"Balancing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... covered every part of the forward deck, and even the sides and bulwarks, from the selvage of the approaching flames to the bowsprit-end. Some had gone out even farther, and could be seen swarming like bees and balancing their bodies on the jib-boom. In fact, but for its awful character, the scene suggested the hiving of bees that had crowded every leaf and twig upon ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... disentangle its difficulties, and pursue it to the end. That is the result of continuous training, and of this she had had none. Ideas passed through her mind with great rapidity, but they were spontaneous, and consequently disconnected, so that in difficulty the path was chosen without any balancing of the reasons on this and on the other side, which, forced the conclusion that it was the ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... balancing her bargains with the Majesty of heaven, posting up the entries to her credit, strictly keeping her set-off, and claiming her due. She was only remarkable in this, for the force and emphasis with which she did it. Thousands upon thousands ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... said Furlong, snappishly; "dwive there!" and, hastily pulling up the glass, he threw himself back again in the carriage. Another troubled vision of what the secretary would say came across him, and, after ten minutes' balancing the question, and trembling at the thoughts of an official blowing up, he thought he had better even venture on an Irish squire; so the check-string was again pulled, and the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... you did not envy him his trade, you had to envy him his throne. He was a man you would have liked to meet at dinner, not for the sake of his conversation, but for the sake of his uniqueness. One remembers how one stood with heart in mouth as he set out with his balancing-pole in his hand on his journey across the rope blindfolded and pretending to stumble every ten yards. A single false step and he would have fallen from the height of a tower to certain death, for there was no net to catch ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... secret of all art, and therefore of all education, is the nice balancing of the generic with the special or the individual. Coleridge says "this is the true meaning of the ideal in art." False culture, by the emphasis laid upon peculiarities of race, sex, or families, develops these peculiarities ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... on hand at the time this estimate was made of the value of $4.50—the amount on hand much more than balancing a little grass which I did not raise. All things considered, that is considering the importance of a man's soul and of to-day, notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly even because of its transient character I believe that that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... bale tested and sealed with the Government stamp or "coket" seal. The collectors, of whom there were two in every important port, were clerical officers rather than coast guards—their most arduous duty the preparing and balancing of the accounts which had to be written by their own hands. Their salary was twenty pounds a year each. The controller, who was intended as a check on the collectors, prepared and presented an independent account to the Exchequer. He seems to have had ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... balancing herself at the crest of a high pile of ice. "What's all that black a little way over there to the left? It's not like ice. Do you suppose it could be ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... just drawn my bow, and was taking my aim, when Gabriel, passing me, made a signal to forbear, and rushing upon the thief, he kicked him in the back, just as he was balancing the saddles upon his head. The thief fell down, and attempted to struggle, but the prodigious muscular strength of Gabriel was too much for him; in a moment he laid half strangled and motionless. We bound him firmly hand and ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... prisoner had stood balancing himself, first on one foot, then on the other, with shoulders stooped and arms inert. Under the strongest light one could observe his extreme thinness, his hollow cheeks, his projecting cheek-bones, his earthen-colored ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... started.) It's exactly like the tail of a bird, and contracts and expands in every direction. Then besides that there are two wings, one on each side, and these can be used, if necessary, in case the screws go wrong, as propellers. But usually they are simply for balancing and gliding. You see, barring collisions, there's hardly the possibility of an accident. If one set of things fails, there's always something else to take its place. At the very worst, we can but be ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... their positions facing one another, a line being drawn or a long piece of rattan being placed on the ground beyond which no member of either party may pass. Matters are then discussed in the presence of such datus or persons of influence as may have been selected for that purpose and after balancing up blood and other debts, the leaders agree to make the payments at an appointed time and thereby put an end to the feud. As an evidence of their sincerity, they part between them a piece of green rattan.[27] Then beeswax[28] is burned. This is a kind of oath which serves to bind them ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Boers, which was very awkward for a lady. Luckily for herself, however, from constant practice, Jess could ride almost as well as though she had been trained to the ring, and was even capable of balancing herself without a pommel on a man's saddle, having often and often ridden round the farm in that fashion. So soon as the horses were ready she astonished John by clambering into the saddle of the older and steadier animal, placing her foot in the stirrup-strap and announcing that ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... of those heavenly luminaries that falls to our enjoyment! They merly form a beautiful canopy over our heads. It is true, their greatest use to us may be that of which we are mostly ignorant; in balancing systems &c. but yet we must have some knowledge of those benefits, before me can feel grateful for them. Dost thou wish to visit them? Dost thou desire to know more concerning them than thou canst know in this state? Calm and deliberate reason would say unto the, 'Be content, O vain ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... the rich to the level of the poor, was a dead leveller; and that, on the other hand, the life to come would raise the poor to the level of the rich. It was a pity that there was no phrase in the language to justify him in carrying out the antithesis, and so balancing his sentence like a rope-walker, by saying that life was a live leveller. The sermon ended with a solemn warning: "Those who neglect the gospel-scheme, and never think of death and judgment — be they rich or poor, be they wise or ignorant ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... of going, either," Eurie said, sitting on a stool, balancing her stockinged feet against Ruth's rocker. "Not that I mind the rain, or that it wouldn't be fun enough if I were not so dead tired. But I tell you, girls, I have had to work like a soldier to get ready, and having the care of such a set ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... replied, balancing himself on the edge of the hammock. "I am deeply touched by your solicitude for my welfare. I partook of tea at the Campions' half ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... violent; rushing even through crowded streets like an ill-trained dog; slovenly and disgusting in his manners; affected with spasmodic motions of the head and limbs; biting and scratching all who displeased him; and always, when at comparative rest, balancing his body like a wild animal in a menagerie. His senses were incapable of being affected by anything not appealing to his personal feelings: a pistol fired close to his head excited little or no emotion, yet he heard distinctly the cracking of a walnut, or the touch ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... said Archy, as Charles stood balancing the matter in his mind. And he took hold of his arm, and drew him in a direction opposite from the school. "Come! you are just the boy I want. I was thinking about you the ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... been drawn up with her stern to the shore, and the men were already in their places, some standing waiting for the order to shove off, and others seated balancing their oars. ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... verdigris of decay, was my diagnosis of old Dewey's ailment. He moved with a premeditation which nine times out of ten amounted to standing still; rest resulted from two opposing forces, Mrs. Dewey's beseeching and threats colliding with his will traveling against her purpose with counter-balancing velocity and mass. A hired man would have left her long ago under such tongue-lashing, but old Dewey could not leave, because to leave is an act. There were no verbs in his vocabulary comprehending possibilities of usefulness within range of the present tense. What ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... whose action instantly arrests his whole attention. By his wide curvature of wing, and sudden suspension in air, he knows him to be the Fish Hawk, settling over some devoted victim of the deep. His eye kindles at the sight, and balancing himself with half-opened wings, on the branch, he watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow from heaven, descends the distant object of his attention, the roar of its wings reaching the ear as it disappears in the deep, making the surges foam around. At this moment, the eager looks ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... then suddenly brightened. "Katy and Gertie haven't got a brother anyhow!" she said half aloud, balancing advantages. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... altogether disapprovingly, a manual check given to her saucy tongue. The little wretch had done her utmost to hurt her cousin's sensitive though uncultivated feelings, and a physical argument was the only mode he had of balancing the account, and repaying its effects on the inflictor. He afterwards gathered the books and hurled them on the fire. I read in his countenance what anguish it was to offer that sacrifice to spleen. I fancied that as they consumed, he recalled the pleasure they had already imparted, and the ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... a moment, a silent, shapeless figure in the cold air. "Pretty actions, I call it," said she then, quite loudly, and went out of the yard with a curious tilting motion on slender ankles, as of a balancing bale of wool. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... nothing short of one of the village merchants. Alice was not long in discovering her advantage, nor in deciding to avail herself of it, so far as to confine her election to one of these, her two undeclared lovers. And, after balancing a while in her mind the account between her judgment, which would have declared for the reserved but sterling Arthur, and her fancy, which clamored hard for the manly-looking and more social Mark, she finally ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... the other scale as many of the sacks of ducats sealed with the seal of Onucz as were necessary to establish an absolute equipoise between the two scales, and then while both the girl and the gold, balancing each other were floating in the air, old Onucz, his face beaming with triumph, poked Fatia Negra in the side with his elbows and said: "And now all ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... however, the Canadians had been withdrawn, and we left the salient with few regrets. But somewhere on the German side of our trench line there are thousands of graves of our fellow-countrymen, and when the time comes for the balancing of accounts we shall expect these to weigh heavy in ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... dies we have no more good wine," declared Ersten with conviction and a wave of his hand as Schoppenvoll approached them with an inordinately long-necked bottle, balancing it carefully on ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... or not to tell! She was still balancing her pen and the question when a firm tread crunched the gravel behind her, and turning she beheld a man advancing to ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... suits their scorching Throats. Their Fur and Peltry come in quick Return: My Scales are honest, but so well contriv'd, That one small Slip will turn Three Pounds to One; Which they, poor silly Souls! ignorant of Weights And Rules of Balancing, do not perceive. But here they come; you'll see how I proceed. Jack, is the Rum ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... people under him have been received by the Sovereigns and will be duly considered, but their Majesties have not time at the moment to go into them. That is the gist of it, and very cold cheer it is for the Admiral, balancing himself on this turbulent see-saw with anxious eyes turned to ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... silent. Perhaps the balancing of the footman's head occupied her mind. At any rate, no more was said till the sisters had reached their home. Then, at the last moment, when there was no time left for a reply, Eleonora cleared and steadied her ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fortifications in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate swing whose two uprights ended in real roses for ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the hermit demeaned himself much like a first-rate critic of the present day at a new opera. He reclined back upon his seat, with his eyes half shut; now, folding his hands and twisting his thumbs, he seemed absorbed in attention, and anon, balancing his expanded palms, he gently flourished them in time to the music. At one or two favourite cadences, he threw in a little assistance of his own, where the knight's voice seemed unable to carry the air so high as his worshipful taste approved. When the song was ended, the anchorite ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... scarred with the scratches of hard stones that once lay embedded in the feet of prehistoric glaciers, but Fisette, screwing his bushy brows over a tiny magnifying glass and peering at the sparkling fragments in his palm and balancing their weight, cared nothing for glaciers. He only knew he had found that which he had been seeking for more ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... and the mass of flesh behind. With an infinite and wonderful patience he waited, knowing that my life or death hung in the balance. While Jana held his foot over me, while he felt me with his trunk, still Hans waited, balancing the arguments for and against firing upon the scales of experience in his clever old mind, and in the end coming to ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... shepherds on the flat plains in the south of France use stilts to enable them to look over a wide stretch of country, and they become so expert in their use that they can travel twice as fast as an ordinary walker on foot. They carry a long pole for balancing purposes and to take soundings when ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... thistledown. They go through a great variety of charming posturings as they hunt for their food upon the blossoms and tender fresh twigs, now creeping like a nuthatch along the bark and peering into the crevices, now gracefully swaying and balancing like a goldfinch upon a slender, pendent stem. One little sprite pauses in its hunt for the insects to raise its pretty head and trill a short and ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... dawn, rising from the sea. In the right angle Selene, evening, sank from sight. Next to Helios was a figure representing either Dionysus or Olympus, and beside were seated two figures, perhaps Persephone and Demeter, perhaps two Horae. Approaching these as a messenger was Iris. Balancing these figures on the side next Selene were two figures, representing Aphrodite in the arms of Peitho, or perhaps Thalassa, goddess of the sea, leaning against Gaia, the earth. Nearer the centre on this side was Hestia, to whom Hermes