"Rapidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prison walls, the dread of the witches, and the excitement against witchcraft, grew with fearful rapidity. Numbers of women, and men, too, were accused, no matter what their station of life and their former character had been. On the other side, it is alleged that upwards of fifty persons were grievously vexed by the devil, and those to whom he had ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of this disorder is commonly shown by retardation of thought and motion, the excited stage by pressure of activity and acceleration of thought. In the so-called "flight of ideas" words succeed each other with incredible rapidity, without goal idea, but each word suggesting the next by sound or ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... more plausibility is, that whilst Pope frequently wastes his skill in gilding refuse, he is really most sensitive to the noblest sentiments of his contemporaries, and that, when he has good materials to work upon, his verse glows with unusual fervour, often to sink with unpleasant rapidity into mere quibbling or epigrammatic pungency. The real truth is that Pope precisely expresses the position of the best thinkers of his day. He did not understand the reasoning, but he fully shared the sentiments of the philosophers ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... rapidity of movement, fulness and richness of reality, exuberance of invention, excellent portraiture, dramatic vehemence, and an almost unrivalled sympathy with the swift and passionate world of angels. What he lacked was power of composition, simplicity ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... marriage, of connubial and motherly love, and the goddess of childbirth. She, too, is represented as a beautiful, stately woman, rejoicing in her adornments; and her special attendant, Gna, rivals Iris in the rapidity with which she executes her mistress's behests. Juno has full control over the clouds, which she can brush away with a motion of her hand, and Frigga is supposed to weave them out of the thread she has spun ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... spread at once with rapidity. By the end of December recruits only amounted to ten thousand. For this two causes were answerable. The first was the honourable refusal of the committee to allow companies to be enrolled except according to locality. They would have no sectional companies of Sinn Fein volunteers, ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... moreover, no boat unless carried can reach Cintra. Twice did we lift up our voice. At the second shout the boat rested on its oars; and when we added 'Caballeros, vengan ustedes atras,' its head was turned round in a jiffy, and back it came bounding over the waters with twice its former rapidity. We are again in the cabin; the three Spaniards, the domestic, ourselves, and the steward; the latter stands with his back against the door, for the purpose of keeping out intruders. There is a small chest on the table, on which all eyes ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... seemed to be merely agitated as from the movement of some great body beneath the surface, and I at once conjectured that another submarine was rising to the surface in pursuit of us; but presently it became apparent that the level of the waters was rising, not with extreme rapidity, but very surely, and that soon they would overflow the sides of the pool and submerge the floor ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... distinguished of Wellington's comrades and pupils. His force was utterly routed, and he himself fled across the frontier to New York. A similar outbreak, excited in the Upper Province by a newspaper editor, was crushed with equal ease and rapidity.[254] And the next year, 1838, Lord John Russell brought forward a bill to suspend the constitution of the colony, and to confer on a new Governor, who was at once to proceed thither, very ample ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... when a terrific blow on the eye, struck with the rapidity of lightning, shot him to the earth, where he lay for about half a minute, apparently insensible. He then got up, and after shaking his head, as if to rid himself of a sense of confusion and stupor, looked at Dalton for ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... plunderers. After his arrival at Me[vs]ica the trouble was brought to an end. Nor was it long before the Serbian troops, riding up through their own country at a rate which no one had foreseen, crossed the Danube and occupied the Banat, in conjunction with the French. The rapidity of this advance astounded the Roumanians; they gaped like Lavengro when he wondered how the stones ever came to Stonehenge.... When the Serbian commandant at Ver[vs]ac invited these enterprising Roumanian officers to an interview he was asked by one of them, Major Iricu, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... wondered at, that from the sixteenth century onward, churches of man's contriving have multiplied with phenomenal rapidity? Churches and churchly organizations professing Christianity as their creed have come to be numbered by hundreds. On every side is heard in this day, "Lo, here is Christ" or "Lo, there." There are sects named from the circumstances of their origin—as the Church of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... quest was fruitless; McCloud met them at the gate with a repeating-rifle, knocked the game-warden down, took away his revolver, and laughed at Byram, who stood awkwardly apart, dazed by the business-like rapidity of the operation. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... lingered thus long with the humble clerk, let us turn to the rich merchant; for Jasper has become a man of extensive possessions. Wealth flowed in upon him with extraordinary rapidity—not in the regular course of trade, overreaching and unscrupulous as he was in dealing, but through what are called fortunate speculations. How he made his first hundred thousand dollars—the basis of his present very large fortune—was not clearly understood, ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... was not a moment to lose as the figure was stealthily nearing the sleeper. Thoughts flashed through her brain with lightning rapidity. If the man were not stopped, somehow, and at any cost, in another moment she would see Honor's fears justified and Brian killed while asleep in his bed. How was it possible for her to witness such a deed and not raise ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Compare with this the rapidity with which a civilized or civilizable race, depending on its innate energy, assimilates our culture with or without Christianity! We need only look at what has happened in Japan during the last thirty years, and what the Christian races of the Balkan countries have been doing after delivery ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... scale is nearly circular in outline and about the size of a small pin head, with a raised center. When abundant, it forms a crust on the branches and causes small red spots on the fruit. It multiplies with marvelous rapidity, there being three or four broods annually in New York, and each mother scale may give birth to several hundred young. The young are born alive, and breeding continues until late autumn when all stages are killed by the cold weather except the tiny half-grown black ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... with a muttered "Now, then," and began to catechise me in a most extraordinarily searching manner, firing off question after question with the rapidity of a maxim gun. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... into water, light and warmth, will grow with remarkable rapidity. Just as the first buds are opening out is the ideal time to use them as presents, as they will continue subjects of daily attraction for a long time. Those that are kept can be saved, either to plant out or use another year. Let the soil gradually dry out when they are through blooming, ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... Lucien's enchantment. This house (for this was the name he chose to give to the shapeless hut, in which our party could scarcely stand upright) appeared to him a perfect masterpiece of architecture, and he was astonished at the rapidity with which it had been built. He helped l'Encuerado to make up the fire, so that all that was requisite on our return was to set a light to it. Then, armed with our guns, we set off ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... painfully bagged at the knees. But the divine light of genius shone from the brown eyes and the ample forehead. The enthusiasm of the multitude now knew no bounds. There was first a strange stillness, then, when the word seemed to have passed with a strange and lightning-like rapidity from mouth to mouth, there burst forth a great cheer, and it was known ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... The rapidity with which Mr. Fleet came to his conclusions increased my bewilderment, and I was at a loss to know what evidence he expected to gain from Craymoor church. He reminded me, however, of Catherine's statement that "the wicked woman" of her vision resembled ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Mr. Cave most tantalisingly in the dark. On another occasion a vast thing, that Mr. Cave thought at first was some gigantic insect, appeared advancing along the causeway beside the canal with extraordinary rapidity. As this drew nearer Mr. Cave perceived that it was a mechanism of shining metals and of extraordinary complexity. And then, when he looked again, it had passed out ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... a heat, on the spur of the occasion, and have all the truth and vividness which arise from an actual impression of the objects. His epithets and single phrases are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination, fired by the whirling rapidity of its own motion. His language is hieroglyphical. It translates thoughts into visible images. It abounds in sudden transitions and elliptical expressions. This is the source of his mixed metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms of speech. These, however, give no ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... guns around Liege, was shattered in a thousand ways. Heavy firing by infantry rifles, as well as by field guns, came from the north. It was plain that Belgian or French troops must have been advancing with great rapidity to interfere with the German raid on the country between Liege and Brussels. Flashes of fire marked the bursting shells less than a mile away, and occasional spurts of flame showed where the German guns were replying to the sudden attack. In a moment Hannay was deserted by the Germans. And before ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... many years British Consul at various places in the United States and on the Continent. At an early age he began to write romances, and continued his production with such industry that his works reach to 100 vols. This excessive rapidity was fatal to his permanent reputation; but his books had considerable immediate popularity. Among them are Richelieu (1829), Philip Augustus (1831), The Man at Arms (1840), The Huguenot (1838), ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... retrospective measurement of time. Each person's experience will have told him that in estimating the distance of a past event by a mere retrospective sense of duration, he is liable to extraordinary fluctuations of judgment. Sometimes when the clock strikes we are surprised at the