"Inch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... repair the great street of Hamburg leading to the gate of Altona. The smugglers overnight filled the sandpit with brown sugar, and the little carts which usually conveyed the sand into Hamburg were filled with the sugar, care being taken to cover it with a layer of sand about an inch thick. This trick was carried on for a length of time, but no progress was made in repairing the street. I complained greatly of the delay, even before I was aware of its cause, for the street led to a country-house I had near Altona, whither I went daily. The officers of the customs at ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... concentration, too, goes without saying. When a man is on the battlefield with the swords whirling about his head, and the bayonets an inch from his breast, he does not go dreaming of scenes a hundred miles off, or think anything else than the one thing, how to keep a whole skin and wound an enemy. If Christian men will do their work in the dawdling, half-interested, and half-indifferent ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... even after the law of 1842, was then such as to supply us with plenty of material for liberal offers. Notwithstanding this, we failed in every case. I doubt whether we advanced the cause of free trade by a single inch.' ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... a pair of slippered feet beside the running board. The owner of the slippers was folding the robe and laying it over the rail, and grumbling to himself all the while. "Have to come out in the rain—daren't trust him an inch—just like him to go off and leave the door unlocked—" With a last grunt or two the mumbling ceased. The light was switched off, and Bud heard the doors pulled shut, and the rattle of the padlock and chain. He waited another minute ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... replied the skipper. "We'll turn out soon, for she won't shift her position an inch unless she thinks we're going to run into her. Let your boat off a point ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... to measure him in my mind, was not small, but he was never quite tall enough. One feels oneself to be a sort of recruiting sergeant, going about with a standard of inches. Mr. Finn was just half an inch too short. He lacks something in individuality. He is a little too much ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... very smooth and slippery little spy that Jap is," declared Mr. Trotter. "He steals all kinds of secrets, from the details of sixteen inch guns down to the method of dyeing a blanket ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... had named regardless of its sex, stood motionless with bliss as he rubbed the base of what would some day probably be as fine a pair of horns as ever grew on a buck. At present they were soft and not more than an inch and a half in length as they sprouted through its dingy wool. Thin in the shoulders and rump, yet "Mary's" sides were distended until their contour resembled that of a toy balloon inflated to ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... probably lay down for my guidance that grand old doctrine "Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa." Presuming that you may do so, I will acknowledge such guidance to be good. If my mind were clear in this matter, I would not budge an inch for any farmer,—no, nor for any bishop, further than he might by law compel me! But my mind is not clear. I do grow pale, and my hair stands on end with horror, as I confess to myself that I do not know whether ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... shoulders bowed, knees bent, craggy chin grim and firm-set, but blue eyes serene and mild as ever. A moment's silent sparring, a quick tread of feet, and Joe feints Ravenslee into an opening, swings for his chin, misses by an inch, and ducking a vicious counter, drives home a smashing body-blow and, staggering weakly, Ravenslee ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... grasses of the greener lowland, and she heard the trickling of the little dark brook, where gentians lived in the fall, and where, still earlier, the cardinal flower and forget-me-not crowded in lavish color. She knew every inch of the way; her feet had an intelligence of their own. The farm was a part of her inherited life; but at that moment, she prized it as nothing beside that newly discovered wealth which she was rushing to cast away. Rosie ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... will water it myself." The field was a mile square, and it needed an inch of water over it all. He quickly figured out that there were 27,878,400 square feet in a square mile. On every twelve square feet a cubic foot of water was needed. A cubic foot of water weighs sixty-two and a third pounds. Hence ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... brought all of his talents to bear to point out his failures, hoping thus to exalt Bernard, out of whose work he strove to keep all blemishes. Thus Belton became accustomed to the closest scrutiny, and prepared himself accordingly. The result was that Bernard did not gain an inch on him. ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... polystyrene on all sides, roof, and floor. Very efficient lighting without excessive heat problems has been provided by the installation of two large roof lights of double glazed, toughened, anti-sun polished plate, the upper light being held an inch above the roof line with a free flow of air between the panes. This form of construction has contributed to the good handling qualities of the van. ...
— Report of the National Library Service for the Year Ended 31 March 1958 • G. T. Alley and National Library Service (New Zealand)
... of the Zephyr Club in uniform was unique and pleasing, and each of the members was "every inch a sailor." Uncle Ben was delighted with the change; "they looked so much more shipshape ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... God. We say, regretfully "If I could only continue at my best!" and we ach with the little ebb, between wave and wave, of an advancing tide. But this tide is Omnipotence. It rises surely, if it were only an inch in a thousand years. The changes in society are like the geologic upheaval and sinking of continents; yet man is morally as far removed from the savage as he is physically superior to the saurian. We do not see the corn grow or the world ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... that as far back as 1911 the employment of seaplanes for torpedo attack, which I think will be one of the most important developments of aircraft in the future, engaged the attention of the Navy, and a Sopwith seaplane carrying a 14-inch torpedo made its first flight at Calshot in 1913. For this reason, therefore, it appeared that principally aeroplanes and airships would have to be employed from shore bases for coast defence and that ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... has little left to offer for the pound of flesh it will demand. The military masters under whom Germany is bleeding see very clearly to what point fate has brought them: if they fall back or are forced back an inch, their power abroad and at home will fall to pieces. It is their power at home of which they are thinking now more than of their power abroad. It is that power which is trembling under their ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... "here's where I hit him the first time; the bullet took a diagonal course from the shoulder back to the other side. It must have gone within an inch of his heart, and would have finished him in a short time, without that other shot—that penetrated his brain, you ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... of very minute particles by a current of water, depending on surface cohesion, the effects of wearing on the form of the grains must vary directly as their diameter or thereabouts. If so, a grain of 1/10 an inch in diameter would be worn ten times as much as one of an inch in diameter, and at least a hundred times as much as one of 1/100 an inch in diameter. Perhaps, then, we may conclude that a grain 1/10 of an inch in diameter would be worn as much or more in drifting a mile ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... space between the two doors that I mentioned, she unlocked a bar, and pulling it down, touched a spring, and immediately a little square door slid back into the ceiling. Across this door, or window or whatever they called it, were strong bars of iron about one inch apart. Through this aperture we were allowed to look, and a sad sight met my eyes. As many as fifty disconsolate looking ladies were sitting there, who were called Black Nuns, because they were preparing to take the Black Veil. They were all dressed ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... a bit since his successful trip to America, was on the steps of the Mansions to welcome them, and the lift conveyed them all three up to the flat—the dear, home-like flat of which Nan felt she loved every inch. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... is called for, it takes the form of osteotomy of the radius and ulna about an inch or more ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... at first. As soon as I got free from Coombs I searched this floor, every inch of it, and found nothing, not even so much as a stain of blood. The dead man was heavily built, and Sallie could never have lifted him alone. There were others—men—concerned in ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... You are not half so long as your name!" "If names," said the baron, "were smaller or bigger, To suit ev'ry size at a pinch, Your name, dear miss Quoltz, to keep up to your figure, Wou'd measure six foot and an inch." How I ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... instant of time?—Who would not ask for demonstration, when told that a gnat's wing, in its ordinary flight, beats many hundred times in a second? or that there exist animated and regularly organised beings, many thousands of whose bodies laid close together would not extend an inch? But what are these to the astonishing truths which modern optical inquiries have disclosed, which teach us that every point of a medium through which a ray of light passes is affected with a succession of periodical movements, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... of certain strange animals flitting through the satellite's jungles, but had not investigated. It was Carse who captured one of the creatures and saw the commercial possibilities of the pointed seven-inch horn that grew on its head, and who named it phanti, after ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... target; also, the sweep of the wind. This he gained by observations repeated until the information gathered from them amounted to almost exact knowledge. Thousands of gunners to-day hit a mark miles away, with a 16-inch gun, not because they are good guessers, but because, by means of science, they determine accurately all of the factors entering into the flight of their projectiles. Pericles judged men by a shrewd ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the seat. These horses average about fifteen hands in height, and are taught to stop, or turn back, at the least touch of the bit. They are both fast and enduring, with plenty of spirit, and yet are perfectly tractable. The enormous spurs worn by the riders, with rowels an inch long, are more for show than for use. Mexican or Spanish ladies are hardly ever seen on horseback, though both English and American ladies are often met in the saddle, dashing gallantly through the throng upon the paseo at the fashionable hour. Something ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... filtered up through the trees, and an officer, his insignia of rank two-inch strips of yellowish ribbon sewed to the collar of a mud-brown coat, was conferring with Wilkins. Then the clear notes of ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... rallying-cheer; And Rollant says: "Martyrdom we'll receive; Not long to live, I know it well, have we; Felon he's named that sells his body cheap! Strike on, my lords, with burnished swords and keen; Contest each inch your life and death between, That neer by us Douce France in shame be steeped. When Charles my lord shall come into this field, Such discipline of Sarrazins he'll see, For one of ours he'll find them dead fifteen; He will not ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... again, and beheld on the wall facing the door a quadrangular hole, about a foot square, with a grating of interlacing iron bars, black, knotted, solid, which formed squares—I had almost said meshes—of less than an inch and a half in diagonal length. The little green flowers of the nankin paper ran in a calm and orderly manner to those iron bars, without being startled or thrown into confusion by their funereal contact. Supposing that a living being had been so wonderfully thin as to essay ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was unbounded. He tried to wake Harold to share it, but only produced some murmurs about half-inch bullets: only when the "Good-night" came did Harold rouse up, and then, of course, he was wide awake; and while Eustace was escorting the distinguished guest to his apartment, we stood over the hall fire, enjoying ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kept weaving back and forth and from side to side and little by little, inch by inch, she could feel something giving way; she was not sure, yet, whether it was the tub, the paint or herself; but something was giving way. And at last, with one agonizing jerk, she broke away and arose to her feet. And then she turned and looked down into the ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... lowest class, even as a sweeper, and he and I strove by all the means in our power to discover what