brought the tidings. The central ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... the strong boxes had been bedded in sheet-iron was just behind the little sanctum, where the cashier was busy. Doubtless he was balancing his books. The open front gave a glimpse of a safe of hammered iron, so enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the modern inventor) that burglars could not carry it away. The door only opened at the pleasure of those who knew its password. The letter-lock was ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... futile negotiations Schiller worked with great zest upon 'Demetrius ',—reading, excerpting, examining maps and pictures, schematizing, balancing possibilities, and so forth. But again he was interrupted; first by an unusually severe illness, which brought him to death's door and left him for weeks in a condition of helpless languor, and then by the distractions incident to the arrival of the hereditary ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... conspicuous, and so do the bakers' carts; while light and neat American wagonettes glide rapidly along among less attractive vehicles. Now and then a Chinaman passes, with his peculiar shambling gait, with a pole across his shoulders balancing his baskets of "truck"; women with oranges and bananas for a penny apiece meet one at every corner, and still the sidewalks are so broad, and the streets so wide, that no one seems to be in the least incommoded. The fruit stores present a remarkable array of tempting fruits, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... in a distinct bold mottle; if the cooling is too rapid, a small crystal is obtained and the mottle is not distributed, resulting in either a small mottle, or no mottle at all, and merely a general coloration. In fact, the entire art of mottling soap consists in properly balancing the saline solutions and colouring matter, so that the latter is properly distributed throughout the soap, and does not either separate in coloured masses at the bottom of the frame, or uniformly ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... saw the empty expanse of ice before her. She leaped to her feet, balancing herself with difficulty, for her head was still dizzy ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... obvious that M. Guizot has applied the most banal platitudes of French parliamentary debate to English history, believing he has thereby explained it. Similarly, when he was Minister, M. Guizot imagined he was balancing on his shoulders the pole of equilibrium between Parliament and the Crown, whereas in reality he was only jobbing the whole of the French State and the whole of French society bit by bit to the Jewish financiers of ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... letter," he remarked, taking the missive from her and balancing it between his finger and thumb. Just then Oscar came back ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... MacGregor," he chuckled feebly, balancing himself on the edge of the bunk. "You're right. It'll take two men to lay out Mr. William DeBar—if you ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... and failures, they stood, balancing themselves painfully on the ropes, clinging to each other's hands, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... hundred seconds or so he had her in the drawing-room, and she was actually pouring out gin for him. She looked ravishing in that peignoir, especially as she was munching an apple, and balancing herself on ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the front of the jam, and was carefully picking his way to the gripping key log. Balancing himself as well as he could he chose a spot where the strain was the greatest. Then the axe cleaved the air, the keen blade bit the wood, and the whirling chips played about his head. Deeper and deeper the steel ate into the side of the giant spruce. Suddenly a report like ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... issues which divided the Protestant denominations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries still vital enough to justify the continuance of the divisions? Summarize the evils of the divisions and their counter-balancing good. ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... gentlemen" were carefully defined. Flinders was directed to afford facilities for the naturalists to collect specimens and the artists to make drawings. The hand of Banks is apparent in the nice balancing of liberty of independent study with liability to direction from the commander; and his forethought in these particulars was probably inspired by his experience with Cook's expedition many ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... willing, and soon Tom was balancing himself as best he could. He felt around with care, Sam moving from point to ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... go much about Dublin, and the most characteristic things I saw there were those queer, uncomfortable dog-carts,—a sort of Irish bull on wheels, with the driver on one side balancing the passenger on the other, and the luggage occupying the seat of safety between. It comes the nearest to riding on horseback, and on a side-saddle at that, of any vehicle-traveling ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... to "all the geese," and himself in particular, On his extraordinary Pegasus, beautifully represented by a Jackass, Idealised with magnificent goose's wings. Mr. GEORGE STEPHENS, Grand Master of Hanky-panky. Balancing on the Pons Asinorum of his Nose the Identical goose-quill with which he indited the Wondrous Tale of Alroy, Mr. BEN D'ISRAELI (much admired). The great Stuffer and Crammer, bearing a stupendous dish Of Sage and Onions, Seated in a magnificent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... looked up with sparkling eyes. Under the name of "Phyllis" she had earned, ere her limbs were stiffened by age, great applause by her dainty egg-dance and all sorts of feats with the balancing pole. The manager of the band had finally given her the position of crier to support herself and her blind boy. This had made her voice so hollow and hoarse that it was difficult to understand her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dusky, cloudy, but moonlight night. I dared not make any quick movement, but slowly withdrawing my right hand from the sextant, I took hold of my rifle which lay close alongside. A second of time was of the greatest importance, for the enemy were all ranged, and just ready balancing their spears, and in another instant there would have been a hundred spears thrown into the camp. I suddenly put down the sextant, and having the rifle almost in position, I grabbed it suddenly with my left hand and fired into the thickest mob, whereupon ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... frenzied movements of his muscles exceeded all anatomical laws. Many Daughters, her big eyes shining, her red lips parted, followed and matched his every motion. Her entire trunk seemed to revolve on the pivot of her waist, her hips twisting in almost a spiral, and her arms akimbo accentuating and balancing her lascivious mobility. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... in brief, my creed is truly this; Conscience is our chief seed of woe or bliss; God who made all things is to all things Love, Balancing wrongs below by rights above; Evil seemed needful that the good be shown, And Good was swift that Evil to atone; While creatures, link'd together, each with each, Of one great Whole in changeful sequence teach, Life-presence everywhere sublimely ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... out once more as the lumbering thing fled with her, giving utterance to shrieking outcries at which the tree-fern jungle shook. It leaped once, upon monstrous hind legs, but came crashing heavily to the ground. Tommy's explosive bullets had shattered the bones which supported the balancing tail. Now that huge fleshy member dragged uselessly. The thing could not progress in its normal fashion of leaps covering many yards. It began to waddle clumsily, shrieking, with Evelyn clasped close. Its jaw was a shattered horror. It went marching insanely ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... where every sect takes its own way, undisturbed by legal restrictions, each ecclesiastical tub balancing itself as it best may on its own bottom, and where bishops Catholic and bishops Episcopal, bishops Methodist and bishops Mormon, jostle each other in our thoroughfares, it is not to be expected that we should trouble ourselves ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... can only take things in the gross; But could we know them in detail, perchance In balancing the profit and the loss, War's merit it by no means might enhance, To waste so much gold for a little dross, As hath been done, mere conquest to advance. The drying up a single tear has more Of honest fame, than shedding ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... In justly balancing the powers of the Federal and State authorities difficulties nearly insurmountable arose at the outset and subsequent collisions were deemed inevitable. Amid these it was scarcely believed possible that a scheme of government so complex in construction could ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... blue, heavy lidded, with their astonishing upward slant toward the temples, the slant that gave a strange, oriental cast to her face, perplexing, enchanting. He remembered the Egyptian fulness of the lips, the strange balancing movement of her head upon her slender neck, the same movement that one sees in a snake at poise. Never had he seen a girl more radiantly beautiful, never a beauty so strange, so troublous, so out of all accepted ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... marked by them in turn. He places a cake of camphor on the tray and sets light to it; and as the clear flame bursts forth in front of the Mother, the whole congregation rises and shouts "Devi ki Jaya" (Victory to the Goddess). Then Moti takes the tray and, balancing it on her head, dances slowly with long swinging stride round the Mother, while the music bursts out with renewed vigour, urging the other women, the human tabernacles of the cholera deities, to follow suit. Thereafter the camphor-cake is handed round to both ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... Jessac, laying aside shyness, went at her Highland reel with the same serious earnestness she gave to her tidying or her knitting. Daintily she tripped the twenty-four steps of that intricate, ancient dance of the Celt people, whirling, balancing, poising, snapping her fingers, and twinkling her feet in the true Highland style, till once more her father's face smoothed out its wrinkles, and beamed like a harvest moon. Hughie gazed, uncertain whether to allow himself to admire Jessac's performance, or to regard it ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... dry ferrous oxalate into the bottle and shaking it up, allowing it to settle before using next time. By treating it in this way it retains its