rapidity of the hour. At other times the timepiece seems rather to have lagged behind its usual pace. And what is true of a short interval is still more true of longer intervals, as months and years. The understanding of these fluctuations will be promoted ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... has passed, the temper of the House, and its sanitary state,[40] will assist him in passing the remaining estimates with rapidity; and he contemplates an ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... of his mind, and is now confined in room number seventeen of the Oboukhoff Hospital. He never answers any questions, but he constantly mutters with unusual rapidity: "Three, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... unbelieving, hating good, and delighting in all which was evil. And it was in consequence of these very sins of theirs, as I think, that the old Hellenic race began to die out physically, and population throughout Greece to decrease with frightful rapidity, after the time of the Achaean league. The facts are well known; and foul enough they are. When the Romans destroyed Greece, God was just and merciful. The eagles were gathered together only because the carrion needed to be removed from the ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... night. And at the same time he noticed, coming over the hill from the cliffs, a white speck in motion. It seemed first to be a sea-gull flying low, but ultimately proved to be a human figure, running with great rapidity. The form flitted on, heedless of the rain which had caused Stephen's halt in this place, dropped down the heathery hill, entered the vale, and was out ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... who occupied the wing of the building nearest the fire. Wooden houses of many various colors were devoured in a few moments, and had already fallen in; magazines of oil, brandy, and other combustible materials, threw out flames of a lurid hue, which were communicated with the rapidity of lightning to other adjoining buildings. A shower of sparks and coals fell on the roofs of the Kremlin; and one shudders to think that one of these sparks alone falling on a caisson might have produced a general explosion, and blown up the Kremlin; for by an inconceivable negligence ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... their ancestors always have done so." Thus the transmission of the mores comes to be a process embodying the greatest conservatism and the least likelihood of change. This situation represents an adaption of society to life-conditions; it would seem that because of the rapidity of succession of variations there is need of an intensely conserving force (like ethnocentrism or religion) to preserve a certain balance and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Fenn has written many a book for boys, but never has he hit upon a happier plan than in writing this story of Yorkshire factory life. The whole book, from page 1 to 352, is all aglow with life, the scenes varying continually with kaleidoscopic rapidity."—Pall Mall Gazette. ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... The distance of 61 Cygni, according to Hall's parallax of 0.27", is about 70,000,000,000,000 miles. There is some question whether or not it is a binary, for, while the twin stars are both moving in the same direction in space with comparative rapidity, yet conclusive evidence of orbital motion is lacking. When one has noticed the contrast in apparent size between this comparatively near-by star, which the naked eye only detects with considerable difficulty, and some of its brilliant neighbors ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... with their usual rapidity, yet it seemed to Kenyon the clock was going fearfully fast. Eleven o'clock came and found him still pacing up and down the office of the telegraph. The operator offered him the hospitality of the private room, but this he declined. Every time the ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... very abruptly with his knees drawn up to his chin and blinked at her with extreme rapidity. "Olga," he ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... discharge, and they had a way of saying, "I can not!" which evidently expressed the despair of a combatant who has burned his last cartridge. A "beard" in glasses and a stovepipe hat, who had been refused in his youth at the Ecole Polytechnique, was frightful in the rapidity and mathematical precision with which he added up in three minutes his barricade of dominoes. When this man "blocked the six," you were transported in imagination to the Rue Transnonain, or to the Cloitre St. Merry. It ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... built, which we called Pirate Hall, was magnificent compared to our poor dear Cartref Pellenig, and was made with such rapidity, speed, and neatness, our clerk of the works fell into fits of envy and jealousy. We had visited it very often without being discovered; but the children, from sheer mischief, used to carry off things of all kinds back to our cavern, and we were unable to prevent them, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... me. Look at me," he went on, speaking with an unwonted rapidity, his wits sharp, his ideas succeeding each other quickly. "Look at me, drenched through, shivering cold. I've walked the city over. Caught in the rain! Yes, I guess I did get caught in the rain, and it ain't your fault I didn't catch my death-a-cold; wouldn't even let ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... I ask this, because I want to consult you at once. Please look in in the course of the day, and stop to dinner if you possibly can. Yours truly. ALLAN ARMADALE." Having read this composition aloud with unconcealed admiration of his own rapidity of literary execution, Allan addressed the letter to Mr. Darch, and rang the bell. "Here, Richard, take this at once, and wait for an answer. And, I say, if there's any news stirring in the town, pick it up and bring it back with you. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... to descend a few feet of rough ice, and Helen found, to her great relief it must be confessed, that they were approaching the lateral moraine. Already the sky was overcast. The glacier had taken to itself a cold grayness that was disconcerting. The heavy mist fell on them with inconceivable rapidity. Shining peaks and towering precipices of naked rock were swept out of sight each instant. The weather had changed with a magical speed. The mist advanced with the rush of an express train, and a strong wind sprang up as though it had burst through a restraining wall and ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... cooperation, a strong work ethic, mastery of high technology, and a comparatively small defense allocation (1% of GDP) have helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and third largest economy in the world after the US and China. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... field for girls with the necessary training and endowment. Many girls have ability for this work, and as the employment is being developed commercially, the opportunities for girls in house furnishing should increase with some rapidity. ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... character with lightning rapidity. It was in turn a ferry-boat—imitation of passengers descending the gangway by rhythmical patting of hand on thwart; a hospital ship chased by a submarine—cormorant's neck and head naturally mistaken for periscope; a destroyer attacking a submarine—said ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... occupied about twelve hours, and although the average speed through the Prussian territory was slow, no sooner did we come upon Saxon ground at the frontier town of Kothen, than we spun along over the sandy waste with a rapidity which reminded one of a trip on an English railway. It was already dark when the train reached Leipsic, and in the drizzling rain I wandered round the city ditch and rampart, unknowing where to find a lodging. At length, directed by a stranger to a trade herberge in the Kleine ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... philosophic curiosity, step by step, the progress of mental anguish, but when that point is passed, analysis loses its interest; the vocabulary of pain has exhausted itself, the phenomena already noted do but repeat themselves with more rapidity, with more intensity—detail is lost in the mere sense of throes. Perchance the mind is capable of suffering worse than the fiercest pangs of hopeless love combined with jealousy; one would not pretend to put a limit to the possibilities of human woe; but ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... on the shoulder, calling me a Delphic oracle, and haled me from the premises through the garden gate, with the lightning rapidity of the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... hazardous manoeuvre had opened the combat, both men sprang to life. Sometimes the log rolled one way, sometimes the other, sometimes it jerked from side to side like a crazy thing, but always with the rapidity of light, always in a smother of spray and foam. The decided spat, spat, spat of the reversing blows from the caulked boots sounded like picket firing. I could not make out the different leads, feints, parries, and counters of this strange ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... than a few minutes under water, but are necessitated to re-ascend to the surface for breath. These opportunities are seized by the hunters, who would seldom succeed, if the otter could remain long under water, where it swims with great rapidity and skill. Even with the above advantage, the chase is very toilsome, and sometimes dangerous. It is carried on ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... fire-mist began to move towards their centre of gravity, under the influence of their mutual attractions, and thus assumed a spherical shape; that by some means or other a motion of rotation was originated in this spherical mass, which increased in rapidity as the process of condensation advanced. The effect of this rotation would be a flattening of the sphere; the equatorial diameter would increase while the polar diameter, or axis of rotation, diminished; and when the centrifugal force ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... mother took both her hands. They were chilly; and there was a little pulse on Mary's temple that visibly throbbed, and almost seemed to leap, with fearful rapidity. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... change their shape—expand—become flexible, and form two light wings, clothed in the most brilliant colours. Her little feet quitted the earth, and as the window was open, she flew out, traversing the air, with a degree of rapidity which at first caused some sensations of fear. But soon the eager desire of seeing Patipata urged her forward, although natural instinct so far prevailed, as to cause frequent descents to earth, where she rested on ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... of excursionists to observe the same birds, notebook in hand, and let each one immediately put down what he actually sees. Afterward compare results. In this way improvement will be made in rapidity and accuracy ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... and traders harboured.... Benham's first intervention was on behalf of a crouching and yelping bundle of humanity that was being dragged about and kicked at a street corner. The bundle resolved itself into a filthy little old man, and made off with extraordinary rapidity, while Benham remonstrated with the kickers. Benham's