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Tonic   Listen
noun
Tonic  n.  
1.
(Phon.) A tonic element or letter; a vowel or a diphthong.
2.
(Mus.) The key tone, or first tone of any scale.
3.
(Med.) A medicine that increases the strength, and gives vigor of action to the system.
Tonic sol-fa (Mus.), the name of the most popular among letter systems of notation (at least in England), based on key relationship, and hence called "tonic." Instead of the five lines, clefs, signature, etc., of the usual notation, it employs letters and the syllables do, re, mi, etc., variously modified, with other simple signs of duration, of upper or lower octave, etc. See Sol-fa.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tonic" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the great tonic forces of the nineteenth century, was also most interested in spiritual growth. He specially emphasized the gospel of work as the only agency that could develop the atmosphere necessary for such growth, and, though deeply religious, he cared little ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... page and showed her the tapering goddesses of the straight front, the tooth-powder, the camera, the breakfast-food, the massage-cream, and the hair-tonic. ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... the lounge and Delia kneeling beside her. On the floor was an empty bottle bearing a death's head and cross-bones and "strychnine" upon its label. She herself had bought it on their physician's prescription, as a tonic for Mrs. Marne, only ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... the muscles in their action, by keeping up a tonic pressure on their surface. It aids materially in the circulation of the fluids, in opposition to the laws of gravity. In the palm of the hand and sole of the foot, it is a powerful protection to the structures that enter into the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... majority of them; two or three sweet children are born to them, and after that there appears to be no further use for them, as far as this world is concerned. Can nothing be done to strengthen their constitutions? Would a tonic be of any help to them? Not the customary tonic, I don't mean, the sort of tonic merely intended to make gouty old gentlemen feel they want to buy a hoop, but the sort of tonic for which it was ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... must be going mad, or at all events growing into an idiot, and you can't think how wretched and despairing it makes me. Do you think medicine—tonic or anything of that sort—would do ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... were soon stowed away for the day. As the reveille hour is too early for breakfast, coffee and hard-tack is served out by each mess cook. The coffee is minus milk, but it is hot and palatable, and really acts as a tonic. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... fix," remarked the Professor, his calm, dry voice acting like a tonic in that moment of fear. "If we try to go up, the cable would probably break. If we try to outlast the patience of this thing we might run out of air, or ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... line at last. For the first time in their little lives they will learn the meaning of discipline, and fresh air, and esprit de corps. Isn't that worth a war? If the present scrap can only be prolonged for another year, our country will receive a tonic which will carry it on for another century. Think of it! Great Britain, populated by men who have actually been outside their own parish; men who know that the whole is greater than the part; men who are too wide awake ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... and vegetable; it is certain to add vigor to adults, while it cannot by any possibility injure even a child. The fact that it was used in the days of the famous Harrison family is proof positive of its merits as it so thoroughly withstood the test of time. As a tonic and revivifer it is simply wonderful. It has relieved the agony of the stomach in thousands of cases; soothed the tired nerves; produced peaceful sleep and averted the coming on of a mania more to be dreaded than ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... Malcolm, do not say any more; it was very wrong of nurse to put these ideas in your head. You know mother spoke to Dr. Armstrong, and he is giving me a tonic; he says I must go out more, so mother is trying to spare me all ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... was feeling better because of the little draught of Sweet Face Tonic, and she was even humming a tune under her breath when she stepped down on to the platform. She stepped daintily along with her pretty head held up saucily and her skirts a-flutter. It wasn't so bad, after all, once off that ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... has got a lot of little chickens and the jonquils are in bloom. The sun is as warm as June, but I'm shivering all the time, and Miss Katherine says she don't understand me. She gave me a tonic to make me eat more. I don't want to ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher

... amulet which will turn the outward sorrow into joy. The bitter water will still be given me to drink, but it will be filtered water, out of which God will strain all the poison, though He leaves plenty of the bitterness in it; for bitterness is a tonic. The evil that is in the evil will be taken out of it, in the measure in which we make God our Refuge, and 'all will be right that seems most wrong' when we recognise it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... He had a sense of vacancy and dull-mindedness, a welcome feeling, to be sure, compared with his sensations of the night, when the procession of images passed through his brain. Nevertheless, the strong, moist, tonic wind, the taste of salt on his lips refreshed him. He shivered a little, and sat with his head sunk in the upturned collar of his overcoat. Presently he began ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... grandfathers, would have sat over half the night, and been pulled out from under the table in the morning perchance. I am not abnormally partial to the pleasures of the table, but I have found a good dinner in combination with first-rate port, rationally dealt with, an excellent tonic for ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... the land of the Gosh The Ogs, they continued to come, With buttons and hooks, and medical books, And rotary engines, and rum, Large cases with labels, occasional tables, Hair tonic and fiddles and 'phones; And the Glugs, while copncealing their joy in the dealing, Paid promptly in nothing but stones. Why, it was screamingly Laughable, seemingly—- Asking for nothing ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis

... they've been doing, but I know I get less money all the time! It's the New Haven, George, that P'pa left me two years ago. I can't understand anything about it, but yesterday I was talking to a young man who advised me to put all my money into some tonic stock. It's a tonic made just of plain earth—he says it makes everything grow. Doesn't it sound reasonable? But if I should lose all I have, I'm afraid I'd really wear my welcome out, Genevieve, dear. So perhaps ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... I paused upon the doorstep for a minute, enjoying the cool drops upon by upturned face, the tonic sharpness of the keen east wind; then slipped my key into the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... to bear with equanimity the suspension of one's daily habits. You are certainly wise, if you find it suits you, to secure the morning for writing. Personally my mind is not at its best then; it is dulled and weakened by sleep, and it requires the tonic of routine work and bodily exercise before it ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... you think of this for a misanthropical man, Mr. Olmney? there's a better tonic to be found in the woods than in any remedies ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... There had been a tonic in a certain attitude of Cater's mind toward Justin—an unspoken kindliness and admiration and tenderness such as an older man who has been along a hard road may feel toward another who has come along the same way. Cater's kind, unobtrusive comradeship, the fair-dealing friendliness ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... asks whether the readers that now are write such generous, such encouraging things to the makers of tales, as the readers of twenty years ago! If not, I cannot but think it is a loss. For praise is a great tonic, and helps most people to ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... might be spared. Marjorie protested, saying that she was not ill; but as the summer days came, she did not grow stronger. Then a physician was called; who pronounced the malady nervous exhaustion, prescribed a tonic—cheerful society, sea bathing, horseback riding—and said ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... Emotions—Tonic and Poisonous. All this is most important because of one vital fact; joyful emotions invigorate, and sorrowful emotions depress; pleasurable emotions stimulate, and painful emotions burden; satisfying emotions revitalize, and unsatisfying emotions ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... you're sick with something chronic, And you think you need a tonic, Do something. There is life and health in doing, There is pleasure in pursuing; Doing, then, is health ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... a foreigner's broken shrug,—a shrug of sufficiently correct construction, but wanting the tonic accent, as one may say, though expressing, however imperfectly, an ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... sabracia, which is not found in Ducange, or other glossaries of debased Latinity. Mr. Halliwell gives "Sabras, salve, plaster;" but he cites no authority. It appears, however, rather to signify a tonic or astringent solution than a salve. I have hitherto found it only in the following passage (Sloane MS. 73., f. 211., late xv. sec.) in a recipe for making "cheuerel lether of perchemyne." The directions are, that it be "basked to and ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various

... work is as bracing, as tonic, as instinct with the spirit of vigorous youth, as the mountain air which has never before been breathed. Woodberry well says: "He created lasting pictures of human life, some of which have the eternal outline and pose of a Theocritean idyl. The supreme ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wine agreeable to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; every other kind of wine would be bad for her. Never allow her to drink water alone; if ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... range Beyond their seeming scope, How tonic were the words, how strange, Cheer up! Use ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang

... Hillary was called in. Anne laughed: there was nothing the matter with her, she said, and her throat was better; she had strained it perhaps. The doctor was a wise doctor; his professional visits were spent in gossip; and as to medicine, he sent her a tonic, and told her to take it or not as she pleased. Only time, he said to Mrs. Ashton—she would be all right in time; the summer ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... odor of the pines, combined with the fresh woodsy fragrance, is like a tonic. Just ahead of us we see a growth of manzanitas, with their smooth purple-brown bark and pinkish white flowers in crowded clusters, standing out vividly against the background of oaks and firs, and we sink knee-deep amid the ferns ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... proved a tonic to the boys. If a firing line of veteran soldiers can be heartened, surely the spirit and courage of orphan waifs needed fortifying against the coming winter. The elements have laughed at the hopes and ambitions of a conqueror, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... manuscripts of the Gospels, the work has been recognized as the precious life-blood of a master spirit. An adequate English translation would constitute to-day a most valuable vade mecum of devotional feeling and of religious inspiration. It would prove a strong moral tonic to hundreds of minds now ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... came from Salonika. Unfortunately it had been doing duty in a fever-stricken area and malaria had weakened its ranks. A little while before the autumn operations began, as many as 3000 of its men were down at one time with malaria, but care and tonic of the battle pulled the ranks together, and the Irish Division, a purely Irish division, campaigned up to the glorious traditions of their race. They worked like gluttons with rifle and spade, and their pioneer ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... shown me by some, who have perhaps overstepped kindness and justice in their sorrowful wrath at my renunciation of Materialism and Atheism. So far as health was concerned, the lecturing acted as a tonic. My chest had always been a little delicate, and when I consulted a doctor on the possibility of my standing platform work, he answered, "It will either kill you or cure you." It entirely cured the lung weakness, and I grew strong and vigorous instead of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... neighbors, they hurried away, the boys keeping in a cluster around the farmer. If any of the scouts began to feel twinges in the muscles of their legs, already hard pushed, they valiantly fought against betraying the weakness. Besides, the excitement acted as a tonic upon them, and seemed to lend them additional powers of endurance, just as it does in foot races where the ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... the leading physician of the vicinity, and a man of considerable experience and ability, called at Jennie's request and suggested a few simple things—hot milk, a wine tonic, rest, but he told Jennie that she must not expect too much. "You know he is quite well along in years now. He is quite feeble. If he were twenty years younger we might do a great deal for him. As it is he is quite well off where ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... breeze is the best tonic I can prescribe," exclaimed the doctor, eyeing Mrs. Verne with close study, "but this one ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... to Dunore, having gained nothing by his London trip but a little of that bitter though salutary tonic called experience. His resolve did not waver—nay, it became his day-dream; but manifold obstacles occurred in the attempt to realize it. Family pride was one of the most stubborn; and not until all hope from home resources ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... at ten thousand times the cost of the production before the first-nighters had even seen a press notice. There would not have been a piece of paper in the house except the Press and the Princes. By the sacred substance of John D. Rockefeller's hair-tonic, I hate to think of the money we would have made with the movies! The Crown Prince giving the Papa Wilhelm kiss, while the trap man plays on the melodeon 'It's the Wrong Way to Tickle Mary,' and the Ghost of the Hohenzollern, who ate ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... being used is rolled between leaves on which a little lime is spread. The flavour is astringent and produces excessive expectoration, and, by its irritation, gives to the tongue and lips a curious bright pink colour. Still, it is considered an excellent stomach tonic, and so far as one can judge has no worse effect than to blacken ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly

... him to do so in a flash by presenting to his jaundiced gaze what, on consideration, he decided was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. 'When a man's afraid,' shrewdly sings the bard, 'a beautiful maid is a cheering sight to see'. In the present instance the sight acted on George like a tonic. He forgot that the lady to whom an injudicious management had assigned the role of heroine in Fate's Footballs invariably—no doubt from the best motives—omitted to give the cynical roue his cue for the big speech in Act III His mind no longer dwelt on the fact ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... book he told her about." He had prescribed a course of light literature for Miss Quincey and seemed to think it necessary to supply his own drugs. To be sure he brought a great many medicines that you cannot get made up at the chemist's, insight, understanding, sympathy, the tonic of his own virile youth; and Heaven only knows if these things were not ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... the need for Home Rule stronger and more urgent. They will realise that Ireland requires not a material, but a moral cure to give her the full value of the new reforms. Her need is to be removed once and for all from the class of dependent communities. She wants the great tonic cure of self-reliance ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender

... Then, the vision of a beautiful woman with a strange rose-scarlet dress, in whose eyes sorrow struggled with mocking laughter, once again assailed him. Who she might be, and what her history, he most emphatically knew not; yet that she breathed a keener and more tonic air than that to which he was habituated, that feelings in her case did not stand for actions, or suppositions for fact, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... the service, the blacks gazed apprehensively at the dark line on the water, above which rolled and tumbled the racing clouds. The first breath of the wind, faint and silken, tonic with life, fanned through his dry-baked body as he finished reading. Then came the second breath of the wind, an angry gust, as the shovels worked rapidly, filling in the sand. So heavy was the gust that Sheldon, still on his feet, seized hold of his man-horse to escape being blown away. The ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... balance of the emotions," I answered. "Anything soft, and tender, and touching, makes you more sensitive. A person like Miss Daltrey acts as a tonic; bitter, perhaps, but invigorating." ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... with the exception of her parents, any relatives outside the family circle. Then alone will she be able to go through this existence in peace and in quiet.' No one heeded the nonsensical talk of this raving priest; but here am I, up to this very day, dosing myself with ginseng pills as a tonic." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... over from the mainland and chaffed Danny about his pup and told him to play in the sun and drink plenty of milk and not to fret about school this year. I waylaid him privately and asked if there was anything I could get or do—a tonic, a change. He patted my shoulder and said, "Land t'goodness, no! That youngun's been a-dying ever since I borned him, fourteen years ago. He warn't meant for ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... being aware of it. There may be other professions which call for a fiercer display of energy, but for the man with a private income who has loitered through life at his own pace, a little school-mastering is brisk enough to be a wonderful tonic. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... with noxious fumes and germs of disease. He breathed deeply of the pure air bearing the sweet perfume of the forest and the refreshing smell of the salt sea. It filled his lungs like a life-giving tonic. How glorious ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... to see her, though he found her looking not so well as at Grand Isle, and he advised a tonic. He talked a good deal on various topics, a little politics, some city news and neighborhood gossip. He spoke with an animation and earnestness that gave an exaggerated importance to every syllable he uttered. His wife was keenly interested in everything he said, laying down her fork the better ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... had been recently treated to an unfriendly presentation of the woman's rights movement and its advocates. I was too ill at the time to leave home, but the difference between my anxious efforts three years before to be heard, and this more than cordial assurance of a waiting audience, was a happy tonic. It was from persons who knew me only through my advocacy of woman's equality, and evidenced the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... to the British soldier a tonic, and when Wellington drew up his lines in challenge of battle to his pursuer, on the great hill of Busaco, his red-coated soldiery were at least full of a grim satisfaction. One of the combatants has described the diverse aspects of the two hosts on the night before the fight. "The French were ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... small cascade, into a pool of clear water about three feet deep. A ledge enabled them to reach the cascade, where they could drink the water as it fell. How cool and refreshing it tasted! They all felt wonderfully invigorated; and the doctor owned that, under their circumstances, no tonic medicine he could have given them would have a more beneficial effect. The rock extended some way down on the opposite side of the stream, and the path they had pursued appeared to be the only one by which the pool could ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... duty. I'll give Honore the details as to diet; no physic; but my prescription to you is, Get up and get out. Never mind the risk of rough handling; they can but kill you, and you will die anyhow if you stay here." He rose. "I'll send you a chalybeate tonic; or—I will leave it at Frowenfeld's to-morrow morning, and you can call there and get it. It will give you ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... hawthorn-blossoms as you pass along the hedges, and catching at the wild rose and honeysuckle; and when you get into the meadows there is stir enough in the air to lighten the dead weight of the sun. The Roman air, however, is not a tonic medicine, and it seldom suffers exercise to be all exhilarating. It has always seemed to me indeed part of the charm of the latter that your keenest consciousness is haunted with a vague languor. Occasionally ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... the separate study of the succession of facts of a single species, specialists have been enabled to ascertain the regular recurrence of the same successions of facts, and these results have been expressed in formulae which are sometimes called laws (for example, the law of the tonic accent); these are never more than empirical laws which merely indicate successions of facts without explaining them, for they do not reveal the efficient cause. But specialists, influenced by a natural metaphor, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... headaches, and as a heart stimulant and diuretic. Theobromine is similar in action, but has the advantage for certain cases, that it has much less effect on the central nervous system, and for this reason it is a very valuable medicine for sufferers from heart dropsy, and as a tonic for senile heart. That its medicinal properties are appreciated is shown by its price: during 1918 the retail price was about 8 shillings an ounce, from which we can calculate that every pound of cocoa contained ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... fat and young, and it was but the work of a moment to dress it and hang it up on a tree. Then I fried some slices of bacon, made myself a cup of coffee, and Jerrine and I sat on the ground and ate. Everything smelled and tasted so good! This air is so tonic that one gets delightfully hungry. Afterward we watered and restaked "Jeems," I rolled some logs on to the fire, and then we sat and enjoyed ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for us and the others. But his life was a good deal sounder than mine or Kate's—and one could picture him taking extra care of it for the joke of keeping us waiting. I always felt that the sight of our hungry eyes was a tonic to him. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... though it had long lain dormant; and as it seemed to please him to hear her chat away in unconstrained fashion, chat she did, with such an accompaniment of sparkling eyes, waving hands, and sunny smiles, as was a positive tonic to behold. She told stories of her own adventures or misadventures, which Mr Vanburgh capped by remembrances of his own boyhood; they compared notes as to their mutual sensations at critical moments, and so sympathetic did they appear, that the girl was ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... like a tonic, and her face was full of gratitude as she bade him goodnight, and turned to confer with Frank. Carroll stood by the reporters' tables, irresolutely, until presently Silvia beckoned her. The two women exchanged looks which were enigmatical to Frank, but evidently perfectly intelligible ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... unhealthy, my dear Mrs. Weare! Believe me, the air has often quite a tonic quality. We are so high, you must remember. If only we could subdue in some degree the noxious exhalations of domestic and industrial chimneys!—Oh, I assure you, Islington has every natural ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... life. Some years ago, on a business trip for our company—not cavalry, insurance,—I went several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick, of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and houses had utterly vanished; a solitary "store," as transient as a toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... select thirteen from which parts should be read. Does not this prove that the stimulus of the one sex upon the other would act rather favorably than otherwise upon the profession? and would not the very best tonic that could be given to the individual be to pique his amour propre by the danger of being excelled by one of the opposite sex? Is not this natural? and would not this be the best and the surest reformation of humanity and its social ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska

... mir behagt ist nur die muntre Jagd, during their distribution among the church cantatas, Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt and Man singet mit Freuden vom Sieg. The fine bass aria, "Ein Fuerst ist seines Landes Pan," was obviously ill-proportioned, with its breakneck return to the tonic and its perfunctory close; and Bach's chief concern in adapting it for its place as the aria, "Du bist geboren mir zu Gute," in Also hat Gott, was to remedy this defect. On the other hand, the use of the delightful ritornello for violoncello from the little aria, "Weil die wollenreichen Heerden," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... customs of the natives of Jeddah, he says:—"It is the almost universal custom for everybody to swallow a cup full of ghee or melted butter in the morning. After this they take coffee, which they regard as a strong tonic; and they are so accustomed to this habit from their earliest years, that they feel greatly inconvenienced if they discontinue it. The higher classes are satisfied with drinking the cup of butter, but the lower classes add another half cup, which ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... the brain craves thought, as the stomach does food; and where it is not properly supplied it will feed on garbage. Where a Latin, geometry, or history lesson would be a healthy tonic, or nourishing food, the trashy, exciting story, the gossiping book of travels, the sentimental poem, or, still worse, the coarse humor or thin-veiled vice of the low romance, fills up the hour—and is at best but tea or slops, if not as dangerous as opium or whisky. Lord ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... dirty off-white jacket. He also had the half-obsequious, half-insulting manner Dave had found most people expected from their barbers. While he shaved and trimmed Dave, he made insultingly solicitous comments about Dave's skin needing a massage, suggested a tonic for thinning hair and practically insisted on a singe. Ser Perth watched with a mixture of intentness and amusement. The barber trimmed the tufts from over Dave's ears and clipped the hair in his nose, while a tray was pushed up and a slatternly ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey

... would be well deserving of a niche in the temple of fame, and stock-feeders would ever regard him as a benefactor to his own and the bovine species; but I fear that Mr. Thorley's imagination outstripped his reason when he described in such glowing terms the wonderful virtues of his tonic food. ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... than alive. I'm goin' to give 'er a hail, see? When I sez to myself, 'Bill,' I sez, 'put out to sea; you're amongst Kaffirs, Bill.' It occurred to me as old Kwen Lung might wonder 'ow much I knew. So I beat it. But when I got in the open air I felt I'd never make my lodgin's without a tonic. That's 'ow I come to meet ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... hundred yards, and I followed him. I there saw my antagonist; a tall, handsome young man, but with a countenance of such dejection that he might have sat for the picture of despair. It was clear that his case was one for which there was no tonic, but what the wits of the day called a course of steel. Beside him stood a greyhaired old figure, of a remarkably intelligent countenance, though stooped slightly with age. He was introduced to me as General Deschamps; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... similar pattern stood for 'Government of the People, For the People, By the People'; for it must obviously be that, unless it were 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' His shrewdness would perhaps be a little shaken if he knew that the triad stood for 'Tang Tonic To-day; Tang Tonic To-morrow; Tang Tonic All the Time.' He will soon identify a restless ribbon of red lettering, red hot and rebellious, as the saying, 'Give me liberty or give me death.' He will fail to identify it as the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... tonic, astringent, detergent, and anti-scorbutic. Employed in scrofula, Leprosy, cutaneous diseases, and purigo, and ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope

... copses, may be nothing; but it takes the tone out of the mind, and engenders discontent, making one long for the tropics; it feeds the weakened imagination on palm-leaves and the lotus. Before we know it we become demoralized, and shrink from the tonic of the sudden change to sharp weather, as the steamed hydropathic patient does from the plunge. It is the insidious temptation that assails us when we are braced up to profit by the invigorating ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Sunday morning with a partially developed attack of indigestion and a thoroughly developed "grouch." The indigestion was due to an injudicious partaking of light refreshment—sandwiches, ice cream and sarsaparilla "tonic"—at the club the previous evening. Simeon Baker had paid for the refreshment, ordering the supplies sent in from Mr. Chris Badger's store. Simeon had received an unexpected high price for cranberries shipped to New York, and was in consequence "flush" and reckless. He appeared at the club at ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... stenographer; over his head hung the bulb of an electric light, its green circular shade throwing the white rays directly down on his open notebook. The girl was once more in the working world, and its bracing air acted as a tonic to her overwrought nerves. All longings and regrets had been put off with the Paris-made gown which the maid at that moment was carefully packing away. The order of nature seemed reversed; the butterfly had abandoned ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... sign," he said, unaware that the faintness of his voice drew the heads of his listeners closer. "The cold weather will be a tonic. It's a hard job to work the tropics out of one's blood. But I'm beginning to shape up now for the Kuskokeem. In the spring, Polly, we start with the dogs, and you'll see the midnight sun. How your mother would have liked the trip. She was a game one. Forty ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... in you, as in every one, every man, woman, girl, and boy, that requires the tonic life of the wild. You may not know it, many do not, but there is a part of your nature that only the wild can reach, satisfy, and develop. The much-housed, overheated, overdressed, and over-entertained life of most girls is artificial, ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... another was occupied in working out mathematical tables;—for these Fathers observe the stars, and are in scientific correspondence with astronomers in Europe. This circumstance gave us real pleasure on their account,—for science, in all its degrees, is a positive good, and a mental tonic of the first importance. Earnestly did we, in thought, commend it to those wearied minds which have undergone the dialectic dislocations, the denaturalizations of truth and of thought, which enable rational men to become first Catholics and then Jesuits. For let there be no illusions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... illustrating his views with very good wood-cuts derived from the atlases of Wilson, Neligan, and Dendy. In many cases he believes constitutional debility to be the primary difficulty, and recommends a tonic regimen as the best preliminary to a course ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... said Napoleon. "In times of peace if a man needs a tonic you give him iron, and it builds him up; but in war if you give the troops iron it bowls 'em down. Look at those Austrians; they've got nervous prostration ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... it can scarcely be kept within bounds will receive as much as one that is slow and feeble in its development. This is worse than waste. Each vine should be treated in accordance with its condition and habit of growth. What would be thought of a physician who ordered a tonic for an entire family, giving as much to one who might need depleting, as to another who, as country people say, was "puny and ailin'?" With even an assortment of half a dozen varieties we shall find after the first good start that some need a curb, ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... lassitude, a languor, th't your pills c'ld hardly aid; In short, they're rather violent for th's, I am afraid. I have a tincture—" Said ye first, "Your tincture cannot touch A case as difficult as th's, my pills are better much." "Your pills, sir, are too violent." "Your tonic is too weak." "As I have said, sir, in th's case—" "Permit me, sir, to speak." And so they argued long and high, and on, and on, and on, Until they lost their tempers, and an hour or more had gone. But long before their arguments ye question ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle

... offices built under Queen Anne, the library added in the days of the Georges, had by some alchemy become one. Peace and long memories were in every line of it, and that air of a home which belongs only to places that have been loved for generations. It breathed ease and comfort, but yet had a tonic vigour in it, for while it stood knee-deep in the green valley its head was fanned by ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... an evening of March, 1521, a calm and pleasant evening, with the perfume of flowers mixed with the tonic tang of the ocean, birds flying and monkeys chattering in the wood, and a gentle surf whispering upon the beach. Amambar was walking on the shore alone. He had gone there to watch the gambols of the mermaids, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... you like, but tonic. This view will suit our mood. For we shall be making and the makers of history will become more real to us. Instead of urging that issues are inevitable, instead of being swamped by problems that are unavoidable, we may stand up ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... reaching the wharf about noon, chartered that fast-sailing clipper, the "Fly-by-night," to convey me to Port Royal. The jabber of the black boatmen and the exhilarating sensation of being once more afloat had quite a tonic effect upon my spirits, which rose higher and higher as we tore down past the Palisades, the boat careening gunwale-to, with the hissing, sparkling foam seething past and trailing away in ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... of course, certain basic and fundamental reasons for white leadership that I need not elaborate. For one thing, there is the tonic air of democratic ideals in which long generations of white men have lived and developed as contrasted with the stifling absolutism of the East. There is also our emphasis upon the worth of the Individual, our conception of the sacredness of personality, as compared with the ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... it. "Well, I'm—the thieving brute!" Humour lurked in his voice—more tonic than sympathy; yet in a sense, more upsetting. Her tragedy had its vein of the ludicrous; and at his hint of it, tears trembled into laughter; laughter into tears. The impact unsteadied her afresh; and she covered her ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... the morning was! "The leaves were newly washed, every flower refreshed, their colors. flashing with brighter tints like new dyes just put on." How pure the air was made! There was no contamination by smoke or dust and the very breeze came like a tonic, and we breathed deeply and thanked the Creator for each potent draught. There was an exuberance of joy in the dance of the waves as they came rolling in to shore, and the swaying branches of the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... alteratives, he had also to deplete himself of blood three times a week by a dozen or twenty leeches behind his left ear and on his temple. All this softens and relaxes the heart towards others, as a good tonic will ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... the chapel morning and evening every Sunday, and the business of religious edification is very peacefully conducted. There is a moderate choir in the chapel, and a small harmonium: The singing is conducted on the tonic sol fa principle, and it seems to suit Mr. William Toulmin, brother of the owner of the chapel, preaches every Sunday, and has done so, more or less, from its opening. He gets nothing for the job, contributes his share towards the church expenses as well, and is satisfied. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... know you'll be gettin' run down, an' I'll be havin' to brew some dandelion bitters for you." She came to an abrupt stop half-way between the oven and the kitchen table, a bowl and spoon poised in her hand. "I ain't sure but it's time to brew you somethin' anyway," she announced. "You ain't had a tonic fur quite a spell an' mebbe 'twould do ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... assured her from his medical experience that "lots of women need a little tonic," and boisterously ordered a glass of ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis



Words linked to "Tonic" :   club soda, invigorating, atonic, tonus, c, seltzer, quinine water, bracer, tonic solfa, music, medicine, quinine, medicinal drug, note, physiology, refreshful, musical note, soda, restorative, refreshing, tonal



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