this man had done with the jewels. Night after night we crawled into his tent. We searched his bed and his clothes. With sharp rods we tried every inch of the soil, believing that he had hidden the diamonds underground, ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... a number of wretched fugitives from the slave trade, who had crossed from the opposite shore, were found; but the ordinary inhabitants had been swept off by the Mazitu. In their deserted gardens cotton of a fine quality, with staple an inch and a half long, was seen growing, some of the plants deserving to ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... their hair very close, and then cover the head with a sort of hood or plaster of black pitch, the composition being clay, pulverized charcoal, and the resinous gum which exudes from the pine-tree. The hood, nearly an inch in thickness, was worn during a period of mourning that lasted through the time it would take nature, by the growth of the hair, actually to lift from the head the heavy covering of pitch after it had become solidified and hard as ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of his career is in reality the most romantic of all. He was hunted closely, almost as by hounds. For weeks he had only such sleep as he could snatch during short periods of safety, and there were times when his pursuers came within an inch of capturing him. But never in his life were his spirits ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... out his hand in protest, "I will not have this greatness you would thrust upon me. Did your Majesty need, and speak to me as one gentleman to another in his need, then would I part with the last inch of my land; but to barter my estate for a gift that I have no heart nor use for—your Majesty, I cannot ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... simple things. Is it right, is it just to starve a person two whole days for shutting the door a little too hard? or to burn one with hot irons because a little water was accidentally spilt on the floor? Yet for these and similar things I have again and again been tortured within an inch of my life. Now that I am to be hung, I am glad of it, for I shall die quick, and be out of my misery, instead of being tortured to death by inches. I did this thing for this very purpose, for I do not fear death nor anything that comes ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... quickly from the table (He couldn't help it) and go tiptoe (Why tiptoe? He didn't know. You had to. It was the mystery and the aching atmosphere of the thing) tiptoe across the room to the window, and draw an inch of the heavy curtain and peer out into the darkness and towards the music. There would be the little round gleam of the postman's lantern, bobbing along as he hurried. And flick! it was gone into a doorway, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... the blocks surrounding the Common, and Miss Maitland bent close to look. "All these little colored objects represent buildings, red for brick and yellow for frame; and they are drawn on a scale of fifty feet to the inch. We get so accustomed to them that automatically we grow to visualize the buildings themselves from these diagrams. See, there is the State House on top of the hill; ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... servility at present exacted by parents from children (under which mask of duty there often lurks indifference, contempt, or rebellion): and as he would have his grandsons believe or represent him to be not an inch taller than Nature has made him: so, with regard to his past acquaintances, he would speak without anger, but with truth, as far as he knows it, neither extenuating nor ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... one. There were only four narrow benches in the whole car, and about twice as many people were already seated on these as they were probably supposed to accommodate. All other space, to the last inch, was crowded by passengers or their luggage. It was very hot and close and altogether uncomfortable, and still at every new station fresh passengers came crowding in, and actually made room, spare as it was, for themselves. It became so terrible that all glared madly at the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... simply fearful about butter. Really they couldn't help feeling that about butter, at least, she took advantage of their kindness. And she had that maddening habit of asking for just an inch more of bread to finish what she had on her plate, and then, at the last mouthful, absent-mindedly—of course it wasn't absent-mindedly—taking another helping. Josephine got very red when this happened, and she fastened her small, bead-like eyes on the tablecloth as if she saw a minute strange ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... handsome of face, standing six feet two inches in his stockings, well built and of iron constitution, might fairly be called a sensual man, but not fairly a sensualist. The distinction lay in his manliness. He was a man, every inch of him. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... removed Westover was from the day of such things, is shown by the noted mantelpiece in the drawing-room. Only with the coming of smaller fireplaces came those elaborate mantelpieces. But the great fireplaces of our ancestors yielded slowly, inch by inch, as it were; and something of the goodly proportions they yet had in Colonel Byrd's day, the hammer and ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... moored in the middle of the River Niemen, Napoleon and Alexander met and arranged the terms of peace for France, Russia, and Prussia. The impressionable tsar was dazzled by the striking personality and the unexpected magnanimity of the emperor of the French. Hardly an inch of Russian soil was exacted, only a promise to cooeperate in excluding British trade from the Continent. Alexander was accorded full permission to deal as he would with Finland and Turkey. "What is Europe?" exclaimed the emotional tsar: "Where is it, if it is not you and I?" But Prussia ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the coquettish widow, who was coming down the stairs, interrupted Vautrin's fortune-telling. "Here is Mamma Vauquerre, fair as a starr-r-r, dressed within an inch of her life.—Aren't we a trifle pinched for room?" he inquired, with his arm round the lady; "we are screwed up very tightly about the bust, mamma! If we are much agitated, there may be an explosion; but I will pick up the fragments with all the care ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... to your overwhelming burdens. A pretty picture your letter is, of a man overwhelmed by burdens! And weigh a hundred and eighty! I can't believe it. Why, I never have weighed more than a hundred and seventy-six. Maybe you are an inch or two taller; and brains, I have often observed, weigh heavy; but yours at the top must be like a glass of soda-water! Nature did a great thing for you, when it placed that buoyant fountain within you. I have often ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... course, be crossed by one or other of the innumerable mountain tracks which are only accessible to pedestrians or mules. That is where our customs officials are powerless, for the tracks are precipitous and offer unlimited cover to those who know every inch of the ground. Several of them lead directly into St. Claude, at some considerable distance from the customs stations, and it is these tracks which are being used by M. Aristide Fournier for the felonious ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... us had ever witnessed. The sides had been carefully picked and well trained. Officers and men cheered on their respective regiments, the crowd of onlookers swelled till the whole Brigade was looking on in feverish suspense, and so even were the sides that for nearly five minutes not an inch of ground was lost or gained. The cheering ceased and the silence became intense; one could see the veins standing out on the competitors' foreheads and perspiration pouring off their faces, each man pulling to the last ounce, ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... being tried with infinite precaution. On the half turn it checked with a faint repetition of the click. Then the door itself quivered almost imperceptibly to pressure, though it yielded not a fraction of an inch. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... times in the day, to heal chronic ulcers on the legs. Its effects, he says, in the most unlikely cases, were decisive and plain to all. He gave directions that whilst a bundle of ten or twelve stalks is grasped with the left hand, this bundle should be cut into pieces of about half-an-inch long, by a pair of scissors held in the right hand. The segments are then to be bruised thoroughly in a mortar, and applied in the mass as a poultice beneath ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... approached with confidence and joy. "What," he asked himself, "is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? It is lofty. This loftiness is to the artist-nature its thrilling aspect. It must be tall. The force of altitude must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a dissenting line." The Prudential (Guaranty) building in Buffalo represents the finest concrete embodiment of his idea achieved by Mr. Sullivan. It marks his emancipation from what he ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... vastness of the stars. What is it that baffles us and remains undefined and undefinable? Just this: TAO: the Infinite Nature. You can survey the earth, and measure it with chains; but not Space, in which a billion leagues is nowise different from an inch or two, —it bears the same proportion ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... waiting as quietly as if he knew that aid was coming, not far away, in the form of an old man, whose hair was white as snow, and whose steps were feeble with age, but who had the advantage of knowing every inch of that ground, for he had trodden it many a time, with a homesick heart which pined for "old Kentuck," whence ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... a closing of the eyes, was the only reply, for a moment; and then Marie answered, "O, I don't know, Cousin; I suppose I'm as well as I ever shall be!" and Marie wiped her eyes with a cambric handkerchief, bordered with an inch deep of black. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... presently grew mountainous on either side, and what seemed an endless sea of greenish drab scrub before. Once or twice we passed tired, weary-looking men plodding on foot, and I did wish we could have picked them up and helped them along; but there was not an inch of room. The ruts were so extremely deep that I certainly should have been pitched out but that Nelson held me tight. Mr. Vinerhorn frowned so when he held Lola, too, that he was obliged to leave her alone, and I am sure she must have had a most uncomfortable journey. I suppose ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... many a thousand miles while the tongue covers an inch; even while Joe answered he was thinking of this. More crowded upon him as he waited the prosecutor's next question. Why should he suffer all that public misjudgment and humiliation, all that pain and twisting of the conscience on Morgan's ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... big and as bright and as yellow (o' my word)—as yellow as two crown pieces! They looked out from under her thick eyebrows like sunlight peeping from a heavy cloud. And she was made like a lad for suppleness. Taller than her mother by head and shoulders, and within a full inch o' my forelock. By'r lay'kin! how she could sing too! She would troll thee a ditty i' th' voice o' a six-foot stripling, but for a' that, as sweet as bells far away on a still noon in summer-tide. And she was always getting hold o' saucy songs, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... would be for us older people to go back to the feelings, to the beliefs, to the tone and the temper with which we used to look at life thirty or forty years ago! Strangely and solemnly, like the silent motion of some gliding scene in a theatre, bit by bit, inch by inch, change comes over all surroundings, and, saddest of all, in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Captain Ericsson himself, whose Monitor vessels have already done so much for the country, as to this availability. He writes,—"An impregnable war-vessel, twenty-five feet wide and two hundred feet long, with a shot-proof turret, carrying a gun of fifteen inch calibre, with a ball of four hundred and fifty pounds, and capable of destroying any hostile vessel that can be put on the Lakes, will draw, without ammunition, coal, or stores, but six feet and six inches water, and consequently will need only a canal wide and deep enough to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... was determined to take advantage if she could. In the parlance of the section of the country from which Broxton Day hailed, she was one of those persons who "if you give 'em an inch ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... fists instead of the weapons of his country, to the great annoyance of Caruey, who would have preferred meeting his rival fairly in the field armed with the spear and the club. Caruey being much the younger man, the lady, every inch a woman, followed her inclination, and Bennillong was compelled to yield her without any further opposition. He seemed to have been satisfied with the beating he had given Caruey, and hinted, that resting for the present without a wife, he should look about ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... martyrdom, had hitherto maintained the siege with courage and abilities, and had much retarded the advances of the king's army. By continual sallies he infested them in their trenches, and gained sudden advantages over them: by disputing every inch of ground, he repressed the vigor and alacrity of their courage, elated by former successes. His garrison, however, was reduced to the last extremity; and he failed not from time to time to inform the parliament that, unless speedily relieved, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... of the harmless type, and it is because of the vast numbers of the harmless ones that the few poisonous or disease germs are killed. Water has millions of them in every cubic inch. Professor Dewar, a great English chemist, calls them nature's policemen. If a typhoid fever germ, for example, should be introduced among so many germs, as is the case every day, a fight at once takes place, and where a person is finally attacked ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... incomprehensible—a study of violently opposing contrasts. Diana felt bruised and shaken by the fierce contradictions of his moods, the temperamental heat and ice which he had meted out to her. It seemed as if he were fighting against the attraction she had for him, prepared to contest every inch of ground—discounting each look and word wrung from him in some moment of emotion by the mocking raillery with ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... imperiously above the petty malice displayed by some of the residents in the hotel; there was a reasonable probability that she might become the wife of a man highly placed and wealthy. Every consideration told in favor of a policy of non-interference. The smoking of an inch of good cigar placed the matter in such a convincing light that Spencer was half resolved to abide by his earlier decision and ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... beside him, now, swimming strongly. She gripped an arm of the unconscious Schuyler.... Together, she and Blake, dividing the weight, slowly, inch by inch, fought their way along the rope. At length they reached the side of the swamped knockabout.... Blake crawled upon its slippery deck. He lay for a moment, helpless; she supported Schuyler. Then he essayed to ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... good ship was afloat again, so well repaired that only about an inch of water per hour was taken in, easily kept under by the pumps. She was laid over on a sandbank on the opposite side of the river and more carefully examined, the sheathing being found to be very badly damaged. The carpenter, in whom Cook had every confidence, reported that, with the ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... of Nations, and very few were the writers who took up this question. It is, undoubtedly, a question of importance, though some of these writers, remembering that the fate of the world was dependent on the fraction of an inch of Cleopatra's nose, seem almost to have imagined that it was proportionately more dependent on those several hundred kilometres of disputed frontier. It would not so much matter that they have introduced a good deal of passion into their arguments ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... won't have my father's name dragged into this mess. I'm here as Zaidos, the stoker; and you will forget Zaidos of Saloniki as fast as ever you can. And if I find you telling anything more, I will thrash you, Velo Kupenol, within an inch of your life. I can do it, too. I learned that in America, at least. And for the present we are in the same fix. We are here as common soldiers. My papers were stolen from me in barracks the night my father died, Velo, so there won't be any proving at all. We are ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... it is a torrent, deep, red and roaring; only white on its surface, where the froth sweeps on, clouting the cliffs on each side. Against these it has risen quite six feet, and still creeps upward. It has filled the channel from side to side, leaving not an inch of roadway ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... smiled upon our traveller, and the traveller smiled back in return. "Similia similibus,"—he believed in homoeopathy. Puns, horse-laugh, monkish face, skin of a friar, true Rabelaisian exterior, clothing, body, mind, and features, all pulled together to put a devil-may-care jollity into every inch of his person. Free-handed and easy-going, he might be recognized at once as the favorite of grisettes, the man who jumps lightly to the top of a stage-coach, gives a hand to the timid lady who fears to step down, jokes with the postillion about his ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... Sweet Scented; they differ only in the form of the leaves, those of the latter variety being shorter and broader than the other. They are annual herbaceous plants, rising with strong erect stems to the height of from six to nine feet, with fine handsome foliage. The stalk near the root is often an inch or more in diameter, and surrounded by a hairy clammy substance, of a greenish yellow color. The leaves are of a light green; they grow alternately, at intervals of two or three inches on the stalk; they are oblong and spear-shaped; ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... senses we find Motion giving the characteristics of solidity: a wheel with only a few spokes, if rotated quickly enough, becomes quite impermeable to any substance, however small, thrown at it; a thin jet of water only half an inch in diameter, if discharged at great pressure equivalent to a column of water of 500 metres, cannot be cut even with an axe, it resists as though it were made of the hardest steel; a thin cord, hanging from a vertical ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... his contempt for it by a scornful laugh. "I'll tell you just what there is in it; and it will show you the sort of man you have to deal with. We haven't an inch of his land. Do you think father is a man to crowd ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... down by a sense of unworthiness and humility. Then, too, she had gone to visit this rich and prosperous young woman dressed in her very best, for she said to herself that whatever her poverty, she would look every inch the lady; she looked every inch the lady to-day, though she was in her old and faded merino. But that had now come to her which made her forget the very existence of dress. The grand footman, however, who answered ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... master of the art of war has said, 'I do not dare to be the host (to commence the war); I prefer to be the guest (to act on the defensive). I do not dare to advance an inch; I prefer to retire a foot.' This is called marshalling the ranks where there are no ranks; baring the arms (to fight) where there are no arms to bare; grasping the weapon where there is no weapon to grasp; advancing against the enemy where ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... dairy two or more firkins can be gradually but simultaneously filled. I strongly recommend the removal of the pickle jar from the dairy. When the layers of butter have been carried up to within an inch or so of the top of the firkin, the space between the surface of the butter and the edge of the vessel should be filled with fine dry salt, instead of pickle. A common mistake made is the holding over for too long a time of the butter: the ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... the spokesman, "we ain't none of us happened to see Bob or Gene Johnson to-day; but we happen to seen Whispering Smith, and we'll blow your face off if you move it an inch." ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... a sheet of paper up to the light, it will show plainly what is next done to it. Sometimes you can see that it is marked by light parallel lines running across it close together, and crossed by other and stouter lines an inch or two apart. Sometimes the name of the paper or that of the manufacturer is marked in the same way by letters lighter than the rest of the sheet. Sometimes the paper is plain with no markings whatever. This difference is made by what is called the "dandy," a cylinder covered with wire. For the ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... asked uncertainly. She sat suddenly erect, as if an actual burden had been dropped from her shoulders. Her eyes were not violet, David decided, he had been deceived by the depth of their coloring; they were blue, Mediterranean blue, and her lashes were an inch and a half long at the very least. She was not only pretty, she was going to be beautiful some day. A strange premonition struck David of a future in which this long-lashed, stoic baby was in some ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... rough arch too wide for my body to jam itself in. Just below the level of the roof—say two feet—I saw the submerged spike of rock. The waters raged around it, and could not have been more than an inch deep on the top. If I could only get my foot on that I believed I could avoid being swept down, and stand up and reach for the wall above ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... any reform to find its worst foes are they of its own household. But the woman movement is not unique in this particular. Other reforms have presented the self-same characteristic. He who is familiar with the history of labor-saving machinery in this country knows that its introduction was fought inch by inch by that very class whose condition it was especially designed to ameliorate. If the Jews were the first to crucify instead of receive their Messiah, we know that the bad precedent which they established has ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... iron to scorch and cicatrize the wound. However much we may labour, we can only arrive at an inner conviction, not at objective certainty. All the glosses and asseverations in the world cannot carry us an inch beyond the due weight of the evidence vouchsafed to us. An honest and brave mind will accept manfully this condition of things, and not seek for infallibility where it can find none. It will adopt as its motto that ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... the door behind her which faced the library and led into the billiard-room was opened noiselessly from without, by an inch at a time. As the opening was enlarged a hand in a black glove, an arm in a black sleeve, appeared, guiding the movement of the door. An interval of a moment passed, and the worn white face of Grace Roseberry showed itself stealthily, looking into ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... mounting, but, striking the horse, spring into the saddle as he starts, and, sticking their long spurs into him, go off on the full run. Their spurs are cruel things, having four or five rowels, each an inch in length, dull and rusty. The flanks of the horses are often sore from them, and I have seen men come in from chasing bullocks, with their horses' hind legs and quarters covered with blood. They frequently give ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... feet rested. One stage of my descent was thus accomplished. I now held the ledge tight with both hands, let my legs slip off, and felt about with my feet for another resting-place. For some seconds I was swinging about, holding on by my hands. There might be another ledge not half an inch below my feet. I stretched down my toes to the utmost. I could not discover it. Should I let go I might have a serious fall. I worked my way on, hoping to be more fortunate. At last my feet struck against the end of a chest, ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... appears to do great mischief to the Cotton plant. It does most damage during the larvae stage, eating up the tender portions of the boll while in residence here. When matured it is only a little under half an inch in length. ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... Monte Cristo, determined not to lose an inch of the ground he had gained, "my reason for desiring an 'unlimited' credit was precisely because I did not know how much ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could only be entered, she knew, by striking sail; all that was unbearable. I suppose there was a whisper of conscience, too, which said, "Strike sail, and go in!"—while passion would not take down an inch of canvas. Could not, she said to herself. Could she submit to have things be as they were? submit, and be quiet, and accept them, and go her way accepting them, and put the thought of Evan away, and live ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... peninsula, and offered peace to Great Britain on the old terms of "uti possidetis" in Spain. In a less public way he had it thoroughly understood throughout Europe that he would take no steps toward peace with Russia; that he would not yield an inch with reference to the grand duchy of Warsaw, or regarding the annexed lands of Italy, Holland, and the Hanseatic League. It was as if the whole world must see that ordinary human concessions could not be expected from one who had been conquered only by act of Providence, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... inch. Just hauled up there taking two-thirds of the road, and started to light his pipe. I was in a hurry to get along, and thought I could just squeeze by; but I made a mistake, and my wagon got upset in the ditch. He went on, grinning at my trouble, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... ball was carefully made, the enemy stood along their goal-line ready to spring the moment the ball should touch the earth. Wright, cool and self-possessed, placed himself in readiness a yard or two behind the ball, which one of our side held an inch off the ground. An anxious moment of expectation followed; then came a sharp "Now!" from our captain. The ball was placed cunningly in the nick, the Craven forwards rushed out on it in a body, but long before they could reach it, Wright's ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... now? Your Gambals? Your Songs? Your flashes of Merriment that were wont to set the Table on a Rore? No one now to mock your own Ieering? Quite chopfalne? Now get you to my Ladies Chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thicke, to this fauour she must come. Make her laugh at that: prythee ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... on him; but in a moment he twisted up a narrow alley. Andrea shot by, unable to check himself; and the pursuers soon found themselves in a labyrinth in which it was vain to pursue a quickfooted fugitive who knew every inch of it, and could now only ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... upon the king and impostor impartially from her great gilt frame. It must have been close to midnight that the painting moved—just a fraction of an inch. Then it remained motionless for a time. Again it moved. This time it revealed a narrow crack at its edge. In ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... before I have finished my education, and that my mind may be diverted from serious subjects. It is no doubt all intended for my good, but I should not lose much time if I turned up my hair like this, and what harm could there be in lengthening my skirts an inch or two? My picture will show her that I am improved by such little changes, and perhaps it will induce hor to let me go to the Bal Blanc that Madame d'Etaples is going to give on Yvonne's birthday. Mamma declined for me, saying I was not fit to wear a low-necked ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... seem, is without weight in public appointments here: old friends are somewhat astonished to find this friend of theirs a King every inch! To old comrades, if they were useless, much more if they were worse than useless, how disappointing! "One wretched Herr [name suppressed, but known at the time, and talked of, and whispered of], who had, like several others, hoping to rise that way, been industrious ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to the belly behind the shoulder it measured three feet and eight inches: the length of the legs before and behind consisted a great deal in the tibia, which was strangely long; but in my haste to get out of the stench, I forgot to measure that joint exactly. Its scut seemed to be about an inch long; the colour was a grizzly black; the mane about four inches long; the fore-hoofs were upright and shapely, the hind flat and splayed. The spring before it was only two years old, so that most probably it was not then come to its growth. What a vast, tall beast must a full-grown stag be! ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... shore of the reef-sheltered lagoon where ruined grass houses told him men had lived. The jungle ran riot through the place. Six-inch trees, throated with rotten remnants of thatched roofs through which they had aspired toward the sun, rose about him. Quick-growing trees had shadowed the kingposts so that the idols and totems, seated in carved shark jaws, grinned greenly and monstrously at the futility ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... which the king gave to the tomb of Tahuti is so splendid that it deserves some notice, especially as it has never been published in England. It is circular, about seven inches across, with vertical sides an inch high. The inside of the bottom bears a boss and rosette in the centre, a line of swimming fish around that, and beyond all a chain of lotus flowers. On the upright edge is an incised inscription, "Given in ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... of the Cluniac Order of Benedictines, being the same order as the house at Wenlock. Humbold in 1169 brought thirteen monks from the parent house, and, having settled them at Renfrewshire in an island of the Clyde called the King's Inch, returned to Wenlock. There was at this time in Paisley an early church, dedicated to St. Mirinus, an Irish saint of the sixth century, and a disciple of the great school of St. Congal at Bangor. St. Mirin was a contemporary of ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... figures of the bottom layer analysis, adding these to the second and third layer analysis, and dividing by 4, we obtain a fair representation of the average composition of the silage taken throughout the silo, for by so doing we obtain the average of the analyses of each 6-inch layer of silage. The results of the analyses are as follows, calculated on the dry matter. The moisture was practically the same, being 70.48 per cent, in the grass and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... trouble. The case must proceed. It is final. She is at liberty, in the meantime, to draw on my bankers for the provision she may need, at the rate of five hundred pounds per annum." He spoke of "the lady now bearing my name." He was within an inch of saying "dishonouring." I swear I heard the "dis," and he caught himself up. He "again declined any attempt towards reconciliation." It could "only be founded on evasion of the truth to be made patent on the day of trial." Half his talk was lawyers' lingo. The fellow's teeth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... impassioned out-sweeping of his hands. Coming swiftly from behind the bench, he halted tensely before Benton and leaned defiantly forward. "Then I can free her—and by God I shall fight you for her on equal terms, inch by inch, not holding her in duress, but fighting for her free consent. She has been trapped by Fate into marrying me and at heart she rebels. I shall set her free and then by God I will ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... sleeping there again; and when here, let him, of all things, remember to go up Mount Willard. It is but a walk of two hours up and down, if so much. When reaching the top, he will be startled to find that he looks down into the ravine without an inch of foreground. He will come out suddenly on a ledge of rock, from whence, as it seems, he might leap down at once into the valley below. Then, going on from the Crawford House, he will be driven through the woods of Cherry Mount, passing, I fear without toll of custom, the house of my ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... had first stood in its plain pulpit as pastor. The walls were lined with all the representative characters of the town, good and bad, rich and poor; merchants, bar-keepers, politicians and miners. In the center the old-time church-goers sat. Up the front, filling every inch of space, the starched and well-washed youngsters wriggled and grinned and sang without fear, as hymn after hymn ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... temperature of the room and on how fast they develop. Usually with the degree of heat we keep here the first moulting takes place within eight days. You see your silkworms are only about a quarter of an inch long at first, and as they increase in size to about three inches their skin is not elastic enough to accommodate their rapid growth. It simply won't hold them. Suppose you or Marie grew twelve times your natural size in ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... six inches wide, and no more than an eighth of an inch in height, resembling the crevice through which the captain looks out upon the enemy from the turret of a monitor. The fact that the red men had made no use of it was proof they did not suspect its existence, though that ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... clinging so tenaciously to the high-water mark; but there were probably two paramount reasons for this. The deep gully was to a great extent protected from the force of the winds, and, as it was soon quite brimful of houses, every inch of space was valuable; then, smuggling was freely practised along the coast, and the more the houses were wedged together, the more opportunities for secret hiding-places would be afforded. The whole town has a consciously guilty ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... the island. This, when made red hot, bored slowly through the timbers; and, the better to retain the heat, Jack shut up one end of it and filled it with sand. True, the work was very slowly done, but it mattered not, we had little else to do. Two holes were bored in each timber, about an inch and a half apart, and also down into the keel, but not quite through. Into these were placed stout pegs made of a tree called iron-wood; and, when they were hammered well home, the timbers were as firmly fixed as if they had been nailed with iron. The gunwales, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the assistant of Professor Mosso, has also conducted a number of experiments in the discharge of an electroscope, by means of "rays" issuing from the medium's body. It was found that, if the medium held her fingers at a distance of an inch or so from the knob of the electroscope, some form of energy, apparently radio-active in character, issued from her fingers, and gradually discharged the electroscope. This is the "radiation" or "emanation" issuing from the body, which has been studied extensively by ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... her mind to the act, deliberately took her scissors, ripped me up into pieces, and sent me to the dyer's, to be colored brown. This was too horrid—I was soused into the vilest mixture you can imagine, and suffered every thing abominable, such as being stretched within an inch of my life, and then almost burned to death. At last, I came out with the color you now see me, not a handsome brown, but a real sickish rhubarb color. My dear mistress laughed when she looked at me. "This is a dose," said she, "but it will do for an every day coat for Jonathan, and ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... present produce; for it is the passion of every man to be a landholder, and the people have a natural disposition to rove in search of good lands, however distant. It may be a question likewise, whether colonization of the kind could be effected without an Indian war, and fighting for every inch of ground. The Indians have long been jealous of our power, and have no patience in seeing us approach their towns, and settle up on their hunting grounds; atonements may be made for a fraud discovered in a trader, and even the murder of ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... the left-hand corner of the Captain's mouth, crossed a fissure in his face, stopped within half an inch of his stub nose, and died out in a smile ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... direction was enough. The dull, black, frowzy outline of the valance above me was within an inch of being parallel with his waist. I still looked breathlessly. And steadily and slowly—very slowly—I saw the figure, and the line of frame below the figure, vanish, as the valance ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... faint with hunger, and staggered as she passed a basement restaurant, from which came savory smells, snuffed longingly by some half-starved children. Her turn was long in coming; and as she laid her bundle on the counter, she saw suddenly that her needle had 'jumped,' and that half an inch or so of band required re-sewing. As she looked, the foreman's knife slipped under the place, and in a moment half the band had been ripped. 'That's no good,' he said. 'You are getting botchier all the time.' 'Give it to me,' Rose pleaded. 'I'll ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... I will speak a word. The master Simon Fuller, is grave man, the snows of nearly sixty winters settling on his head. He has made many voyages, and seems a fit man to command men. The first mate, too, James Festing, is every inch a seaman, but somewhat handy with his fist, a rope's end, or a marline spike, or, truth to say, whatever lies nearest, and withal not over choice in his words when angered, or desirous of getting work done ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... else I can think of. Where the branches are widest the plant is three or four feet from side to side. The lowest branches are the longest, and the plant, standing by itself, has a shape similar to that of the Northern spruce. The stalk is sometimes an inch and a half in diameter where it leaves the ground. Before the leaves have fallen, the rows in a cotton-field bear a strong resemblance to a series ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... starting I had felt sure of winning him; when I was half through I knew nothing could stand against my arguments, and when I had said the last word I felt satisfied that, being human and intelligent, he must be convinced. It took him only ten minutes to show me that I had been talking against ten-inch armor-plate, and that he meant it absolutely when he said, "Lawson, I want to see it your way, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... big iron gate, which opened to admit the passengers on to the summit. Here the guides were waiting, and after some parleying in Italian, Miss Morley engaged a couple of them to escort her party. Led by these men, who knew every inch of the way, they started to walk to the crater of the volcano. A cinder path had been made along the edge of the cone, having on the left side a steep ridge of ashes, and on the right a sheer drop of many thousand feet. From this strange road there were weird ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... expansion which covered every addition of territory to that of Alaska. By nature they were opposed to giving such advantage to the central power. After the acquisition had been made, Jefferson was loud in his declaration that he would not "give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any nation"; but neither by nature nor party was he an expansionist. He would have been satisfied with the acquisition of the east bank of the river, including New Orleans. During the negotiations he confessed his doubts of success. ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks |
