"Impervious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did those eyes begin to grow soft and gentle, and when they met his turned meek and harmless, and, in their apparent innocence, seemed to plead to him for notice, confidence, instruction. He did not remain impervious to their influence. It afforded him distinct pleasure to sit at table beside this beautiful woman and show her small attentions. On his long walks he caught himself thinking deeply about her, while the blood coursed with unwonted heat through ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... without parley, and the pufformance was offered for his entertainment with admirable conscientiousness. True to the Lady Clara caste and training, Roderick's pale, fat face expressed nothing except an impervious superiority and, as he sat, cold and unimpressed upon the front bench, like a large, white lump, it must be said that he made a discouraging audience "to play to." He was not, however, unresponsive—far ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... sods. Then Harris found a sticky, yellow clay in the side of the ravine, and two or three inches of this he spread carefully over the sods, like icing on a great cake. The greasy clay soon hardened in the sun, and became so impervious to water that the heaviest rains of summer made no impression ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... hemisphere," should concert together a grand American system. The drollery pf (p. 134) this notion was of a kind that Mr. Adams could appreciate, though to most manifestations of humor he was utterly impervious. But after giving vent to some contemptuous merriment he adds, with a just and serious pride: "As to an American system, we have it; we constitute the whole of it; there is no community of interests or of principles between North and South America." This sound doctrine was put forth ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... surrounded by bodiless souls forever! What a contradiction that would be, what a scandal, indeed. It would be the declaration that the Son of God had power to rise from the dead, make His own body immortal, impervious to death, but in respect to those for whom He died and who died trusting in His promise He either did not have the power or did not care to keep ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... fairly shook the green quartz pillars, between which the smug, green Buddha smiled complacently, impervious to ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... employed by the Russian settlers on this part of the Amoor attracted my attention. Stakes were driven into the ground a foot apart and seven feet high. Willow sticks were then woven between these stakes in a sort of basket work. The fence was impervious to any thing larger than a rat, and no sensible man would attempt climbing it, unless pursued by a bull or a sheriff, as the upper ends of the sticks were very sharp and about as convenient to sit upon ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... to be found in the Peninsula, being built with great regularity and symmetry. The streets are numerous, and intersect each other, for the most part, at right angles. They are very narrow in comparison to the height of the houses, so that they are almost impervious to the rays of the sun, except when at its midday altitude. The principal street, however, is an exception, it being of some width. This street, in which stands the Bolsa, or exchange, and which contains the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... changed my course many times, striving to keep in cold currents. Finding, however, that as I neared the Equator this was impossible, I took to the sea, and went down to its highway. Of course I had on garments impervious to water—that is to say, water-proof—and my wallet was as dry as a bone; but not being in the habit of travelling under ocean, my eyes were a little affected by the salt, and I became conscious that I ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... the way they hover about Inez Mendoza," he remarked. "Perhaps the Senora is after Whitney, while her son is after Inez. Lockwood seems to be impervious to her. Yes, I'll undertake that commission for you, only I can't promise ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... monster in a frenzy of impotent rage and fear. If only he could kill it somehow in its sleep! But he couldn't. In no way could he harm it. Secure in its silicate covering, it was impervious to his wildest attempts at destruction. And it knew it, too; hadn't it laughed just before sinking down to slumber through ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... practical men and can understand." Yet somehow the jury are impervious. They sit back in their chairs ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... had a chance to inspect the projectors closer, that they were black outside and like burnished copper inside, to reflect the light. I judged that this black covering must have been like the black suits worn by some of the men, and that it was impervious to the light-ray. Near the center of each projector was a coil of wire. The wires from outside ran to it, and across the open face of the projector a large number of fine lateral wires ran ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... sudden, dangerous natures—sensitive as they are called—offer many a curious spectacle to those whom a cooler temperament has secured from participation in their vagaries." When Polly, charming Polly, waits on her father at the tea-table, Lucy is impervious to her tiny charm. "Candidly speaking, I thought her a little busy-body." When Graham Bretton repulses Polly, Lucy has some thoughts of "improving the occasion by inculcating some of those maxims of philosophy whereof I had ever a tolerable stock ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... my dear, as to the wisdom of having employed this person in the first place, under the circumstances, why did you keep silent?" Was Miss Van Rolsen still talking, or rambling on to the impervious beautiful girl? "You should have called me foolish, eccentric; yes, that's what I was, to have taken ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... eager eye with mixed melancholy and surprise! The singular half-circular, and half square, corner towers, hanging over the ever-restless wave, interested me exceedingly. The guide shewed me where the prisoners used to be kept—in a dungeon, apparently impervious to every glimmer of day-light, and every breath of air. I cannot pretend to say at what period even the oldest part of the Castle of Montmorenci was built: but I saw nothing that seemed to be more ancient than the latter end ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... after that have no more that they can do,' because they were so afraid to sin against God that they were not afraid to die rather than to do it. And that is the temper that you and I should have. Let that one fear, like Moses' rod, swallow up all the other serpents and make our hearts impervious ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... plan of attack. A thousand projects were proposed and some were adopted and failed. At length the Chevalier d'Arcon, a French engineer, proposed a plan which seemed to ensure a complete triumph. This was the employment of floating batteries so constructed as to be impervious to shot and indestructible by fire. The bottoms of these batteries were made of massive timber, and their sides were secured with a rampart or wall composed of timber and cork, with an interstice between, filled up with wet sand. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not so victorious as when it towers above some little landscape of rather paltry interest—a conventional river heavy with water, gardens with their little evergreens, walks, and shrubberies; and thick trees impervious to the light, touched, as the novelists always have it, with "autumn tints." High over these rises, in the enormous scale of the scenery of clouds, what no man expected—an heroic sky. Few of the things ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... adventure, and not apart from it, that we find and maintain the personality which we suppose ourselves to possess ab initio.'[15] The soul is a world in itself; but it is not, and must not be treated as, an isolated personality impervious to the mind of others. At each stage of its evolution it is the focus and expression of a larger world. A man does not value himself as a detached subject, but as the {114} inheritor of gifts which are focused in him. Man, in short, is a trustee for the world; and suffering and privation ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... were not seduced by this entertainment into approval of the firemen's idleness and inquired sarcastically why they had left their cots behind or if they thought they were still on WPA? The men remained impervious until the chief jumped out of his red roadster and surveyed the scene napoleonically. "Thought somebody was pulling a rib," he explained to no one in particular. "All right, boys, there's folks in that ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... not strictly speaking erotic experience had the remarkable effect of rendering me for the next seven years impervious to the tender passion, so that, undisturbed by women or erotic emotions, I was able to absorb myself in the world of varied research that was now opening up ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... attracted by a strange fascination. Europe could show no more magnificent place of sepulture. A staircase encrusted with jasper led down from the stately church of the Escurial into an octagon situated just beneath the high altar. The vault, impervious to the sun, was rich with gold and precious marbles, which reflected the blaze from a huge chandelier of silver. On the right and on the left reposed, each in a massy sarcophagus, the departed kings and queens of Spain. Into this mausoleum the King descended ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... idea,—that is, who have one idea at a time,—men who accomplish great results, men of action, reformers, saints, martyrs, are inevitably destitute of humor; and if the idea that inspires them be great and noble, they are impervious to it. But through the perversity of human affairs it not infrequently happens that men are possessed by a single idea, and that a small and rickety one—some seven months' child of thought—that maintains a querulous struggle for life, sometimes to the disquieting of a whole neighborhood. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... good idea of the hill country, apart from that of the Plain, a walk should be taken, by those who are impervious to fatigue, to Broad Chalke, about seven miles from East Harnham, or even farther to Berwick St. John, more than six miles higher up the stream. The river Ebble itself, if river it can be called, is rarely in evidence, but the valley it drains is beautiful and, though it contains quite a string ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... monkey. Ah! you see de monkeys when we get out dere," and Potto Jumbo pointed eastward. "Ah! dat one fine country, only little too hot sometimes for lily-white skins;" and Potto Jumbo grinned from ear to ear, as if congratulating himself that his own dark covering was impervious to the sun's rays of that or any ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the shell may come from an external wetting, from the "sweating" of eggs coming out of cold storage, or by the prevention of evaporation to such an extent that the external moisture of the egg thoroughly soaks the membrane. The latter happens in damp cellars, and when eggs are covered with some impervious material. ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... colors that sank into her heart and consciousness and made her think she was in paradise. To see the sun rise here—she almost wept that morning when the lord of heaven came over the mountains that towered like huge sentinels, impervious to ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... followed by the ragged, dirty-faced little Hottentot, who, looking very miserable and ashamed of himself, took off his hat and squatted down on the drive, in the full glare of the African sun, to the effects of which he appeared to be totally impervious. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... vegetation had attained a luxuriance rarely seen in the dry uplands, where the west winds lick up the moisture, and the soil is arid and unpromising. The matted intertwining branches of the creepers had formed an almost impervious screen, and on the basis thus formed, amid the branches and creepers, the leopards had formed their lair. Beneath, was a still stagnant pool; above, was the leafy foliage. The tracks led down to ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... or lime to soil was found in Chap. III. to improve it very much by making it less sticky and less impervious to air and water. Chalk or lime does more than this. It puts out of action certain injurious substances or acids that may be formed, and thus makes the conditions more favourable for plants and for the useful micro-organisms; farmers and gardeners ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... tamarinds, and holy figs: in one place Vikram planted 100,000 in a single orchard and gave them to his spiritual advisers. The river valley separated the stream from a belt of forest growth which extended to a hill range, dark with impervious jungle, and cleared here and there for the cultivator's village. Behind it, rose another sub-range, wooded with a lower bush and already blue with air, whilst in the background towered range upon range, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... nothing else, being as capricious as the breeze that blows only as it chooses. For beginning with his parents, nobody ever crossed him, or placed any obstacle whatever in the path of his desires, which grew up accordingly like a very rank jungle impervious to the light, in which his will wandered like a wild young tiger-cub, wayward, and passionate, and absolutely uncontrolled. And he gave in to others, and was guided by them, in one point only, and that was in their extravagant admiration of himself. For ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... cruel perfection of triumph, she had no need to fear these voices—these little evidences of sociability. They could not hurt her, for was she not impervious ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... as long as possible, and it was not until the end of April that he left for England. She came alone to see him off. It was drizzling, but her tall, slight figure in the golf cape looked impervious to cold and rain amongst the shivering natives. Desperately he clutched her hand, warm through the wet glove; her smile seemed heartless in its brilliancy. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... romantic evening, and although Lord Reggie prided himself on being altogether impervious to the influences of Nature, he was not unaware that a warm and fantastic twilight may incline the average woman favourably to a suit that she might not be disposed to heed in the early morning, or during the garish sunshine of a summer afternoon. He presumed that Lady Locke was ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... natural scenery—whether the youthful May is covering their rugged brows with the bright tender verdure of the tasseled larch, and the yet brighter green of maple, mountain ash and willow—or the full flush of summer has clothed their forests with impervious and shadowy foliage, while carpeting their sides with the unnumbered blossoms of calmia, rhododendron and azalea!—whether the gorgeous hues of autumn gleam like the banners of ten thousand victor armies along their rugged ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... had been long in abeyance, many of the Cherokees of Citico Town were still in their airy summer residences, but in one of the conical "winter houses," stove-like, air-tight, windowless, plastered within and without with the impervious red clay of the region, after the fashion of the great rotunda, Tscholens, in view of his sudden seizure and complaint of the gentle breeze of the south as freighted with the chill of the north, was consigned to rest. Half a dozen Cherokee braves ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... knew no other way of passing his life than in dangling about women. He was generally tolerated as a butt, and being impervious to contempt, supposed that his fascinations procured him immunity. He did—it must be reckoned the first of his two accomplishments—he did know a pretty woman from a plain one, and therefore as soon as he knew Alison much resorted to her. His other accomplishment ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... nothing to do with the soils. It is a deeper proposition than that. Artesian water comes from gravel strata overlaid with impervious layers of rock or clay in such a way that water in the gravel is under pressure because the gravel leads up and away to some point where water is poured into it by rain falling or snow melting on mountain or high plateau. As the water cannot get out of this gravel until you punch ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... harsh monosyllable. There was a finality about it—definite, unalterable. She looked at him dry-eyed, her face tragically beautiful in its agony. But he seemed impervious to either its beauty or its suffering. There was no hint of softening in him. Without another word he swung round on his heel ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... twenty-five, and they brought with them a liberal supply of maids, valets, and luggage. It was not until many weeks later that he read the vivid descriptions of the weighing of the anchor which were printed in the New York papers, but by that time he was impervious ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... not so much as hummed under the impact of Thett's greatest weapons, whined and shuddered now. The two enormous generators, the blackness of the protonic shield, and the great artificial matter generator, throwing an inner shield impervious to the cosmics Thett gave off as it vanished, both were whining. And the six smaller machines, which Arcot had succeeded in interconnecting with the protonic generator, were whining too. Space was weirdly distorted, glowing gray about them, the ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... Colorado, numbers constantly attend the line of road to devour the carcasses of the exhausted animals which chance to perish from fatigue and thirst. Although thus common in these dry and open countries, and likewise on the arid shores of the Pacific, it is nevertheless found inhabiting the damp impervious forests of West Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. The Carranchas, together with the Chimango, constantly attend in numbers the estancias and slaughtering-houses. If an animal dies on the plain the Gallinazo commences the feast, and then the two species of Polyborus pick the bones ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... idolatry. But men no whit less sensible laugh them in the face, pointing to the "black rubric" and its history as evidence that between the admitted doctrine of the real presence and the disallowed tenet of transubstantiation no impervious barrier of words ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... forecastle the disposition to play upon the Hermit developed from small and secret things into open harassment, and Jim's stoicism was wholly misconstrued. He did not seem to see things that would have caused others in the company to fill the ship with bad language and dread of death; he was impervious to rhymed jibes and broad sarcasms that were supposed to have peculiar powers of irritation if repeated constantly, day after day and night after night, without any apparent feeling, or motive, or reason ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... reads of groves, but it is impossible for those who never felt it, to conceive the effect of such a situation in a warm climate. In this island the woods which are naturally so interwoven with vines as to be impervious to a human being, are in some places, cleared and converted into nurseries for the young coffee-trees which remain sheltered from the sun and wind till sufficiently grown to transplant. To enter one of these ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... he should learn how completely he had been duped. Then, too, Lucius Ahenobarbus had a voluble flow of polite small talk, and he knew how to display his accomplishments to full advantage. He had a fair share of wit and humour; and when he fancied that Cornelia was not impervious to his advances, he became more agreeable and more ardent. Once or twice Cornelia frightened herself by laughing without conscious forcing. Yet it was an immense relief to her when the banquet was over, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... strong principles as well as warm feelings, and a fine and resolute sense of honour utterly impervious to attack. It was impossible to be in his company an hour, and not see that he was a man to be respected. It was equally impossible to live with him a week, and not see that he was a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... his dismay, did the tail of the bear reach him, than the man caught hold of it. The animal, astonished at finding some big creature below him, when he only expected to meet with a family of bees, against whose stings his thick hide was impervious, quickly scrambled out again, dragging up the man, who probably shouted right lustily. Be that as it may, the bear waddled off at a quick rate, and the honey-seeker made his way homeward, to relate his adventure, and relieve the anxiety ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... upon which Michel Rollin came to Amitrano's. He was an elderly man, with a white beard and a florid complexion, who had painted a number of decorations for the State, but these were an object of derision to the students he instructed: he was a disciple of Ingres, impervious to the progress of art and angrily impatient with that tas de farceurs whose names were Manet, Degas, Monet, and Sisley; but he was an excellent teacher, helpful, polite, and encouraging. Foinet, on the other hand, who visited the studio on Fridays, was a difficult ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... all elephant-warriors in the world.[54] His elephant, again, is the foremost of elephants, without a rival to encounter it in battle. Possessed of great dexterity and above all fatigue, it is, again, impervious to all weapons. Capable of bearing every weapon and even the touch of fire, it will, O sinless one, alone destroy the Pandava force today. Except us two, there is none else capable of checking that creature. Go quickly, therefore, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... it became a slow and fatiguing process for the men to drag us against the strong current; and sometimes the poor Indians had to cling like flies against nearly perpendicular cliffs of slippery clay, whilst at others they tore their way through almost impervious bushes. They relieved each other by turns every hour at this work, the one steering the canoe while the other tracked; and they took no rest during the whole day, except when at breakfast. Indeed, any proposal to do so would have been received by them with great contempt, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lord Cromer had pursued these impressions very far, or that he had formed any conscious theory with regard to them. But he was very "eighteenth century" in his suspicion of enthusiasm, and I always found him amusingly impervious to ideas of a visionary or mystical order. It was impossible that so intelligent and omnivorous a reader as he should not be drawn to the pathetic figure of Pascal, but he was puzzled by him. He described him as "manifestly a man full of contrasts, difficult to understand, and as many-sided as ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... learn that Starling's quiet was not impervious. I saw him start. His hand flew to where his knife had been, and his teeth showed like a jackal's. A figure that had lain, blanket-shrouded in the shadow, had risen and come forward. It was Pemaou. He had pleased his humor by being an unseen ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... through air or in a vacuum in a single straight line, without deflection, and seemingly without diminution. Most solids, and especially metals, according to their electric condition, are more or less impervious to it—antapergic. Its power of penetration diminishes under a very obscure law, but so rapidly that no conceivable strength of current would affect an object protected by an intervening sheet half an inch in thickness. On the other hand, it prefers to all other lines the axis ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... 'Impervious Cement Roof' on now, and it seems to do well enough, excepting that it isn't impervious. It lets in the water at eight different places; and whenever there is a shower, I have to rush my family out on the roof to shelter it with umbrellas. I fully expect it will explode some night, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... instead of receiving something he finds himself. That is it. There is a power of vision latent in us, clouded by error; the true philosophy dissipates the cloud and leaves the vision clear, wonderful and inspiring. He who acquired that vision is impervious to argument—it is not that he despises argument; on the contrary, he always uses it to its full strength. But he has had awakened within him something which the mere logician can never deduce, and that mysterious something is ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... Britain's immortal bard and with our own gentle Geoffrey Crayon are not unfamiliar to the veriest layman, and no fewer than thirty thousand pilgrims, largely from America, visit the delightful old town each year. And who ever came away disappointed? Who, if impervious to the charm of the place, ever ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... buries itself in the earth or withdraws to some crevice or overarching stone to await the returning vegetation of spring. So, in the season of intense heat, the Helix Waltoni of Ceylon, and others of the same family, before retiring under cover, close the aperture of their shells with an impervious epiphragm, which effectually protects their moisture and juices from evaporation during the period of their aestivation. The Bulimi of Chili have been found alive in England in a box packed in cotton after an interval of two years, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... sultry clime, Both solitary, and in straggling groups; In solid phalanx, rigid and compact; In labyrinth of branches interspread, Impervious to the rain and midday sun; In form spontaneous, without regard To law of uniformity, there stand In silent awe, or whispering to the breeze, The sombre fir and melancholy pine. And many a denuded avenue Of varying and considerable ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... changed conditions it was wise to change a policy, which he had openly adopted or approved, he clung to it with peculiar tenacity refusing or merely failing to modify it. Mr. Wilson's mind once made up seemed to become inflexible. It appeared to grow impervious to arguments and even to facts. It lacked the elasticity and receptivity which have always been characteristic of sound judgment and right thinking. He might break, but he would not bend. This rigidity of mind accounts ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... meditations. But she did not want to appear unamiable and uninterested, so she had brought forth newspapers, which she spread upon the floor of the gallery, and under Madame Ratignolle's directions she had cut a pattern of the impervious garment. ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... one is (if it all be true)—one whose heart, so hopelessly impervious to the written word, so helplessly callous to the spoken message, can be reached only by the organized vibrations of a trained larynx, a metal pipe, a reed, a fiddle-string—by invisible, impalpable, incomprehensible little air-waves in mathematical combination, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... otherwise than a model of cleanliness and spruceness he was indifferent. But the manner in which the taxi-driver looked him up and down penetrated through the veil of abstraction which hitherto had rendered Kerry impervious to all ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... stood, we examined the cellar. It was cut out of the solid rock, and is twenty feet long by eight wide, and four feet deep, and has a covering of granite eight inches thick, the entrance being by two gun-metal doors, or rather man-holes, perfectly impervious to water when closed; it was formed to hold the tools and stores of the labourers. The rock itself is twelve feet above the level of the sea at high-water, and the lantern of the old lighthouse stood seventy ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... loftiest mystical saint, and who, in spite of all their listening for the inner flow of things, discover no inrushes, feel no invasions, are aware of no environing Companion, do not even feel a "More of Consciousness conterminous and continuous with their own." Their inner life appears impervious to divine bubblings. The only visitants that pass over the threshold of their consciousness are their own mental states, now bright and clear, now dim and strange, but all bearing the brand and mark of temporal origin. This type of experience must not, therefore, be ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... furious gusts of wind swept through the forest, they raised strange echoes—as if the impervious mazes of that mighty wood were the abode of hideous fiends and evil spirits, who responded in shrieks, moans, and lamentations to the fearful din ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... less impervious to cheerful auguries, and spoke with gladness of the pleasure it would give her friend Genevieve to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... paint, now is impregnated thoroughly with finely divided metal, by means of the Schoop metal-coating process, which is heralded as one of the most far-reaching improvements in aerial navigation. By its means the airship envelope is made absolutely impervious to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... or fragments of lava, are encountered. Mocassins are also sometimes worn. The Icelanders, however, do not seem to mind any obstacles, but run and leap on or over them in their 'skin skurs' as though impervious to feeling. Later on we saw a higher class of Icelanders wearing fishermen's boots, but such luxuries were unknown in the little town where we first landed. The men being short of stature, in their curious kit much ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... was not impervious to flattery, but he looked doubtful. Running up into the village in the evening was strictly forbidden to the younger members ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... superstition. Superstition is the Chinese Reaper. Rituals instead of medicines. Sometimes I try to talk. I might as well try to build a ladder to heaven. We must take the children—of any race—if we would teach knowledge. Age is set, impervious to innovations." ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... are not the special seat of the congestion, yet the air-cells are pressed on by the surrounding swollen substance, and the entrance of air into them is impeded. If the mischief goes further the substance becomes solid and impervious to air, and lastly it becomes softened, its structure destroyed, and infiltrated with matter; the affected part becomes really an abscess, though not bounded by the distinct limits which would shut in an abscess of the hand or the ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... accompanied by Oswy, he rapidly traversed the country over which his brother had been so painfully borne; slowly, however, in places, for here and there large tracts of swamp obstructed the way, and in other places the thickets were dense and impervious; even where the country was cultivated the unpaved roads were rough ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... instead of getting closer to her, she felt every time they met, that the hedge of separation which had sprung up between them had in the interval grown thicker. By degrees the mistress had assumed towards the poor girl that impervious manner of self-contained dignity, which, according to her who wears it, is the carriage either of a wing-bound angel, the gait of a stork, or the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... we do?" asked Eyer. "If it is impervious to the cold of these heights; if it is so strong that it is impervious to the tremendous pressure inside the globe—which must be kept at a certain degree to maintain human life—what can we do? We tried bullets. We might as well have used peas and pea-shooters. ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... man. Faith, one might have thought Bothwell impervious to shame, but at my words the fellow flushed. He could not quite forget that he had ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... passion ought to be—glowing but through a veil, and stealing upon the heart from concealment. Few of the ancients have attained this modesty of description, which, like the golden cloud that hung over Jupiter and Juno, is impervious to every ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... magnolia-leaf texture as a woman's name,—a thing so easily stained that it must be ever elevated beyond the cleaving dust of suspicion, and the scorching breath of gossiping conjecture. The time has passed (did it ever really exist?) when the prestige of pastoral office hedged it around with impervious infallibility, and to-day, instead of partial and extenuating leniency, pure and uncontaminated society justly denies all ministerial immunities as regards the rigid mandates of social decorum and propriety,—and the world demands that, instead of drawing heavily upon an indefinite ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... frost was rapidly trenching on the fair proportions of an eighth of these hebdomadal inconveniences, and still continued the same hard, ringing sound and appearance, as if the sky itself o' nights had been frozen too—fixed and impervious—and the darkness had become already palpable. Yet the moon looked out so calm, so pure and beautiful, and the stars so spark-like and piercing, that it was a holy and a heavenly rapture to gaze upon their glorious forms, and to behold them, fresh ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... and had until then vainly waited for some sound in the cabinet," replied Hudelist, with a perfectly innocent expression of countenance. "The second door separating the conference-room from your majesty's cabinet is so heavily lined with cushions as to render it almost impervious to sound, and I beg your pardon again for not having heard despite the most ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... under fire, as some stout skipper paces his deck in a suit of Flushing, calmly oblivious of the April drops that fall on his woollen armour. At last the besiegers got spiteful, and would not waste any more good steel on him; but cursed him and his impervious coat of mail. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... if you make the effort, and I am sure you will. My experience is that in the early stages of spiritual development we are impervious to certain truths. Will you permit me to recommend to you certain books dealing with these questions ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... You produce your food, your host adds his store, and you partake in common of the feast to which both sides contribute. After a good long talk, I got to sleep easily, thinking, as I dozed off, that I should pass a pleasant night. I had become impervious to the mosquitoes, but there was something else which I had forgotten. Was it a dream, an awful nightmare, or had a sudden descent of Bedouins occurred? Gradually I was awakened by a noise as of wild beasts let loose, howls of rage and calls to ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... existence and operation of the tricuspid valves in the right ventricle, and of the sigmoid valves at the beginning of the pulmonary artery and aorta, and that there were only two ventricles separated by a solid impervious septum. These were afterwards described in greater detail by Vesalius, who nevertheless appears not to have been aware of the important use which might be ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... so oppressive, continuing such an unusually sultry period for the season, that Sidsall, ordinarily impervious to the effects of weather, was unable to sleep. Although the door between her room and her parents' was shut, she heard her father—his step, at once quick and firm, was easily recognizable moving about beyond. Her restlessness increased and she got up, crossing the floor to the window open ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... gardens of Marly ascended almost imperceptibly to the Pavilion of the Sun., which was occupied only by the King and his family. The pavilions of the twelve zodiacal signs bounded the two sides of the lawn. They were connected by bowers impervious to the rays of the sun. The pavilions nearest to that of the sun were reserved for the Princes of the blood and the ministers; the rest were occupied by persons holding superior offices at Court, or invited to stay at Marly. Each pavilion was named after fresco paintings, which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Britons are a common-sense and practical people, but a people impervious to ideas; that they are quick at the invention of expedients, but slow to recognize and follow general principles. This statement may be true of the nation as a whole; but it is lamentably untrue in respect of our politicians. They do somehow ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... country, then became abruptly much steeper, and led me deeper and deeper among thickets and endless woods. By the time my watch informed me that I must have nearly walked my appointed distance, the view was bounded on all sides and the sky was shut out overhead by an impervious screen of leaves and branches. I still followed my only guide, the steep path; and in ten minutes, emerging suddenly on a plot of tolerably clear and level ground, I saw the convent ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... women's gowns and men's shirts, vests, vest-linings, and coat-linings—should also be loose and porous. Here is one of the most important but almost wholly neglected clothing reforms. Most linings and many fabrics used in outer clothes are so tightly woven as to be impervious to air. Yet porous fabrics are always available, including porous alpacas for lining. To test a fabric it is only necessary to place it over the mouth and observe whether it is possible or easy to ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... like a turtle, but the tissue which unites the upper and lower shells is so hardened as to be impervious to a knife. Charley solved the problem by wedging it in the fork of a fallen tree, and after two or three attempts he succeeded in separating the shells with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... of their coat when they talk to me, and who sometimes even offer to go home with me from a tea-party all alone, and after dark too. It is true, one or two of these are "literary" themselves; the others I knew before I was dyed blue; which may account for it. Also I am impervious to anonymous letters, exhorting me to all kinds of mental and moral improvement, or indulging in idle impertinences about my private affairs, the result of a knowledge about me and the aforesaid affairs drawn solely from my "Pieces ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... impervious to the unendurable heat, and these, moving together, one behind the other, one beside the other, one atop the other, formed a living wall between Sarka and Jaska and the rim of the flaming blue abyss, to protect them from ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... intelligence rather than force, and something of the respect that Europeans feel for their kingly families made them submit to woman's rule. The valley of Nacooche, Georgia, indeed, perpetuates in its name one of these princesses of a royal house, for though she ruled a large tribe with wisdom she was not impervious to the passions of common mortals. The "Evening Star" died by her own hand, being disappointed in love affair. Her story is that of Juliet, and she and her lover—united in death, as they could not be in life—are buried beneath a mound in the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... relation of elements, constitutes at least the practical unity of the soul, and this unimpeded association of its elements is true or inner freedom of will. Nothing is wanting or lost when the powers of the soul are mobilized for a great task, and its substance is impervious to passion. With this organization, men of really little power accomplish wonders. Without it great minds are confused and lost. They have only velleity or caprice. The will makes a series of vigorous, perhaps almost convulsive, but short, inconsistent ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... nothing can be so obtuse as a boy; it never occurs to him that he is not wanted. Sam continued to call and to tell her of his play and to look at her with beautiful, tragic eyes, that by and by openly adored. Inevitably the coldness to which he was so calmly impervious wore off; a boy's innocent devotion must touch any woman no matter how self-absorbed she may be. Mrs. Richie began to be glad to see him. As for his drama, ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... day, to be met with the news. He gave way to no sign of grief, he repelled all consolation. Taking his rope and axe he went up into the mountain by himself. All through the winter he haunted the track by which she must have travelled, indifferent to the danger that he ran, impervious apparently to cold, or hunger, or fatigue, undeterred by storm, or mist, or avalanche. At the beginning of the spring he returned to the village, purchased building utensils, and day after day carried them ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... upon to design a palace of fine arts at the Exposition, one fact enabled him to exemplify his theory in the finest way. The old Harbor View bog was found to have a bottom impervious enough to hold water, and the trees of the demolished resort were still standing. When the mud was scooped out, a lake was left. That gave not only growing trees, in addition to the resources of the Exposition's ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... night. As for me, I pretended to believe everything, and I seemed to interest myself really in him. Besides, I have never seen him so small and humble; and if I had not known how easily his heart overflows, and how mine is impervious to every other arrow than those with which you have wounded it, I believe that I should have allowed myself to soften; but lest that should alarm you, I would die rather than give up what I have promised you. As for you, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... previously offered for to bribe me—need I say with what success?—was dodging about our court last night as late as twenty minutes after eight o'clock. I see him myself, with his eye at the counting-house keyhole, which being patent is impervious. Another one,' said Mr Perch, 'with military frogs, is in the parlour of the King's Arms all the blessed day. I happened, last week, to let a little obserwation fall there, and next morning, which was Sunday, I see it worked up in print, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the river was by so rugged a path, that, giddy and footsore with leaping from rock to rock, we at last attempted the jungle, but it proved utterly impervious. On turning a bend of the stream, the mountains of Bhotan suddenly presented themselves, with the Teesta flowing at their base; and we emerged at the angle formed by the junction of the Rungeet, which we had followed from the west, of the Teesta, coming from the north, and of their united ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... broad flat brush, apply a thin, smooth coating to the entire surface of the body and limbs. While the tar remains soft, the flea becomes entangled in its tenacious folds, and is rendered perfectly harmless; but it will soon form a hard, smooth coating, entirely impervious to his bite. Should the coating crack at the knee or elbow joints, it is merely necessary to retouch it slightly at those places. The whole coat should be renewed every three or four weeks. This remedy is sure, and having the advantage ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... to start out at once from a sea of vapour, like the grim barriers of some gigantic lake. The clouds were following hard upon the sun's flight, so that by the time he had disappeared the sky was covered with a dense and impervious curtain, rendered darker by the rapidity of the change. Chill and eddying gusts rustled over the dreary heath; the voice of nature only responding to the chords of sadness and of sorrow. The hollow roar of the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... ingeniously accounted for by Dr. Franklin on principles of electricity. He premises the following electric phenomena: 1. that all new fallen snow has much positive electricity standing on its surface. 2. That about twelve degrees of latitude round the poles are covered with a crust of eternal ice, which is impervious to the electric fluid. 3. That the dense part of the atmosphere rises but a few miles high; and that in the rarer parts of it the electric fluid will ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... sex possesses so many wiles that even Solomon, wisest of kings, succumbed. But Satan scornfully rejects this proposal, declaring that He whom they propose thus to tempt is far wiser than Solomon and has a much more exalted mind. Although certain Christ will prove impervious to the bait of sense, Satan surmises that, owing to a prolonged fast, he may be susceptible to the temptation of hunger, so, taking a select band of spirits, he returns to the desert to renew his attempts in ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... of books which he had once studied he had thrown into dim corners of his library shelves when he left the Fathers' school. "I should have left them in Paris," he told himself, as he turned out some books which were particularly insufferable: those of the Abbe Lamennais and that impervious sectarian so magisterially, so pompously dull and empty, the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... looks high and bold after the desperate flatness of the Bights, and we note with pleasure that we have left behind us the "impervious luxuriance of vegetation which crowns the lowlands, covers the sides of the rises, and caps their summits." During the rains after October the grass, now showing yellow stubble upon the ruddy, rusty plain, becomes a cane fence, ten to twelve feet tall; but ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... speeches on woman's suffrage that could be equalled only by John B. Gough,"[204] the well-known temperance crusader. Train's radical ideas did not disturb her. Her association with antislavery extremists prior to the Civil War had made her impervious to the criticism and accusations of conservatives. She was aware that on this proposed lecture tour Train probably wanted to make use of her executive ability and of Mrs. Stanton's popularity as a speaker; but on the other hand, his generosity to them was beyond ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... enter into a palpably useless argument with judges whose minds were so rooted in the idea of dualism as to be impervious to any other conception; but with a mixed multitude, who were not officially committed to a system, the case was different. Among them there might be some still open to conviction, and the appeal was, therefore, made to a passage in the Psalms with which they were ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Clifton at once turned the key, placed his package upon the table, and proceeded to employ a stray bit of carpet in stopping a ventilator which communicated with the entry. Having satisfied himself that this passage was rendered impervious to sound, he drew two chairs up to the table, motioned me into one, and planted himself in the other with the air of a man, in popular phrase, about to make a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... completed her sentence, and as she turned towards the door her eloquent eyes looked at him for a moment beneath their long lashes with an expression in them that might have moved a statue. Although Simon Rattar had the reputation of being impervious to woman's wiles, he may have been moved by this unspoken appeal. He certainly seemed struck by something, for even as her back was turning towards him, he said suddenly, and in a distinctly ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... preserves its perpendicularity better than other rocks, one reason being that it does not invite percolation, and usually offers, for a considerable distance on each side of the canyon, barren and impervious surfaces to the rains. Where strata rest on exposed softer beds, these are undermined from the front, and in this ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... ameliorating the condition of their inhabitants. There have been men, claiming to be considered wise men, who have ridiculed the exertions of these daughters of philanthropy, and have made them objects of ridicule, but, happily, they are impervious to the shafts of folly; and as heedless of the unjust censures, as they are undesirous of the applause of man. Their aim is, the good of their fellow-creatures,—their reward, the pleasure of doing good, and the approbation of Him who is goodness itself. That their well-meant and praiseworthy ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... prominent place than Dennis in the list of men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof against Pope's malice. Graceless ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... which are driven from place to place for pasture. The Navajos, however, never go to any great distance for this, but keep generally within a radius of fifty or sixty miles from home. This tribe weaves a rug that is useful, unique, durable, and when at its best, impervious to rain. Among the tribes, and in some Western homes, they are used as blankets, but it has become a fashion in many of the best houses in the Eastern States to use them entirely as rugs, ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... there was a lull in the shooting. Learning this lesson, the determined Confederate defenders of Fort Sumter in 1863-64 refused to surrender, but under the most difficult conditions converted their ruined masonry into an earthwork almost impervious to further bombardment. ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... forced a German education speedily forgot the two hundred words which they had learned, but as they had been taught no other script than the German they were accustomed to write the Slovene language with German Gothic characters. These peasants were fairly impervious to Germanization; their strong sense of national consciousness was supported by the books, religious and otherwise, which they received every year from some such society as that of St. Hermagoras at Celovec, which distributed half a million books a ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... prophets have always been common in India. They foretell pestilence and famine: the downfall of British rule, or the destruction of the whole world. They are often supposed to be endowed with supernatural powers and to be impervious to bullets; but these phenomena invariably disappear whenever they come in contact with Europeans, especially as all such characters are liable to be treated as vagrants without visible means ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... a matter of some moment. For in all woods and by every wayside there prospers an abominable shrub or weed, called poison oak, whose very neighbourhood is venomous to some, and whose actual touch is avoided by the most impervious. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... listen to the stern words—"Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone!" It is the most terrible of all judgments when God leaves a sinner undisturbed in his sinfulness—abandons him to "the fruit of his own ways, and to be filled with his own devices;" until, like a tree impervious to moistening dews and fructifying heat, he dwarfs and dwindles into the last hopeless stage ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... capacity to see the tragi-comedy of the world, without necessarily losing the power of enthusiasm. It also explains why Father Faber regarded an honest sense of the ridiculous as a help to goodness. The man or woman who is impervious to the absurd cannot well be stripped of self-delusion. For him, for her, there is no shaft which wounds. The admirable advice of Thomas a Kempis to keep away from people whom we desire to please, and the quiet perfection of his warning to the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... cavalry was about got into marching order, up rode John Watson, a ragamuffin-looking gamekeeper, in a green plush coat, with a very tarnished laced hat, mounted on a very shaggy white pony, whose hide seemed quite impervious to the visitations of a heavily-knotted dogwhip, with which he kept ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the solitude of her room became unbearable; she wanted someone to see, someone to console her. She had a few shillings in her pocket, but she remembered her resolutions and for some time resented the impervious clutch of the temptation. But the sorrow that hung about her, that penetrated like a corrosive acid into the very marrow of her bones, grew momentarily more burning, more unendurable. Twenty times she tried to wrench it out of her heart. The landlady brought her up some tea; she could not ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... light enough to show him the black wall of the jungle on either side of the path. There were no openings. Tropical undergrowth is not like that of a northern forest. Here the lianas and thorns intermingled with strong brush, make an impervious hedge. One could not penetrate it without the aid ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... horrible weather. Before him, in the narrow alleys of the bazaar, Persians walk with their umbrellas unfurled, and Russians have put the convenient bashluk (a sort of woollen hood) over their heads and ears. The Arab, in his long camel-skin coat, looks impervious to the weather, and women with veiled faces and long black cloaks pick their way through the mire. Throngs of donkeys, melancholy and overladen, their small feet sinking in the slush, may be with the foot-passengers. Some pariah dogs make a dirty patch in the snow, and a troop of Cossacks, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... least consequence in any way, being not only old but very poor; yet people dreaded her, and would slip away round doors and corners to avoid her tongue. She succeeded, in spite of all drawbacks, in making herself felt; and it was only one or two impervious beings, such is Dicky Browne for example (who knew the Monktons well, and was indeed distantly connected with them through his mother), who could endure her manners ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... indignant that anything except him should absorb attention; a gallant horse, with another floating blue streamer, bearing himself as becometh a king's son; the chase comes near to crushing sundry grunting porkers impervious to pride and glory in any worldly distinctions of cerulean decorations, and at last is fain to draw up and wait until a flock of silly over-dressed sheep, running in frantic fear every way but the right way, can be gathered together and guided to a ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... was hot, my feet were blistered—I was but a weary boy—and I thought I should have dropped under the weight of the flint musket which galled my shoulder. But I managed to keep up with my companion, a grim old soldier, who seemed impervious ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... consigned to perdition. (Matt. x., 28; Luke xii., 5.) And in another passage He says that He will disclaim all those who shall have denied Him before men. (Matt. x., 33; Luke xii., 10.) These words, if we are not altogether impervious to feeling, might well make our hair stand on end. Be this as it may, this much is certain; if these things do not move us as they ought, nothing remains for us but a fearful judgment. (Heb. x., 27.) All the words of Christ having proved ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... differing in shape from that of the Copres; but this is where the ingenuity of the American insect shines forth. The inner mass, the usual dung-cake furnished by the Cow or the Sheep, is covered with a perfectly homogeneous and continuous coating of clay, which makes a piece of solid pottery impervious to evaporation. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... an exterior coating which is porous and pervious to water when it is unripe. But when it fully ripens this coating is chemically changed into a thin, impervious coating of a cork-like structure, through which water cannot pass, and as a result potatoes, and fruit, will keep through an entire winter and become mellower and better ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... before the exploding bomb; And as the fabric sank beneath The shattering shell's volcanic breath, In red and wreathing columns flashed The flame, as loud the ruin crashed, Or into countless meteors driven, Its earth-stars melted into heaven— Whose clouds that day grew doubly dun, Impervious to the hidden sun, With volumed smoke that slowly grew To one wide sky ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... possessed in a high degree a very wholesome love of adventure, Alice Marcum coupled with it a very unwholesome habit of acting on impulse. As unamenable to reason as she was impervious to argument, those who would remonstrate with her invariably found themselves worsted by the simple and easy process of turning their weapons of attack into barriers of defence. Thus when, an hour later, Winthrop Adams Endicott found her seated alone at a little table in the dining-car ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... not in the state le valliant des cubes, but carefully cleaned and dried, as we do bladders. It is then split longitudinally, and the pieces sewed together, each seam being set with tufts or rather fringes of purple feathers; so that the vest is light, impervious to rain, and highly ornamental from its rich purple stripes. There is another entirely of rich Mazarine blue feathers; a sceptre most ingeniously wrought of scarlet feathers; and a cap of bark, with a long projecting beak in front, and ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... theirs it was not probable that anything said by Sir Roger would have much effect. Those men would either abstain from voting, or vote for the railway hero, with the view of keeping out the de Courcy candidate. Then came the shopkeepers, who might also be regarded as a stiff-necked generation, impervious to electioneering eloquence. They would, generally, support Mr Moffat. But there was an inferior class of voters, ten-pound freeholders, and such like, who, at this period, were somewhat given to have an opinion of their own, and over them it was ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... with snow-balling and skating, to be tenderly rubbed before the fire, or fondly folded in the motherly apron. Thither brought I an extensive and various assortment of splinters and fresh cuts; thither my impervious nose, to be lubricated with goose-grease, or my swollen angry tonsils ("waxen kernels," Aunt Judy called them), to be mollified ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... monstrous portent of a beard that you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except, when he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife (the loveliest of the series, but ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... out with less difficulty, and make way to try farther on; but with the linen I could do nothing, for, after several attempts, I was unable to move any of the pieces, and as to cutting a way through them, a wall of adamant would scarce have been more impervious to the blade of my knife. It would have been the work of a week at least. My provision would not keep me alive till I had reached the other side. But I did not speculate on such a performance. It was too manifestly ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... by delay, and impervious to any thought of a possible service in the horseman's attitude, grew more impatient and ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... had been rapid, and she owed her advancement to a combination of circumstances. In the first place, her insular position rendered her almost impervious to attack, and she had therefore no occasion to keep on foot any army, and was able to throw all her strength on to the sea, where Genoa was her only formidable rival. In the second place, her mercantile spirit, and her extensive trade with the East, ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... he added, as they were about to resume their carriage after a change of horses, "we must draw him out, and see what he thinks of his master now—delicately, you know." The soldier was, however, impervious to his lordship's attacks, until the project was finally abandoned in despair. As Peter was much too modest to talk in the presence of Mr. John Moseley and a lord, the young men had most of the discourse to themselves. At a village fifteen miles from London, a fashionable carriage ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... nevertheless took place; and this unorganised mass of passions called Vittorio Alfieri, this chaotic thing without a higher life or a purpose in the world, only partially sensitive, and seemingly quite impervious to external influence, suddenly obeyed some inner impulse (perhaps some accumulation of unnoticed effects from without), and organised itself into a man, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... maltreatment, Lulu's apparent distrust of them wounded them deeply. They had looked forward to delicious nocturnal confidences, when, half disrobed, each should visit the other's boudoir and discuss the fascinating topic from all possible and impossible points of view. That Lulu had proved impervious to all hints of this nature was a slight which could not be pardoned, at least not without due penance on her part. Moreover, to add to their mortification, there seemed daily to be less occasion for sympathy. Lulu ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various |