tallness, his very Gentile face, his good clothes, and an air of tense authority about him had its effect, and the kickers shuffled off with remarks that were ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... set to work. The water tore through the nostril-pipe, boring a hole with such rapidity that the tall beam dropped into the socket with startling suddenness. Still breathing torrents, the pipe was withdrawn: the clutching sand seized, grappled the stake. It is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... however, spent four years among the more friendly Bannock Indians, who probably for centuries had lived in or near the park. He had a very enjoyable time in the newly discovered region, and his adventures crowded upon each other, one after the other, with great rapidity. When at last he decided to return to the abode of the white man, he took with him a fund of recollection and incident of the most sensational character, and before he had been at home with his own kindred a week, he had earned ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a perfect equilibrium or adjustment. To sights and sounds and events which required action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as a husky dog could leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could leap twice as quickly. He saw the movement, or heard sound, and responded in less time than another dog required to compass the mere seeing ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... boy he is often too advanced for his years or his information; in youth he is conspicuous neither for his culture nor his unselfishness. But once in matrimonial harness this untrained animal becomes bridle-wise with surprising rapidity, and will for the rest of life go through his paces, waltzing, kneeing, and saluting with hardly a touch of the whip. Whether this is the result of superior horse-womanship on the part of American wives or a trait peculiar to sons of “Uncle Sam,” is hard to say, but ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do was to keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could travel alone. But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in so short a time. Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely make them move together to grip a twig, and they seemed remote from his body and from him. When he touched ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... place afterwards happened with an inconceivable rapidity, in less time than it takes to draw breath. He never recognized me. I saw his glare of incredulous awe change, suddenly, to horror and despair. He had felt himself ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... This suggests that the actual participation of Americans in the ocean-carrying trade of the world is not to be estimated by the frequency or infrequency with which the Stars and Stripes are to be met on the ocean. It furthermore gives some indication of the rapidity with which the American flag would reappear if the law to register only ships built in ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... bite her lip. Outside he showed a strong desire to walk with Miss Fountain that he might instruct her in the details of the Bessemer process and the manufacture of steel rails. But the ease with which the little nonchalant creature disposed of him, the rapidity with which he found himself transferred to Polly, and left to stare at the backs of Laura and Hubert hurrying along in front, ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 15th. On the first day of the month, a moderate-sized goat was put into his house. The poor animal would scream, and exhibit every symptom of extreme terror, but was not kept long in suspense; for the snake, after eyeing his victim keenly, would spring on it with the rapidity of thought, coil three turns round the body, and in an instant every bone in the goat's skin was broken. The next process was, to stretch the carcass to as great a length as he could before uncoiling himself; then to lick it all over; and he commenced ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... ear, however, could hear the roaring of the waters and the crash of buildings, bridges, and lumber, and the eye could trace the mammoth ice-jam of four miles long, which passed on majestically, but with lightning rapidity, bearing the contents of both rivers on its bosom, The noble covered bridge of the Penobscot, two bridges of the Kenduskeag, and the two long ranges of saw-mills, besides other mills, houses, shops, logs, and lumber enough to build ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... manner and conversation to match the simplicity of her dress, she was disappointed. In Love's school women learn with marvellous rapidity, and Thora astonished her by falling readily into a conversation of the most up-to-date social character. She had caught the trick from Ian, a little playful fencing round the most alluring of subjects, yet it brought out the simplicity of her character, while it also ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and highly complex industrial development which went on with ever accelerated rapidity during the latter half of the nineteenth century brings us face to face, at the beginning of the twentieth, with very serious social problems. The old laws, and the old customs which had almost the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... these advantages were added the results of wise and thorough training, so wise, so thorough, that defects in the national physique had been remedied. Thus, the calves were stanch and prominent, whereas ancient Egypt was as flat-legged as the negro; the body was round and tapered with proper athletic rapidity from shoulder to heel, without any sign of the lank attenuation that was characteristic of most ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... of the progress of the post office in Canada, which has been compiled from authentic sources, will be found interesting. It extends over a period of one hundred years, and serves to mark a rapidity of improvement which, in a country purely agricultural, has seldom ...
— Canadian Postal Guide • Various
... the pen over the lines with inconceivable rapidity, the writer occasionally glancing over his left arm at the document he was copying. The tortoise-shell cat sat at her master's feet with an air of self-importance and a look which seemed to say, "woe be to him who dare ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... for three or four years. His time was taken up with his trade and his philanthropic missions. Besides, he did not compose with rapidity; he elaborated his poems by degrees; he arranged the plot of his story, and then he clothed it with poetical words and images. While he walked and journeyed from place to place, he was dreaming and thinking of his next dramatic poem—his Franconnette, which many ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... which nature rejects, there remains a heat. The veins and arteries seem, by their continual quivering, to resemble the agitation of fire; and it has often been observed when the heart of an animal is just plucked from the body that it palpitates with such visible motion as to resemble the rapidity of fire. Everything, therefore, that has life, whether it be animal or vegetable, owes that life to the heat inherent in it; it is this nature of heat which contains in itself the vital power which extends throughout ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... with excessive sensibility of character; and neither ethological theory nor practical observation of men and women is at all hostile to what he is so anxious to prove. The cardinal element of character is the speed at which its energies move; its rapidity or its steadiness, concentration or volatility; whether the thought and feeling travel as quickly as light or as slowly as sound. A rapid and volatile constitution like that of Madame de Warens is inconsistent with ardent and glowing warmth, which belongs to the other ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... drumming of the distant horses grew louder and louder with inconceivable rapidity, and the cavalcade of police rushed by below them in the lane, almost with the roar and rattle of an ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... she was got before the wind, and away she ran towards the south and east, surrounded by a cloud of mist and foam which circumscribed our view to a very narrow compass. The sea, too, got up with a rapidity truly astonishing. It seemed as if the giant waves had been rolling on towards us from some far-off part of the ocean. All that day and night we ran on. Scarcely had the first streaks of dawn appeared, when ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... this sort, once known, even to one's mother only, travels with miraculous rapidity, until the whole gaping neighborhood becomes confidentially intrusted with its keeping. It seems that ours had been more observant and suspicious than even my dear mother. But such eager care-takers of other people's affairs exist wherever human beings may chance to congregate. Humble life secured ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... know what I'm talking about—since this has been going on. If you saw the pictures that were published and the things all the critics said of me a few weeks ago you would know that is true. I'm astonished myself lately at the ease, the rapidity and the success with which I work. But it's all he has not stolen," Brand continued more gloomily. "He has taken all my business sense. I used to have a good deal of it. I could make money and I would soon have been ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... some, it formerly obtained the appellation of Bellositum. This town is watered by two rivers, the Cherwell and the Isis, vulgarly called the Ouse; and though these streams join in the same channel, yet the Isis runs more entire and with more rapidity towards the south, retaining its name till it meets the Thame, which it seems long to have sought, at Wallingford; thence, called by the compound name of Thames, it flows the prince of all British rivers, of whom we may justly say, as the ancients did of the ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... says that he read with great rapidity. "He galloped through the pages so rapidly that we often laughed at him when he shut up a thick quarto as his morning's work. 'Cross-examine me, then,' he said; and we generally found that he knew all that was worth knowing in ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... not answer. The man did not move. The minutes went by, and the silence remained unbroken. Below, the twilight seemed to be passing into night with unusual rapidity. It was a shapeless world now, a world of black and gray. More lights flashed out every ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of slaves free men, of classes a brotherhood, then it is not difficult to see wherein lies the lightning-like speed with which the electric current passes from heart to heart. Such a man was Buddha, such was the essential of his teaching; and such was the inevitable rapidity of Buddhistic expansion, and the profound influence of the shock that was produced by the new faith upon the moral consciousness of ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... turns to Mr. Terriss: "Shall we go through it first without the dialogue?" "Yes," answers Mr. Terriss; and the whole action of the scene is gone through. Mr. Irving and Mr. Terriss exchanging their direction of the various groups for the assumption of their own parts with an ease and rapidity born of long practice, Mr. Irving moving about from group to group until he is satisfied with the effect of the whole. Mr. H. T. Loveday, the stage manager, being at present ill, Mr. Terriss is kindly assisting Mr. Irving with rehearsal. After the entrances and exits have been arranged for the twentieth ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... an author informs the public that his production was struck off in a great hurry, he offers an insult, not an excuse. But I trust that the present case is an exception, and that the peculiar circumstances which obliged me to write with such unusual rapidity give a propriety to my professions of it: "nec nunc eam apud te jacto, sed et ceteris indico; ne quis asperiore limae carmen examinet, et a confuso scriptum et quod frigidum erat ni statim traderem." ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... led the way to a carriage house. Here, with great rapidity, the four youths stripped off the odd suits and donned their regular garments. Then they hid the other things in an ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... waves which strike the retina in periodic intervals; and such waves, impinging on the molecules of bodies, agitate their constituent atoms. These atoms are so small, and, when grouped to molecules, are so tightly clasped together, that they are capable of tremors equal in rapidity to those of light and radiant heat. To a mind coming freshly to these subjects, the numbers with which scientific men here habitually deal must appear utterly fantastical; and yet, to minds trained in the logic of science, they express most sober and certain truth. The constituent ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... exquisitely neat, small, and beautifully legible handwriting has always been the subject of wondering comment and admiration. He adopted and perfected that style of chirography deliberately to reduce the labor of writing to a minimum. And he succeeded, for few pen-men could exceed him in the rapidity with which he produced "copy" for the printer and none excelled him in sending that copy to the compositor in a form so free from error as to leave no question where blame for typographical blunders lay. In over twenty years' experience in handling copy I have only known one regular writer for ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... a troop if over exposed ground, into sheltered places. It is true that cavalry cannot hide themselves over exposed ground as infantry can, but they have one advantage that nothing can deprive them of—rapidity of motion; and the distance that would take them say 10 seconds to traverse, viz., 150 yards, would take ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... he grew older, in appearance anyhow, with exceptional rapidity; his face grew leaner and his beard, which he continued to shave, was ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... at the irreligious manner in which the priests at Rome read mass. They hurry through the performance with incredible rapidity. They crowd each other away from the altar in their haste to get their performance finished. "Hurry, hurry! Begone! Come away!" he hears them calling to one-another. Sometimes two priests are reading mass ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... went on eating again, and after a time I saw his hand steal slowly to the bread, his eyes fixed on mine, and he snatched the piece and conveyed it to his mouth with a motion that was wonderful from its rapidity. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... exertions, and the rapidity of their fire was sensibly increased. The effect was soon perceptible in the rebel ranks; for the right of the line, probably supposing a company, if not a whole regiment, of sharp-shooters was concealed in the covert, suddenly broke and fled ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... classmate are confirmed by Dr. Harrison, chairman of the Faculty, who remarks that the poet was a great favorite with his fellow-students, and was noted for the remarkable rapidity with which he prepared his recitations and for their accuracy, his translations from the modern languages ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... dressed Montauran in Chouan clothes with that amazing rapidity that belongs only to women. As soon as Marie saw her husband loading the gun Francine had brought in she slipped hastily from the room with a sign to her faithful maid. Francine then took the marquis to the dressing-room adjoining the bed-chamber. The young man seeing a large ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... there are quantities of these creatures in this ship. It is believed that they are only in the scantling or upper wood-work. It is to be hoped that this may be so; for they devour timber with wonderful rapidity, and ships have been lost by their eating ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... dropping all, absented himself thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages, and audibly refusing to be comforted. "Great Scott! what is that?" cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon. "That," said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... situation for some moments, the lights coming nearer with astonishing rapidity. At length another light showed away to the south and west, but not such a light ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... commenced in earnest. The venison pasties of Margaret's make disappeared with a truly marvellous rapidity, while Dorothy's confections had a very short lease of life, and fared no better, either because they were nice or that Dorothy was ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... the hill we descended with extreme rapidity—down, down into a valley which sent up a damp, oppressive atmosphere. Through the trees I could see one lovely ball of deep, rich red, painting the earth as it sank in a beauty exquisite beyond all else. Four men met us, stared suspiciously, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... more rapidly than otherwise he could. This latter case is what actually occurs; and Dr. Ebbinghaus has found that syllables originally separated by as many as seven intermediaries still reveal, by the increased rapidity with which they are learned in order, the strength of the tie that the original learning established between them, over the heads, so to speak, of all the rest. It may be that this particular series of experiments is the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... seventy miles was passed in three hours; a rapid journey, but agreeable merely by its rapidity, for the whole neighbourhood presents only widely-extended plains, turf-bogs and moorlands, sandy places and heaths, interspersed with a little meadow or arable land. From the nature of the soil, the water in the ditches and fields looked ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... on every kind of scale as to magnitude, with the same regularity and perseverance. The tear that falls from childhood's cheek is globular, through the efficacy of that same law of mutual attraction of particles which made the sun and planets round. The rapidity of Mercury is quicker than that of Saturn, for the same reason that, when we wheel a ball round by a string and make the string wind up round our fingers, the ball always flies quicker and quicker as the string is shortened. Two eddies in a stream, as has been stated, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... time were too meagre to enable a sharp line to be drawn between these two great classes of variability. Since Darwin's time evidence, which proves the correctness of his view, has accumulated with increasing rapidity. Fluctuations constitute one type; they are never absent and follow the law of chance, but they do not afford the material from which to build new species. Mutations, on the other hand, only happen to occur from time to time. They do ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... south or north, according to the period of year, keep the repair gangs busy by flying against the wires and causing short circuits through their dead bodies. Woodpeckers eat away the wooden cross-pieces on the iron towers with disheartening rapidity. The company is philanthropically inclined toward its employees. Even the peons are given two weeks' vacation on full pay, during which many rent a patch of land on the mountainside to plant with corn. A savings bank system is maintained, strict sanitation ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... movement in this country affords a striking illustration at once of the almost startling rapidity with which innovating ideas as to the regulation of life gain acceptance, and of the fact that this rapidity is by no means conclusive proof that their progress will be continuous. The one thing clear is that there is ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... her bosom with wonderful rapidity and dexterity, and rose to her feet. But Rose just saw her conceal something, and resolved to find out quietly what it was. So she said nothing about it, but asked Josephine what on earth she ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... distance. The horses, still weak from the effects of the long sea voyage, suffered severely from the strain. Five indeed actually died of exhaustion, and all were so weary that during the engagement of the 23rd, the artillery was unable to move with any degree of rapidity. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... making, while her hands clutched her throat, a guttural noise. Then she would throw herself on her back and thrust her arms and legs about to the no small danger of those around her. Then becoming comparatively quiet and supine she would quiver all over while her eyelids trembled with great rapidity. This state perhaps would be followed by general convulsive movements in which she would put herself into the most grotesque postures and make the most unlovely grimaces. At last the fit ended, and exhausted and in tears she was put ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... hereafter perplex the choice and excite the wonder of the historian.—Removed from the great scene of intrigues, we are little acquainted with them—we begin to suffer almost before we begin to conjecture, and our solicitude to examine causes is lost in the rapidity with ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... also the marks and uses of the different kinds of ammunition, the systems of "spotting" and "range-finding." Every gun had its officer crew and the rapidity of fire was recorded. Each man in turn was chosen to give the necessary orders and to judge the ranges and deflections. In this way not only was the practical work learned by heart, but also the theory of naval gunnery, so far as it related to the ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... absentmindedly practised the art of withholding money from customers, a source of income to them. They played with coins, pitched them into the air, palmed them, made them appear and disappear with marvellous rapidity. Some of them sat on stools along the counter eating pie and drinking cups ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... brother and thy son? Would that restore my own to me? No. Instead of them, I will put thee to death, therefore come on!" Accordingly both simultaneously bent their bows, and shot their arrows with the utmost rapidity; but whilst Rustem's made no impression, those of Isfendiyar's produced great effect on the champion and his horse. So severely was Rakush wounded, that Rustem, when he perceived how much his favorite ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous |
