"Ballast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... working day soon made itself felt. The north wind rose, causing the lively Mukhbir, whose ballast, by-the-by, was all on deck, to waddle dangerously for the poor mules; and it was agreed, nem. con., to put into Tor harbour. We found ourselves at ten a.m. (December 12th) within the natural pier of coralline, and we were not alone in our misfortune; an English steamer making Suez was ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... leave unsaid; she was so forgetful of herself, and so regardful of the sorrow about her, that I held her in a sort of veneration. The work she did that day! There were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the outhouse—as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under weights that she was quite ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... alteration in their theories. But they were facing a new situation, and that new situation became an immense factor in their unconscious growth. Their intellectual and moral problems shifted, as a boat shifts her ballast when the wind blows from a new quarter. The John Cotton preaching in a shed in the new Boston had come to "suffer a sea-change" from the John Cotton who had been rector of St. Botolph's splendid church in Lincolnshire. The "church without a bishop" and the "state without ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... side of the body; that, so far from sharing in the lightness and subtlety of the principle with which it is animated, the body is no more in our eyes than a heavy and cumbersome vesture, a kind of irksome ballast which holds down to earth a soul eager to rise aloft. Then the body will become to the soul what, as we have just seen, the garment was to the body itself—inert matter dumped down upon living energy. ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... "Reminds me of a skipper I once sailed with, bound from Rotterdam to Hull in ballast. There was a Scotch mist best part of the trip, an' the old man loaded with schnapps to keep out the damp. First time he got a squint of the sun he went as yaller as a Swede turnip. 'It's all up with us, boys,' he said. 'My missus is forty fathoms below. We've just sailed over York.' ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... steady eyes that look through the blast, you see him understanding commandments from the jerk of his father’s white eyebrow, now belaying and now letting go, now scrunching himself down into mere ballast, or baling out death with a pipkin. Stale enough is the sight, and yet when I see it I always stare anew, and with a kind of Titanic exultation, because that a poor boat with the brain of a man and the hands of a boy ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... George Washington, rising and standing in the attitude of Webster, "I rises to appoint to order. We took ballast in de prior cases, and why make flesh of one man an' a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... descended in about two hours at Nesle, a small town about 27 m. from Paris, when Robert left the car, and Charles made a, second ascent by himself. He had intended to have replaced the weight of his companion by a nearly equivalent quantity of ballast; but not having any suitable means of obtaining such at the place of descent, and it being just upon sunset, he gave the word to let go, and the balloon being thus so greatly lightened, ascended very rapidly to a height of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... without convoy, capturing any of the enemy's vessels she may happen to fall in with, who are not strong enough to resist her. We had cleared out for Genoa with a cargo of lead, which lay at the bottom of the hold, and which merely served for ballast. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... occurs to one in reference to this position is, that it should more properly belong to a man than a woman. Even in women of the strongest understanding and the deepest and widest culture, there is generally a want of ballast which unfits them for such a responsibility; and Lady Huntingdon was not a lady of a strong understanding, and still less of a deep and wide culture. But she possessed what was better still—a single eye to her Master's glory, a truly humble mind, and genuine piety. The possession of these ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the 11th.—It had been settled that to-day should be devoted to an excursion to the forests which are now being opened up by the new line of railway in course of construction. The special train of ballast-trucks which had been provided for us was to have started at ten o'clock, soon after which hour we landed, some delay having been caused at the last moment by the receipt of a message requesting us to send ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... who had suffered in the good cause. They feasted and lionized him, and did their utmost to advance his fortunes. At the elections which took place during the following year they returned him as one of the representatives of the County of Wentworth in the Assembly, where, though he lacked sufficient ballast to display anything like statesmanship, he made considerable noise, and erelong became a notable personage. He was voluble, and made many verbose speeches, the matter of which never rose above the veriest commonplace, but as it was always ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... looked at me as one returned from the grave, and from what I could gather by the looks of the boys, I was something of a hero, even before I had told my story. The colonel asked me what had become of all the baggage I had on my saddle when I went away, and I told him that I had thrown ballast over-board all over the Southern Confederacy, when I was charging the enemy, because I found my horse drew too much water for a long run. He said something about my being a Horse-Marine, and sent me back to my company, telling me that when we got into camp that night he would send for me and I ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... four men man these galley punts, and the hardships and perils they encounter in the earning of their livelihood are great. The men are sometimes, even in winter time, three days away in these open boats, sleeping on the bare boards or ballast bags and wrapped in ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... is familiar to every resident in India. This species nests between March and August. The 122 eggs in the possession of Hume were taken, 12 in March, 46 in April, 24 in May, 26 in June, 4 in July, and 8 in August. Generally in a slight depression on the ground, occasionally on the ballast of a rail-road, four pegtop-shaped eggs are laid; these are, invariably, placed in the form of a cross, so that they touch each other at their thin ends. They are coloured like those of the common plover. The yellow-wattled ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... too full of coal are dangerous and a great waste of coal, as the jar when running will cause a part of it to fall off; water overflowing from tanks results in washing away the ballast and in cold ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... from Havana to Matamoras, with supplies for General Ampudia," came much more cheerfully back. "We had to run away from Matamoras in ballast to escape the gringos. Their cruisers are around like hawks. You won't get to Vera Cruz ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... nothing but ballast back—made a delicious voyage, Setter; and might have rode at anchor in the port till this time, but the enemy surprised ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... was almost fully charged, and was swaying to and fro in a wild, fitful manner, that could not have been beheld without trepidation by any of the thirty gentlemen who had so judiciously booked seats in advance. The wickerwork car now secured to the balloon was half filled with ballast and crowded with men, whilst others hung on to the ropes and to each other in the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Clayton were bent upon the festivities of fair week, it must not be imagined that the grave and thoughtful contingent, which acts as ballast in ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... and gave him the position of every train on the line—freights, ballast trains, everything—showed him the answers of the various conductors, the latest reports at the stations where the various trains had passed. All was right. He looked in my face for a second. I scarcely dared look in his. I did not know what was going to happen. He did not say ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... the only country manufacturing rubber articles, and her best market soon proved to be North America. Probably the first rubber this country saw was brought to New England in clipper ships as ballast in the form of crude lumps and balls. Rubber shoes, water-bottles, powder-flasks, and tobacco-pouches found buyers in the American ports, but rubber shoes were ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... writings to make the fortune of a great poet, in spite of their ballast of mediocre and tiresome verses, which the reader should disregard as he goes along. Between him and his contemporary, the haughty recluse Alfred de Vigny, there is not a little resemblance. Needless to say that Lebensohn had no acquaintance whatsoever with ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... for him," he said to himself. "With old Stephen on one side and with me on the other, and with his fancied devotion to Alice on top of it all, he must feel that the world is against him." Then Gorham's face became stern again. "But he must take on ballast," he said, firmly; "he must get over these snap-judgments and learn to recognize that he is playing with tools too heavy for him to handle. It will do him good—but I love the boy for his courage. It will land him somewhere if he ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... trouble,' said Davis. 'There's only one thing certain: it's no use carting this old glass and ballast to Peru. No, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... angrily. "Strip your old tub down to a flying balloon-jib and a marline-spike, and ballast the Ark with elephants until every inch of her reeked with ivory and peanuts, and she'd outfoot you on every leg, in a cyclone or a zephyr. Give me the Ark and a breeze, and your House-boat wouldn't be within hailing distance ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... occasion. The cheapest and least delicate provisions are heaped in the shops; the coarsest and commonest articles of wearing apparel dangle at the salesman's door, and stream from the house-parapet and windows. Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of ponderous waggons that bear great ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... imports are Australian coal, and general merchandise from Europe, but most sailing ships arrive in ballast. ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... practical a man not to put to some purpose a journey of 15,000 or 16,000 leagues across all the oceans of the globe. His ship was to go without cargo, undoubtedly, but it was easy to get her down to her right trim by means of water ballast, and even to sink her to her deck, if ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... care, and foresight, at moderate rates, and at the rates taken in the subsequent calculations. Merchant vessels, bound to all quarters, so soon as they perceived that they were sure of a market, would take a proportion of coals as ballast; and others would be glad to take a portion even beyond that, to aid them in completing their cargoes, instead of remaining, as vessels both at Liverpool, Glasgow, &c. frequently do, some time, till they can obtain a ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... on New Year's Day in 1681 on the Most Holy Trinity, they clapped their captain in irons and put him down below on the ballast, and elected an old pirate and a "stout seaman," John Watling, in his place. One of the reasons for the revolt was said to be ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... objective was to institute a New York-Savannah packet service, for which the Savannah was to be the first ship. He shows that, due to the economic depression of 1819, the Savannah sailed to Liverpool in ballast and without passengers. Her fuel capacity is given as 1,500 bushels (75 tons) of coal and 25 cords of wood. [It should be noted that 1,500 bushels of bituminous coal does not quite equal 75 tons.] Tyler quotes S. C. ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle
... (see ANCHOR) or mushroom anchors according to the nature of the ground. London Trinity House buoys are [v.04 p.0808] built of steel, with bulkheads to lessen the risk of their sinking by collision, and, with the exception of bell buoys, do not contain water ballast. In 1878 gas buoys, with fixed and occulting lights of 10-candle power, were introduced. In 1896 Mr T. Matthews, engineer-in-chief in the London Trinity Corporation, developed the present design (fig. 12). It is of steel, the lower plates being ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... thing in literature. Write half a dozen folios full of other people's ideas (as all folios are pretty sure to be), and you serve as ballast to the lower shelves of a library, about as like to be disturbed as the kentledge in the hold of a ship. Write a story, or a dozen stories, and your book will be in demand like an oyster while it is ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... closer parallel than in the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The union of the philosopher, the enthusiast, and the man of the world is fairly unusual in literature, but in Hazlitt's case the union was not productive of any sharp contradictions. His common sense served as a ballast to his buoyant emotions; the natural strength of his feelings loosened the bonds which attached him to his favorite theories; his cynicism, by sharpening his perception of the frailty of human nature, prevented his philanthropic dreams ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... made in the fitting out was lessening the quantity of iron and other ballast. I gave directions that only nineteen tons of iron should be taken on board instead of the customary proportion which was forty-five tons. The stores and provisions I judged would be fully sufficient to answer the purpose of the remainder; for I am of opinion that many of the misfortunes which attend ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... Hornet the other day? He calls it The Hornet because he got stung when he bought it. The weather was all to the good the other afternoon, so we hike up to Harlem and collar the ship, six of us, and, after loading a bunch of bottled ballast on board, we started out. Gosh, the water was lovely. Gym don't care what becomes of the blooming barge as long as it doesn't get lost. You can even sink it, if you mark the spot. We all leave our Merry Widow lids ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... ready the ring which lies midway between the belts. This you will catch into the hook at the end of the lowered rope. When all is secure, and I have pulled you both up by the windlass so as to clear the top, I shall throw out ballast which we shall carry on purpose, and away we go! I am sorry it must be so uncomfortable for you both, but there is no other way. When we get well clear of the Tower, I shall take you both up on the platform. If necessary, I shall ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... muddy, dark autumn, bringing a slack time, and I used to sit at home three days in the week without work, or did various jobs outside painting; such as digging earth for ballast for twenty copecks a day. Doctor Blagovo had gone to Petersburg. My sister did not come to see me. Radish lay at home ill, expecting to ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... and two or three pinnaces, under the command of Lord Thomas Howard. In the month of August in that year, they lay at anchor off the island of Flores, where they had put in for a fresh supply of water, and to take in ballast, as well as to refresh the crew, for ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... and exceedingly simple device bore witness to the ingenuity of the inventor. He had noticed in his days of free ballooning that to rise the aeronaut had to throw out sand-ballast; to descend he had to open the valves and let out gas. As his supply of both gas and sand was limited it was clear that the time of his flight was necessarily curtailed every time he ascended or descended. Santos-Dumont thought to husband his supplies of lifting force and of ballast, ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... as was his habit. When first he heard of those favored spots, he had two anchors which kept him bound to Edinburgh—his parents. The good engineer died in 1887; and the other anchor, his mother, he found could be lifted, and became the best of ballast. When he elected to become a world wanderer, she left her Edinburgh home and, without hesitation, went off with her son and his household when they turned their backs on Europe in 1887. Her journal to her sister tells of these travels "From Saranac to Marquesas." ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... there. There was scarcely a cloud in the sky, and nothing whatever to suggest a squall. But as he looked again, a suspicious wisp of white water lifted suddenly from the surface a few yards to windward. Like a flash he remembered that the boat had no ballast in her, and was running with her sheets made fast. Instinctively he leaned forward to let go the foresail, but at the same moment the squall struck the boat like the hammer of Thor. Relieved of the fore canvas, ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... been partitioned off, so as to form four tanks in which water and gasolene could be stored. Caps screwed over vent-holes provided opportunity to insert a small pump when it was necessary to draw on the emergency supplies or water ballast thus carried. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... I'd been, never to have heard of it. It was my guess—in its twentieth edition! ... The globe spun round at that, and all of a sudden I was under the old stars. That's the way it happens when the ballast of vanity shifts! I'd lived a third of a life out there, unconscious of human opinion—because I supposed it was unconscious of me. But now—now! Oh, it was different. I wanted to know what they said. ... Not exactly that, either: I wanted to know what I'd made them say. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... light ship, as sailors term a vessel that stands high upon the water, having discharged her cargo at Callao, from which port we were proceeding in ballast to Cape Town, South Africa, there to call for orders. Our run to within a few parallels of the latitude of the Horn had been extremely pleasant; the proverbial mildness of the Pacific Ocean was in the mellow ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... was, the front wheel struck the heel of the newsboy's boot and he and Jimmy fell, face downward on the sharp, fresh-gravel ballast so hard that they were both bleeding and the baggage man thought sure the wheel had gone over them. To his surprise their injuries proved ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the main ballast tank was emptied until the conning tower was well awash. Then the commander, Frank and Jack went up to have a look around, for the airship, as well ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... born when I was very young and have been desperately tidy about my morals ever since, but for fear of stumbling just because I'm so bored I have entrenched myself behind a maddening routine. Six months here ought to put ballast into ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... nothin' stirrin' there this year, and never will I'm thinkin'. No mortal soul CAN live in Nova Scotia. I do believe that our country was made of a Sunday night, arter all the rest of the univarse was finished. One half of it has got all the ballast of Noah's ark thrown out there; and the other half is eat up by bankers, lawyers, and other great folks. All our money goes to pay salaries, and a poor man has no chance at all.' 'Well,' says I, 'are you done up stock and fluke—a total wrack?' 'No,' says he, 'I have ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... able to right them, bail them out, and scramble aboard again. They could all swim and dive like ducks—save Bessie and Tubby. But Bessie was improving every day, and Tubby never could really sink, they all declared, unless he swallowed so much of the lake for ballast that he would be able to wade ashore ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... delayed, so that it took us seventy-two days to reach the Ladrones. There we filled our water-butts, and I took on board a large anchor that I found there that had belonged formerly to the flagship lost there by Ffelipe de Sauzedo; in the other ship we placed four small boat-loads of ballast. All this detained us only a day and a half. On nearing the cape of Spiritu Santo in Tandaya, one of the Philipinas, our progress was impeded by the vendaval, and our pilots also gave us considerable trouble, so that ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... eloquent articles pertaining to the great oil wealth of the region had been reinforced by a favorable report from the laboratory in the city to which he had sent a specimen from the spring on Turtle Creek. Thus equipped with wings of hope, and a small ballast of fact, the "Eagle" went soaring on its way, and in time attracted the attention of a party of capitalists who were traveling through the State, investigating oil ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... busily employed in finishing off her internal fittings; and when first I beheld her the dockyard people were in the act of warping her across the basin to still another berth, where she was to receive her ballast; thus when my eyes first rested upon her she was floating high out of the water, and I was afforded an excellent opportunity to view and criticise her lines. She was somewhat shallow of hull and flat in the floor, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... &c. 774 neutralization, nullification; counteraction &c. 179; reaction; measure for measure. retaliation &c. 718 equalization &c. 27; robbing Peter to pay Paul. set-off, offset; make-weight, casting-weight; counterpoise, ballast; indemnity, equivalent, quid pro,quo; bribe, hush money; amends &c. (atonement) 952; counterbalance, counterclaim; cross-debt, cross-demand. V. make compensation; compensate, compense[obs3]; indemnify; counteract, countervail, counterpoise; balance; outbalance[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Crump carefully. "Looked as if he was going out in ballast—except his pockets; there was something in his pockets, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... little balls of dry and hardened clay. Why does the bird amass these objects? Is it impelled by a collector's instinct less perfect than that of the Bower-bird? There is no reason to suppose this. Nor does it appear that he wishes to make the nest heavier and prevent it by this ballast from being blown about by every breeze when the couple are out, and the young not heavy enough to ensure the stability of the edifice. The part played by these little balls is much more remarkable, if we may trust the evidence of the natives, as confirmed by competent European observers. ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... those old-time brigs, when bound to the North in ballast, to be blown off the land by strong westerly gales, and these occasions were dreaded by the coasting commander whose geographical knowledge was so limited that when he found himself drifting into the German Ocean beyond the sight of land, his resources became too heavily taxed, ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Channel. A schooner of considerable size, belonging to Squire Blackett, had, indeed, been chased, off the Norfolk coast, and had escaped only by the fact that it was lightly laden—it was returning in ballast to the Tyne—and by its superior sailing qualities. Such things brought home to every collier the realities of the situation. George's ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... were removed, so if the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship, and adversity, if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance . . . that they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly. A ship without ballast is unstable, and will not go straight." Therefore let us make our ship of life go straight with its ballast of miseries and hardships, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... a queer old wooden pier, fortunately without the slightest pretensions to architecture, and very picturesque in consequence. Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes are coiled all over it; lobster-pots, nets, masts, oars, spars, sails, ballast, and rickety capstans, make a perfect labyrinth of it. For ever hovering about this pier, with their hands in their pockets, or leaning over the rough bulwark it opposes to the sea, gazing through telescopes which they carry about in the same profound receptacles, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... about this time that William Fairbairn made the acquaintance of George Stephenson, while the latter was employed in working the ballast-engine at Willington Quay. He greatly admired George as a workman, and was accustomed in the summer evenings to go over to the Quay occasionally and take charge of George's engine, to enable him to earn a few shillings extra by heaving ballast out ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... had come up with the afternoon tide—a coaster, a Norwegian barque in ballast, and a full-rigged ship with nitrate from the West Coast of ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... he is uplifted with some fancy of his own. It may be only with the meeting of me after our encounter," said Humfrey. "He is a brave fellow and kindly, but never did craft so want ballast as does that pate ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to be of his mind about everything, but, if he is a Republican, I have done with him. If he will in his Republican system throw in a little royal authority as ballast, we shall soon come to an agreement. I wish him to come neuf to all those great and important questions, and examine them sans l'esprit de systeme, without prejudice and strong inclination to be of either side, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... hard-burnt bricks of imperfect shape. Obtain their name from being much used as ballast ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... upon the rights of the individual. With a code of political ethics more perfect than any the world has yet seen, we find it still hesitating to put these principles to the test. As a consequence it struggles in the waves of political disorder like a ship without ballast. Recognizing as vital doctrines the equality of the race, and the value of the family as the political unit, we find the woman principle, the mother element, subdued, subjected, deprived of any fair expression in the conduct of the government. As a result we ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... don't believe they do," he said. "Of course, it would have seemed strange to the mate and to Rogers if I hadn't given them some explanation, especially as we came out in ballast. So I dropped hints that we were out on a survey expedition that couldn't be talked of just now. They probably have the idea that we're looking up a suitable coaling station for the Government, or something of that kind. To carry that out, I've got some surveyor's instruments ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... three qualities are essential to statesmanship. Poets and philosophers can afford to be thin—cannot, indeed, afford to be otherwise; inasmuch as poetry and philosophy thrive but in the clouds aloft, and a stomach ballasts you to earth. Such ballast the statesman must have. Thin statesmen may destroy, but construct they cannot; have ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... story to read to you that concerns us all. I am glad to have you here, Kate, as a sort of ballast. It was what excited me so this morning and I was very unreasonable. The doctor threatened to put me ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Orleans paved her favorite streets, when she paved them at all, with big blocks of granite two feet by one. They came from the North as ballast in those innumerable wide-armed ships whose cloud of masts and cordage inspiringly darkened the sky of that far-winding river-front where we lately saw Hilary Kincaid and Fred Greenleaf ride. Beginning at the great steamboat landing, half a mile ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... the ballast of the soul, that will keep it from rolling and tumbling in the greatest storms; and he that will venture out without this to make him sail even and steady will certainly make shipwreck and drown himself, first in the cares and sorrows of this world, and then ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... was not seeking her own way. She was steering the poor domestic ship of Manchester House, illuminating its dark rooms with her own sure, radiant presence: her silver-white hair, and her pale, heavy, reposeful face seemed to give off a certain radiance. She seemed to give weight, ballast, and repose to the staggering and bewildered home. She controlled the maid, and suggested the meals—meals which James ate without knowing what he ate. She brought in flowers and books, and, very rarely, a visitor. Visitors were out of place in the dark sombreness ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Gentile lies but little more than a cable's length from the shore, so that you can almost look down upon her decks. You perceive that she is a handsome craft of some six or seven hundred tons burthen, standing high out of water, in ballast trim, with a black hull, bright waist, and wales painted white. Her bows flare very much, and are sharp and symmetrical; the cut-water stretches, with a graceful curve, far out beyond them toward the long sweeping martingal, and is surmounted by a gilt scroll, or, as the sailors ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... of; you have stocked in your little heart a great deal of ballast, and neglected the most necessary things. Do you ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... brickwork on account of its greater durability, is made by using foundry sand or smith's ashes instead of ordinary sand. There are many other substitutes for the ordinary sand. As an example, fine stone grit may be used with advantage. Thoroughly burnt clay or ballast, old bricks, clinkers and cinders, ground to a uniform size and screened from dust, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... exhausting, Guynemer seemed to prolong his flights to the point where overwork and nervous depression compelled him to go away and take a little rest—which made him suffer still more. And suddenly, before he had taken the necessary repose, he threw it off like ballast, and returning to camp, reappeared in the air, like the falcon in the legend of Saint Julien the Hospitaller: "The bold bird rose straight in the air like an arrow, and there could be seen two spots of unequal size which ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... Kant! have we not had enough To make Religion sad, and sour, and snubbish, But Saints Zoological must cant their stuff, As vessels cant their ballast-rattling rubbish! Once let the sect, triumphant to their text, Shut Nero up from Saturday till Monday, And sure as fate they will deny us next To see the Dandelions on a Sunday— But what is ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the chill from our bodies with hot coffee. Also we had to devote ourselves to the miserable task of bailing, for in some incomprehensible way the Reindeer had sprung a generous leak. Half the night had been spent in overhauling the ballast and exploring the seams, but the labor had been without avail. The water still poured in, and perforce we doubled up in the cockpit and tossed it ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... unit, is not a part of fate alone; it carries just so much fate and so much freedom as there are to be carried. It changes nothing; it is simply a vehicle, and transports freight,—precious stones or ballast stones, as the case may be. Therefore, in unveiling a single year, and seeing precisely what this fact of two hundred murders means, we find its meaning for any possible succession of years. It shows certain measures of fate working in the bosoms of certain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Tom. "He makes good ballast. I wish Mr. Damon was here. If everything goes right we may take a run ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... orange boats passing between Soller in North Mallorca and Marseille, they aren't to be depended on. By a singular irony of fate, I did come across an old white—painted barque which had just come out of Palma in ballast; but her skipper only told what I knew full well in my own heart, that I might very likely wait three years before I found a craft ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... age Stephenson married Fanny Henderson, a respectable country girl living at Ballast Hill. He brought the bride home behind him on a pillion, a wedding journey of fifteen miles. Robert Stephenson, who became his father's partner, and one of the first of England's civil engineers, was born ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... than he wishes, less also than he imagines himself to do. The purely formal character of intelligence deprives it of the ballast necessary to enable it to settle itself on the objects that are of the most powerful interest to speculation. Instinct, on the contrary, has the desired materiality, but it is incapable of going so far in quest of its object; it does not speculate. Here we ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... will, by allowing some quantity of the gas to escape. The car in which he sits is suspended to the balloon by a network, which covers the whole structure. Sacks of sand are carried in this car as ballast, so that, when descending, if the aeronaut sees that he is likely to be precipitated into the sea or into a lake, he throws over the sand, and his air-carriage, being thus lightened, mounts again and travels away to a more desirable resting-place. The idea of the valve, as well ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... Howard passed away with five ships of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven; But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land Very carefully and slow, Men of Bideford in Devon, And we laid them on the ballast down below; For we brought them all aboard, And they blest him in their pain that they were not left to Spain, To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... done, they set out to sail the new boat home. It had no other ballast than himself, his wife and children, and the Christmas fare. His son Bernt sat in the fore-part, his wife, with the help of the second son, held the halliard, and Elias sat at the helm, while the two younger boys, twelve and fourteen ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... mackerel-fishing of last spring, which was the best for the past four years. The open boat, which they own in partnership, is a strongly built one about twenty-two feet long, with a lug and foresail of brown canvas and great flat stones for ballast. The whole outfit, including the lobster-pots, cost them twenty-five pounds. The pots have been set and baited with gurnet; during the two hours' interval we are anchored. A curious thing about the craft is the galley. ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... in a voice that shook as his hand did while he handed me back the letter. "It is a great chance for him, and if you can help you'll have to go to it, Betty. Pete only needs ballast, and you are ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... intoxicated men, went a little way very straight, and surprisingly slued round and came back again. And then others were so chock-full of trucks of coal, others were so blocked with trucks of casks, others were so gorged with trucks of ballast, others were so set apart for wheeled objects like immense iron cotton-reels: while others were so bright and clear, and others were so delivered over to rust and ashes and idle wheelbarrows out of work, with their legs in ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... the forlorn neutral. Our destroyer nipped past us with that high-shouldered, terrier-like pouncing action of the newer boats, and went ahead. A tramp in ballast, her propeller half out of water, threshed along ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... nor condescending to be body, but hovering intermediate. But the more strongly the antithesis is felt, the nearer the thought to end this remaining tenderness for the gross and unspiritual,—to drop this ballast of earth, and rise into the region of heavenly realities. Upon a window of Canterbury Cathedral, beneath a representation of the miracle of Cana, is the legend,—"Lympha dat historiam, vinum notat allegoriam." But if the earthly is there only for the sake of this heavenly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... a hard lee shore you've beached upon; I'll lend ye a hand to get in the head sail, and get the craft trimmed up a little. A dash of the same brine will help keep the ballast right, then a skysail-yard breakfast must be carefully stowed away, in order to give a firmness to the timbers, and on the strength of these two blocks for shoring up the hull, you must begin little by little, and keep on brightening up until you have got the craft all right again. And ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... as to prevent the loss of our ships and seamen. The Senate hurried a bill through all its stages in a single day; and the House, by nearly two to one, accepted it. No foreign merchant vessel could leave an American port, except in ballast, or with a cargo then on board; no American merchantman could leave for a foreign port ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... we were up in the mountains, and I was rowing myself, and the boat didn't go well, and Mr. Holloway came down off the hotel piazza and called to me that she needed ballast, and—and I said: 'Is that the trouble?' And he said: 'Yes, row ashore, and I'll ballast you.' And so, of course I rowed ashore to get him, and (of course, I supposed he meant himself), and when I was up by the dock ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... but soon turn'd His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few Thus to another spake: "Along this path Crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now!" So saw I fluctuate in successive change Th' unsteady ballast of the seventh hold: And here if aught my tongue have swerv'd, events So strange may be its warrant. O'er mine eyes Confusion hung, and on my thoughts amaze. Yet 'scap'd they not so covertly, but well I mark'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... which representatives of the press occupy. Pa stood on one ear on a crushed chair, with his legs over the railing, and when he came to, the newspaper men wanted to interview pa. Pa said all he remembered was that the air ship was sailing over the town, and they threw him out for ballast, and he struck a church spire and bounded onto a warehouse filled with dynamite, which exploded when he struck it, and the neighbors picked his remains up on a dustpan and emptied them in here, Then he asked if his head was on straight, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her and judge for yourself. There is her history; the inhabitants know it by heart." So we can say to De Tocqueville, who had said of the Government of the United States, that it is all sail and no ballast, and that it possessed no power to resist internal strife, and, therefore, could not endure: there she is; she needs no encomium by us; there she stands, and she has stood firmly in the face of all sorts ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Kentucky, and drifting toward the gulf. Our valve refuses to work, and we dare not attempt to land in the dark. Ballast nearly gone. We fear we may be swept out to sea. Please notify station at Pensacola to send assistance—a tug, if possible. We may keep afloat a short time if we ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... which, if not noble themselves, are allied to nobility,—and as to my "rise in the world"—if I had risen, it would have been rather for balloon-like qualities than for mother-wit, to being unencumbered with heavy ballast either in my head or my pockets. However, it was my cue to agree: ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... new article, and recommends its use to draughtsmen. This substance, however, being one of those of which nature has provided an inexhaustible supply, greater quantities found their way into the commerce of the world; until, in 1820, it was a drug in all markets, and was frequently brought as ballast merely. About this time it began to be subjected to experiments with a view to rendering it available in the arts. It was found useful as an ingredient of blacking and varnish. Its elasticity was turned to account in France in the manufacture of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... that is the case, I see no need to regret her vivid imagination," replied his friend. "A quick fancy helps people along wonderfully. Imagination is like a big sail. When there's nothing underneath it's risky; but with plenty of ballast to hold the vessel steady, it's an immense advantage ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... Not above ten thousand, which would be robbery. Every time she's in a rough sea I'm afraid she'll jump her ballast through her planking." ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... passion becomes a mania among our farmers, and particularly we do not wonder at a passion for wood land. That wide, deep chasm of conscious self-poverty and emptiness which lies at the bottom of every human heart, making men crave property as something to add to one's own bareness, and to ballast one's own specific levity, is sooner filled by ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to increase the weight of the pole leaving the sun, by increasing the amount of material there for the sun to attract, and to lighten the pole approaching or turning towards the sun, by removing some heavy substance from it, and putting it preferably at the opposite pole. This shifting of ballast is most easily accomplished, as you will readily perceive, by confining and removing water, which is easily moved and has a considerable weight. How we purpose to apply these aqueous brakes to check the wabbling of the earth, by means ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... fresh meat, vegetables, bread, butter, and milk. The deck is all bustle with custom-house officers, and men unloading a part of the ship's freight, which consists chiefly of rum, brandy, sugar, and coals, for ballast. We are to leave Quebec by five o'clock this evening. The British America, a superb steam-vessel of three decks, takes us in tow as far as Montreal. I must ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... of half-formed thoughts, fancies, and ideas; her mind and her character were full of disquiet. At times joyous and wild beyond bounds, she became on the other hand wretched and dispirited without reason. Poor Petrea! She was wanting in every kind of self-regulation and ballast, even outwardly; she walked ill—she stood ill—she curtseyed ill—sate ill—and dressed ill; and occasioned, in consequence, much pain to her mother, who felt so acutely whatever was unpleasing; and this also was very painful to Petrea, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... the Custom House officer, "you are an Inspector of Customs, I am an Inspector of Railways. Inspectors do not eat inspectors. The deuce take it! Some worthy Belgians have taken fright and sent me to you between four gendarmes. Why, I know not. I am sent by the Northern Company to relay the ballast of a bridge somewhere about here which is not firm. I come to ask you to allow me to continue my road. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... superintendents of hay scales, four measurers of upper leather, fifteen measurers of wood and bark, twenty measurers of grain, three weighers of beef, thirty-eight weighers of coal, five weighers of boilers and heavy machinery, four weighers of ballast and lighters, ninety-two undertakers, 150 constables, 968 election officers and their deputies. A few of these officials serve without pay, some are paid by salaries fixed by the council, some by fees. ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... I can't make out," answered Kitchell. "A bark such as she ain't ought to roll thata way; her ballast'd steady her." ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... proposition as a dogma not to be modified, and before the week was out he would advance the contrary proposition and maintain that with equal warmth and doubtless with equal conviction. Guided by no sound knowledge and devoid of the ballast of principle, he was tossed and driven hither and thither like a wreck on the ocean. Mr. Melville Stone, the veteran American journalist, gave his countrymen his impression of the first British delegate. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... passion gets the reins of reason, The force of nature, like too strong a gale, For want of ballast oversets the ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... where you are, lady,' the Guard was saying. 'You're good ballast. You can keep the train down. That's something. Steady ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... social aspiration of the race. But as there is no society possible without regulation, without control, without limitations on individual liberty, above all without moral limitations, the peoples which are legally the freest do well to take their religious consciousness for check and ballast. In mixed states, Catholic or free-thinking, the limit of action, being a merely penal one, invites ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... notwithstanding, our Universities, along with our whole system of education, are in poor plight. As, at the public school, the child is robbed of valuable time by filling his brain with matters that accord neither with common sense nor scientific experience; as a mass of ballast is there dumped into him that he can not utilize in life, that, rather, hampers him in his progress and development; so likewise is it done in our higher schools. In the preparatory schools for the Universities a mass of dry, useless matter is pounded into the pupils. These ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... waited on and on, in hopes of more passengers, though never avowing their purpose, His patience was now nearly exhausted, and he went and made such vifs remonstrances that he almost startled the managers. They pretended the ballast was all they stayed for : he offered to aid that himself; and actually went to work, and never rested till the vessel was absolutely ready: orders, enfin, were given for sailing next morning, though he fears, with all his skill, and all his eloquence, and all his aiding, they ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... merchantmen, plying between Brazil and New England, sometimes carried rubber as ballast on the home voyage and dumped it on the wharves at Boston. One of the shipmasters exhibited to his friends a pair of native shoes fancifully gilded. Another, with more foresight, brought home five hundred pairs, ungilded, and offered them for sale. They were thick, clumsily ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... a revolution?—Aid their aim, But be the revolution—in our hearts! Wouldst thou (whose hand is at the helm) the bark, The shaken bark of Britain, should outride The present blast, and every future storm? Give it that ballast which alone has weight With Him whom wind, and waves, and war, obey, Persist. Are others subtle? Thou be wise: Above the Florentine's court-science raise; Stand forth a patriot of the moral world; The pattern, and the patron, of ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... punctilious; fearful of compromising their rank; all etiquette." The entertainments at government-house were ceremonies, rather than parties of pleasure. As the servant opened the door, he seemed to say, "you may come in, but don't speak." Some more daring spirit would venture a remark, as ballast is thrown out to send a balloon above the fogs; but caution, like Sancho's physician, interdicted the perilous indulgence, and restored the watchful silence. No Dutchman would willingly endure the Humdrumstadt on the Derwent, notwithstanding its natural ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... of breaking the calcareous shell or of getting at the hermit through the opening. Then why should she collect those prizes, whose slimy flesh is probably not to her taste? We begin to suspect a simple question of ballast and balance. The House Spider, or Tegenaria domestica, prevents her web, spun in a corner of the wall, from losing its shape at the least breath of air, by loading it with crumbling plaster and allowing tiny fragments of ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Ballast weights of stone, iron or bags of sand used to balance the boat. A good way to learn about the parts of a boat is to whittle out a small working model. This is a help, but only the actual experience can teach you how to manage a sail and at the same time steer the boat. Of course, ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... in aeroplanes," went on Ives, reflectively. "I've tried ballooning; but it seems to be merely a cut-and-dried affair of wind and ballast." ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... rising. "A craft should never go astern, and I am quite willing to ballast the boat. We have seen such terrible accidents to-day, that all should lend their aid in endeavoring to get under way, and in averting all possible hamper. Only take me to my poor, dear Rosy, Capt. Spike, and every thing shall be forgotten that has ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... 1591, Lord Thomas Howard, with six English line-of-battle ships, six victuallers, and two or three pinnaces, were lying at anchor under the Island of Florez. Light in ballast and short of water, with half their men disabled by sickness, they were unable to pursue the aggressive purpose on which they had been sent out. Several of the ships' crews were on shore: the ships themselves "all pestered and rommaging," with everything out of ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Adams were industrious and savin'—the little farm prospered, for Boston supplied a goodly market, and weekly trips were made there in a one-horse cart, often piloted by young John, with the minister's boy for ballast. The Adams family had ambitions for their son John—he was to go to Harvard and be educated, and be a minister and preach at Braintree, or ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... out,—not lasting, on an average, more than half as long as they should, if once thoroughly constructed. Wooden bridges are allowed to rot down for want of protection. Rails are left to be battered to pieces for want of drainage and ballast. One road spends thirty-four thousand dollars a year for "watching cuts," and fifty-five thousand more for removing slides that should never have taken place. Everything is done for the moment, and nothing thoroughly. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... not," retorted the sheriff easily. "Del, you better relieve Mr. Hardman of his ballast. He ain't really fit to be trusted with a weapon, and him so excitable. That Winchester came awful near going off, friend. You don't want to be so careless when you're playing with firearms. It's a habit that's liable ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... humiliation, and equal with the rest; to commence, or have the road clear'd to commence, the grand experiment of development, whose end, (perhaps requiring several generations,) may be the forming of a full-grown man or woman—that is something. To ballast the State is also secured, and in our times is to be ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... overflowing by soldiers and merchants from Panama and the adjacent cities. Waggons of maize and cassava were dragged into the streets, with numbers of fowls and hogs. Lodgings rose in value, until a "middle chamber" could not be had for less than 1000 crowns. Desperate efforts were made to collect ballast for the supply ships. Then the treasure trains from Panama began to arrive. Soldiers marched in, escorting strings of mules carrying chests of gold and silver, goatskins filled with bezoar stones, and ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... Having no custom-house nor quarantine To ask him awkward questions on the way About the time and place where he had been: He left his ship to be hove down next day, With orders to the people to careen; So that all hands were busy beyond measure, In getting out goods, ballast, guns, and treasure. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... as such discussions will, when the disputants are at the golden age, and views and opinions are winged, and have not yet become ballast, or, which is worse, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... heart bled for him. "The hope had gone from my life. I had no ballast, nothing to steady me in the tempest. My hope had been all in the present, and it perished with her. I cared for nothing, my little children were a misery to me, the old home was unendurable. I got ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... ''Tis like reading the list of the dead after a battle where you've not had the best of it—each name 's a startling new blow. I'd offer to run to Earlsfont, but here's my company you would have me join for the directoring of it, you know, my dear, to ballast me, as you pretty clearly hinted; and all 's in the city to-day like a loaf with bad yeast, thick as lead, and sour to boot. And a howl and growl coming off the wilds of Old Ireland! We're smitten to-day ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that the load was 10,560 pounds, and the ascensional effort 45,100 pounds. The fuel consumption had averaged 297 pounds per hour, while the fuel tanks carried sufficient for a flight of about seven hours. The airship had attained a maximum height of about 6,230 feet, to reach which 6,600 pounds of ballast had to be discarded. Moreover, it was proved that a Zeppelin, if travelling under military conditions with full armament and ammunition aboard, could carry sufficient fuel for only ten hours at the utmost, during which, if the ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... actual engrossing interest and in abstract questions and ideals. The portraits done of her immediately after her marriage show, as I have said, a remarkably childish person; and childish, without much ballast of passion or even likings, the likeness sketched by Bonstetten seems certainly to show her. But there are women who, while immature as women and human beings, are precocious as intellects, and in whom the character, instead of rapidly ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... and stability to the screen, with sufficient development of its surface. To these ends, whiskey or beef barrels, supporting boards of sufficient length, will afford staging for the masts, yards, and screen; the heel of the mast passing through the stage, and having ballast attached to it. The stage should be so fitted as to be readily put together when wanted, and ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... whenever the aeronaut wishes to let gas escape for a descent. He is able to cause a very rapid escape by pulling another cord depending from a "ripping piece" near the top of the bag. In case of emergency this is torn away bodily, leaving a large hole. The ballast (usually sand) carried enables him to maintain a state of equilibrium between the upward pull of the gas and the downward pull of gravity. To sink he lets out gas, to rise he throws out ballast; and this process can be repeated until ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... other, and more important things to think about," Mr. Skinner retorted icily. As a business man he was opposed to levity in the office. "What are your plans with reference to the Retriever? Do you wish to bring her back from Antofagasta in ballast?" ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... express " - pony pack- trains, carrying merchandise to and fro between Sofia and Nisch. Most of these animals are too heavily laden to think of objecting to the appearance of anything on the road, but some of the outfits are returning from Sofia in "ballast" only; and one of these, doubtless overjoyed beyond measure at their unaccustomed lissomeness, breaks through all restraint at my approach, and goes stampeding over the rolling hills, the wild-looking teamsters in full tear after ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... to the south gave them a fair wind down Lake Bennett, before which they ran under a huge sail made by Liverpool. The heavy weight of outfit gave such ballast that he cracked on as a daring sailor should when moments counted. A shift of four points into the south-west, coming just at the right time as they entered upon Caribou Crossing, drove them down that connecting link to lakes Tagish and Marsh. In stormy sunset and twilight—they ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... look after him now and then, Riddell," he said; "he's not a bad fellow, I fancy, but he's not got quite enough ballast on board, and unless there's some one to look after him he's very likely to get ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... several yards of fine muslin. Her dress in the house was usually of coloured sarcenet, for a small vessel came into the port one day during her father's lifetime, unloaded a great quantity of bales of goods with English marks, and, as the vessel had gone out in ballast, there was a surmise on his part by what means they came into the captain's possession. He therefore cited the captain up to the Governor, but the affair was amicably arranged by the vice-consul receiving ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... possible, against the double danger of swamping and capsizing, by a canvas deck, proper ballast, and fittings of the sail, I crossed Lake Ontario alone from Toronto to Port Dalhousie in nine hours; had my skiff conveyed thence to Port Colborne on a Canadian vessel, through the Welland Canal, and proceeded along the north shore of Lake Erie, rowing in one day, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the crops of the others, was perfectly empty. Indeed, he appeared to prefer traveling in ballast that way. But his eyes shone, and his wing-strokes, with little pauses of rigidity between, such as many birds take—only one doesn't notice it ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... somewhere—where?—"he did not care where." The consequence was a consultation upon the best disposal of a fortnight of waste time, a general survey of the maritime craft of Halifax, the selection of the schooner "Balaklava," bound for Sydney in ballast, and an understanding with the captain, that the old French town of Louisburgh was the point we wished to arrive at, into which harbor we expected to be put safely—three hundred and odd miles from Halifax, and this side of Sydney ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... served me as ballast to so much sail. The first was the very difficult and deadly business I had still to handle; the second, the place that I was in. The tall, black city, and the numbers and movement and noise of so many folk, made a new world for me, after ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chief engineer in 1813, at Killingworth, at a salary of L100 per year. Besides erecting a winding engine for drawing up coal, and a pumping-engine, he projected and laid down a self-acting incline along the declivity of the Willington ballast quay, so arranged that full wagons descending to the vessels drew up the empty ones. But the construction of an efficient and economical locomotive steam engine mainly occupied his mind. He was among those who saw the Blenkinsop engine first put ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... this operation was necessarily renewed every tide, since the hole was always found filled up after the high water. An armourer's forge and tools were now much wanted but the deficiency of an anvil was supplied by the substitution of a pig of ballast; and some chain plates that we had fortunately taken from the Frederick's wreck, and some bar-iron which was brought out from England by the Dromedary, enabled us to place our vessel in a state of security which we were by no ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... and the great change it had wrought in the world; to think about what they had done and the qualities that enabled them to do it. From Panaetius they were to learn a philosophical creed which might direct and save them in the future, which might serve as ballast in public and private life, just when the ship was beginning to drift in moral helplessness. He was the founder of a school of practical wisdom, singularly well adapted to the Roman character and intellect, which were always practical rather than speculative; and far better suited to ordinary ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... immediate demands of special groups, but with no genuine training of the imagination and no understanding of the longer problems of humanity, with no hold on the past, "amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre their thoughts, to ballast their conduct, to preserve them from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine." It will set itself against any regular subjection of the "fierce spirit of liberty," which is the breath of distinction and the very charter of aristocracy, to the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... tons, which had been once used to carry anchors, chains, and stores about the harbor. A week or two more, and she was fitted with a single mast, stepped well in the bows, for a jib and one square lug-sail. Then ballast in bags of sand was laid along her keelson, and a couple of breakers of fresh water got on board, together with a quantity of cooked salt meat and hard biscuit stowed away under the half-deck forward—where, too, was a cozy little nest of spare canvas, with an oakum ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... but shall give you an equal portion of it with ourselves. At present the gold is of no more value to any of us than so much sand, beyond the fact that if we build a craft, as the senor and I have been talking of doing, the boxes will be found excellent ballast, otherwise it is not ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... for children, and which, tumble them about in any way the urchins will, are always brought to their feet again, by the lead deposited in their extremities. The mass of property has the same effect on our Constitution, and is a sort of ballast which will always right the vessel, to use a sailor's phrase, and bring ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... was just leaving the port. The vessel, rather a large one for those days, seems but poorly manned, and rocks so greatly among the short white waves, that it is plainly to be seen that she is short of ballast and lading. She is a Venetian trading vessel, bound first to the Isle of Candia, where she will complete her cargo and add to the number of her crew. This Candia or Crete (the very Crete by which St. Paul passed on his voyage to Italy) was ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... Chaplains must have held him as one of the heartiest of Penitents; for he never came back from a Cruise without a whole Sackful of Misdeeds, and straightway hied him to St. John's Church, to fling his Sinful Ballast overboard and lighten ship. How he swore! I never heard a man take the entrails of Alexander the Great in vain before; but this was an ordinary expletive with Don Ercolo. He belonged to the Italian Language, though I suspected he had a dash of the Spanish in him; and many a Gay Bout over the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... just take another look at the water tank valves," said Tom to himself as he prepared to enter the big compartments which received the water ballast. "I want to be sure they work properly and quickly. We've got to depend on them to make us sink when we want to, and, what's more important, to rise to the surface in a hurry. I've got time enough to look them over before dad and Mr. ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... pockets severely, Uhlig conceived the ingenious idea of using the parcel post for our correspondence. As only packets of a certain weight might be sent in this way, a German translation of Beaumarchais' Figaro, of which Uhlig possessed an ancient copy, enjoyed the singular destiny of acting as ballast for our letters to and fro. Every time, therefore, that our epistles had swelled, to the requisite length, we announced them with the ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Grande. He hed three ships, an' maybe a hundred an' fifty men 'bout the time I got away. The last I saw o' him wus at sea. He'd overhauled an English ship, an' sunk her; an' then the next mornin' we took a Dutch bark in ballast. She wus such a trig sailor Sanchez decided to keep her afloat, an' sent a prize crew aboard ter sail her inter Porto Grande. I wus one o' the fellers picked fer thet job, an' we wus told off under a nigger mate, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... seventy-two to forty-one fathoms, we steered off to the northward until daylight, and then to the East-South-East, in order to anchor in the Mermaid's Strait to the eastward of Malus Island, to take some stones on board as ballast, for the brig was so very light and leewardly that it would have been running a great risk to approach the land, as she then was. But in this we were disappointed, for after an interval of close sultry weather, and a severe thunderstorm, a gale of wind set in from ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... on trigger, eager to kill, gliding from cover to cover, and presently gone again from view, leaving no human life visible nearer than the swarming mob that Richling, by mounting a pile of ship's ballast, could see still on the steam-boat landing, pillaging in the drenching rain, and the long fleet casting anchor before the town in ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... or suicides, and perhaps a well-shaped soul sits in each of these stones. But heaven protect me just the same from the inhabitants of these towns! Rolling stones cannot bark, neither do they attract thieves; they are mere ballast. Quiet behavior: that is what I hold against them, that they make no fiery gestures; it would become them to roll a little, but there they lie, with even their sex unknown. But you saw the eagle instead! ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... not less under the necessity of forming some fixed ideas concerning the general policy of the British empire. Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable, in order, amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre my thoughts, to ballast my conduct, to preserve me from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. I really did not think it safe or manly to have fresh principles to seek upon every fresh mail which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a little while would have been hard to find. It is needless to say that I took no more such chances. The tridacna were afterward procured in a safe boat, thirty of them taking the place of three tons of cement ballast, which I threw overboard to make room ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... came to birth, would remain intransmissible and incommunicable, and would perish in a solitary cry. By language alone are we enabled to submit it to a positive test: the letter is the ballast of the mind, the body which allows it to act, and in acting to scatter the unreal ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... with the voice of her scientists and artists: "Onward, advance! Follow me!" She carries a huge crew, which delights in adorning her with fresh streamers. Boys and urchins laughing in the rigging; ballast of heavy bourgeoisie; working-men and sailor-men touched with tar; in her cabins the lucky passengers; elegant midshipmen smoke their cigars leaning over the bulwarks; then, on the deck, her soldiers, innovators or ambitious, would accost every fresh shore, and shooting ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... being united by interest, made a jest of that surly look from which Beaufort's cabal were termed "The Importants," and at the same time artfully made use of the grand appearance which Beaufort (like those who carry more sail than ballast) never failed to assume upon the most trifling occasions. His counsels were unseasonable, his meetings to no purpose, and even his hunting matches became mysterious. In short, Beaufort was arrested at the Louvre by a captain of the Queen's Guards, and carried on the 2d of September, ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz |
