"Absorbent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Do I look as bad as that? No," growing suddenly quite grave, "you will have to guess again. I'll give you a cue—absorbent cotton." ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... their outrageous abduction of him. Therefore, after performing his post-prandial ablutions in a basin of solid gold, held before him by a kneeling man, and drying himself upon an immaculate towel woven of cotton which was a perfect miracle of absorbent softness, tendered to him by another kneeling man, he resolutely seated himself upon a moss-grown rock which happened to conveniently protrude itself from the soil close at hand, and proceeded to deal with ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... distance that separates us prevents our distinguishing any details of his surface, but spectral analysis reveals the presence of an absorbent atmosphere in which are gases unknown to the air of our planet, and of which the chemical composition resembles that ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... during work experiments it is highly probable that some consideration must be given to the possibility of the development of a considerable temperature rise in the air of the potash-lime absorbers, due to the reaction between the carbon dioxide and the solid absorbent. It is thus apparent that the constant-temperature conditions maintained in the calorimeter laboratory not only facilitate calorimetric measurements, but also simplify considerably the elaborate calculations of the respiratory exchange ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... without being subject, like its Italian ancestors, to rivalry with its own species; nothing checks the growth; it may absorb all the juices of the ground, all the air and sunshine of the region, and become the Colossus which the ancient plants, equally deep-rooted and certainly as absorbent, but born in a less friable soil and more crowded together, could ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... never much of a newspaper reader before the war, but now he can challenge the American commuter as an absorbent of the printed word. And not only has the German been suddenly educated into an avid newspaper reader, but he has developed a tendency to think for himself, to read between the lines, and interpret sentences. Thus, no ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... out new subjects for her brush, at that quiet hour. She said to a friend: "I have been a faithful student since I was ten years old. I have copied no master. I have studied Nature, and expressed to the best of my ability the ideas and feelings with which she has inspired me. Art is an absorbent—a tyrant. It demands heart, brain, soul, body, the entireness of the votary. Nothing less will win its highest favor. I wed art. It is my husband, my world, my life-dream, the air I breathe. I know nothing else, feel nothing else, think nothing ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... had its proper niche. What they failed to acknowledge was his point of view—and this he was wise enough not to press at dinner tables and in drawing-rooms—that religion should have the penetrability of ether; that it should be the absorbent of life. He did not have to commit the banality of reminding them of this conviction of his at their own tables; he had sufficient humour and penetration to credit them with knowing it. Nay, he went farther in his unsuspected analysis, and perceived that these ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... is nothing better for dressing the navel than absorbent antiseptic cotton. There needs be no grease or oil upon the cotton. After the separation of the cord the navel should be dressed with a little cosmoline, still using the absorbent cotton. The navel string usually separates in a week's ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... with atmospheric air, oxidize, and destroys many of the easily alterable ones, by resolving them into the simplest combinations they are capable of forming, which are chiefly water and carbonic acid. It is on this oxidizing property of charcoal, as well as on its absorbent power, that its efficacy as a deodorizing ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the dairy woman until she grew too infirm, was the neatest creature imaginable; she wore the highest of turbans, and her clothes were spotless. She took the greatest pride in her dairy; for milk vessels she used great calibashes with wooden covers, and, as they naturally were absorbent, it was necessary to sun one set while another was in use. She kept them beautifully, and the milk and ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... places least in the way in the crowded fields and gardens, awaiting removal to the final resting place. It is this custom, too, I am told, which has led to placing a large quantity of caustic lime in the bottom of the casket, on which the body rests, this acting as an effective absorbent. ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... he cried frantically. "Where are you? Are you in the hospital? Is everything all right? Is the doctor there? Elsie!" He shouted her name aloud, angrily, trying to force it through the immense absorbent space between them, cursing and screaming ...
— A Choice of Miracles • James A. Cox
... you couldn't, you couldn't! You are too intensely absorbent, you are too rigidly individual. The flame in you would never consent even for an instant to be the flame in anybody else—any of those people who, for the purpose of the state, are ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... shock, so she gave him a dose of morphine and whiskey. Then with a quick stroke of a razor she laid open the green streak and immersed the whole arm in a strong solution of bichloride of mercury for twenty minutes. She then dressed the wound with absorbent cotton saturated with olive oil and carbolic acid, bundled her patient into a buggy, and drove forty-five miles that night to get him to a doctor. The doctor told us that only her quick action and knowledge of what to do ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... claims fame for her elms, which, loved and cared for, arch over the long village streets that give character to the homes of the descendants of the Puritan fathers. The fully grown elm presents to the sun a darkly absorbent hue, and to the passer-by who rests beneath its shade the most grateful and restful color in all ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... sand-blasts, sandpaper, and for other abrasive purposes. Chert or flint constitutes grinding pebbles and tube-mill linings, and is also ground up for abrasives. Diatomaceous (infusorial) earth is used as a polishing agent and also as a filtering medium, an absorbent, and for heat insulation. Tripoli (and rottenstone) are used in polishing powders and scouring soaps as well as for filter blocks and ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... outward form, they were too alien to have much in common. Only as intelligences, as life forces, could they share a common bed. And it had evolved to that in fifty years. A bed of protoplasm in a shock-absorbent tank. ...
— Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? • Bryce Walton
... his torn shirt over the spot on his broad shoulder where a wad of absorbent cotton and a lot of crisscrossed surgeon's plaster marked the slight wound. He moved the shoulder curiously. "That will be stiff for a couple of days, I suppose, but that is all there will be to it. Nothing but a scratch. Did you see the man go ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... following morning Lloyd came and went about the house with an untiring energy, yet with the silence of a swiftly moving shadow, getting together the things needed for the operation—strychnia tablets, absorbent cotton, the rubber tubing for the tourniquet, bandages, salt, and the like—and preparing the little chamber adjoining the sick-room ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... was used next the skin in places to perfect the modelling, but such amounts would be required for a large animal as to affect the durability of the skin. Clay and plaster being in a dry state very absorbent, will eventually rob of all oily matter any skin in contact with them. Such skins will crack, split and finally disintegrate as thoroughly as those having an excess ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... respects, no less than in the others, he justified Mr Cruickshank's selection. He did his work as unobtrusively as he did it admirably well; and for the rest he was just washed about, carried, hither and thither, generally on the tops of omnibuses, receptive, absorbent, mostly silent. He did try once or twice to talk to the bus drivers—he had been told it was a thing to do if you wanted to get hold of the point of view of a particular class; but the thick London idiom defeated him, and he found they grew surly when he asked them too often to repeat their replies. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... invariable rule at the time these early Canada stamps were printed) and it can be easily seen that the wetting would have quite different results on different qualities of paper. Some would be more absorbent than others and would stretch while damp and contract again when drying. The amount of wetting administered would, also, result in differences even in the same qualify of paper. These variations in the size of the design, ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... ramifications of the vena portae and of the proper veins of the liver are supposed by Galen to be effected by means of anastomosing pores or channels. Although it is evident that Galen was ignorant of the true absorbent system, yet he appears to have been aware of the lacteals; for he says that in addition to those mesenteric veins which by their union form the vena portae, there are visible in every part of the mesentery other veins, proceeding also from the intestines, which terminate in glands; ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... decidedly ill-bred to rob a locality of its precious plants. Pick your fern leaf down close to the root-stock, including a portion of that also, if it can be spared. Place your fronds between newspaper sheets and lay "dryers" over them (blotting paper or other absorbent paper). Cover with a board or slat frame, and lay on this a weight of several pounds, leaving it for twenty-four hours; if the specimens are not then cured, change the dryers. Mount the prepared specimens on white mounting sheets. The ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... carefully to avoid all fat, rancid, and salted provisions, and high seasoned dishes of every description. The constant use of barley bread is recommended, with large doses of powdered ginger boiled in milk for breakfast. Absorbent powders of two scruples of magnesia, and three or four grains each of rhubarb and purified kali, should be taken during the intervals of gouty fits, and repeated every other morning for several weeks. The feet should be kept warm, sinapisms frequently applied to them, and the part ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the lying-in are the antiseptic absorbent pads which can be obtained at any place where surgical dressings are sold; they are made of absorbent cotton, covered with cheesecloth, ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... that he had no money of the country into which he was come. And further, how could the habit of lapsing in thought, or more simply, of passing abruptly from the present subject, be explained except on the theory of something to which he had so given himself it had become overmastering and all absorbent? This, she saw intuitively, would prove the key to the man; and she set ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... is a very good absorbent of ammonia, and consequently, as will be hereafter described, adds to the ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... the lieutenant's head and heavy torso, helped turn him face downward on the berth, then stood aside, thoughtfully watching the girl's deft fingers sop absorbent cotton in an antiseptic wash and apply it ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... by far the best deodorizer and absorbent, but when it cannot be easily and cheaply procured, well sifted wood or coal ashes—wood preferred—is a good substitute. The ashes must be kept dry. If they are not, they lose their absorbing, deodorizing powers. They must also be well sifted. If they are not, the cinders add a useless ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... friends had all the work in the world to stretch properly by the aid of pincers. Then he just coated the canvas with ceruse, laid on with a palette-knife, refusing to size it previously, in order that it might remain absorbent, by which method he declared that the painting would be bright and solid. An easel was not to be thought of. It would not have been possible to move a canvas of such dimensions on it. So he invented a system of ropes and beams, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... is an alum tampon. You take a piece of absorbent cotton, about the size of a fist, spread it out, put about a tablespoonful of powdered alum on it, fold it up, tie a string around the center, insert it in the vagina as far as it will go, and leave it in for twenty-four hours. ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... order to avoid any confusing complications. It is evidently simply a coiled tube— coiled for the sake of packing— with occasional dilatations, and with one side-shunt, the caecum (cae.), into which the food enters, and is returned to the main line, after probably absorbent action, imperfectly understood at present. A spiral fold in this cul-de-sac {bottom-of-sack}, which is marked externally by constrictions, has a directive influence on the circulation of its contents. The student should sketch Figure 1 once or twice, and make himself ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... anatomy the sepals, petals, carpels, and even the stamens, as a general rule, correspond to the sheath rather than to the blade of the leaf, as may be seen by the arrangement of the veins. The blade of the leaf seems to be set apart for special respiratory and absorbent offices, while the sheath is in structure, if not in office, more akin to the stem. It would not be easy apart from their position to distinguish between a tubular sheathing leaf and a hollow stem. The development ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... had never looked so serious as he did now, and he was more slim than in England. He impressed me as permeated by an atmosphere of perception. A magnetic current of sympathy with the city rendered him contemplative and absorbent as a cloud. He was everywhere, but only looked in silence, so far as I was aware. "The Marble Faun" shows what he thought in sentences that reveal, like mineral specimens, strata of ideas stretching far beyond the confines of the novel. While he observed Rome, as he frequently ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... pigment from the neighbourhood of Oxford, semi-opaque, of a warm yellow colour and soft argillaceous texture, absorbent of water and oil, in both of which it may be safely employed. It is one of the best of ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... it; in some wise it was a breakfast earned. Aaron looked melancholy; his coffee was not charmful, I knew; the chemical changes that sugar and milk wrought were not the same as when Sophie presided over the laboratory of the breakfast-tray. I am not an absorbent, and so I reflected Aaron's discomfort. He was disposed to question me for a reason for Miss Axtell's aberration. I was not empowered to give one, and was fully determined to impart no information until such time as I could with honor tell all. Aaron desisted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... first warriors, one of the first modern artists of the soul, says: "There is nothing on earth so curious for beauty or so absorbent of it, as a soul. For that reason few mortal souls withstand the leadership of a soul which gives to them beauty." [Footnote: De ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... for mal-assimilation, mal-nutrition, anemia; and for a thousand and one reflex functional derangements of the system as well. The inflamed surface of the intestinal canal (proctitis) inhibits the passage of feces. Absorbent glands begin to act on the retained sewage, and the whole system becomes more or less infected with poisonous bacteria. Various organs (especially the feeblest) endeavor to perform vicarious defecation, and the patient, the friends, and even the physician are deceived ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... black bag for the day's calls—stethoscope, thermometer, eye-cup, bandages, case of small vials, a lump of absorbent cotton in a not over-fresh towel; in the bottom, a heterogeneous collection of instruments, a roll of adhesive plaster, a bottle or two of sugar-milk tablets for the children, a dog collar that had belonged to ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to give a perfectly level and non-absorbent basis for varnish covering or other finish. This can be done with shellac carefully rubbed down with fine oiled sandpaper, but this method requires much toil and patience, and has therefore been given up by furniture finishers. The best fillers, ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... her brother's face anxiously. The stain upon the cloth was rapidly growing larger. She was sure he ought not to lie there with the bleeding unchecked. She went to the door of the small private office; her eyes fell upon a package labeled "Absorbent Cotton." She opened it, pulled out a handful, and ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... evident from inspection, cannot have belonged toany vegetable substance, for it is almost entirely composed of phosphate of lime. Mr. Faraday adds that "if the piece of matter has ever been employed as a spongy absorbent, it seems hardly fit for that purpose in its present state: but who can say to what treatment it has been subjected since it was fit for use, or to what treatment the natives may submit it when expecting to ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... (formation) of the milk, whether the child receives it or not. If it is not taken by the child, or drawn off in some other way, one of two things must follow;—either it must be taken up by what are called absorbent vessels, and carried into the circulation, and chiefly thrown out of the system as waste matter, or it will prove a source of irritation, if not of inflammation, to the organs themselves which secrete it. In both cases, the strength of the mother is quite as likely ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... York uses the following: A new antiseptic enzymol. This is used as follows.—Use one part of enzymol, three parts of warm water. Rub and cleanse the nose thoroughly with the solution, saturate a piece of absorbent cotton with this solution, place it in the nostril and leave it ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... which it is applied, the Peruvians acting upon the philosophical principal, whether they comprehend its theory or not, that to secure the nutrient properties of this active fertilizer to their growing crops, it is essential that they provide an absorbent, and that they find in the water furnished by their processes of irrigation. Experience, practice, and irrigation have taught them, that unless they cause the carbonate of ammonia, and the various ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... slate for roofing purposes is hard, heavy and of a bluish gray color. A good slate should readily split into even laminae; it should not be absorbent of water either on its face or endwise, a property evinced by its not increasing perceptibly in weight after immersion in water; and it should be sound, compact and not apt to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... blossoms, should be enclosed in bags, about six of the three-pound, common kraft bags should be enough. These are slipped over those branches which bear female blossoms and are tied around a heavy packing of absorbent cotton, which has been wound around the branch at approximately the place where the opening of the bag will be. In fastening the mouth of the bag around the cotton, I find that No. 18 copper wire, wrapped several times around and the ends twisted together, is more satisfactory than string. This ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... Paris drawings, many of which are reproduced in the present volume, are literal portraits from life. But for the most part they are the result of that close and absorbent observation which has been mentioned as characteristic of the artist's method. The "Pictures of Paris" were no hurried impressions received during a flying visit, but the outcome of a long stay in the French capital, which gave opportunities for a close study of manners, and ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... "Having styptic, absorbent, and balsamic qualities, would produce a kind of tanning operation on the body, which would also, no doubt, be heightened by the washing ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... dry the film as most people, including chemists, are apt to do, he put his mind on it and it occurred to him that this sticky stuff, slowly hardening to an elastic mass, might be just the thing he was hunting as an absorbent and solidifier of nitroglycerin. So instead of throwing away the extra collodion that he had made he mixed it with nitroglycerin and found that it set to a jelly. The "blasting gelatin" thus discovered ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... mandate of law was sufficient authorization for them to prey upon the whole world outside of their charmed circle. With this scrap of paper they could go forth on the highways of commerce and over the farms and drag in, by the devious, absorbent processes of the banking system, a great part of the wealth created by the actual producers. As it was with taxation, so was it with the burdens of this system; they fell largely upon the worker, whether in the shop or on the farm. When ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... L. Wilson of Bellwood, Pa., relates the case of an old lady of seventy-eight whom he found with the blood gushing from the nostrils. After plugging the nares thoroughly with absorbent cotton dusted with tannic acid he was surprised to see the blood ooze out around the eyelids and trickle down the cheeks. This oozing continued for the greater part of an hour, being controlled by applications of ice to both sides ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... dress will make a woman look pale, for the reason that the black absorbs whatever color there may be in her face. A dark color has also absorbent characteristics. The lighter the color, the less absorbent. Hence light greens are preferable to bring out the color in the face than dark greens, assuming that we are to consider only this point, which is all that is necessary to consider in house decoration. ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... little scraping will be necessary, and usually if well rubbed with fine sand-paper, to remove any chance finger-marks or loose fragments of paper, the edge will be smooth enough to gild. If the paper is very absorbent, the edges must be washed over with vellum size ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... drops of blood falling only a few inches usually make a round spot with a smooth border. Still the surface on which the drop falls is quite as much a factor as the height from which it falls. If the surface is rough the border may be irregular. But this was a smooth surface and not absorbent. The thickness of a dried blood-spot on a non-absorbent surface is less the greater the height from which it has fallen. This was a thick spot. Now if it had fallen, say, six feet, the height of Mr. Langley, the spot would have been thin—some secondary spatters might have been seen, or at least ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the retelling, it is dominant for good. The child imitates what he hears you say and sees you do, and the way you say and do it, far more closely in the story-hour than in any lesson-period. He is in a more absorbent state, as it were, because there is no preoccupation of effort. Here is the great opportunity of the cultured teacher; here is the appalling opportunity of the careless or ignorant teacher. For the implications of the oral theory of teaching English are ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... used. A tablespoonful of powdered boric acid is added to three ounces of water and thoroughly mixed. This is poured into a six-ounce bottle, which is then filled with grain alcohol (95 per cent). The solution is applied twice a day with a small piece of absorbent cotton. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... Make on paper the design wanted. (2.) Moisten the back side of the leather with sponge or cloth with as much water as it will take yet not show through on the face side. (3.) Place the leather on some hard non-absorbent material, such as brass or marble. (4.) Place the paper design on the leather and, holding it in place with the left hand, trace the outline, of the object and the decorative design with the nut pick so as to make a V-shaped groove in the leather. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... all the forces of the man, whether of body or of mind, there stands the soul, which uses them for purposes of its own, be they for better or for worse. And of these there is always one which in time becomes the absorbent of all its life, the essence of all its being; and such purpose is soon found in the life of every man who lives, and not merely exists; such purpose is soon found in the mightiest as well as in the frailest, in the loftiest as well as in the lowest. And till such purpose is understood, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... bronchial arteries and veins, and their attendant lymphatics; in this circumstance it resembles the difficulty of breathing, which attends cold bathing. If this continues long, a congestion of fluid in the air-cells succeeds, as the absorbent actions cease completely before the secerning ones; as explained in Class I. 1. 2. 3. And the coldness, which attends the inaction of these vessels, prevents the usual quantity of exhalation. Some fits cease before this congestion takes place, and in them no violent sweating nor any expuition ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... simply and plainly, that man is an omnivorous, versatile, various creature and can draw his strength from a hundred varieties of nourishment. He has physiological idiosyncrasies too that are indifferent to biological classifications and moral generalities. It is not true that his absorbent vessels begin their task as children begin the guessing game, by asking, "Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?" He responds to stimulation and recuperates after the exhaustion of his response, and ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... both can be used when fitting land for seeding, and both should be used if the need exists. One should be applied early and be well disked into the soil, and then the other application may be made and covered with the harrow. The soil is an absorbent, and the contact of manure and lime within the soil only leads to immediate availability, which is desirable in giving the grass ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... talk had cost him something. The performance over, he relaxed and closed his eyes. Even as she watched, the sweat of weakness began to form on his forehead and under the nether lip. She wet some absorbent cotton with alcohol and refreshed his face and neck. This done, she waited at the side of the bed; but he gave no sign that he ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... corals. On her lap was a beautiful winged smiling genius, who flourished two bright torches. On her left hand stood the man of Modena with his white lamb, a new S. John. On her right stood the man of Torcello with his keys, a new S. Peter. Both were laughing after their all-absorbent, divine, noiseless fashion; and under both was written, Sic Genius. Are not all things, even profanity, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of steep hills of yellow clay, the country assumes a more gently undulating surface; but it is sufficiently varied both for health and ornament, and has an absorbent, gravelly, or sandy soil, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... no invidious comparison between the two systems: I merely look at facts. And it does appear to me that Congregationalism—so simple, so free, so unsectarian, and so catholic—is nevertheless a powerful absorbent. It has absorbed all that was orthodox in the old Presbyterian Churches of England; and it is absorbing the Calvinistic Methodists and the churches named after the Countess of Huntingdon. It has all along exerted a powerful influence on the Presbyterianism of America. ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... when he had lost, but she was far too womanly not to miss something very essential in what he said and in his way of saying it. A woman may love flattery ever so much and have ever so strong a moral absorbent system with which to digest it; she does not hate banality the less. There is no such word as banality in the English tongue, but there might be, and if there were, it would mean that peculiarly tasteless and saltless nature of actions and speeches done and delivered ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... transmits 90 per cent., absorbing only 10. For the radiation from carbonic acid, the same layer of bisulphide transmits only 25 per cent., 75 per cent. being absorbed. For this source of rays, indeed, the bisulphide transcends, as an absorbent, many substances which, for all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... useful as a medicine. It seems to be the immediate cause of the sea-scurvy, as those patients quickly recover by the use of fresh provisions; and is probably a remote cause of scrophula (which consists in the want of irritability in the absorbent vessels), and is therefore serviceable to these patients; as wine is necessary to those whose stomachs have been weakened by its use. The universality of the use of salt with our food, and in our cookery, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... pigment which is deficient in wholly white animals. The explanation has, however, been carried a step further, by experiments showing that the absorption of odors by dead matter, such as clothing, is greatly affected by color, black being the most powerful absorbent, then blue, red, yellow, and lastly white. We have here a physical cause for the sense inferiority of totally white animals which may account for their rarity in nature. For few, if any, wild animals are wholly white. The head, the face, or at least the muzzle or the nose, are ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... preventive to pear blight? or mildew on the gooseberry? or the grape rot? or for the yellows or leaf-curl in peach trees? or for the rust in the blackberry and raspberry? In any or all of these it may have a decided value, and should be faithfully experimented with. As an absorbent alone it ought to be worth saving, to use in retaining the house slops and other liquid manures that ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... from a hospital standpoint as can possibly be devised. Outer walls wind and moisture proof, and inner walls of brick, with an absolutely protected air space between, insure strength and warmth. An interior wall finish of the hardest and most non-absorbent materials known for such uses is a valuable hygienic provision, and both safety and salubrity are further conserved by an absence of any hollow spaces between floors and ceilings, or in stud partitions. No vermin retreats, no harbors for rodents, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... fixative, and then the specimen must be covered with a bell-jar or other receiver to prevent even the slightest draft of air, otherwise the spores will float around more or less. The spores may be caught on a thin, absorbent paper, and the paper then be floated on the fixative in a shallow vessel until it soaks through and comes in contact with the spores. I have sometimes used white of egg as a fixative. These pieces of paper can then be cut out and either ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... comfortable as Mother Eve at a woman's club. Lockerbie's scowl was no joke; and Follet had a way of wriggling his backbone gracefully.—It was up to me to save Schneider, and I did. The honor of Naapu was nothing to me; and by dint of almost embracing him, I made myself a kind of absorbent for his worst breaks. It was not a pleasant hour for me before the rest ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... very good effect upon the boys, and without being at all fussy, she is instilling their absorbent minds quite unconsciously with some little bits of the quaint good breeding of other days that they will never forget. They love to go to town with her, one of her first stipulations being that if I chose to include her in some of our long ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... one should not forget that the liquid excrement contains more nitrogen and more potassium than the solid, and that much of this can be saved and returned to the land by use of plenty of absorbent bedding, and in pasturing there is no danger of any loss ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... of blood from a living body falling upon any non-absorbent surface will, in the course of a few minutes, solidify into a jelly which will, at first, have the same bulk and ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... cough; and it was remarked by Dr. WARREN, sen. that he had never observed that diseased action to increase, while the wound remained open. At last the lower extremities swelled, which might be attributed to the upright posture, and the pressure on the absorbent vessels in that posture. The appetite failed; she complained of a constant sense of depression at the stomach, and, without any remission of the difficulty of breathing, died on ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... Mordred. The ship is no longer important. Keep your eyes on that rag. It's a flimsy thing, composed of absorbent plastic and gooed up with a little unpolymerized resin, weighing about fifty grams. It is apparently floating harmlessly in space, just beyond the orbit of Uranus, looking as innocuous as a rag ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... it is its most useful property, is undoubtedly the power which it has of absorbing great quantities of gas into itself. It is in fact what may be termed an all-round purifier. It is a deodoriser, a disinfectant, and a decoloriser. It is an absorbent of bad odours, and partially removes the smell from tainted meat. It has been used when offensive manures have been spread over soils, with the same object in view, and its use for the purification of water is well known to all users of filters. ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... decomposition, when it becomes a very pure vegetable mould; and it is well known that very pure vegetable mould is the most proper of all materials for the growth of almost all kinds of plants. The moss would also not retain more moisture than precisely the quantity best adapted to the absorbent powers of the root—a condition which can scarcely be obtained with any certainty by the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Kate's presence had not been favourable to his recovery, irrespectively of the excitement and restlessness which it occasioned; for she was an absorbent rather than a diffuser of life. Her own unsatisfied nature, her excitableness, her openness to all influences from the external world, and her incapacity for supplying her needs in any approximate degree from inward ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... which combining with water formed a harmless soap better qualified for washing the ear, and retaining the wax in solution than anything I have tried, for it is my opinion that the ear wax should be kept in a fluid state. When in that state the absorbent can more readily take it up and use it in the economy of life in this condition. The same day two ladies came to my house, sore in lungs, necks tied up, sore throats, fever and headache. As an experiment, in addition to Osteopathic treatment, I put a few drops of glycerine in their ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... your flow of words, Kitten, but I do agree with their meaning. Yes, small towns can turn out gigantic specimens of conceited ego. And that conceit is like a paraffine coating; air tight against personal progress, absorbent for the poisons of jealousy and envy. There, that sounds as if I have learned a little English, doesn't it? But it isn't enough to ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... from beneath the table and spread it out. "Absorbent material," he said. "Lay it on that and just let it dry. That's what ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... obtains with many people to-day. The "madstones" in the possession of many credulous people help to perpetuate the fear of this awful disease. As a matter of fact, the madstone is simply a porous rock which may adhere to a warm, moist surface and exert an absorbent action. Any poison introduced under the skin is disseminated through the system in less than two minutes. If the doctor ever gave you a hypodermic, your knowledge on this point is convincing. The folly then of ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... with the fats which we have been wont to discard. Anyone can get from the Department of Agriculture suggestions for the practical use of chicken, mutton, beef, and other kinds of meat fats. The main points are to free them from flavor, by melting them with milk or water, possibly using some special absorbent like potato or charcoal too, and then mixing hard and soft together, just as the oleomargarine-makers do, to get such a degree of hardness as suits one's purpose. All this requires time and thought. Let no one dream that the patriotic duties of the kitchen are trivial. ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... a state of approximate intoxication. I never drew near to him without getting a whiff of alcohol, yet I never saw him radically drunk. His absorbent capacity must have been tremendous. It is certain he spent all the sous he could collect for liquids (he never wasted money upon food; he knew where to go for crusts of bread and broken meat; the ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... Decaen, preserved in his native town of Caen, is authoritative.) Peron pointed to the political insecurity of the Spanish-American colonies, and predicted that the outbreak of revolution in them, possibly with the connivance of the English, would further the deep designs of that absorbent and dominating nation.* (* A French author of later date, Prevost-Paradol (La France Nouvelle, published in 1868), predicted that some day "a new Monroe doctrine would forbid old Europe, in the name of the United States of Australia, to ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... sponging the parts with a warm antiseptic solution upon changing the cloth. Every woman should be provided with a circular girdle cut upon the bias so it may be elastic, and provided with tabs to which to pin the folded cloth. She also should have a supply of sanitary cloths made of absorbent cotton-fabric, or pads made of absorbent cotton enclosed in gauze. The latter especially are convenient for the girl who is obliged to room away from home, for they may be burned and the cost of new ones is no greater than the laundry of cloths. These pads or cloths should be changed ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... observable in that degree in which the surface, reflected upon, is rough or smooth. The absorbent surface allows the light to fall in and disappear and under this condition we see the true or local color. Note, for example, the effect of light on velvet or the hide of a cow in winter. When the hair points toward the light the mass is rich and dark, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... historian tells you, "as a vulnerary and abstersive," and healed wounds with it; then some labourers accidentally drank it, and Epsom's fortune was made. The doctors agreed; Epsom salts were bitter, diluent, absorbent, soluble, cathartic—everything that salts should be. In two years the wells were enclosed with a wall; in twenty years France and Germany had heard of Epsom, and distinguished foreigners obediently paced the common. But the great days were still to come. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... measure he can shut out external noises and eliminate many of those within. Loud dictation, conversations, clicking typewriters, loud-ringing telephones, can all be cut to a key which makes them virtually indistinguishable in an office of any size. More and more the big open office as an absorbent of sound seems to be gaining in favor. In one of the newest and largest of these I know, nearly all the typewriting machines are segregated in a glass-walled room, and long-distance telephone messages can be taken at any instrument in ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... a bunch of that absorbent cotton from Danny for me, will you? If he sees this he will make a fuss about it. I don't want it to get stiff on me. Hi, Fowler, ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... smell. To put in thermometer Pungent, has a hot, biting tubes. taste. To preserve meats, insects, Liquid, will flow in etc. drops. To make perfumery. Poisonous, hurts the In making jewelry. body. Intoxicating, takes away the BAD USE. senses; makes drunk. To drink. Absorbent, takes up or absorbs water. Inflammable, burns with a flame. Uncongealable, will not freeze. ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... slice cucumber and onion sprinkle with a teaspoon of salt and let stand for a few minutes. Pat with towel or absorbent paper to take out all moisture possible. Place cucumbers and onions in serving dish, add the vinegar and mix. Pour on enough sour cream to half cover and dust ...
— Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking • Unknown
... that all stars are suns with continuous spectra, and the classes are differentiated by the character of the absorbent vapours of ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... the elaborate finish and lavish ornament, but with so much breadth, and powerful execution, that the display scarcely offends—and he generally seeks subjects that will bear it. As a fault it was conspicuous in his Lady Macbeth: the strong emotions of that banquet-scene are of too hurrying, too absorbent a nature, to admit either the conspicuous multiplicity of parts, or the excess of ornament which that work exhibited. It was the very perfection of the "Sleeping Beauty," and singularly enough, begat a repose; for the mind was fascinated into the notion of the long sleep, by the very leisure required ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... that matter, that their dinners were soignes. Let me not indeed, in saying this, neglect to declare that I shall falsify my counterfeit if I seem to hint that there was in his nature any ounce of calculation. He took whatever came, but he never plotted for it, and no man who was so much of an absorbent can ever have been so little of a parasite. He had a system of the universe, but he had no system of sponging—that was quite hand-to-mouth. He had fine gross easy senses, but it was not his good-natured appetite that wrought confusion. ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... Tillie, with anxious glances at Beth, had brought absorbent cotton, clean linen, a basin of water and a sponge, and Stryker and Brierly washed the wound, while McGuire rushed for his bottle and managed to force some whisky and water between Peter's teeth. The bullet ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Charly and see what could be done. The following morning, Saturday, the twenty-ninth—I betook myself to Charly and there managed to beg the elements of a rudimentary infirmary from the old pharmacist, who must have thought me crazy. Absorbent cotton I was able to procure in small rolled packages from the draper, and promising to send the boys down in the afternoon with a small band cart, I returned home, without having observed anything abnormal ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... sanno, like to retain a spice of mystery in our mental food. It may constitute no part of the nutriment, and may often be deleterious, but it meets a want, somehow or other, and wants, however undefinable, must be recognized. It is a spur that titillates the absorbent surfaces and helps to keep them in action. It is a craving that the race is never going to outlive, and that will afford occupation and subsistence to a considerable class of its most intelligent and respectable members until the year ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Flannel, being an absorbent, has usually been recommended as the best material for under-clothing in sweltering weather, such as that of the present summer. An ingenious gentleman of this city, however, has discovered that a full under-suit of blotting-paper ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... or a piece of absorbent cotton drawn out thin and held near the nose by some one will indicate by its movements whether or not there is a current of air going and coming with each forced expiration ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... from England. I went back to the University, jealous of the invasion of my ecstatic calm by new faces, and jealous when there of the privileges those new faces would enjoy; and then, how my recent deadness of life cried out against me as worse than a spendthrift, a destroyer! a nerveless absorbent of the bliss showered on me—the light of her morning presence when, just before embracing, she made her obeisance to the margravine, and kindly saluted me, and stooped her forehead for the baroness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I told them, consistent with the notion I had adopted in common with all others I had conversed with, that I thought it impossible, because the vegetable salts in the charcoal being an alkali acted as an absorbent to the sulphur of the iron, which occasions the red-short quality of the iron, and pit coal abounding with sulphur would increase it. This specious answer, which would probably have appeared conclusive to most, and which indeed was what I really thought, was not so to them. They replied ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... watery solution of gum Arabic. The extremely delicate nature of the paper matrix was a serious drawback, and had to be overcome. The slabs of limestone which served Senefelder in a previous emergency were now recurred to by him as an absorbent material similar to paper, and a trial by making an impression from his above-mentioned paper matrix on the stone, and subsequent gumming, convinced him that he was correct in his surmise. By this act ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... in charge of the ship's lamps, who in right of his office has a double allowance of poisoned chalices, seems thereby vastly degraded, even though he empties the chalices into himself, one after the other, much as if he were delivering their contents at some absorbent establishment in which he had no personal interest. But vastly comforted, I note them all to be, on deck presently, even to the circulation of redder blood in their cold blue knuckles; and when I look up at them lying out on the yards, and holding on for life among the beating ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the case of persons who use it immoderately for they lose appetite, become salivated, and the whole organism degenerates. The carbonized and powdered fruit is used as a dentifrice but its virtues are doubtless identical with those of any vegetable charcoal, i. e., absorbent ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... outline of the picture was drawn, and its light and shade expressed, usually with the pen, with all possible care; and over this outline a coating of size was applied in order to render the gesso ground non-absorbent. The establishment of this fact is of the greatest importance, for the whole question of the true function and use of the gesso ground hangs upon it. That use has been supposed by all previous writers on ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... is wealthy, busy, commercial, Scotch, absorbent of whisky; but she is duly aware of other things. She has a most modern and efficient interest in education; and here are gathered what faint, faint beginnings or premonitions of such things as Art Canada can boast (except the French-Canadians, who, it is complained, produce disproportionately ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... and love "Pauline" will remember the passage where the poet, with that pantheistic ecstasy which was possibly inspired by the singer he most loved, tells how he can live the life of plants, content to watch the wild bees flitting to and fro, or to lie absorbent of the ardours of the sun, or, like the night-flowering columbine, to trail up the tree-trunk and through its rustling foliage "look for the dim stars;" or, again, can live the life of the bird, "leaping airily his pyramid of leaves and twisted boughs of some tall mountain-tree;" ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... one quick jerk. Then we'll put your foot in the warm water and let all the blood that has been gathering to see what was wrong, run away, and then we'll put on something nice and soft, and some absorbent cotton, and make a fine bandage, and about tomorrow it will be as good ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... or diminished length of the intestines, which apparently results from changed diet, is a more remarkable case, because it is characteristic of certain animals in their domesticated condition, and therefore must be inherited. The complex absorbent system, the blood-vessels, nerves, and muscles, are necessarily all modified together with the intestines. According to Daubenton, the intestines of the domestic cat are one-third longer than those of the wild ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... passage or recess opening from the court; to which we flocked and pushed, in a merciless squeeze, with all our coppers, and the products of which, the oblong farinaceous compound, faintly yet richly brown, stamped and smoking, not crisp nor brittle, but softly absorbent of the syrup dabbed upon it for a finish, revealed to me I for a long time, even for a very long time supposed, the highest pleasure of sense. We stamped about, we freely conversed, we ate sticky waffles by the hundred—I recall no worse acts ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... to account for the nature of the morbid state, which gives rise to general and local dropsy, there are only three which our author regards as entitled to our notice. According to these, all dropsical accumulations arise either, 1st, From a want of tone or energy in the absorbent vessels, giving rise to a deficient absorption. 2nd, From an increased exhalation of the natural fluid, through a similar want of tone in the exhalents; and 3d, From a mechanical obstruction to ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... is sufficiently large to admit of it, the antiseptic dressing is best applied by means of the probe. This instrument is thinly wrapped with tow, or other absorbent material, so as to form a small swab. Dipped in a suitable solution (as, for example, Zinc Chloride, Spts. Hydrarg. Perchlor., Carbolic Acid, or any other that suggests itself), the swab is inserted into the prick, and the wound conveniently mopped clean. A further portion of the medicated tow is ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... for it is only the under surface that is coated. When the upper leaf surface is hairy, we know that the plant is protected in this way from perspiring too freely. Doubtless these leaves of the steeple bush, like those of other plants that choose a similar habitat, have woolly hairs beneath as an absorbent to protect their pores from clogging with the vapors that must rise from the damp ground where the plant grows. If these pores were filled with moisture from without, how could they possibly throw off the waste of the plant? All plants are largely dependent upon free perspiration for ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al |
