humors of her father, that, however much they pained her, she was no longer alarmed by them as formerly. It was her habit, whenever he was attacked by his malady, to endeavor to divert his attention from melancholy thoughts to others of a more cheerful character. And now, on this ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... Cornwallis was born in 1738. Early in life he had embraced the military profession, which he pursued with undeviating honour, though variable success. In him the want of any shining talents was in a great measure supplied by probity, by punctuality, by steady courage, by vigilant attention to his duties. In 1776, on the Declaratory Bill, he had shown his ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... the difference of the earth's diameters; proving its true ratio to be not less variable than as 45 is to 46, and shortest in its pole's axis 174 miles.... likewise a method for fixing an universal standard for weights and measures. By Thomas Williams.[380] London, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... osseous tissue (astrocytes), and behaves just like a rhizopod (such as Gromia); it sends out numbers of stellate processes all round, which ramify and stretch into the surrounding food-yelk. These variable and very mobile processes, the pseudopodia of the merocytes, serve both for locomotion and for getting food; as in the real rhizopods, they surround the solid particles of food (granules and plates of yelk), and ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... little and very variable, and this day was a calm, so that they could advance very little in their voyage. In the evening the wind grew fresh, and increased till three o'clock the next morning, so that they made good way in their course; but these deep seas began to rise, and the ship to roll and ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... humblest parentage. No such extreme variations are seen in any of the lower orders. Indeed, in one's lifetime one sees but very slight variation in any of the wild or domestic creatures, less in the wild than in the domestic because they are less under the influence of that most variable of animals, man. And man's variations are mainly mental and not physical. The higher we go in the scale of powers, the greater the variation and hence the more rapid the evolution. Probably man's body has not changed radically ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... change in the fastenings of the jaws and in the teeth; and you will find that the same sort of modifications take place in the whole class of mammals. This is in fact the essentially movable and variable point in their apparatus for nutrition. The jaw and its weapons vary their character from one species to another, according to the nature of their food; but the modifications generally terminate there, i.e. on the threshold, as it were. The interior arrangements of ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... these changes, and to be up-to-date, and all that. I'm happy as I am, and so's David. He has his hope of the council, and the bribes and them things. And I've my guild and my friends, with their odd clothes and variable accents. That's the life I want, and I won't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various

... was rife with the sweet and balmy air and the gay sunshine, so duly prized in our variable climate, because of the rarity of their occurrence; more especially when the year is yet too young to assist with vigour the energies of all-industrious nature. The trees, in their faint greenery, looked ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... ever tending to increase and to appear where it is absent," as Dr. Wallace believes, then we ought to find it varying in the direction of greater brightness in some species in a family so numerous and variable as the Dendrocolaptidae, however feeble and in need of a protective colouring these birds may be in a majority of pases. And this in effect we do find. In many of the dark-plumaged species that live in perpetual shade some parts are a very bright chestnut; ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... tendency, perhaps, to magnify some one thing beyond its proportionate importance to adopt hasty conclusions; to entertain some questionable or erroneous principle because it appears to solve a difficulty, or perhaps falls in with an old prepossession; to make too much account of variable and transitory feelings; or to carry zeal beyond the limits of discretion. In examples of a lower order of the correction or reversal of the effects of ignorance by the influence of religion, the remains will be still more palpable. So that, while it is an unquestionable and gratifying fact, that ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... anatomy, is basic; but it cannot long continue to exist (outside a refrigerator) without accompanying vital rhythms in heart, respiration and digestion. Nor do these perform their parts without the intermittent support of variable but still characteristic activities: dogs not only breathe and digest, they run about, hunt their food, look for mates, bark at cats, and so on. The anatomical pattern, the vital rhythm, and the characteristic acts ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... applause. And what work, among others, was he elaborating at this time, but the notorious "First Blast"? So that he may have rolled out in his big pulpit voice, how women were weak, frail, impatient, feeble, foolish, inconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel, and how men were above them, even as God is above the angels, in the ears of his own wife, and the two dearest friends he had on earth. But he had lost the sense of incongruity, and continued to despise in theory the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... form of the monuments, it is very variable at different ages; there are some covered passages or chambers completely closed, some dolmens with openings like those of India. At the very time when my excavations were attaining their greatest importance I was compelled to discontinue ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... the water at 21, through the natural effect of their difference in density. This latter is likewise utilized for causing the oil to flow into the vaporizer through 26 and 27, instead of using a graduated cock that receives a variable pressure from the receiver. In this way every cause of obstruction ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various

... Adder," leading her in full course to the tree he is "the dire Snake," springing to his natural height before the astonished gaze of the cherubs he is "the grisly King." Every fresh designation elaborates his character and history, emphasises the situation, and saves a sentence. So it is with all variable appellations of concrete objects; and even in the stricter and more conventional region of abstract ideas the same law runs. Let a word be changed or repeated, it brings in either case its contribution of emphasis, and must be carefully chosen for the part ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... water may be purchased in gutta-percha or lead bottles. It is of variable strength and doubtful purity. It must always be examined quantitatively for the residue left on evaporation. It is used occasionally for the examination of silicates. It attacks silica, forming fluoride ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... this, as in other respects, he showed more of the Scottish character, more of the true sense of Highland honour, than any of his immediate predecessors in the Stuart line. Naturally gay, though variable; quick and shrewd, rather than deep or strong in intellect; easily to be flattered, too easily led by some, too wilful in resisting the counsels of others,—as a Prince, as the head of a Court, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... conspiracy. In 1857 a permanent body was formed in Sheffield, and in the years immediately following in Glasgow, London, Bristol, and other cities. They have since come into existence in most of the larger industrial towns, 120 local trades councils existing in 1892. Their influence has been variable and limited. ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... beside the two detectives, rendering it easy for any one within to have shot them dead. This observed, the light was cautiously removed, and everybody took care to keep out of its reflection. By this time the crisis of the position was at hand, the cavalry exhibited very variable inclinations, some to run away, others to shoot Booth without a summons, but all excited and fitfully silent. At the house near by the female folks were seen collected in the doorway, and the necessities of the case provoked prompt ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... This phenomenon having been often noted subsequently, the conclusion drawn therefrom is, that the sun is a spherical body, having a movement of rotation about its centre, of which the duration is equal to twenty-five days and a half. These dark spots, irregular and variable, but well defined on their edge, are sometimes of considerable dimensions. Some have been seen whose size was five times that of the earth. They are generally surrounded by an aureola known as the penumbra, and sensibly less ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... showing all the circle of sunny blue. Then would come the ragged edge of a cloud, brightened throughout with sunshine, passing and changing quickly,—not that the divine smile was not always the same, but continually variable through the medium of earthly influences. The great slanting beam of sunshine was visible all the way down to the pavement, falling upon motes of dust, or a thin smoke of incense imperceptible in the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... with that ineffable insolence which is the other side of the flunkey's insufferable self-abasement. He cast a glance at us as he went by, a withering glance of brazen effrontery. We knew him now, of course: it was that variable star, our old acquaintance, Mr. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... saw the white cliffs of Cape Rulhieres, which, like Point Pearce, we found to be four miles and a half west of its assigned position. On the 14th and 15th we were beating to the westward with a light and variable wind. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... these more modern branches of science alone that this influence is felt. It is to Gauss, to the Magnetic Union, and to magnetic observers in general, that we owe our deliverance from that absurd method of estimating forces by a variable standard which prevailed so long even among men of science. It was Gauss who first based the practical measurement of magnetic force (and therefore of every other force) on those long established principles, which, though they are embodied in every dynamical ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

... swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... perceptions of the senses with the utmost accuracy, but regarding everything in the concrete, it is unfriendly to the nobler labors of the mind, to abstraction and generalization. In the numberless changes of these languages, their bewildering flexibility, their variable forms, and their rapid deterioration, they seem to betray a lack of individuality, and to resemble the vague and tumultuous history of the tribes who employ them. They exhibit an almost incredible laxity. It is nothing uncommon for the two sexes to use different names for the same ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... Irish case is found in the Irish saga of Diarmaid and Grainne. We read Mr. O'Grady's introduction on the position of Eionn Mac Cumhail, the legendary Over-Lord of Ireland, the Agamemnon of the Celts. "Fionn, like many men in power, is variable; he is at times magnanimous, at other times tyrannical and petty. Diarmaid, Oisin, Oscar, and Caoilte Mac Rohain are everywhere the [Greek: kaloi kachotoi] of the Fenians; of them we never hear anything ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... landscapes. Sometimes this sublime spectacle presents itself to them at the hour of prayer, and seems to invite them to lift up their hearts with their voices to the heavens. It changes every instant into forms as variable as the shades, presenting celestial colors and forms which no pencil can pretend to imitate, and ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... or of cured dry tea from a single bush is necessarily variable with its age, size and condition. In China, the proportion of manufactured tea to the green leaves is one to three, or one to three and one-third, while in the East Indies and Java the allowance is ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.

... termination as they express different sexes; as prince, princess; actor, actress; lion, lioness; hero, heroine. To these mentioned by Dr. Lowth may be added arbitress, poetess, chauntress, duchess, tigress, governess, tutress, peeress, authoress, traytress, and perhaps othets. Of these variable terminations we have only a sufficient number to make us feel our want; for when we say of a woman that she is a philosopher, an astronomer, a builder, a weaver, a dancer, we perceive an impropriety in the termination which we cannot avoid; but we can say that she is an architect, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... of the variable winds. How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods and susceptibility? Yet they differ as all and nothing. Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... him, and for him alone, to use. BUT WHAT RULE HAVE WE, BY WHICH WE CAN DISTINGUISH THESE OBJECTS? Here we must have recourse to statutes, customs, precedents, analogies, and a hundred other circumstances; some of which are constant and inflexible, some variable and arbitrary. But the ultimate point, in which they all professedly terminate, is the interest and happiness of human society. Where this enters not into consideration, nothing can appear more whimsical, unnatural, and even superstitious, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... for a week—he remained away for a month. We heard of him, leading a wild life, among a vicious set of men. It was reported that a frantic restlessness possessed him which nobody could understand. He came back as suddenly as he had left us. His variable nature had swung round, in the interval, to the opposite extreme. He was full of repentance for his reckless conduct; he was in a state of depression which defied rousing; he despaired of himself ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... for human life of the two facts of dependence and variable control has been summed up in the doctrine of the significance of prolonged infancy. 1 This prolongation is significant from the standpoint of the adult members of the group as well as from that of the young. The presence of dependent and learning beings is a stimulus to nurture and affection. ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... complained months back, when I returned to London, seemed to have increased. His face was still the same impenetrable face which had so powerfully impressed me when I first saw him, but his manner, hitherto so quiet and self-possessed, had now grown abrupt and variable. Sometimes, when he joined us in the drawing-room at North Villa, he would suddenly stop before we had exchanged more than three or four words, murmur something, in a voice unlike his usual voice, about an attack of spasm and giddiness, and leave the room. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... noun place itself is just as loose and variable in its meaning as the adverb there. For example; "There is never any difference;" i.e., "No difference ever takes place." Shall we say that "place," in this sense, is not a noun of place? To take place, is, to occur somewhere, or anywhere; and the unemphatic ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... English or Persian walnut, under northern conditions, has been variable and not very satisfactory. With good scions and good stocks and other favorable conditions, we have sometimes gotten over 90 per cent to grow, but the stand is more often much below this and the present season we did not average over 25 per cent. The fact ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various

... temperature of zero for four days, yet when it was thawed these animalcules, as they are supposed to be, were as active as ever. They are not, however, always present, and when present may be of variable activity. In young men, just past puberty, and in aged men, they are often scarce and languid in motion." At the proper age the secretion is supposed to be the most active, generally at the age of twenty-five, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... disproved ny the fact that some swans are black, because a thing may very well happen in spite of the fact that some data render it improbable. In the case of the swans, a man might know that colour is a very variable characteristic in many species of animals, and that, therefore, an induction as to colour is peculiarly liable to error. But this knowledge would be a fresh datum, by no means proving that the probability relatively to our previous data had been wrongly estimated. The fact, therefore, that things ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... of figure 6A. The oesophagus, oe, is seen as a small, circular opening between two much larger openings, the lungs, lu. The epithelium of the oesophagus is the same here as in the more anterior regions described above; that of the lung rudiments is very variable in thickness, even in different parts of the same section, being in some places composed of a single layer of cuboidal or even flattened cells, in other places consisting of four or five layers of cells (not well shown in the figure). Surrounding the epithelium of the lung rudiments is a thin layer ...
— Development of the Digestive Canal of the American Alligator • Albert M. Reese

... or indications of indigestion will be present as the appetite is variable, temperature elevated, breathing labored, the animal avoids walking down hill as it causes pain from the stomach and intestines pressing the lungs against the heart. The symptoms, however, are so slight that they may ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... that very reason, it is apt to be more sought after: the persiflage of a writer of another nation and of a past age is of necessity peculiarly difficult to realize and reproduce. Nothing is so variable as the standard of taste in a matter like this: even on the minor question, what expressions may and what may not be tolerated in good society, probably no two persons think exactly alike: and when we ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... reasoning, his vocabulary and method, instead of constantly suggesting a false simplicity, warn him that every individual instance with which he deals is different from any other, that any effect is a function of many variable causes, and, therefore, that no estimate of the result of any act can be accurate unless all its conditions and their relative importance ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... mental reality to her, tradition possessed for her all the power of the living and the sublime. Thus the conception of "honor" with all its personal and social facets was to her as fixed, clear, clean-cut and immutable as a diamond. That it might be variable, that some ages had called honorable what was now considered dishonorable, and vice versa, on that she never reflected and she did not seek for the lasting kernel of the changing idea. Through this she possessed a serenity and peace of mind which, in ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... marked tabular character of the pueblo masons' material. The narrow edges of similar stones are visible in the unplastered portions of the house wall, which also illustrates the relative proportion of chinking stones. This latter, however, is a variable feature. Pl. XV affords a clear illustration of the proportion of these small stones in the old masonry of Payupki; while in Pl. XI, illustrating a portion of the outer wall of the Fire House, the tablets are fewer in number and thinner, their use predominating in ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... desert of the geography naturally conceives it an absolutely forsaken and empty region where nothing but dust-storms are born unattended and die "without benefit of the clergy." But the desert has character and is as variable ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... movement is not in them, nor in any one body of men, let me tell you. It is the people that makes the clergy, and not the clergy that makes the people. Of course, the profession reacts on its source with variable energy.—But there never was a guild of dealers or a company of craftsmen that did not ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... a nebulous but suggestive remark that the newspaper occupies the borderland between literature and common sense. Literature it certainly is not, and in the popular apprehension it seems often too erratic and variable to be credited with the balance-wheel of sense; but it must have something of the charm of the one, and the steadiness and sagacity of the other, or it will fail to please. The model editor, I believe, has yet to appear. Notwithstanding ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... is still in a state of colostrum, the fluid contains a variable quantity of albumen coagulable by heat, much less caseine, and an excess ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... to be effected by the conscientious consecration and prayerful use of wealth. That is for each man to settle for himself. But what is not variable is the obligation to set the kingdom high above all else, and to use all outward wealth, as Christ's servants, not for luxury and self-gratification, but as in His sight and for His glory. Let us not be afraid of believing what Jesus and His ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... brass, was that of Jupiter, emblem of his solidity and dry nature. The fourth, of iron, was that of Mercury, expressing his indefatigable activity and sagacity. The fifth, of copper, was that of Mars, expressive of his inequalities and variable nature. The sixth, of silver, was that of the Moon: and the seventh, of gold, that of the Sun. This order is not the real order of these Planets; but a mysterious one, like that of the days of the Week consecrated to them, commencing with Saturday, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... She is a respectable person who lets her house in lodgings. Twenty-five years ago she had a house in Westminster, and let the drawing-room floor to a gentleman of the name of Gilmore. He was rather tall and dark, and very variable in his temper. He had his wife with him, and two months afterwards a child was born. It was christened at St. Matthew's. I was its god-mother, as they seemed to have very few friends in the town. Mr. Gilmore was out a good deal looking for ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... Englishmen for the most part were willing to wait for the perfection of society, if only they could keep their throats perfect and help to drive away the chief enemy of mankind from our coasts. To my father's mind the noisy teachers of revolutionary doctrine were, to speak mildly, a variable mixture of the fool and the scoundrel; the welfare of the nation lay in a strong Government which could maintain order; and I was accustomed to hear him utter the word "Government" in a tone that charged it with awe, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... The variable position of the head of steamboat navigation on the Kanawha made it impossible to fix a permanent depot as a terminus for our wagon trains in the upper valley. My own judgment was in favor of placing it at Kanawha Falls, a mile ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... two stood this variable, sensuous, woman's nature, so capable both of good and evil. Rachel felt the burden of their virtues too much for her, together with the sting of her ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... administered its temporalities, consisting of the cura and churchwardens), four for the parrocos (parish priests) and lower clergy, one and one-half for the hospitals, and two for the King—all but this last being variable. See Baluffi's America en tempo Spagnuola (Ancona, 1844) ii, p. 41.—Rev. T. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... was no such will or hope to exalt the quiet instincts of his natural industry; and partly as a scholar's exercise, partly as an old man's recreation, the severity of the Latin language was softened, like Venetian crystal, by the variable fire of Hebrew thought, and the "Book of Books" took the abiding form of which all the future art of the Western nations was to be an ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... daughter, as a souvenir," said Gotzkowsky, folding it up carefully, and then added thoughtfully: "Who knows but what the time may come when it will be necessary to remind the merchants of Leipsic of this document? The opinions and destinies of men are very variable." ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... through a ribbon give variable shades and the typist in filling in must watch carefully to see that her typewriter ribbons match the impressions made in the body of the letter, especially where the form letters are printed several months in advance ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... were it not for the rational and moral elements in their nature, which suggest noble pieces of abstinence and self-restraint, thus securing a certain freedom, a certain superiority to the brute pressure of interest and impulse. These rational and moral elements are in variable counterpoise with the ruder desires,—sometimes commanding them with imperial ease, sometimes overcoming them by struggle, sometimes striving with them feebly and vainly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... to consider WILKES merely as a political adventurer, and it may surprise to find this "city chamberlain" ranked among professed literary characters: yet in his variable life there was a period when he cherished the aspirations of a votary. Once he desired Lloyd to announce the edition of Churchill, which he designed to enrich by a commentary; and his correspondence on this subject, which has never appeared, would, as he ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... beauty, but the large black eyes and raven hair contrasted sadly with the pallor of her face. Poe himself, poor, proud, and ill, anticipating grief and nursing the bitterness that springs from helplessness in the sight of suffering borne by those dear to us, was restless and variable, the creature ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... singular and mysterious. Whatever love of humour you have,—whatever sympathy with imperfect, but most subtle, feeling,—whatever perception of sublimity in conditions of fatal power, may here find fullest occupation: all these being joined, in the strong animal races, to a variable and fantastic beauty far beyond anything that merely formative art has yet conceived. I have placed in your Educational series a wing by Albert Duerer, which goes as far as art yet has reached in delineation of ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... oblong-lanceolate, veins { Beeches terminating in teeth { Chestnut A D Ovate-oblong, doubly serrate, surface rough Elms A D Ovate to ovate-lanceolate, serrate, surface slightly rough Hackberry A D Outline variable, ovate-oval, sometimes lobed (3-7), serrate-dentate Mulberry A D Ovate, serrate, oblong { Shadbush { Plums { Cherries A D Oval or oval-oblong, spines, evergreen Holly A D Broad-ovate, one-sided, ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday, nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope, although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and proportions of ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... coldest. It is at the close of the invierno (May) that fevers most abound. The climate of Guayaquil during the dry season is nearly perfect. At daybreak there is a cool easterly breeze; at sunrise a brief lull, and then a gentle variable wind; at 3 P.M. a southwest wind, at first in gusts, then in a sustained current; at sunset the same softened down to a gentle breeze, increasing about 7 P.M., and dying away about 3 A.M. Notwithstanding heaps of filth and green-mantled ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... words were found in variable forms in the original text and both versions have been retained: armchair/arm-chair; byword/by-word; hearthrug/hearth-rug; housekeeping/house-keeping; ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... letter. The doctor, to whom the reports were communicated, received them in his turn with unabated confidence in the precautions that had been adopted up to the morning of the 8th. On that date the irritation of continued suspense had produced a change for the worse in Miss Gwilt's variable temper, which was perceptible to every one about her, and which, strangely enough, was reflected by an equally marked change in the doctor's manner when he came to pay his usual visit. By a coincidence so extraordinary that his enemies might have suspected it of not being ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... I might strive to appall thee," he added faintly smiling, "with a description of the gloom and discomfort of thine unknown northern mansion; but if thou art willing to bear with its scanty means of accommodation, as well as with thy husband's variable temper, come with him to ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore

... truth, and Law is the earthly reality; liberty is Right and society is Law. Wherefore there are two tribunes, one of the men of ideas, the other of the men of facts; and between these two the consciences of most still vacillate. Not yet is there harmony between the immutable and the variable power; Right and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... gentle. In all probability she has a passion for battles and bloodshed. I judged from your father's point of view. She has money, and you are to have money; and the union of money and money is supposed to be a good thing. And besides, you are variable, and off to-morrow what you are on to-day; is it not so? and heiresses are never jilted. Colonel Barclay is only awaiting your retirement. Le roi est mort; vive le roi! Heiresses may cry it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of each, according to either specification, is such a variable quantity that nothing can be determined satisfactorily. According to one officer's statement, about one in every five is considered an employee.[20] In the winter of 1903-4, 209 men were sent to Hadleigh and supported there by a special fund, called ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb

... oxe havyng a sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen draw home this Maiepoole (this stinckying idoll rather), which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound round aboute with stringes from the top to the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women, and children, following it with great devotion. And thus beyng reared up, with handkerchiefes and flagges streaming on the toppe, they strewe the ground about, binde greene boughs about it, set up summer haules, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... Institution, (the first High Court of Parliament on the present Establishment, having been ordained in the Reign of Henry the First, Son of William the Conquerer) avoiding the turbulent Licentiousness of a Democracy, the factious domineering Temper of Aristocracy, and the variable oppressive Sway of Arbitrary Monarchy; but including, by an harmonious Assemblage, the essential Virtues of those different Systems of Government; is unquestionably the best digested and wisest in the known World: Under which, the King and the Nobles, with the Commons, unite, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... those of Nature. The baths, erected there nearly twenty centuries ago, present only heaps of ruins, and even the bricks of which they were built, though hardened by fire, are crumbled into dust, whilst the masses of travertine around it, though formed by a variable source from the most perishable materials, have hardened by time, and the most perfect remains of the greatest ruins in the eternal city, such as the triumphal arches and the Colosaeum, owe their duration to this source. ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... seven A.M.; went on shore again at nine, and stopped all day. Dined and slept on board; rough living here, but no cattle, which is a great thing.—26th. Set sail at eleven A.M.; fair wind; fine day, and very hot.—27th. Rain all night; wind light and variable, and one made but little progress. Cape Bona still close to us this morning. We are only going at three and three-quarter knots per hour. A fine breeze got up at twelve, and at seven we passed Panteleria Isle, going at seven knots.—28th. Wind fell away early ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... in this trade are very variable, for although their goods are all disposed of apparently at enormous prices, yet there are so many of them delivered to powerful chiefs, or to the Sultan, as presents, or sold to these dignitaries without the traders ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... was as variable as the strength of the current. Sometimes I saw the stony bed seven or ten feet below, and then quite suddenly the boat would get into rushing water that sparkled with crystal clearness over a bank of pebbles, and I expected momentarily to hear a grating noise and to feel myself aground; ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... the more fastidious sense of the present day the vagaries and weaknesses of their writer. Johnson protested against this attempt to 'enchain his volatility' by vows. But Boswell replies that they may be useful to one 'of a variable judgment and irregular inclinations. For my part, without affecting to be a Socrates, I am sure I have a more than ordinary struggle to maintain with the Evil Principle, and all the methods I can devise are little enough to keep me tolerably steady in the paths of rectitude.' ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... bird, far less brilliant in plumage than the tanager, alighted even nearer, and poured forth a flood of song to which Henry listened without moving. Then the gray bird also flew away, not in fear, but because its variable mind moved it to do so. It too had come as a friend and it departed without changing. A rabbit hopped through the brush, stared at him a moment or two, and then hopped calmly out of sight. Its visit ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the dropping out of detail that accomplishes this in one case and the other. In either, the point of view alone is fixed. The rest is variable, and depends, it may be, on the nature of that subtile and volatile ether through which each ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... the female is incapable of reproduction. But for some days before her monthly illness she is liable to conception, as for that length of time the male element can survive. This period, therefore, becomes a variable and an undetermined one, and even when known, its observation demands a large ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... of good writing. Writing, as a means of expression, has to compete with talking. The talker need not rely wholly on what he says. He has the help of his mobile face and hands, and of his voice, with its various inflexions and its variable pace, whereby he may insinuate fine shades of meaning, qualifying or strengthening at will, and clothing naked words with colour, and making dead words live. But the writer? He can express a certain amount through his handwriting, if he write in a properly elastic way. But his ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... than the free-swimming medusa; and the cold-blooded and less heterogeneous fish is quicker in its movements than the warm-blooded and more heterogeneous sloth. But the admission that the several aspects under which this increasing contrast shows itself bear variable ratios to one another, does not negative the general truth enunciated. Looking at the facts in the mass, it cannot be denied that the successively higher groups of organisms are severally characterized, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... the wind was variable at daylight, and a dense fog was on the river. As the sun rose, it was dissipated and a light breeze sprung up from W.S.W. We ran up the stream with a free sheet for six hours, when we stopped ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... made in the House upon this occasion, printed at the end of his poems, gives us some notion of his principles as to government.' Indeed we cannot but confess he was a little too inconstant in them, and was not naturally so steady, as he was judicious; which variable temper was the cause of his losing his reputation, in a great measure, with both parties, when the nation became unhappily divided. His love to poetry, and his indolence, laid him open to the insinuations of others, and perhaps prevented his fixing so resolutely to any one party, as to make him ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... our journey westward. I arrived at Toronto on the 27th of June, and found the weather had changed to variable ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... always be renewed, and in an equal degree, by the objects which first excited it. The weakness of humanity is never willingly perceived by young minds. It is painful to know, that we are operated upon by objects whose impressions are variable as they are indefinable—and that what yesterday affected us strongly, is to-day but imperfectly felt, and to-morrow perhaps shall be disregarded. When at length this unwelcome truth is received into the mind, we ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe

... watching an orb that is only variable at our caprice, and contemplating a woman who shifts and quivers ever with her own, how vast ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... as the day before. The thermometer had risen twenty-five degrees during the night—a great change, but not unusual in our variable climate. Phil rather enjoyed this walk, notwithstanding his back was ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Impulsive, variable as the wind, San Francisco found a new adventure. It listened spellbound to golden eloquence, extolling the virtues of a favored candidate. Meanwhile Acting Sheriff Townes rushed his prisoners to the county jail without anyone so ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... approach of such a revolution. There is nothing more striking to a person newly arrived in the United States, than the kind of tumultuous agitation in which he finds political society. The laws are incessantly changing, and at first sight it seems impossible that a people so variable in its desires should avoid adopting, within a short space of time, a completely new form of government. Such apprehensions are, however, premature; the instability which affects political institutions is of two kinds, which ought not to be confounded: ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... application of this rule to those over whom we have control, is not without its difficulties. Our own sensations are so variable, independently of external and obvious causes, that we cannot at all times judge for others, especially for infants. The absolute and real state of temperature in a room can only be ascertained by the aid of a thermometer; and no nursery should ever be without one. It should be placed, however, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... changed from its calm. Variable emotions shot over it. Prescott, as he stood there before her, was conscious of admiration. What vagary had sent a girl who looked like ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... approximate figures may always be had and they are extremely useful. The cost of writing an ordinary letter is quite surprising. Very few letters can be dictated, transcribed, and mailed at a cost of much less than twelve cents each. The factors which govern costs are variable and it is to be borne in mind that the methods for ascertaining costs as here given represent the least cost and not the real cost—they simply tell you "Your letter costs at least this sum." They do not say "Your letter costs exactly this sum." The ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther

... and the demand for every freely produced commodity is variable, and since a true standard of value, like a true standard of weight or length, must be invariable as regards that which it measures, it necessarily follows that no single freely produced commodity can be a true standard of value. But while it is true that every single commodity must vary ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... we imagined that she was either from Falkland's Islands, where the French had then a settlement, to get wood, or upon a survey of the strait. The remaining part of this day, and the next morning, we had variable winds with calms; in the afternoon therefore I hoisted out the boats, and towed round Saint Anne's Point into Port Famine; at six in the evening we anchored, and soon after the French ship passed by us ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... "A most variable climate," said the Duchess; "and how unfortunate that we should have had that very cold weather at a time when coal was so dear! So distressing ...
— Reginald • Saki

... impossible to bring a fleet of forty sail of the line into line of battle in variable winds, thick weather, and other circumstances which must occur, without such a loss of time that the opportunity would probably be lost of bringing the enemy to battle in such a manner as to make the business decisive; I have therefore ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett

... our own country is exceedingly variable. The transitions from heat to cold are very sudden, the range of the mercury is very great. In the North, we have almost the Arctic winters; in the South, almost the peculiarities of the tropics. Of the State of Pennsylvania ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... amount of water in wood is extremely variable it usually is not satisfactory to refer to the density of green wood. For scientific purposes the density of "oven-dry" wood is used; that is, the wood is dried in an oven at a temperature of 100 deg.C. (212 deg.F.) ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record

... With variable winds, the three ships that composed the fleet sailed towards the west till the 26th of January, 1606, when, in the afternoon, they sighted a small island. No anchorage could be found and it was thought that it could not be inhabited, so they passed it. Continuing on a westerly course three days ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge

... to allow of any amount of selected change; so that it does not seem to me at all incompatible that a group which at any one period (or during all successive periods) varies less, should in the long course of time have undergone more modification than a group which is generally more variable. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... clearness, receipts on one side and expenses on the other, each section divided into chapters and each chapter into articles, the state of the liabilities, each debt, the state of the assets and a tabular enumeration of distinct resources, available capital and unpaid claims, fixed income and variable income, certain revenue and possible revenue. In no case must "the calculation of presumable expenditure exceed the amount of presumable income." In no case must "the commune demand or obtain an extra tax for its ordinary expenses." Exact accounts ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... a very remarkable influence upon the irritability of the sensitive plant. Thus, if a sensitive plant be placed in complete darkness, by carrying it within an opaque vessel, it will entirely lose its irritability, and that in a variable time, according to a certain state of depression or ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... with Bramble that we would return together and halve the pilotage. About eight leagues from the Lizard Point we boarded a small ship which had hoisted the signal, the weather at that time being fine and the wind variable. When we went on board it was but just daylight, and the captain was not yet on deck, but the mate received us. We were surprised to find that she mounted twelve brass guns, remarkably well fitted, and that everything was apparently ready for action, rammers and sponges, shot ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... news story is probably the most variable part of a newspaper. Given the same facts, each individual reporter will write the story in his individual way and each editor will change it to suit his individual taste. No two newspapers have exactly the same ideal form of news story and no newspaper ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... and the discussion is complicated by the fact that conflicts of men as groups of individuals within the same species are somewhat anomalous among biological forms of struggle. Commonly, struggle takes place among individuals, organisms having definite characteristics and but slightly variable each from its own kind contending with one another, by direct competition or through adaptation, in the first case individuals striving to obtain actually the same objects. Or, again, species having the ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... undulation of the sea-bed: its highest ridges do not rise more than the height of a man above the salines on either side;—the salines themselves lie almost level with the level of the flood-tides;—the tides are variable, treacherous, mysterious. But when all around and above these ever-changing shores the twin vastnesses of heaven and sea begin to utter the tremendous revelation of themselves as infinite forces in contention, then indeed this sense of separation from humanity appalls ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... of him where the body is. King Now sonne Hamlet, where is this dead body? Ham. At supper, not where he is eating, but Where he is eaten, a certaine company of politicke wormes [G4] are euen now at him. Father, your fatte King, and your leane Beggar Are but variable seruices, two dishes to one messe: Looke you, a man may fish with that worme That hath eaten of a King, And a Beggar eate that fish, Which that worme hath caught. King What of this? Ham. Nothing father, but to tell you, how a King May go a progresse through the ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare

... compelled the explorer to return, and on October 12th he started for Buenos Ayres in a small vessel. During this journey he had an opportunity of examining the shifting and variable islands of the muddy Parana, on which the jaguar thrives. Arrived at Las Conchas, a revolution had broken out, and Darwin was detained to a certain extent under surveillance; but by the influence ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... distinguish a German or a Briton, in the habits of his mind or his body, in his manners or apprehensions, from an American, who, like him, with his bow and his dart, is left to traverse the forest; and in a like severe or variable climate, is obliged ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... after the other to the world. Hence the many transformations of that semi-madness, and their quick variety. Young Gourlay was showing them now. His had always been a wandering mind, deficient in application and control, and as he neared his final collapse it became more and more variable, the prey of each momentary thought. In a short five minutes of time he had been alive to the beauty of the darkness, cowering before the memory of his father's eyes, sobbing in self-pity and angry resolve, shaking in terror—indeed he was ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... my governement, a field hath been wonne so honourably, I suppose that it is good, that I tempt not fortune any more, knowyng how variable, and unstable she is: and therefore, I desire to give up my governement, and that Zanobi do execute now this office of demaundyng, mindyng to followe the order, whiche concerneth the youngeste: and I knowe he will not refuse this honoure, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... Variable passions throng her constant woe, As striving who should best become her grief; 968 All entertain'd, each passion labours so, That every present sorrow seemeth chief, But none is best; then join they all together, Like many clouds consulting for ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare

... Mrs Enderby had been in agitated and variable spirits for some time, apparently wishing to say something that she did not say, and expressing a stronger regard than ever for her old friends—a regular sign that some act of tyranny or rudeness might speedily be expected from Mrs Rowland. The Greys were in the midst of their speculations, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... of the new cuts were easily navigable, being from 140 to 200 feet wide at bottom, whereas the old outlets had been variable and were often choked with shifting sand. The district was thus effectually opened up for navigation, and a convenient transit afforded for coals and other articles of consumption. Wisbeach became accessible to vessels of much larger burden, and in the course of a few years after ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... runways; 12 locations have snow-surface skiways limited to use by ski-equipped planes - 8 runways/skiways greater than 3,000 m,10 runways/skiways 1,000 to 3,000 m, 3 runways/skiways less than 1,000 m, and 4 of unspecified or variable length; airports generally subject to severe restrictions and limitations resulting from extreme seasonal and geographic conditions; airports do not meet ICAO standards; advance approval from the respective governmental or non-governmental ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... of fire as a punishment, which has been suggested, though not absolutely advised, by Bentham, would have a decisive preference. "Fire," writes that voluminous jurist and legislator, "may be employed as an instrument of punishment without occasioning death. This punishment is variable in its nature, through all the degrees of severity of which there can be any need. It would be necessary carefully to determine, on the test of the law, the part of the body which ought to be exposed to the action of fire; the intensity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... gives strength to the rest: for they are not to be regarded as separate and successive states, a discrete series through which we must pass one by one, leaving penitence behind us when we reach surrendered love; but as the variable yet enduring and inseparable aspects of one rich life, phases in one complete and vital effort to respond more and more closely ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... his Cromwell (1827)], or rather there are no other rules than the general laws of nature which encompass the whole art, and the special laws which for every composition result from the conditions of existence peculiar to each subject. The former are eternal, internal, and remain; the latter variable, external, and serve ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... introduction of bronze, of iron, of glass and glazed earthenware; and these we perceive increasingly not as turning points of the whole, but as processes within it, affecting now one region, now another, in a sequence which is clearly geographical and at very variable speed. Bronze, for example, took some thousands of years to permeate the continent of Europe; iron perhaps as many hundreds; platinum a little more than fifty years; and radium less ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... that two-ninths of the atmosphere by weight is a highly magnetic body, subject to great changes in its magnetic character, by variations in its temperature and condensation or rarefaction, without being persuaded that it has much to do with the variable disposition of the magnetic forces upon the surface of ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... thick, solid, firm, slightly tapering toward the apex, very bulbous at base, same color as cap, stuffed with brown pith inside. There are two or three reddish oblique zones encircling the stem. Gills adnate, swollen in the middle, distant, variable, at first pale cinnamon color, and then dark brown. We found them at the end of August in great numbers, sometimes united in tufts (caespitose) in all stages of growth, the younger ones covered with a cobwebby ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin

... Roquevaire; they are very large and very sweet. This sort is rarely eaten by any but the most wealthy. The dried Malaga, or Muscatel raisins, which come to this country packed in small boxes, and nicely preserved in bunches, are variable in their quality, but mostly of a rich flavour, when new, juicy, and of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... appearance in The Room with the Tassels made that story more than ordinarily worth while. I do not know, though, whether Penny Wise would be interesting or even notable if it were not for his curious assistant, Zizi. The merit of detective stories is necessarily variable; The Vanishing of Betty Varian is one of the author's best; but Miss Wells (really Mrs. Hadwin Houghton) is, to me, as extraordinary as her stories. All those books! She herself says that "having mastered the psychology ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... arabesques, denticulations, capitals, and bas-reliefs,—it combines all these flowers of the fancy according to the logarithm that suits it best. Hence the immense variety in the exteriors of those structures within which dwell such unity and order. The trunk of the tree is fixt; the foliage is variable. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... that it was in any case necessary to analyze the products of combustion in order to detect imperfect action. Thus, in the case of substances containing carbon, carbonic oxide was always present to a variable extent with the carbonic acid, and corrections were necessary in order to determine the total heat due to the complete combination of the substance with oxygen. Another advantage gained was that the absorption of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various

... with all other commodities, the idea of a "constant" measure of prices is unthinkable. We would have to suppose here, that not a single kind of goods varied in its price; since, otherwise, at least as compared with those that varied in price, the measure of prices would itself be variable.(773) But we may, indeed, search for a kind of goods such that its inherent elements and the elements peculiar to it, so far as it is itself concerned, and which go to determine price, should exert the same uniform influence at all times. If there be such ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... mind. It did not so much blow in gusts as with the steady sweep of a waterfall, so that there was no remission of discomfort while it blew. But higher upon the mountain, it was probably of a more variable strength, with accesses of fury; for there came down at times a far-off wailing, infinitely grievous to hear; and at times, on one of the high shelves or terraces, there would start up, and then disperse, a tower of dust, like ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Prussian Militarism or the rise of German Commercialism, or the long tradition and growth of a Welt-politik philosophy, or the general political ignorance which gave to these influences such rash and uncritical acceptance; or whether we accuse the somewhat difficult and variable personal equation of the Kaiser himself—the fact still remains that for years and years this war has been by the German Government most deliberately and systematically prepared for. The fact remains that Britain—though for a long period she had foreseen ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... for other purposes too vague to enumerate. I have attempted, by Hooker's help, to ascertain in a similar way whether the different species of the same genera in distant quarters of the globe are variable or present varieties. The definition I should give of a "CLOSE SPECIES" was one that YOU thought specifically distinct, but which you could conceive some other GOOD botanist might think only a race or variety; or, again, a species that you had trouble, though ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... fiction would do well to study the Spanish picaresque novels; for in their simplicity of design he will find one of the best forms for an American story. The intrigue of close texture will never suit our conditions, which are so loose and open and variable; each man's life among us is a romance of the Spanish model, if it is the life of a man who has risen, as we nearly all have, with many ups and downs. The story of 'Latzarillo' is gross in its facts, and is mostly "unmeet for ladies," like most ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... proved to be, perhaps not so predictably, quite similar in practical consequences. One pressure felt by all the services was the recently acquired knowledge that the nation's military manpower was not only variable but also limited in quantity. Military efficiency demanded, therefore, that the services not only make the most effective use of available manpower, but also improve its quality. Since Negroes, who made up approximately 10 percent of the population, formed a substantial part of the nation's manpower, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... day we discovered land at five of the clock in the morning, being very great and high mountains, the tops of the hills being covered with snow. Here the wind was variable, sometimes north-east, east-north-east, and east by north; but we imagined ourselves to be 16 or 17 leagues off ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... as a King," she whispered, and drew from her bosom the opal, as lovely and as variable as the human spirit. "With the other three stones you may, if you will, buy back your father's kingdom. But this, which contains all qualities in one, let us keep for ever, for our children and theirs, ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... Nanson, in condemning Mr. Hare's original scheme, has denied that they are free to vote as faddists; but he still holds that they are free to vote on any basis if only they form one-sixth to one-twelfth of an electorate. Thus the amount of freedom is variable and a matter of opinion. Now, we altogether deny that electors should be given the opportunity to subordinate the national interests to factious interests. Just as the faddist argument is fatal to Mr. Hare's original scheme, ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth

... and when the groups began to scatter themselves through the light and shadow made here by closely neighboring beeches and there by rarer oaks, one may suppose that a painter would have been glad to look on. This roving archery was far prettier than the stationary game, but success in shooting at variable marks were less favored by practice, and the hits were distributed among the volunteer archers otherwise than they would have been in target-shooting. From this cause, perhaps, as well as from the twofold distraction of being preoccupied and wishing not to betray her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... consist of the valleys of the Nubra and Shayok rivers. These are deep, fierce, variable streams, which have buried the lower levels under great stretches of shingle, patched with jungles of hippophae and tamarisk, affording cover for innumerable wolves. Great lateral torrents descend to these rivers, and ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)

... shadow over this place too long as it is! Miss Clairville is no child; she knows, has always known, her own mind, and I do not grudge her a slight flirtation or two with any one she fancies; it is her way, a safe outlet for her strong yet variable temperament. You take things too seriously, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... pleasant, his manners affable. In stature he was short; in movement, quick and nervous. But in the make-up of the man one essential of true greatness—fixedness of purpose—had been omitted. He lacked the staying qualities. He was "variable and fond of change." "His full nature, like that river of which Alexander broke the strength, spent itself in channels which led to no great name on earth." By a single exploit, at the age of thirty, he ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell

... as near to the sportsman as possible, otherwise the game will be flushed at such a distance that it will be impossible to get at it. The cocker spaniel is much smaller than the springer; his ears are long, pendulous, and silky; his body round and compact; his legs short and tufted; his coat variable; his nose black; tail bushy and feathered, and, when hunting, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... begins a fight most fierce and fell. "And fight they did confusedly, and with variable fortunes; while, on the one hand, the English manfully rescued the ships of London, which were hemmed in by the Spaniards; and, on the other side, the Spaniards as stoutly delivered Recalde being in danger." "Never was heard such thundering of ordnance on both sides, which notwithstanding from ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Veronica found him an exceptionally interesting man. To begin with, he struck her as being the most variable person she had ever encountered. At times he was brilliant and masterful, talked round and over every one, and would have been domineering if he had not been extraordinarily kindly; at times he was almost monosyllabic, and defeated Miss Garvice's ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... to communicate to previous molecular supplies. Hitherto it has used such molecules solely for the repair of its own waste; now it employs a large portion of them to build up an entirely new fabric. It seems then that molecular polarity is not a fixed but a variable property, and, being such, cannot be inherent or originate in the molecular nature. But I will not linger over this point nor yet over the fact, absolutely unintelligible on the polar hypothesis, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... existence and the competition of life; antagonistic cooperation. The struggle for existence must be carried on under life conditions and in connection with the competition of life. The life conditions consist in variable elements of the environment, the supply of materials necessary to support life, the difficulty of exploiting them, the state of the arts, and the circumstances of physiography, climate, meteorology, etc., which favor life or the contrary. The struggle for ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... flowers is pollen. Candle-alder (Alnus Rubra)[9] yields the first supply. The time of flowering varies from the 10th of March to the 20th of April. The amount afforded is also variable. Cold, freezing weather frequently destroys a great portion of these flowers after they are out. These staminate flowers are nearly perfected the season previous, and a few warm days in spring will bring them out, even before any leaves appear. When the weather continues ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... wrangling any more, I should 'bout ship and settle the difference with them in a less ceremonious manner in the harbour. This effectually stopped their tongues, and we again proceeded on the journey. After two entire days' sailing across the Gulf with variable and gentle breezes, we arrived at our destination, Kurrum, in safety, on the third evening, the 24th March, and at once sent some Government letters to the Akils, ordering their attendance, and to proclaim publicly the nature ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Here the variable character of humour is recognised, but it is not to be supposed that Rosalind's arguments were intended to be strictly correct. Very much must depend upon the form in which a jest is produced, and without the tongue of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... of air now required all the attention of Paul, for they again became variable, and at last the wind drew directly ahead in a continued current for half an hour. As soon as this change was felt, the sails were trimmed to it, and the boat began to stir the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... has yielded itself to me, the nineteenth seeker after the truth in one direct line. One slight detail alone baffles me. So far as I have gone at present, the constituent parts, containing always the same elements and producing, therefore, the same effect, appear in variable dimensions or potencies, for reasons which at present elude me. Of my formula there is no longer any doubt. This substance which I have produced shall purify and make holy ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... is ever tending to increase and to appear where it is absent," as Dr. Wallace believes, then we ought to find it varying in the direction of greater brightness in some species in a family so numerous and variable as the Dendrocolaptidae, however feeble and in need of a protective colouring these birds may be in a majority of pases. And this in effect we do find. In many of the dark-plumaged species that live in perpetual shade some ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... perhaps ever unanswerable question—How they exist and grow at all? By what miracle they are compacted out of light, air, and water, each after its kind? How, again, those kinds began to be, and what they were like at first? Whether those crowded, struggling, competing shapes are stable or variable? Whether or not they are varying still? Whether even now, as we sit here, the great God may not be creating, slowly but surely, new forms of beauty round us? Why not? If He chose to do it, could He not do it? And even had you answered that ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... least of the reasons militating against complete success was the short time possible for psychoanalytic treatment. The patient was seen only three weeks. As the time needed for a psychoanalysis is variable depending on the particular patient, it is clear that this would be too short a time to enable a young girl, only recently here from Russia, to understand, or to overcome resistances. That the treatment was as nearly successful as it was is perhaps encouraging to the ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... Woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou! Scarce were the piteous accents said, When, with the baron's casque, the maid To the nigh streamlet ran: ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins

... Cats," says that "Mme. Ronner excels all other cat painters, living or dead. She not only infuses a wonderful degree of life into her little figures, but reproduces the shades of expression, shifting and variable as the sands of the sea, as no other artist of the brush has done. Asleep or awake, her cats look to the" felinarian "like cats with whom he or she is familiar. Curiosity, drowsiness, indifference, alertness, love, hate, anxiety, temper, innocence, cunning, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... coursed masses of precipice, but it is somewhat curious that the most noble cliff in Europe, which this eastern front of the Cervin is, I believe, without dispute, should be to us an example of the utmost possible stability of precipitousness attained with materials of imperfect and variable character; and, what is more, there are very few cliffs which do not display alternations between compact and friable conditions of their material, marked in their contours by bevelled slopes when the bricks are soft, and vertical steps when they ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... will still be ours, and memory, the Janus-headed, will still pursue us, calling to our minds the enacted evil and that good which, having been, must always be. For we are immortal, and though we put off the mortal dress —yes, though our forms become as variable as the clouds, and assume proportions of which we cannot dream—yet shall memory companion us and identity remain. For we are each fashioned apart for ever, and built about with such an iron wall of individual life that all the force of time and change cannot ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... blocked the way, extending a considerable distance along the creek, and leading sheer to the water from a variable height of forty to ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... domestic machinery running smoothly. It was astonishing what a peculiar and uncomfortable state of things was produced by the 'resting and reveling' process. The days kept getting longer and longer, the weather was unusually variable and so were tempers; an unsettled feeling possessed everyone, and Satan found plenty of mischief for the idle hands to do. As the height of luxury, Meg put out some of her sewing, and then found time hang so heavily, that she fell to snipping and spoiling ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... was thinking of himself when he thus criticised the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. 'The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... there is a wretched small silver coin called Dama, of which the value in exchange is variable; but commonly 136 Damas are ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... production for the very good reason that it is only with respect to them that any clear and certain laws as to distribution can be laid down. Into the distribution between individuals and classes there enter other and variable factors, governed by no fundamental economic law; and here, the conclusion should at once suggest itself, is the field for action designed to alter the distribution of wealth. What is possible or desirable in this field, it is again not the purpose ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... contained is variable," said Challenger, "depending upon the pressure and care with which it has been bottled. I am inclined to agree with you, Roxton, that this ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... counted as two. Usage is not altogether consistent in this particular; the same combination is in some words pronounced as two syllables (ni-ais, li-en, pri-re, pri-ons, jou-et), in others as one (biais, rien, bar-rire, ai-mions, fou-et); and even the same word is sometimes variable (ancien, hier, duel). In general such combinations are monosyllabic if they have developed from a single vowel in the Latin ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... the milk is still in a state of colostrum, the fluid contains a variable quantity of albumen coagulable by heat, much less caseine, and an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... (during twilight) with light, variable, westerly breezes. All around hangs a heavy curtain of haze, and, although very light snow is falling, overhead is black and clear with stars shining. As soon as the faint noon light fades away the ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... est. That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion—which some whisper is, in the present case, very much the same thing as publican's opinion—has willed otherwise. The Heads may return to their wonted slumbers—at any rate for ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... Kantian viewpoint amounts to is an exaltation of conscience-a much more concrete (and variable) thing than this abstract formula. Do your duty, at any cost! Our hearts respond to such preaching, but our intellects remain perplexed, if the practical apotheosis of goodness is not supplemented by an ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... any one within to have shot them dead. This observed, the light was cautiously removed, and everybody took care to keep out of its reflection. By this time the crisis of the position was at hand, the cavalry exhibited very variable inclinations, some to run away, others to shoot Booth without a summons, but all excited and fitfully silent. At the house near by the female folks were seen collected in the doorway, and the necessities of the case provoked prompt conclusions. The boy was placed at a remote ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... easy flexibility. The third, of brass, was that of Jupiter, emblem of his solidity and dry nature. The fourth, of iron, was that of Mercury, expressing his indefatigable activity and sagacity. The fifth, of copper, was that of Mars, expressive of his inequalities and variable nature. The sixth, of silver, was that of the Moon: and the seventh, of gold, that of the Sun. This order is not the real order of these Planets; but a mysterious one, like that of the days of the Week consecrated to them, commencing with Saturday, and retrograding ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... been doing that for millions of years. The shock of their meeting has transformed their motion into light and heat. They have united to form a single sun and a nebula, which will some day condense into a system of planets like ours. To-night the astronomers on Earth will discover a new star—a variable star as they'll call it—for it will grow dimmer as it moves away from our system. ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... those ancient histories which have been preserved and yet remain among us; and withal of so many tragical poets, as in the persons of powerful princes and other mighty men have complained against {13} infidelity, time, destiny, and most of all against the variable success of worldly things and instability of fortune. To these undertakings these great lords of the world have been stirred up, rather by the desire of fame, which plougheth up the air and soweth in the wind, than by the affection of bearing ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... be well knowen Of you thre specially, and of duetie Great payne and busines as for mine owne For you I haue taken because I loue you hartely To maintaine you is all my desyre and faculty yet hard it is to doo, the people be so variable And many be so wilfull, they will not ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous

... the district there are parts where wells can be profitably worked. Belts of uneven sandy land are found especially in the west and south. The dry cultivation is most precarious, for the rainfall is extremely variable. In the old district it averages 20 inches. But averages in a tract like Rohtak mean very little. The chief crops are the two millets ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... The Madonna-like purity of her face might have been inspired by the Sanctus in Gounod's Mass. But I was always glad when she changed that mood for what we called her "April Manoeuvres." She was often as variable as an April day. In the morning grave, dignified and sweet, at noon laughing, capricious, at evening whatever one least expected. I preferred her so rather than in that Madonna-like tranquillity which stirred the depths of my ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... brotherhood. Science has given us the steamship,—it has destroyed the sailor. The age of discovery is closing with this century. Up to the limits of the ice-fields, every shore is mapped out, every shoal sounded. Not only does Science give the fixed, but she is even transferring to her charts the variable features of the deep,—the sliding current, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... of the Jew to his environment has been at once his strength and his weakness. His strength, in that it provided a variable cloak to shelter him in storm on the one hand,—on the other, to deck him seasonably, as it were, for the onward journey, when days were fair; his weakness, in that it has often led him to forget that the cloak was but raiment;—"and is not the body more than raiment?" ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... his ministers tried to grapple with the altered circumstances, and strove to substitute and equitable Crown rent or money payment for the existing and variable claims which were collected by the Court of Ward and Livery. The knight's fee then consisted of twelve plough-lands, a more modern name for "a hide of land." The class burdened with knight's service, ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... simple cavity; it is filled with a soft cellular or spongy substance in which the ink is diffused. This has no relation or analogy with bile, as Munro believed; but it is a peculiar secretion, somewhat glutinous, readily miscible with water, and variable in point of shade, according to the species of cephalopode from which it comes; so that, as Dr. Grant remarks, a more intimate acquaintance with this character might be useful in tracing relations among the different species. The colour of the ink in Loligo sagittata[16] is a deep brown, approaching ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various

... calculable forces? If the will is free, and is the chief factor in the moulding of life, then you cannot forecast what line conduct will take or predict what shape character will assume. The whole conception of Ethics as a science must, it is contended, fall to the ground, if we admit a variable and incalculable element ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... detained in the Chops of the Channel, that I agreed with Bramble that we would return together and halve the pilotage. About eight leagues from the Lizard Point we boarded a small ship which had hoisted the signal, the weather at that time being fine and the wind variable. When we went on board it was but just daylight, and the captain was not yet on deck, but the mate received us. We were surprised to find that she mounted twelve brass guns, remarkably well fitted, and that everything was apparently ready for action, rammers and sponges, shot and wadding being ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... a standard NorCon Patrol vehicle. She was sixty feet long, twelve feet wide and twelve feet high; topped by a four-foot-high bubble canopy over her cab. All the way across her nose was a three-foot-wide luminescent strip. This was the variable beam headlight that could cut a day-bright swath of light through night, fog, rain or snow and could be varied in intensity, width and elevation. Immediately above the headlight strip were two red-black plastic panels which when lighted, sent out a flashing ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael

... some variable spelling; this has been repaired where there was an obvious prevalence of one form over the other, but is otherwise left as printed. There is a reference on page 112 to "gambling hells", which seems to be a genuine ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... incongruous animal is man! how unsettled in his best part, his soul, and how changing and variable in his frame of body. What is man altogether but ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... week—he remained away for a month. We heard of him, leading a wild life, among a vicious set of men. It was reported that a frantic restlessness possessed him which nobody could understand. He came back as suddenly as he had left us. His variable nature had swung round, in the interval, to the opposite extreme. He was full of repentance for his reckless conduct; he was in a state of depression which defied rousing; he despaired of himself and his future. Sometimes ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... strange, variable fools we are! Months of tender intercourse had failed to bring about anything like a positive engagement between Margaret and myself; and here behold me irrevocably pledged to Flora, after ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... Valley, instead of proving a dreary season of frost or fog, was apt to be as variable as April. Sheltered by the tall mountains, the climate was mild, and though snow would lie on the peaks of Penllwyd and Cwm Dinas it rarely rested on the lower levels. Very early in January the garden at The Woodlands ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... States are to be found even more striking examples of crop adaptation, although the areas are much smaller, as in the case of tobacco, potatoes, celery, onions, apples, peaches and other fruits. Regions containing residual soils are more variable in crop adaptation than drift soils and require more careful watchfulness on the part of those who ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... rifle-shooting. The sights and the object aimed at cannot be in focus together, and a great deal depends on the form of sight. Tycho Brahe invented, and applied to the pointers of his instruments, an aperture-sight of variable area, like the iris diaphragm used now in photography. This enabled him to get the best result with stars of different brightness. The telescope not having been invented, he could not use a telescopic-sight as we now do in gunnery. This not only ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... species, instead of its structure, he will find a much broader line of demarcation. Wherever he examines the existing relations or former records of his race, and compares them with those of other animals, he will find that the instincts of the one are variable and progressive, those of the other are definite and stationary. As far as has ever been ascertained by the most accurate observer, the nest of the grossbeak, the dam of the beaver, the cone of the termites, were, ages ago, each similar in character, and equal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... recommended and J. cordiformis, the Japanese heart nut, is also promising. This nut can be recommended for planting for its own sake as the tree is hardy, a rapid grower, comes into bearing early and bears a fairly good nut. There are no grafted trees, however, so the variable seedlings will have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... medical experts proved as dubious and uncertain as if the court had confined itself to the original witness. It seemed to be generally agreed that the data for determining the time of death of anybody were too complex and variable to admit of very precise inference; rigor mortis and other symptoms setting in within very wide limits and differing largely in different persons. All agreed that death from such a cut must have ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... I state that every opaque body is surrounded and its whole surface enveloped in shadow and light. And on this proposition I build up the first Book. Besides this, shadows have in themselves various degrees of darkness, because they are caused by the absence of a variable amount of the luminous rays; and these I call Primary shadows because they are the first, and inseparable from the object to which they belong. And on this I will found my second Book. From these primary shadows there result certain shaded rays which ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... essentially the same as the infinitely tender tissues of the eye? This difference is due to and accounted for by the adaptation of certain portions of the immense accumulation of cells to diverse functions, which has necessitated the variable conformity of the supporting elements. But all of these elements are in the blood, which carries them in the necessary quantities to the different organs to which they belong and where they are ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... do not that way tend; Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, Was not like madness. There's something in his soul, O'er which his melancholy sits on brood; He shall with speed to England, For the demand of our neglected tribute: Haply, the seas, and countries different, With variable objects, shall expel This something-settled matter in his heart; Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus From fashion of himself. ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... their duty to be mournful; why? I cannot love your weeping poets; I Am sad in winter, but in summer gay, And vary with each variable day. ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West

... Its composition is very variable, and probably no two samples would yield exactly similar analyses. In this fact lies one of the chief difficulties of the treatment of the subject, and all statements made in the following pages as to its chemical composition must be taken as ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... "They are variable, then? That is distinctly curious, because—but do I understand that the type of the delusion varies? For example, Mr. Sargent believes that he ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... there was an odd occurrence. Soon after our arrival we had learned that Mr. Schurman was a man of very variable opinions. He was rather readily convinced by plausible arguments, but sometimes very suddenly reversed his views on an ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... exceptionally up to 0.2 per cent., but generally below 0.1 per cent., and with less than 0.1 per cent. of phosphorus and sulphur. On the other hand, rails with a tendency to break or split are low in carbon, with variable proportions of manganese, but contain much silicon, 0.3 to 0.9 per cent., and often above 0.1 per cent. of phosphorus. Another series of experiments upon rails for the Finland lines made by the author in 1879-80 shows the high quality of manganese ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... accordingly, from six thousand to six hundred dollars each. He ordered them a berth on deck, at the after part of the vessel, where they had nothing to shelter them from the weather, which at this time was very variable,—the days excessively hot, and the nights cold, with heavy rains. The town being plundered of every thing valuable, it was set on fire, and reduced to ashes by the morning. The fleet remained here three days, negotiating for the ransom of the prisoners, and plundering ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... while a man at sedentary employment would be well nourished with 92 grams (1400 grains) or 0.20 pound of available protein, and enough fat and carbohydrates in addition to yield 2,700 calories of energy. The demands are, however, variable, increasing and decreasing with increase and decrease of muscular work, or as other needs of the person change. Each person, too, should learn by experience what kinds of food yield him nourishment with the least discomfort, and should avoid those which do ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon

... that incandescent youth, From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth. He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote— For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow: "Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... evil.' Now I've got that, sure; ye know I'm always thinkin' somethin' dreadful's goin' ter happen. 'Sparks before the eyes.' There! I had them only jest ter-day. I was sweepin' out the barn, an' I see 'em hoppin' up an' down in a streak of sunshine that come through a crack. 'Variable appetite.' Now, Hitty, don't ye remember? Yesterday I wanted pie awful, an' I ate a whole one; well, this mornin' seems as if I never wanted ter see an apple pie again. Now, if that ain't 'variable,' I don't know what ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... second-hand booksellers attached to an important library, from whom the librarian may naturally expect to obtain such books as he requires. Of course a man of knowledge and experience must be paid for the exercise of these qualities, but the price of books is so variable that it is quite possible that the bookseller, from his knowledge, may buy the required books cheaper than the librarian himself would pay for them. As far as it is possible to judge from the information given us respecting the collection of libraries, ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... must for long remain, in that period of life when one has not yet separated the fact of this sensual pleasure from the various women in whose company one has tasted it, when one has not reduced it to a general idea which makes one regard them thenceforward as the variable instruments of a pleasure that is always the same. Indeed, that pleasure does not exist, isolated and formulated in the consciousness, as the ultimate object with which one seeks a woman's company, or as the cause of the uneasiness ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... governmental group which, like the Privy Council, differs from the cabinet while containing it, is the ministry. The ministry comprises a large and variable body of functionaries, some of whom occupy the principal offices of state and divide their efforts between advising the crown, i.e., formulating governmental policy, and administering the affairs of their respective ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... the weather was variable, sometimes strong gales from the southward and south-east, with moist and hazy weather; a great sea rolling in upon the coast. This month the marines were ordered to clear ground and begin to build ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... past; and we should probably live as long and as happily as all the others." That was the way his father and mother had married; and why were he and Margaret different from the generations before them? What variable strain in their natures impelled them to lead their own separate lives instead of the collective life of the family? "I suppose Mother is right as far as she sees," he admitted. "To marry Margaret and settle down would be the best thing that could happen ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... still remaining valid. That would be a form of polygamy, but Hinton was careful to point out that by "polygamy" he meant "less a particular marriage-order than such an order as best serves good, and which therefore must be essentially variable. Monogamy may be good, even the only good order, if of free choice; but a law for it is another thing. The sexual relationship must be a natural thing. The true social life will not be any fixed and definite relationship, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... these were points that made his appearance undeniably striking and attractive. A physiognomist might, however, have found something to blame as well as to praise in his features. There was an ominous upright line between the dark brows, which surely told of a variable temper; the curl of the laughing lips, and the fall of the heavy moustache only half concealed a curious over-sensitiveness in the lines of the too mobile mouth. It was not the face of a great thinker nor of a great saint, ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... Francis Keary's Outlines of Primitive Belief Among the Indo-European Races (London, 1882), chaps, iv, vii. He observes: "The wind is a far more physical and less abstract conception than the sky or heaven; it is also a more variable phenomenon; and by reason of both these recommendations the wind-god superseded the older Dyaus. * * * Just as the chief god of Greece, having descended to be a divinity of storm, was not content to remain only that, but grew again to some likeness of the older Dyaus, so Odhinn came ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans; he was worshipped accordingly with more bloody sacrifices. But in all Europe, Western Asia and the northwestern coast of Africa, where the earth is uneven and the climate variable, their religion was more gloomy and their gods more ferocious than among ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... school-girl herself: sent fastidiously on her way, with long gloves covering her arms, a white linen mask tied over her face to screen her complexion from tan, a sunbonnet sewed tightly on her head to keep it secure from the capricious winds of heaven and the more variable gusts of her own wilfulness; or on another picture of her—as a lonely little lass—begging to be taken to court, where she could marvel at her father, an awful judge in his wig and his robe of scarlet and black velvet; or on a third picture ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... all inevitably out of sight. I have heard it mentioned as an article of belief among sextons that a hundred years is the fair measure of a head-stone's "life" above ground, but this reckoning is much too short for the evidences, and makes no allowance for variable circumstances. In some places, Keston for instance, the church is founded upon a bed of chalk, and out of the chalk the graves are laboriously hewn. It is obvious therefore that the nature of the soil, as it is yielding or impervious, must ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... people, unsad* and ev'r untrue, *variable And undiscreet, and changing as a vane, Delighting ev'r in rumour that is new, For like the moon so waxe ye and wane: Aye full of clapping, *dear enough a jane,* *worth nothing * Your doom* is false, your constance ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... had been extremely variable since dawn, now whipped around a couple of points, swinging the boat's stern to them. Barnet, putting aside his glass ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... sportsman as possible, otherwise the game will be flushed at such a distance that it will be impossible to get at it. The cocker spaniel is much smaller than the springer; his ears are long, pendulous, and silky; his body round and compact; his legs short and tufted; his coat variable; his nose black; tail bushy and feathered, and, when hunting, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... what propriety in calling him the younger son? The order in which Noah's sons are always mentioned, makes Ham the second, and not the younger son. If it be said that Bible usage is variable, and that the order of birth is not always preserved in enumerations; the reply is, that, enumeration in the order of birth, is the rule, in any other order the exception. Besides, if the younger member of a family, takes precedence of older ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... always considered to be most probably the true explanation; which is, that as these services were compiled when algebra stood much higher in the rank of sciences than it does at present, it is by no means unlikely that these two letters should be used to signify indefinite and variable names, as they are in algebra to represent indefinite or variable numbers, in the same manner as A. B. C. are as signs of known or definite, and X. Y. Z. of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various

... Mill here demands much more of philosophy than Sir W. Hamilton deems it capable of accomplishing. Why may not Hamilton, like Kant, distinguish between the permanent and necessary, and the variable and contingent—in other words, between the subjective and the objective elements of consciousness, without therefore obtaining a "direct intuition of things in themselves?" Why may he not distinguish between space and time as the forms of our sensitive ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... before them descending gradually, passed through a gulch, where the darkness was greater, and such light as sifted through the larch and poplar trees rested in variable spots on the earth. Overhead the somber obscurity appeared touched with a veil of shimmer or sheen like diamond dust floating through the mask of night. Their horses but crept along; the girl bent forward wearily; heretofore the excitement and danger ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... everything which is mutable is variable. But forms are invariable; for it is said (Sex Princip. i) that "form is essence consisting of the simple and invariable." Therefore it does not belong to God alone ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... number of minor differences in the composition even of those to which the same name has been applied, due manifestly to the fact that their production is the result of a gradual decomposition, which renders it impossible to extract from the soil one pure substance, but only a variable mixture of several, so similar to one another in properties, that their separation is very difficult, if not impossible. For this reason great discrepancies exist in the statements made regarding them by different observers, but this is a matter of comparatively small importance, as ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... could convey to others a little of the happiness I have enjoyed all through my life in the study of Natural History. During twenty years of variable health, the companionship of the animal world has been my constant solace and delight. To keep my own memory fresh, in the first instance, and afterwards with a distinct intention of repeating my single experiences ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... Lord's Supper was determined in its main features by the memory of its institution. The sphere of sacred song remained the most unfettered, though here also, even at an early period—no later in fact than the end of the first and beginning of the second century—a fixed and a variable element were distinguished; for responsory hymns, as is testified by the Epistle of Pliny and the still earlier Book of Revelation, require to follow a definite arrangement. But the whole, though perhaps already fixed during the course of the second century, still bore the stamp of spirituality ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... and simple stock will not, as I have just been saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer to apostasy than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the house of Rimmon. When Louis XVI., in the words of the edict, "convinced by the uselessness of a century of persecutions, and rather from necessity than sympathy," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... crevices of morn Let in those regal luxuries of light, Which all the variable east adorn, And hang rich fringes on the skirts of night, Leander, weaning from sweet Hero's side, Must leave a widow where he ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... Song Sparrow's nest is variable; sometimes on the ground, or in a low bush, but usually in as secluded a place as its instinct of preservation enables it to find. A favorite spot is a deep shaded ravine through which a rivulet ripples, where the solitude is disturbed only by the notes of his song, made more sweet and clear ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various

... digger to pick out the roots, which must be thoroughly cleaned and dried on a kiln till they are so brittle as to break across, when they are fit to be packed in bags, and sold to the dye-stuff manufacturers who grind and reduce them to powder for use. The produce is variable; usually from eight to twenty cwt. per acre, but as much as 3,000 to 6,000 lbs. is frequently obtained. The forage amounts to about 15,000 lbs. the first year, and 7,500 lbs. the second year. In a new and good soil manure ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... exactions of his variable temper along with the responsibility for the economical administration of his ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... being against them. I've been thinking of it, William, a great deal, and my idea is, that it will be at the beginning of the rainy season that we shall have a visit, if we have one at all; for you see that the wind don't blow regular from one quarter, as it does now, but is variable, and then they can make sail in their canoes, and come here easily, instead of pulling between thirty and forty miles, which is hard work against wind and current. Still, we must not be careless and ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat

... the eyelids. Though it may perhaps be stimulated into the performance of its natural action by the blood, which surrounds its origin, or by some part of that heterogeneous fluid; yet as the tears secreted by this gland are more wanted at some times than at others, its secretion is variable, like that of the saliva above mentioned, and is chiefly produced when its excretory duct is stimulated; for in our common sleep there seems to be little or no secretion of tears; though they are occasionally produced ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... conditions of liberty. Thus he set himself another of the insoluble problems he seems to delight in by neglecting the most important factor in the equation. Yet the invisible soul of man, ignored, as a variable, varying quantity, has upset all societies and constitutions, and all schemes of bondage as well ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... arises and the discussion is complicated by the fact that conflicts of men as groups of individuals within the same species are somewhat anomalous among biological forms of struggle. Commonly, struggle takes place among individuals, organisms having definite characteristics and but slightly variable each from its own kind contending with one another, by direct competition or through adaptation, in the first case individuals striving to obtain actually the same objects. Or, again, species having the ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... which print through a ribbon give variable shades and the typist in filling in must watch carefully to see that her typewriter ribbons match the impressions made in the body of the letter, especially where the form letters are printed several months in advance ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... Climate: variable, with mostly westerly winds throughout the year interspersed with periods of calm; nearly ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... ranges from 2 to 5 per cent and, together with the nitrogen, represents what was taken from the soil during growth. In animal bodies, the ash is present mainly in the bones, but there is also an appreciable amount, one per cent or more, in all the tissues. Ash is exceedingly variable in composition, being composed of the various salts of potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, and iron, as sulphates, phosphates, chlorides, and silicates of these elements. There are also other elements in small ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... commercial model. Inside is an ultra-slow fine-wire recorder holding a spool that runs for a week. The clock lets you go to any place on the 7-day wire and record a message. The buttons give you variable speed in going there, so you don't waste too much time making a setting. There's a knack in fingering them efficiently, but ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... them by any words of distinct and settled meaning; such are bear, break, come, cast, fall, get, give, do, put, set, go, run, make, take, turn, throw. If of these the whole power is not accurately delivered, it must be remembered, that while our language is yet living, and variable by the caprice of every one that speaks it, these words are hourly shifting their relations, and can no more be ascertained in a dictionary, than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can be accurately delineated from its picture in the water. The particles ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... Hyphenation has been made consistent within the main text. There is some archaic and variable spelling, which ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... was in a most variable frame of mind; one day hoping devoutly that the Langham affair might prove lasting enough in its effects to tire Hugh out; the next, outraged that a silly girl should waste a thought on such a creature, while Hugh was in her way; at ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... insufficient knowledge. Dr. Johnson, indeed, made it the distinguishing merit of the French, that they "have a book upon every subject." But Dr. Johnson was not only capricious as regards temper and variable humors, but as regards the inequality of his knowledge. Incoherent and unsystematic was Dr. Johnson's information in most cases. Hence his extravagant misappraisement of Knolles, the Turkish historian, which is exposed so severely by Spittler, the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... the 21st of December the phenomenon appeared partially, and with a variable light, in different parts of the southern sky for several hours. At seven on the following morning it became more brilliant and stationary, describing a well-defined arch, extending from the E.S.E. ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... it out, kept it from her mind: so she knew him, knew him to be a sweeter and a variable Willoughby, a generous kind of Willoughby, a Willoughby-butterfly, without having the free mind to summarize him and picture him for a warning. Scattered features of him, such as the instincts call up, were not sufficiently impressive. Besides, the clouded ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... seen them, but asked me to bring him a few. When he saw them he was surprised and at once pronounced them the finest hickories he had ever seen, and named them "Hales' Paper Shell." The hickory is one of the most valuable of North American nuts. It is of a variable nature. I have over twenty old trees on my place, and no two bear nuts of the same shape or size, and although some neighbors planted some nuts from the old tree and produced fruit from them they were only ordinary sized, so that it is necessary to propagate ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... temperature of heate (which hauing any extremitie, as either of heate, or his contrary, breedeth disorder in the worke) as also in the framing of the Ost or furnace after many new moulds and fashions, as variable as mens wits and experiences, yet because innouations and incertainty doth rather perplexe then profit, I will shunne, as much as in me lyeth, from loading the memory of the studious Husbandman with those stratagems which disable his vnderstanding from the attaining of better perfection, ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham

... Mental Examination:—Attitude was variable, but was distinctly that of one in a stupor. Arms, hands and legs, placed in uncomfortable positions, would remain fixed indefinitely, i.e., so observed from 20 to 30 minutes. Did not resent liberties taken with him; smiled in a silly fashion at each person. Orientation perfect; ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... Hunt, in his autobiography, writes, "I will not dwell upon the moment." From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, and established them in the ground-floor of Byron's Palazzo Lanfranchi, as comfortably as was consistent with his lordship's variable moods. The negotiations which had preceded Hunt's visit to Italy, raised forebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet from Byron; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled. Trelawny tells us how irksome the poet found it to have "a man with a sick wife, and seven ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... much as the affections of men are naturally variable and different one from an other: vpon this occasion I may bee excused. For although that bread sometime denyed and kept backe from the hungrie body, may cause a hard conceit, yet when it is eftsoones offered vnto him, the mallice is forgotten, and ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... these two stood this variable, sensuous, woman's nature, so capable both of good and evil. Rachel felt the burden of their virtues too much for her, together with the sting of her own ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... course was slower and more variable, often taking us into great depths. Several times they made use of the inclined planes, which certain internal levers placed obliquely to the waterline. In that way we went about two miles, but without ever obtaining the greatest depths of the Indian ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... Mr. Vail had no natural aptitude for executive work, and he had a temper somewhat variable and unhappy. He and I got along very well together until I determined to order my own instruments, his being too heavy and too difficult, as I thought, for an operator to handle while receiving. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... else whom she could appeal to. Mrs. Lander, after her first warning, had not spoken of him again, though Clementina could feel in the grimness with which she regarded her variable treatment of him that she was silently hoarding up a sum of inculpation which would crush her under its weight when it should fall upon her. She seemed to be growing constantly better, now, and as the interval since her last attack widened behind her, she began to indulge ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... short, on superstition; and as free inquiry is fatal to a belief in those fables which awed the childhood of the race, it has followed that established priesthoods have been almost uniformly the most conservative of social forces, and that clergymen have seldom failed to slay their variable brethren when opportunity has offered. History teems with such slaughters, some of the most instructive of which are related in the Old Testament, whose code of morals is ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... that the main force of the attack should be in the north, upon the Rhine and Meuse. Villeroy and those who were secretly in the Spanish interest were for beginning it with the southern combination and against Milan. Sully believed the Duke of Savoy to be variable and attached in his heart to Spain, and he thought it contrary to the interests of France to permit an Italian prince to grow so great on her frontier. He therefore thoroughly disapproved the plan, and explained ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... ballad verses and the ballad airs, also, these 'owerwords' are exceedingly variable, and are often interchangeable. Some of them are 'owerwords' literally; that is to say, they simply repeat or echo a word or phrase of the stanza to which they are attached. A specimen is the verse from Johnie o' Braidislee, quoted in the previous chapter. ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... in Cape Cod harbor. The fourth Sunday here. Scarce any of those aboard free from vehement coughs, some very ill. Weather very variable. ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... North, and the course, "east, and by south and east," and continues: "After much trouble, with fogges sometimes, and more dangerous ice. The nineteenth, being Tuesday, was close stormie weather, with much wind and snow, and very cold. The wind variable between the north north-west and north-east. We made our way west and by ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier

... antiquity, and of the host of smaller stars which our telescopes disclose? Can it be true that these countless orbs are really majestic suns, sunk to an appalling depth in the abyss of unfathomable space? What have we to tell of the different varieties of stars—of coloured stars, of variable stars, of double stars, of multiple stars, of stars that seem to move, and of stars that seem at rest? What of those glorious objects, the great star clusters? What of the Milky Way? And, lastly, what can we learn of the marvellous nebulae which our ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... goods—one company furnishing the waggon and tarpaulin, besides undertaking the trouble of loading and furnishing station-accommodation and the use of its line, while, it may be, several other companies give the use of their lines only, and that to a variable extent. In addition to all this, the company providing its carriages or waggons is entitled to "demurrage" for every day beyond a certain time that these are detained by the companies to which they ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... differences and distinctions of the race would require a book all to itself, for in 1597, more than three hundred years ago, Gerarde wrote: "There are, under the name of Caryophyllus, comprehended diuers and sundrie sorts of plants, of such variable colours and also severall shapes that a great and large volume would not suffice to write of euery one in particular." And when we realize that the pink was probably the first flower upon which, early in the eighteenth century, experiments in hybridization ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... English law, would have secured the acquittal of so wicked a poisoner as Palmer. He quoted from the famous French lawyer d'Aguesseau: "The corpus delicti is no other thing than the delictum itself; but the proofs of the delictum are infinitely variable according to the nature of things; they may be general or special, principal or accessory, direct or indirect; in a word, they form that general effect (ensemble) which goes to determine the conviction of an honest man." If such a ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... taxation, and must vary with every variation in that system. As they have contrived matters, their taxation does not so much depend on their constitution as their constitution on their taxation. This must introduce great confusion among the masses; as the variable qualification for votes within the district must, if ever real contested elections take place, cause ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... whirled up in a solid mass, blinding and choking me. The cold penetrated my heavy clothing. I went on. In a few minutes I was in the midst of the turmoil, utterly lost, buffeted about. I tried to keep the wind in my face for compass, but it was so variable, eddying from all directions, that it was not reassuring. Near the top of the mountain a blast knocked me down, and half smothered me with flying snow. I arose groggily, uncertain which way to head; it was impossible to see even a step in front. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... exceeded both of these his ancestors; and in this, as in other respects, he showed more of the Scottish character, more of the true sense of Highland honour, than any of his immediate predecessors in the Stuart line. Naturally gay, though variable; quick and shrewd, rather than deep or strong in intellect; easily to be flattered, too easily led by some, too wilful in resisting the counsels of others,—as a Prince, as the head of a Court, he soon won upon the affections ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... fancy according to the logarithm that suits it best. Hence the immense variety in the exteriors of those structures within which dwell such unity and order. The trunk of the tree is fixt; the foliage is variable. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... 42. Variable or regulating lashing. By laying the piece, a f, horizontally, it can be slipped along the rope, b; by raising or lowering this, we shall raise or depress the weight, c, the cord, b, running over the two pulleys, d, from the piece, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various

... argument is not disproved ny the fact that some swans are black, because a thing may very well happen in spite of the fact that some data render it improbable. In the case of the swans, a man might know that colour is a very variable characteristic in many species of animals, and that, therefore, an induction as to colour is peculiarly liable to error. But this knowledge would be a fresh datum, by no means proving that the probability ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... thus require 10 microseconds for completion. Examples of this are add, subtract, deposit, load, etc. One cycle instructions do not refer to memory and require 5 microseconds. Examples of the latter are the jump instructions, the skip instructions, and the operate group. The operating times of variable cycle instructions depend upon the instruction. For example, the operating time for a shift or rotate instruction is 5 0.2N microseconds, where N is the number of shifts performed. The operating times for multiply and divide are functions of the number of ...
— Preliminary Specifications: Programmed Data Processor Model Three (PDP-3) - October, 1960 • Digital Equipment Corporation

... as we may choose for our own ends; but a thorough knowledge is attained only by incessant observation and long practice; like music, it demands a special talent possessed by different individuals in variable quantity or not at all. You, gentlemen, all are, what I am not, commercial tourists. Before you I must be modest. You, each of you, have been chosen from surrounding hundreds or thousands for your superior ability, natural or acquired, to scan the human ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... paddle-wheel constitute at present the means of propulsion that are exclusively employed when one has recourse to a motive power for effecting the propulsion of a boat. The sail constitutes an entirely different mode, and should not figure in our enumeration, considering the essentially variable character of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... book is to stimulate thought and to encourage the average young officer to seek truth for, and in, himself. It is never a good idea to attempt a precise formula about matters which are by nature indefinite and subject to all number of variable factors. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... other considerations than those of equity and his own conscience. But the voice of his conscience had never spoken—let us better say whispered—against the government. For that conscience was born a functionary. It registered thoughts as a State function—variable but infallible. Established powers were invested by him with a sacred truth. He admired sincerely those souls of iron, the great free and unbending magistrates of the past; and perhaps secretly believed himself ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland

... if I should propose some accommodation of this nature? Lord Etherington does not pretend to the ardour of a passionate lover. He lives much in the world, and has no desire to quit it. Miss Mowbray's health is delicate—her spirits variable—and retirement would most probably be her choice.—Suppose—I am barely putting a supposition—suppose that a marriage between two persons so circumstanced were rendered necessary or advantageous to both—suppose that such a marriage were to secure ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... returned Trent, showing by his tone the momentary depression which settled so easily upon his variable moods. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... less brilliant in plumage than the tanager, alighted even nearer, and poured forth a flood of song to which Henry listened without moving. Then the gray bird also flew away, not in fear, but because its variable mind moved it to do so. It too had come as a friend and it departed without changing. A rabbit hopped through the brush, stared at him a moment or two, and then hopped calmly out of sight. Its visit had all the appearance of a friendly nature, and ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... term Tincture is meant that variable hue which is given to shields and their bearings; they are divided ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... Fifth Species of Females were made out of the Sea. These are Women of variable uneven Tempers, sometimes all Storm and Tempest, sometimes all Calm and Sunshine. The Stranger who sees one of these in her Smiles and Smoothness would cry her up for a Miracle of good Humour; but on a sudden her Looks ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... thrown out of cultivation become admirable natural pastures. The hemp is of very fine quality when cultivated with care. The vine and the mulberry thrive wherever they are planted. The finest olive-trees and the best olives in Europe grow in the mountains. A variable, but generally mild climate, brings to maturity the products of extreme latitudes. Half the country is favourable to the palm and the orange. Numerous and thriving flocks roam across the plains in winter, and ascend ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... and ideas. If their meaning or content is not fixed, and specially if they are undergoing a constant change, in the way of growth, with the progress of reason and society, how can we employ them as a test of morality, which is itself also a variable conception? Surely this is to make one indefinite idea the gauge of another indefinite idea. The answer to this question will, I trust, bring out clearly the nature of a moral test, as well as the ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler

... space of 48 yeeres, and then departed this life, as in place afterwards it shall appeere. But for that the contrarietie in writers in such points may sooner be perceiued than reformed, to the satisfieng of mens fansies which are variable, we will leaue euerie man to his libertie to thinke as seemeth him good, noting now and then the diuersitie of such writers, ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed

... my dear Augusta, [1] that your opinion of my meek mamma would coincide with mine; Her temper is so variable, and, when inflamed, so furious, that I dread our meeting; not but I dare say, that I am troublesome enough, but I always endeavour to be as dutiful as possible. She is so very strenuous, and so tormenting in her entreaties and commands, with regard ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... and less beloved, than the Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans; he was worshipped accordingly with more bloody sacrifices. But in all Europe, Western Asia and the northwestern coast of Africa, where the earth is uneven and the climate variable, their religion was more gloomy and their gods more ferocious ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... a painter, or a melo-drama. An English garden, adorned at every turn with statues of the heathen deities (although they were all but personifications of the various attributes of nature,) would be ridiculous. Setting aside the injury they must sustain from our damp, variable climate, they would be out of keeping with all around; here it is altogether different; the very air of Italy is embued with the spirit of ancient mythology; and though "the fair humanities of ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... discourses; nothing in him was extreme but the orator: the man was by no means so, neither was he at all cruel. Studious, but without imagination; copious, but without warmth, his intellect was mediocre, his mind honest, his will variable, his heart in the right place. His talent, which they affected to compare with Mirabeau's, was nothing more than a power of skilfully rivetting public attention. His habit of pleading gave him, with ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... sentences so loosely knit together that they seemed almost incoherent; now a burst of congratulation—now a falter of condolence—now words that seemed to supplicate as for pardon to an offence of his own—rapid transitions from enthusiasm to pity, from joy to grief—variable, with the stormy April of a ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Monument—long hours between each town as the local did its variable thirty-five miles an hour across the southern end of New Mexico. It was Pete's first experience in traveling by rail, and true to himself he made the most of it. He used his eyes, and came to the conclusion that they were aboard a very fast train—a train that ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... which, as a whole, they are guided. The county societies have been and are the chief means of influence and progress; but they have no power which can be systematically applied; their movements are variable, and their annual exhibitions do not always indicate the condition of agriculture in the districts represented. They have become, to a certain extent, localized in the vicinity of the towns where the fairs are held; and ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... fancy, and thus resting the basis of reality on the ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday, nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope, although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... Tom, and spent some days prospecting with variable success—i.e., we found gold nearly everywhere, each shovelful of earth contained gold, but in quantities so generally infinitesimal as to be not worth the time spent in working for it. The land was impregnated with gold, but the difficulty was to find it ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... arrive at an accurate computation of the time it must have taken to form these coral islands, because we lack the necessary data; but we can form a rough calculation, which leads to very curious and striking results. The computations of the rate at which corals grow are so exceedingly variable, that we must allow the widest possible margin for error; and it is better in this case to make the allowance upon the side of excess. I think that anybody who knows anything about the matter will tell you that I am making a computation far in excess of what is probable, if I say that an ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley

... varies from this norm, though not very often, the alteration usually taking the form of the loss of the first syllable, so that the half-line consists of three trochees. The second half is much more variable. Sometimes, in the same way as with the first, a syllable is dropped at the opening, and the half-line becomes similarly trochaic. Sometimes there is a double rhyme instead of a single, making seven syllables, though not altering the rhythm; and sometimes ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... before Helvetius, under the patronage of Louis XIV, succeeded in introducing it into practice in France; and, to the Queen of Charles II., we are indebted for the introduction of that popular beverage, tea, into England. Tobacco has suffered as many variable vicissitudes in its fame and character. It has been successively opposed and commended by physicians, condemned and praised by priests and kings, and proscribed and protected by governments, until, at length, this once insignificant production of a little island, has succeeded in propagating itself ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... abstract, hypothetical, and variable portions of the craft—or, if you will, of the science—depending on ten thousand varying and variable circumstances—depending on persons, passions, fancies, whims; caprices royal, national, parliamentary, and personal, is above theory, and beyond the reach of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... the radii are known and p and p be given, then deducing from the above equations the values T0 and T, and also the variable pressure px, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... been coincident with the departure of the stage that brought the travellers from "Town," but Chugg was late—a tardiness ascribed to indulgence in local lethe waters, for Lemuel Chugg had survived a romance and drank to forget that woman is a variable and a changeable thing. In consequence of which the sober stage-driver departed without the mails, leaving Mary Carmichael and the fat lady to scan the horizon for the delinquent Chugg, and incidentally to hear ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... the other hotly. "You have cast your damned ugly, black shadow over this place too long as it is! Miss Clairville is no child; she knows, has always known, her own mind, and I do not grudge her a slight flirtation or two with any one she fancies; it is her way, a safe outlet for her strong yet variable temperament. You take things too ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... centigrade scale, till one's head spins round with their inexplicable dissertations. What is the use of these interminable technicalities to the world at large? Do they enlighten the rheumatic as to how many coats they may put on, for the Midsummer days of this variable climate? Do their barometers tell us when to take an umbrella, or when to leave it at home? No. Who, we further ask, knows how hot it is when the mercury stands at 120 deg., or how cold it is when opposite 32 deg. of Fahrenheit? Only the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... January, all the monotonous incidents of the voyage were repeated; they advanced more slowly, and with much fatigue; their legs grew tired; the dogs dragged the sledge with difficulty; their diminished supply of food could not comfort men or beasts. The weather was very variable, changing from intense, dry cold ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... hard-boiled white of egg, granulated by rubbing through a wire sieve, is immersed in the liquid, and the whole kept at 98 to 130 F. for four hours, when the undissolved albumen is filtered off through muslin, and, after partial drying, is weighed to ascertain the amount dissolved. The variable numbers above quoted embrace various formul recommended ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... driven away. Lady Montbarry's variable humour changed again. With a low groan of misery, she threw herself back in the cab. Lost in her own dark thoughts, as careless of the woman whom she had bent to her iron will as if no such person sat by her side, she preserved a sinister ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... might give you an opportunity to work a strong Sub-Committee," suggested Disraeli. "One cannot calculate on the course of a man so variable and impulsive. He proposes to get rid of Aumerle, and make concessions to his set. It is an unhappy policy, and always unhappily applied, to imagine that men can be reconciled by partial concessions. I attribute much of Reckage's behaviour ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... more, I should 'bout ship and settle the difference with them in a less ceremonious manner in the harbour. This effectually stopped their tongues, and we again proceeded on the journey. After two entire days' sailing across the Gulf with variable and gentle breezes, we arrived at our destination, Kurrum, in safety, on the third evening, the 24th March, and at once sent some Government letters to the Akils, ordering their attendance, and to proclaim publicly ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... paddles, made by tearing up the lining of the boat, we assisted in moving ourselves slowly through the water, providentially the sea was comparatively smooth, or our overloaded boats would have swamped, and we should only have escaped the flames to have perished in the deep. The wind was light, but variable, and, acting on the sails, which, being drenched with the rain, did not soon take fire, drove the burning mass, in terrific grandeur, over the surface of the ocean, the darkness of which was only illuminated by the ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... by the Mertz Glacier on the east and delimited on the west by more or less compact ice, has been named the D'Urville Sea. We found subsequently that its freedom from obstruction by ice is due to the persistent gales which set off the land in that locality. To the north, pack-ice in variable amount is encountered before reaching the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... tissue (Figure XIII) is a general name for a group of tissues of very variable character. It is usually described as consisting typically in the mammals of three chief elements felted together; of comparatively unmodified corpuscles (c.c.), more or less amoeboid, and of fibres which are elongated, altered, and distorted cells. The fibres are of two kinds: yellow, ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... a little closer to what I'm trying to express, we have arithmetic and algebra. Suppose with our arithmetic minds with no slightest inkling of the existence of a variable, we run into an algebra mind? We might mistake it for something far removed from thinking or intelligence. We go on the assumption that anything that doesn't stomp up, give a salute, and solemnly announce ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips

... bearing all burdens, however great or small; and how thus early he offered himself for the mission field and was impatiently eager to enter it. Then look at the sovereign love of God, imparting to him in so eminent a degree the childlike spirit, teaching him to trust not his own variable moods of feeling, but the changeless word of His promise; teaching him to wait patiently on Him for orders, and not to look to human authority or direction; and so singularly releasing him from military service for life, and mysteriously ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... discovered evident symptoms of discontent; but their motions were slow and backward. The states, though terrified at the prospect of having their frontier exposed to so formidable a foe, saw no resource, no means of safety. England indeed seemed disposed to make opposition to the French; but the variable and impolitic conduct of Charles kept that republic from making him any open advances, by which she might lose the friendship of France, without acquiring any new ally. And though Lewis, dreading a combination of all Europe, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... inhuman because they are not human—as yet. They seem variable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man's body and brain must so seem. They are not ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... The Fijians are in the main vegetarians, but the vegetables which they cultivate "contain a large proportion of starch and water, and are deficient in proteids. Moreover, the supply of the principal staples is irregular, being greatly affected by variable seasons, and the attacks of insects and vermin. Very few of them will bear keeping, and almost all of them must be eaten when ripe. As the food is of low nutritive value, a native always eats to repletion. In times of plenty a full-grown man will eat as much as ten pounds' weight of vegetables ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... morality are closely united; the morality of a people depends above all on the idea which it forms to itself of God. The conscience, in fact, at the same time that it is real and permanent in its bases, is variable in the degrees of its light. It is enlightened or obscured, according as the man's religious conceptions are pure or corrupted; and, on the other hand, when the religious worship is degraded beyond a certain limit by error and the passions, the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... lose it; it has been with me in many moods—and my moods are many and very variable, as you know. I can't express it in words; but I feel no more doubt about Edward's well-being, no more inclination to fret or murmur, besides an all-embracing and pervading sense of satisfied content that penetrates everywhere ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... to the Flemish coast this morning in twenty-five fathoms of water; but it was so calm that we made little progress. It was too cloudy to take the latitude. The wind was very variable, and we could not keep on S.W., or even south, and so drifted for the most part with ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... dismal and appalling, it was pathetic. The instrument became, as it were, the organ of sadness, it became eloquent with an inarticulate wo; it was a breast bursting with affliction, a voice broken with sorrow, a soul dissolving with emotions. Then the variable harmonies rose from pensiveness into frenzy, from frenzy into the noise and the shocks of a great battle; they swelled to the din of contending armies, to the storm and vicissitudes of warlike deeds, and soared at last into a paean such as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... Italy; the most esteemed of all are those of Roquevaire; they are very large and very sweet. This sort is rarely eaten by any but the most wealthy. The dried Malaga, or Muscatel raisins, which come to this country packed in small boxes, and nicely preserved in bunches, are variable in their quality, but mostly of a rich flavour, when new, juicy, and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... the human race, the tension of grief is variable. Honora, closed in her stateroom, eased herself that night by writing a long, if somewhat undecipherable, letter to Chiltern; and was able, the next day, to read the greater portion of a novel. It was only ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... York or London. To every one in India falls naturally a little faithful company of assistants to oil the wheels of life—groom, gardener, butler and so forth—and a spacious dwelling-place to think of England in, and calculate the variable value of the rupee, and wonder why the dickens So-and-so got his knighthood. Agra seemed to me to be the most widespreading city of all; but very likely it is not. In itself it is far from being the most interesting, but it has one building ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... positions of the curves show certain things when properly understood. The curve secured by the method of Reproduction (not given in the figure) shows results which are least accurate, because most variable. The reason of this is that in drawing the squares to reproduce the one remembered, the student is influenced by the size of the paper he uses, by the varying accuracy of his control over his hand and arm (the results ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... society, but still Catholic and One.[67] The change, in this respect, between the opinions which prevailed, respectively, at the era of the first and that of the second Revolution, is at once striking and instructive. It shows how variable and vacillating is the wretched creed of Infidelity, and how the firm maintenance of truth will eventually compel the homage, even where it may not succeed in carrying the convictions, of speculative minds. That Religion in all its ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... twofold purpose of strengthening the whole financial structure and of arriving eventually at a medium of exchange which over the years will have less variable purchasing and debt paying power for our people than that of the past, I have used the authority granted me to purchase all American-produced gold and silver and to buy additional gold in the world markets. Careful investigation ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... 3-bracted whorls of 3, borne near the summit of a leafless scape 4 in. to 4 ft. tall. Calyx of 3 sepals; corolla of 3 rounded, spreading petals. Stamens and pistils numerous, the former yellow in upper flowers; usually absent or imperfect in lower pistillate flowers. Leaves: Exceedingly variable; those under water usually long and grass-like; upper ones sharply arrow-shaped or blunt and broad, spongy or leathery, on ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... in the formation of the maps, which have been carefully constructed from Burckhardt's materials, occasionally assisted and corrected by other extant authorities. One cannot easily decide, whether the errors in our traveller's bearings are chiefly to be attributed to the variable nature of the instrument, or to the circumstances of haste and concealment under which he was often obliged to take his observations, though it is sufficiently evident that be fell into the error, not uncommon with unexperienced travellers, of multiplying ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... scarcely visible. At noon, the general course had been E. by N. 80 miles; the latitude was found to be 43 deg. 41', and longitude by estimation (corrected) 168 deg. 3': the needle pointed here, true North. The land was in sight to the north-west, and the wind strong, but variable, from the northward. The ships steered westward for a short time; but the weather being too stormy to admit of approaching the land, they went upon the other tack; and kept as much to the northward., under easy sail, as ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... waves. Bleached, whitened. Tide, the regular rise and fall of the ocean which occurs twice in a little over twenty-four hours. 2. Scud, fly hastily. Shrouds, Winding sheets, dresses of the dead. Close'reefed, with sails contracted as much as possible. 3. Fit'ful, irregularly variable. Draper-y, garments. Scans, looks at care-fully. Stanch, firm. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... May, yet the weather was temperate, variable, and cool enough, and people had still some hopes. That which encouraged them was that the city was healthy: the whole ninety-seven parishes buried but fifty-four, and we began to hope that, as it was chiefly among the people at that end of the town, it might go no farther; and the rather, because ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... fifty-eight cases of rise of temperature the rate of ordinary corrosion was increased in every instance except one, and that was only a feeble exception—the increase of corrosion from 60 deg. to 160 deg. F. with different metals was extremely variable, and was from 1.5 to 321.6 times. Whether a metal increased or decreased in thermo-electromotive force by being heated, it increased in rapidity of corrosion. The proportions in which the most corroded metal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various

... two; there was nothing else in the room but the scholar in his age and the "Portrait of a Lady" in her youth. Jack saw the Doge's face, its many lines expressive as through a mist of time, its hills and valleys in the sun and the shadow of emotions as variable as the mother's in life, speaking personal resentment and wrong, admiration and tenderness, grievous inquiry and philosophy, while the only answer was the radiant, "I give! I give!" Finally, the Doge tightened the clasp of his hands, with ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... do not even know of the existence of this vehicle. We could not get right of way on the rails, so this gravity car was developed in secrecy. It is provided with variable repulsion energies that can be adjusted to keep it at a fixed distance from the inner surface of the copper shell. Thus it misses cross beams and braces. It is drawn forward by similar energies, or more exactly, by the component of a number of ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... Act of May 31, 1870, above cited, Congress has ordained, in legal effect, that if any person violates the penal Code of the State of New York, or any State, in respect of voting, he may be punished by the United States. And the offense is a variable quantity; what is a crime in one State under this Act, is a legal right and duty in another. A citizen of Rhode Island, for instance, who votes when not possessed in his own right, of an estate in fee simple—in fee tail, for life, or in reversion or remainder, of the value of $134 or ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... notes'. It is set up with a comma between each item and a hard return at the end of each definition. This means that this section could easily be cut and pasted into its own text file and imported into a database or spreadsheet as a comma separated variable file (.csv file). Failing that, you could do a search and replace for commas in this section (I have not used any commas in my words, definitions or notes) and replace the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... of the Lozere is excessively variable. The traveller must always be provided with winter wraps and the lightest summer clothing. We had enjoyed almost tropic sunshine on the plateau of Sauveterre. Next day (September 19th), when half-way to St. Flour, the very blasts of Siberia seemed ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... a revised ideal of life. Look back through the past, or look abroad through the present, and we find that the ideal of life is variable and depends on social conditions. Everyone knows that to be a successful warrior was the highest aim among all ancient peoples of note, as it is still among many barbarous peoples. When we remember that in the Norseman's heaven, the time was to be passed in daily battles with magical healing of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... what it all meant, and what the revelation was between Nature and herself. Nature was so vast; she was so insignificant; changes in its motionless inorganic life were imperceptible save through the telescopes of years; but she, like the wind, the water, and the clouds, was variable, inconstant. Was there any real relation between the vast, imperturbable earth, its seas, its forests, its mountains and its plains, its life of tree and plant and flower and the men and women dotted on its surface? Did they belong to each ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... keeping the advantage with which he had started, despite Howe's skill. At nightfall both fleets were still steering to the southward, on the port tack, the French five or six miles in the rear of the British, with the wind variable at east. The same course was maintained throughout the night, the French gradually overhauling the British, and becoming visible at 3 A.M. of the 11th. By Howe's dispatch, they bore in the morning, at an hour not specified, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... HF.—A solution in water may be purchased in gutta-percha or lead bottles. It is of variable strength and doubtful purity. It must always be examined quantitatively for the residue left on evaporation. It is used occasionally for the examination of silicates. It attacks silica, forming fluoride of silicon, which is a gas. When the introduction of another ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... motives, making up the system of impulses which is our will. Such has been the common outfit of motives in every age, and in every age its melee has been found insufficient in itself. It is a heterogeneous system, it does not form in any sense a completed or balanced system, its constituents are variable and compete amongst themselves. They are not so much arranged about one another as superposed and higgledy-piggledy. The senses and curiosity war with pride and one another, the motives suggested to us fall into conflict with this element or that of our intimate and habitual selves. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... the wind is very variable; when it is scarcely felt, the velocity does not exceed a foot a second; but it is far otherwise in the cases of hurricanes and tornados, that sweep ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... cold-blooded during the winter when they hibernate; such are the hedgehog, bat and dormouse. John Hunter suggested that two groups should be known as "animals of permanent heat at all atmospheres" and "animals of a heat variable with every atmosphere," but later Bergmann suggested that they should be known as "homoiothermic" and "poikilothermic" animals. But it must be remembered there is no hard and fast line between the two groups. Also, from work recently done by J.O. Wakelin Barratt, it has been ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... mechanical representation of the whole physical world. Even were we disposed to admit the strangest solutions of the problem; to consent, for example, to be satisfied with the hidden systems devised by Helmholtz, whereby we ought to divide variable things into two classes, some accessible, and the others now and for ever unknown, we should never manage to construct an edifice to contain all the known facts. Even the very comprehensive mechanics of a Hertz fails where the classical ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... have cited to demonstrate that the return from the playlet is a most variable quantity. The small-time pays less than the big-time, and each individual act on both small- and big-time pays ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... the Prince of Wales in these childhood days vary greatly; probably in natural accordance with the variable temperament of his age. Lady Lyttelton who, perhaps, knew him best, described him to Mr. Greville in 1852—though that interesting litterateur is not always reliable—as being "extremely shy and timid, with very good principles and, particularly, an exact observer of truth." The ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... carved. The sailors aboard the Nigna took up the branch of a tree with red berries perfectly fresh. The clouds around the setting sun assumed a new appearance; the air was more mild and warm, and during night the wind became unequal and variable. From all these symptoms, Columbus was so confident of being near land, that on the evening of the eleventh of October, after public prayers for success, he ordered the sails to be furled, and the ships to ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... fundamental importance; and it is no exaggeration to say that only the individual who knows how to breathe knows how to sing effectually. A musical ear and sense of rhythm are innate in some individuals; in others they are not innate and can only be acquired to a variable degree of perfection by persevering efforts and practice. The most intelligent persons may never be able to sing in tune, or even time; the latter (sense of rhythm) is much more easily acquired by practice than the former (correct intonation). This is easily intelligible, for ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... latitude, at breakfast. Approaching the equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I would rather see it than any other thing in the world. We entered the "doldrums" last night—variable winds, bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and drunken motion to the ship—a condition of things findable in other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The globe-girdling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... spoke of interest, not as fluctuating and variable, but steady and persistent. It contains also the elements of ease, pleasure, and needed employment; that is, in learning something that has a proper interest, there is greater ease and pleasure in the acquisition, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... been made, the physicist of to-day has not yet been able to make anything like an exact determination of the total amount of heat received from the sun. The largest measurements are almost double the smallest. This is partly due to the atmosphere absorbing an unknown and variable fraction of the sun's rays which pass through it, and partly to the difficulty of distinguishing the heat radiated by the sun from ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... town of Woodstock there enters the River St. John, from the westward, a good sized tributary known as Eel River. It is a variable stream, flowing in the upper reaches with feeble current, over sandy shallows, with here and there deep pools, and at certain seasons almost lake-like expansions over adjoining swamps, but in the last twelve miles of its course it is transformed into a turbulent stream, broken by rapids ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... your sensible and disinterested advice to Mr. Bell, as you will see by my letter to him. As I approve entirely of his marrying again, you may readily ask me why I don't marry at all. My circumstances have hitherto been so variable and uncertain in this fluctuating world, as induce to keep me from engaging in such a state: and now, though they are more settled, and of late (which you will be glad to hear) considerably improved, I begin to ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... though I was beginning to get accustomed to the fact that she was a creature of variable moods, I was unprepared for this one. Her hauteur had disappeared; she was apparently in a sweet and gentle frame of mind. Her large dark eyes were soft and gentle, and though her red lips quivered, it was not with anger or disdain ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... probably amuse him more when he differs than when he agrees with them; at least they will do no harm, for nobody will follow my advice. But the last word is of more concern. Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. They have been so tried among the inconstant squalls and currents, so often sailed for islands in the air or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they will risk all for solid ground below their feet. Desperate pilots, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... spread out on its substratum becomes transformed into a sporangium, or it divides into a variable number of unequal and irregular pieces, each of which undergoes transformation. Such a sporangium lying flat on the substratum, more or less elongated and flexuous, often branched and reticulate, ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan

... transmitter. The simplest transmitter for this purpose is a plane mirror of flexible material, silvered mica or microscope glass. Against the back of this mirror my voice is directed. In the carbon transmitter of the telephone a variable electrical resistance is produced by the pressure on the diaphragm, based on the fact that carbon is not as good a conductor of electricity under pressure as when not. Here, the mouthpiece is just a shell supporting a thin metal diaphragm to which the mirror on the back is attached, an apparatus ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... and occasionally existing as a fluid, like the electric fluid gravitating amongst them, and that hence it may be propagated from the central fires of the earth to the whole mass, and contribute to preserve the mean heat of the earth, which in this country is about 48 degrees but variable from the greater or less effect of the sun's heat in different climates, so well explained in Mr. Kirwan's Treatise on the Temperature of different Latitudes. 1787, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... his start to Dad's camp until dusk, knowing the old man would prefer to take the road at night, after his mysterious way. He probably would hoof it over to Sullivan's and borrow a buckboard to make a figure in before the widow-lady upon whom he had anchored his variable heart. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... the open at that temperature back East, nor would they attempt it on the Pacific Slope were the cold continuous. In the western half of British Columbia, however, long periods of severe weather are rare. It is a variable zone, swept now and then by damp, warm breezes, and men tell of sheltered valleys where flowers blow the year round, though very few of those who ramble up and down the Mountain Province ever chance ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... again been crushed. The Forward weighed anchor, and took up her uncertain march northward. As the Forward began to be weather-worn, the masts were unreeved, for they could no longer rely on the variable wind, and the sails were nearly useless in the winding channels. Large white marks appeared here and there on the sea like oil spots; they presaged an approaching frost; as soon as the breeze dropped the sea began to freeze immediately; but as soon as the wind got up again, the young ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... on first entering this city. The population is as variable as the breezes that blow over the ocean, for Newport has gained fame the world over as one of America's most fashionable watering places. As early as 1830 it began to attract health seekers and others ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... or three days, we reached a warmer temperature, when the wind falling light and becoming variable we crossed our topgallant and royal yards again, spreading all the sail we could so as to make the best of the breezes we got. These were now mingled with occasional showers of rain, as is customary with the south-west ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... saddle, which increased Lady Charlotte's liking for him and irritated her watchful forecasts. She rode with the young man after lunch, "to show him the country," and gave him a taste of what he took for her variable moods. He misjudged her. Like a swimmer going through warm and cold springs of certain lake waters, he thought her a capricious ladyship, dangerous for intimacy, alluring to the deeps and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to forms, colours, flavours, scents, sounds, fabrics, etc., what is agreeable to one being highly objectionable to another. The experience is to common to need illustration; but the conclusion to which we are led is that, in relation to the nervous system of man, every material body has a variable effect. And this clears the ground for a statement of our views in regard to the Crystal and its effects upon ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial

... punches are arranged side by side and parallel upon a shaft, B, a spring, b, holding them constantly against the circumference of the cam-wheels. In Fig. 2 only one of these details is shown. The punching arrangement consists of an ordinary punch, c, of variable diameter, screwed to the extremity of a tube, d, which is itself suspended from the end of the lever, p, but which can receive from it at the desired moment the pressure necessary to effect the cutting. The vertical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... especially in Garland and Montgomery Counties, rock crystals are found lining cavities of variable size, and in one instance thirty tons of crystals were found in a single cavity. These crystals are mined by the farmers in their spare time and sold in the streets of Hot Springs, their value amounting to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... surf observable this morning, increasing until about 4 P.M.; the wind variable, settling for a short time in the south-east. I became anxious on account of my berth, which was represented to me as insecure, in case of a blow from seaward. I sent and got a pilot on board, but when he came he said he thought we should not have bad weather; and ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... to stand at the singing of psalms and anthems were for the most part 'stiff, morose, and saturnine votists.'[1125] In fact, High Churchmen insisted on the one posture, while Low Churchmen generally preferred the other; and so the custom remained very variable, until the High Church reaction of Queen Anne's time succeeded in establishing, in this particular, a rule which was henceforth generally recognised. In 1741, Secker speaks of sitting during the singing as if, though common enough, it were still a ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... band is founded on the basic of the Moebius strip," one student E was saying heatedly. "This little gadget sends out a field in the shape of such a strip, a band with a half twist before rejoined. Its width is as variable as we need it, up ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... coloured marbles have all been painted by Nature with one material only, variously proportioned and applied—the oxide of iron. The varieties of marble are mainly caused by the different degrees in which this substance has pervaded them. They are variable mixtures of the metamorphous carbonates of protoxide of iron and lime. And it is an interesting fact that there is a distinct relation between deposits of magnetic iron ore and the metamorphoses of limestones into marbles; so that this substance not only gives to the marbles their colouring, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... power. These different species do not affect the milk in the same way. All produce some acid, but they differ in the kind and the amount of acid, and especially in the other changes which are effected at the same time that the milk is soured, so that the resulting soured milk is quite variable. In spite of this variety, however, the most recent work tends to show that the majority of cases of spontaneous souring of milk are produced by bacteria which, though somewhat variable, probably constitute a single ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn

... after sun-set is succeeded by an agreeable land-breeze from the mountains. The sea-breeze from the eastward, however, is not so constant here, as in the West-Indies between the tropicks, because the sun, which produces it, is not so powerful. This country lies nearer the region of variable winds, and is surrounded by mountains, capes, and straights, which often influence the constitution and current of the air. About the winter solstice, the people of Nice expect wind and rain, which generally ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... break the windows of each with his sling. What idle fabricators of crazy systems will tell me that climate is the creator of genius? The climate of Austria is more regular and more temperate than ours, which I am inclined to believe is the most variable in the whole universe, subject, as you have perceived, to heavy fogs for two months in winter, and to a stifling heat, concentrated within the hills, for five more. Yet a single man of genius hath never appeared in the whole extent ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... in the moulding of life, then you cannot forecast what line conduct will take or predict what shape character will assume. The whole conception of Ethics as a science must, it is contended, fall to the ground, if we admit a variable and incalculable element ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... and when any of Wallace's officers approached, they separated, or withdrew to a greater distance. This strange conduct Wallace attributed to its right source, and thought of Bruce with a sigh, when he contemplated the variable substance of these men's minds. However, he was so convinced that nothing but the proclamation of Bruce, and that prince's personal exertions, could preserve his country from falling again into the snare from which he had just ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... which the strife as a memory assumes are as manifold as are the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance. Yielding instinctively, one after another, to feelings not inspired from any one source exclusively, and unmindful, without purposing to be, of consistency, I seem, in most of these verses, to have but placed a harp in a window, ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... difficulty as is met in gunnery and rifle-shooting. The sights and the object aimed at cannot be in focus together, and a great deal depends on the form of sight. Tycho Brahe invented, and applied to the pointers of his instruments, an aperture-sight of variable area, like the iris diaphragm used now in photography. This enabled him to get the best result with stars of different brightness. The telescope not having been invented, he could not use a telescopic-sight as we now do in gunnery. This not only removes ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... the 7th of June. He was in 28 degrees south latitude and 112 degrees west longitude, that is to say, he was in the immediate neighbourhood of Easter Island. It was still the depth of winter. The sea ran continually high, violent and variable winds, dull, foggy, and cold weather was accompanied by thunder, rain, and snow. No doubt it was owing to the great darkness, and to the thick fog, which hid the sun for several days, that Carteret failed to perceive Easter Island, for many signs, such as the number ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... blended,—that occasionally the force of two natures is represented in the derivative one by a diagonal of greater value than either original line of living movement,—that sometimes there is a loss of vitality hardly to be accounted for, and again a forward impulse of variable intensity in some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... having been ordained in the Reign of Henry the First, Son of William the Conquerer) avoiding the turbulent Licentiousness of a Democracy, the factious domineering Temper of Aristocracy, and the variable oppressive Sway of Arbitrary Monarchy; but including, by an harmonious Assemblage, the essential Virtues of those different Systems of Government; is unquestionably the best digested and wisest in the known World: Under which, the King ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... and Tenure. Remarks. Bursaries, variable Tuition fees and in number maintenance grant 1 year Awarded (to children of Bristol ratepayers only) according to qualification Vincent Stuckey Lean Interest on Science ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... the Craigwen Valley, instead of proving a dreary season of frost or fog, was apt to be as variable as April. Sheltered by the tall mountains, the climate was mild, and though snow would lie on the peaks of Penllwyd and Cwm Dinas it rarely rested on the lower levels. Very early in January the garden at The Woodlands could boast brave clumps of snowdrops and polyanthus, a venturous ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... his booted feet in the glow which poured from the stove, and looking across at his companion with admiration in his bold eyes. At another time she might have been offended by the look: or she might not. Women are variable. Now her fears lest Felix should be discovered dulled ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... differ far more in form than in substance. It is only the variable mentality of men that varies their effects. All the discussions as to various systems of government are really of no interest, for these have no special virtue of themselves. Their value will always depend on that of the people ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... however, is that human efficiency is a variable quantity which increases and decreases according to law. By the application of known physical laws the telephone and the telegraph have supplanted the messenger boy. By the laws of psychology applied to business equally ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... South Sandwich Islands variable, with mostly westerly winds throughout the year interspersed with periods of calm; nearly all precipitation falls ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... many of us are so limited in our capacity for "variable reaction" that there are so few good critics. But we are all, I think, more multiple-souled than we care to admit. It is our foolish pride of consistency, our absurd desire to be "constructive," that makes us so dull. A critic ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... abundant evidence in his own poems alone that at the time of, and for at least two or three years subsequently to, his marriage Coleridge's feeling towards his wife was one of profound and indeed of ardent attachment. It is of course quite possible that the passion of so variable, impulsive, and irresolute a temperament as his may have had its hot and cold fits, and that during one of the latter phases Southey may have imagined that his friend needed some such remonstrance as that referred to. But this is not nearly enough to support the assertion ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... science stepped in, fixed the law of language, and developed its rule, which was no longer determined on the basis of experience, but made the claim to determine experience. The endings of declension, which hitherto had in part been variable, were now to be once for all fixed; e. g. of the genitive and dative forms hitherto current side by side in the so-called fourth declension (-senatuis- and -senatus-, -senatui-, and -senatu-) Caesar recognized exclusively as valid the contracted forms (-us and -u). In orthography various ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... it does not absolutely result from a concourse of favorable incidents, but is an affection of the mind itself. I am frequently guilty of repetitions, but should be infinitely more so, did I repeat the same thing as often as it recurs with pleasure to my mind. When at length my variable mode of life was reduced to a more uniform course, the following was nearly the distribution of time which I adopted: I rose every morning before the sun, and passed through a neighboring orchard into ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... more just and catholic spirit. We translate the conclusion of the last article, in which Mr. Schmidt gives the result of his careful analysis of all the works of the author: "The novel, on account of its lax and variable form, and the caprice which it tolerates, is in my opinion not to be reckoned among those kinds of art, which, as classic, will endure to posterity. The authors who have been most read in modern times have already been checked in their popularity by the greater attraction ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... on the 23rd January. It has little elevation, and is scarcely possible to be seen at a greater distance than twelve leagues. The wind then became very variable; and, like Captain Cook, we met with currents, which carried us every day fifteen minutes south of our reckoning; so that we spent the whole of the 24th in plying in sight of Botany Bay, without being able to double Point Solander, which bore from us a league north. The ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott

... about two degrees in diameter, fixed immovably in the heavens overhead, and tipped on one of its edges with a crescent border of the most brilliant gold. No traces of land or water could be discovered, and the whole was clouded with variable spots, and belted with tropical ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... is obvious, that the most superficial characters are the most variable. Thus colour depends much upon light; thickness of hair upon heat; size upon abundance of food, &c. In wild animals, however, these varieties are greatly limited by the natural habits of the animal, which does not willingly migrate from the places where it finds, in sufficient quantity, ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey

... modes in which Nature produces variable curves on a large scale are very numerous, but may generally be resolved into the gradual increase or diminution of some given force. Thus, if a chain hangs between two points A and B, Fig. 95, the weight of chain sustained by any given link increases gradually from the central link ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... comparison of this letter with the foregoing records that the standard of evidence is a somewhat variable quantity in the Society for Psychical Research. In attempting to explain the matter, Mr. Myers wrote to Lord Bute, ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... of our passing these rocks until the evening of the 3d, we had very light airs and variable, but mostly from the south-west quarter, and every day found we were affected by a southerly current of 10 or 12 miles in 24 hours. The wind now sprung up from the northward, and we steered for the island ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... him alone, to use. BUT WHAT RULE HAVE WE, BY WHICH WE CAN DISTINGUISH THESE OBJECTS? Here we must have recourse to statutes, customs, precedents, analogies, and a hundred other circumstances; some of which are constant and inflexible, some variable and arbitrary. But the ultimate point, in which they all professedly terminate, is the interest and happiness of human society. Where this enters not into consideration, nothing can appear more whimsical, unnatural, and even superstitious, than all or most of the laws ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... timid pathos, more singular and mysterious. Whatever love of humour you have,—whatever sympathy with imperfect, but most subtle, feeling,—whatever perception of sublimity in conditions of fatal power, may here find fullest occupation: all these being joined, in the strong animal races, to a variable and fantastic beauty far beyond anything that merely formative art has yet conceived. I have placed in your Educational series a wing by Albert Duerer, which goes as far as art yet has reached in delineation of plumage; while for the simple action of the pinion ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... fastidiously on her way, with long gloves covering her arms, a white linen mask tied over her face to screen her complexion from tan, a sunbonnet sewed tightly on her head to keep it secure from the capricious winds of heaven and the more variable gusts of her own wilfulness; or on another picture of her—as a lonely little lass—begging to be taken to court, where she could marvel at her father, an awful judge in his wig and his robe of scarlet and black velvet; or on a third picture ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... something.... It is very difficult to imagine what is [Page 379] happening to the weather.... The clouds don't seem to come from anywhere, form and disperse without visible reason.... The meteorological conditions seem to point to an area of variable light winds, and that plot ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... are seen in any of the lower orders. Indeed, in one's lifetime one sees but very slight variation in any of the wild or domestic creatures, less in the wild than in the domestic because they are less under the influence of that most variable of animals, man. And man's variations are mainly mental and not physical. The higher we go in the scale of powers, the greater the variation and hence the more rapid the evolution. Probably man's body has not changed radically in vast cycles of time, but his mind has developed enormously since the ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... locutus est. That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion—which some whisper is, in the present case, very much the same thing as publican's opinion—has willed otherwise. The Heads may return to their wonted slumbers—at any rate for ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... to his natural height before the astonished gaze of the cherubs he is "the grisly King." Every fresh designation elaborates his character and history, emphasises the situation, and saves a sentence. So it is with all variable appellations of concrete objects; and even in the stricter and more conventional region of abstract ideas the same law runs. Let a word be changed or repeated, it brings in either case its contribution of emphasis, and ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... ourselves of a leading wind through the south-east trades, the course from the islands to Frio being southwesterly. This latter stretch was spanned on an easy bow-line; with nothing eventful to record. Thence our course was through variable winds to the River Plate, where a pampeiro was experienced that blew "great guns," and whistled a ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... kept as much as possible out of sight. Towards her, Mr. Stillinghast's manner was inconsistent, and variable in the extreme. At one time almost kind, at another, captious and surly. Sometimes he called on her for every thing, and perhaps the next moment threatened to throw whatever he had ordered, at her head. Once he told her, in bitter tones and language, that "but for wishing ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... stated, in this work, that dyspepsia is Protean in its symptoms, but single and uniform in its nature; the very reverse is the fact; its symptoms are of a single character, and of an uniform attack, while its nature is variable and inconstant. A dyspeptic will complain of a want of appetite, a degree of squeamishness and irritability, eructations, heart-burn, pain in the head, stomach, and bowels, with costiveness; his tongue will be furred, and his pulse a little increased in strength and quickness. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... this family, I have promised to ride on Friday, wind and weather permitting; at present both are more variable than I can describe, the extreme changes of the temperature, and the suddenness of these, utterly surpassing all my experience. One day I have a large fire, and the next, windows and doors open in search of cool ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... serenity of the Misses Stone's domain, far from restoring Rose's composure, seemed to smite her by contrast with an intolerable sense of personal reproach, and to goad her into rebellion. Rose was conscious of her variable spirits—the heritage of her years—getting more and more uncertain, and of being wrought up to a perilously high-strung pitch. She felt as if she were panting for liberty to breathe, to express her discordant mood ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... bird, "Winged Fisher," as he has been happily called, is seen in places suited to his habits, throughout temperate North America, particularly about islands and along the seacoast. At Shelter Island, New York, they are exceedingly variable in the choice of a nesting place. On Gardiner's Island they all build in trees at a distance varying from ten to seventy-five feet from the ground; on Plum Island, where large numbers of them nest, many place their nests on the ground, some being built up to a height of four ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... colour at the touch of animation. She was a good vocalist; and, even in speech, her voice commanded a great range of changes, the low notes rich with tenor quality, the upper ringing, on the brink of laughter, into music. A gem of many facets and variable hues of fire; a woman who withheld the better portion of her beauty, and then, in a caressing second, flashed it like a weapon full on the beholder; now merely a tall figure and a sallow handsome face, with the evidences of a reckless temper; anon opening like a flower to life and colour, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... well back, and his figure was very alert and lithe. He made great use of his lips in talking, and whatever he said seemed a little overdone in emphasis. His expression was eager, amiable, and sensitive, and it changed like the complexion of water in variable weather. He was a bit of a dandy in his way, too. His clothes showed his slim and elastic figure to the best advantage, and a bright-coloured neckerchief with loose flying ends helped out a certain air of festal rural opera which belonged ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... that a portion of these exercises should be carried out on the drill ground in order to expedite this portion of the work. But all the more energetically must it be insisted on that the remainder of the programme—the greater part in regard to time—should be executed, as far as possible, in variable ground, and that all exercises of the larger formations should be confined to such ground as we shall have to work over in War; not alone are they by far the most important for the higher tactical education of the Arm, but they cannot be represented on drill grounds at all; ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... which is effected by various reasonings. These reasonings are like pieces of wood, which the fire inflames, and which thence burn: they are therefore like so much fuel, or so many combustible matters which give occasion to that spiritual flame, which is very variable. ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... finished at the end. Had I done so, this work would not have been so near to a close as, thank Heaven, it is at present. At times I have been gay, at others, sad; and I am obliged to write according to my humour, which, as variable as the wind, seldom continues in one direction. I have proceeded with this book as I should do if I had had to build a ship. The dimensions of every separate piece of timber I knew by the sheer-draught which ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... his time, he made his own telescopes; for it was his ambition to be not a mere star-gazer, but an earnest student of the heavens. By day, he and his brother and sister ground specula; by night he observed the heavens. His astronomical work includes a careful study of variable stars; an attempt to explain the relation of sun-spots to terrestrial phenomenae; the determination that the periods of rotation of various satellites, like the rotation of our own moon, are equal to the times of their revolutions about their primaries; and ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... desideratum, illustrating the utility of a senate, is the want of a due sense of national character. Without a select and stable member of the government, the esteem of foreign powers will not only be forfeited by an unenlightened and variable policy, proceeding from the causes already mentioned, but the national councils will not possess that sensibility to the opinion of the world, which is perhaps not less necessary in order to merit, than it is to obtain, its ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... Her mood was variable. Messages from Blaise and Martin came and went, and it became known that her intended shelter at Chollet, together with all the adjacent houses, had been closely searched by the younger Ribaumont in conjunction with the governor; so that it was plain ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... upon different occasions to have contained five, twelve, twenty, and forty pennies. Among the ancient Saxons, a shilling appears at one time to have contained only five pennies, and it is not improbable that it may have been as variable among them as among their neighbours, the ancient Franks. From the time of Charlemagne among the French, and from that of William the Conqueror among the English, the proportion between the pound, the shilling, and the penny, seems to have been uniformly the same ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... one of our coming characters, and was then turned into Robert, another of them. This revolving piece of statuary could not, however, be relied on as a vane, owing to the neighbouring hill, which formed variable currents in the wind. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... systems, speech habits of the two peoples. Yet the instinctive cries as such are practically identical for all humanity, just as the human skeleton or nervous system is to all intents and purposes a "fixed," that is, an only slightly and "accidentally" variable, ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir









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