power fairly well for a long time; and as it becomes less active I give a little longer exposure, balancing one against the other. Making the ferrous oxalate solution from two saturated solutions of iron sulphate and potassium oxalate has not succeeded so well with me for transparencies. The tone of the picture is not so black as when developed by the old method; and I do not like gray transparencies ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... cried Dot, perilously balancing a spoonful of mush and milk on the way to her mouth, in midair. "It was in 1492 at Thanksgiving time, and the Pilgrim Fathers found it first. So they called it Plymouth Rock—and you've got some of their hens in ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... and even laid eggs. More credible is the story of Aulus Gellius, who in his Attic Nights tells how Archytas, four centuries prior to the opening of the Christian era, made a wooden pigeon that actually flew by means of a mechanism of balancing weights and the breath of a mysterious spirit hidden within it. There may yet arise one credulous enough to state that the mysterious spirit was precursor of the internal combustion engine, but, however that may be, the ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... from between the drawing-room curtains Henry appeared, balancing himself on his middle, and handed down still another package. Ikey ran to receive it, and as if to silence the mourning with which the Close resounded, hastened to thrust the package into the lap of the unhappy lady ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... feet are still imprisoned in the clinging marble; His left arm and hand are only indicated, and His right hand is resting on a mass of broken stone, which hides a portion of His mother's drapery, but leaves the position of her hand uncertain. The infant S. John, upright upon his feet, balancing the chief group, is hazily subordinate. The whole of his form looms blurred through the veil of stone, and what his two hands and arms are doing with the hidden right arm and hand of the Virgin may hardly be conjectured. It is clear that on this side of the composition the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Manchuria had also ceased to be inexhaustible reservoirs of warlike men; the more adjacent portions had become commercialized; whilst the outer regions had sunk to depopulated graziers' lands. The Government, after the collapse of the Rebellion, being greatly impoverished, had openly fallen to balancing province against province and personality against personality, hoping that by some means it would be able to regain its prestige and a portion of its former wealth. Taking down the ledgers containing the lists of provincial contributions, the mandarins of Peking completely revised ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... first attempt was a short letter to Richard Henry Lee, in November, 1775, in which he starts with this proposition as fundamental: "A legislative, an executive, and a judicial power comprehend the whole of what is meant and understood by government. It is by balancing each of these powers against the other two, that the efforts in human nature towards tyranny can alone be checked and restrained, and any degree of freedom preserved in the constitution." [Footnote: Works of J. ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... sport. Standing on the summit of the hill in the form of a woman, she challenged Kahawali to slide with her. He accepted the offer, and they set off together down the hill. Pele, less acquainted with the art of balancing herself on the narrow sled than her rival, was beaten, and Kahawali was applauded by the spectators as he returned up the ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... both hands, and moved them up and down above her shoulders, as though balancing a heavy load—"as though a great ton weight had been rolled off my shoulders. ... Bridgie! You are angry; I was angry too, but now I've had time to think. ... There have been two and a half years since he went away—that's about nine hundred days. ... ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something "not quite proper;" while, like a skilful posture-master, balancing betwixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is destruction; hovering in the confines of light and darkness, or where "both seem either;" a hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the Play, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... takes only the slightest noise to alarm an Indian, especially when he is on the watch. That faint plash caused by the jar of the body caught the ear of the listening, peering redskin, who instantly slid his body over the bluff, and balancing himself for an instant, dropped with such precision that he struck the canoe in the very center, and preserved its gravity so well that it tipped neither to ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... yet, had more cause to celebrate than all the rest put together. Taken all in all, it would have been hard to find a merrier crowd than that which sped over the smooth yellow road on this perfect summer day, and many a bird, balancing himself on a blossoming twig, ceased his ecstatic outpouring of melody to listen to the blithe chorus of these earth birds, as they sang, "Hey Ho for Merry June," and "Let the Hills and Dales Resound," each machineful trying its best ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... just sit around and act audience while I do the balancing act. Guess that old moose is yearning for his place out there. He didn't figure on ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... accomplished by comparing the effect of its attraction with that of much smaller bodies. One method is to compare, by balancing the weight of two balls, one above a globe of lead, as large as practicable, and the other below it, so as to have the attraction of the leaden globe pulling up and counteracting the gravitation to the earth. The effect is very slight ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... quality of painting in this canvas is the same as that which makes Whistler's work so interesting. This painting is one of the great assets of the French section, and to my mind one of the great pictures of the entire exhibition. Balancing the Desch canvas, one finds another figural canvas of great beauty of design, by Georges Devoux. "Farewell," while of a sentimental character, is strong in drawing and composition. It is very consistent throughout. Everything ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... wind blows, it is a study to see three or four of these air-kings at the head of the valley far up toward the mountain, balancing and oscillating upon the strong current; now quite stationary, except for a slight tremulous motion like the poise of a rope-dancer, then rising and falling in long undulations, and seeming to resign themselves ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... to me on Christmas Day," he resumed, "when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides; for a kind of manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has to pay for it." The dealer once more chuckled; ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... their group, supporting herself by the ledge of rock. She pulled herself upright, balancing precariously. She put her sharp little teeth close, parted ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... man, but, all the same, a slip, sending one into the foaming water among a particularly large and hard collection of boulders, seemed most undesirable, and I stepped across, like Agag, delicately, carefully balancing myself with a khudstick. The men came prancing over as if they were on a good high-road, the careless ease with which they made the passage bordering on impertinence! I reflected, however, that sheep, and such like beasts of humble brain, can stroll upon the brink of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... his new enemies, commenced rushing from one to the other, endeavouring to carry their horses upon his horns. It was with great difficulty that they could keep out of his reach; but at length another well-directed shot from Basil's rifle entered the heart of the animal; and, after balancing himself upon his spread limbs, and rocking awhile from side to side, the huge creature fell forward upon his knees and lay motionless, with a stream of blood pouring from his lips. In a few moments ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... together temporarily, heat and thunder must be powerless to make or to unmake the marks that showed the cliffs to have once been one, and to have been violently torn apart. Next, heat (supposing frost to be the root-conception) was obviously used merely as a balancing phrase, and thunder simply as the inevitable rhyme to asunder. I have not seen this matter alluded to, though it may have been mentioned, and it is certainly not important enough to make any serious deduction from the pleasure ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... you can't imagine what a treasure it is!" she exclaimed. "It gives a complete table for the exact balancing ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... Tricked by the balancing odds; Strike! God is waiting for us! Strike! for the vengeance ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... am about to propose to you the health of these three distinguished visitors. They are all admirable speakers, but Mr. Albert Smith has confessed to me, that on fairly balancing his own merits as a speaker and a singer, he rather thinks he excels in the latter art. I have, therefore, yielded to his estimate of himself, and I have now the pleasure of informing you that he will lead off the speeches of the other two gentlemen with a song. Mr. Albert Smith ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... enjoying—just frightened enough, now and then, to keep up the excitement—they came upon the summit of the ridge. Now their way lay downward. This began to look really almost perilous. With careful guiding, however, and skillful balancing—tipping, creaking, sinking, emerging—they kept on slowly, about half the ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... symptom I have for nine months been struggling to subdue, and as my wife knows, I am, week by week, balancing whether to put myself under a doctor for it.... The spasm which distresses me comes at the crisis when I ought to go to sleep, and so wakes me up. I could not get rid of it even in the summer, on days on which I had least mental effort, and was in all other respects conscious ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... us and yonder turret, which is, I warrant you, twelve feet distant, I confess the truth, nothing short of the most imminent danger should induce me to try. Pah—the thought makes my head grow giddy!—I tremble to see your Highness stand there, balancing yourself as if you meditated a spring into the empty air. I repeat, I would scarce stand so near the verge as does your Highness, for the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... particularly as the tickets were so high that bad folks could not go, and taking out her purse Aunt Betsy counted its contents carefully, holding the bills thoughtfully for a moment, while she seemed to be balancing between what she knew was safe and what she feared might be wrong, at least in the eyes ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... find no fault in him," and then on the other hand he says: "Take him away and crucify him;" First he washes his hands to show that he is innocent of the blood of this just person, and then he delivers Jesus to the Jews to take him away. It was a fine balancing of a judicial mind, and I suppose he withdrew from the judgment hall saying to himself: "Whatever may happen in this case, at least I am not responsible." But what does history think {160} of this judicial Pilate? It holds him ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... the lonely bird upgazes from the fountain's side. High in the air it proudly floats, balancing its crimson wings, and its snowy tail, long, delicate, and thin, shines like a sparkling ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... was still scooting downward, its speed even greater than that of the broken flier. When the man saw it swinging past and below him, he instantly clambered, burden and all, to the edge of the cockpit. For a second he stood, balancing precariously; and then, half jumping, half diving, he plunged ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... improvement. He began, in 1882, the invention of machines for making paper bags, and his improvements in this line of machinery are covered by a dozen patents; and a half dozen other patents granted Mr. Purvis include three patents on electric railways, one on a fountain pen, another on a magnetic car-balancing device, and still another for a cutter for ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... the truth, and in this particular instance are not much improved upon by the philosophers), to a more comprehensive notion of friendship. This, however, is far from being cleared of its perplexity. Two notions appear to be struggling or balancing in the mind of Socrates:—First, the sense that friendship arises out of human needs and wants; Secondly, that the higher form or ideal of friendship exists only for the sake of the good. That friends are not necessarily ...
— Lysis • Plato
... box in the bow, the savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... how the Japs were organized, as soon as they felt there was going to be a row, they kept their eyes on the Russians all the time they were in the ring doing their pole balancing, and the little Jap up on the bamboo pole, with a fan, kept jabbering to the fellows down on the ground, and I could see that trouble was coming. When their act was over the Japs bowed to the audience, and started out where the Russians were ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... questions as to previous knowledge of Blackstone; and after such an experience, shall one shrink from wrecking a steamer or two in the cause of the nation? So I placidly accepted my naval establishment, as if it were a new form of boat-club, and looked over the charts, balancing between one river and another, as if deciding whether to pull up or down Lake Quinsigamond. If military life ever contemplated the exercise of the virtue of humility under any circumstances this would perhaps have been a good opportunity to begin its ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... footing in such ground. There is no road metal available in Mesopotamia. It is a stoneless place. The frogs trumpeted in chorus all night; packs of dogs or jackals swept about in droves, once at full pelt through our tent, like devils of the storm. It was nightmarish, but sleep brought that wonderful balancing force that sometimes clothes itself in dreams, and steeps the spirit in all that is lacking. Just before falling asleep I reflected that Adam and Eve might well have been ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... balancing on the edge of the rain barrel, "is there something in this barn you do ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... remembered that the origin of their excellent playing was centred in their own fears. I preserved a neutral attitude. I did not venture on any overt act of insubordination. That would have only meant my destruction, without any counter-balancing advantage in the way of baulking an enterprise in which I was a most unwilling participator. And to pretend what I did not feel was a task which I had neither stomach to undertake nor ability to carry out successfully. In consequence I kept my own ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... come down from the high domes and tribunes of the churches. The clouds were made of good woven stuff, the saints and cherubs were unglorified mortals supported by firm bars, and those mysterious giants were really men of very steady brain, balancing themselves on stilts, and enlarged, like Greek tragedians, by huge masks and stuffed shoulders; but he was a miserably unimaginative Florentine who thought only of that—nay, somewhat impious, for in the images of sacred things was there not some of the virtue of sacred things themselves? ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... anxiety for the family heirloom absorbed Aunt Caroline's whole attention. If she noticed her nephew's look of anguished guilt and his friend's politely raised brows she ascribed it to his carelessness in balancing china. Desire's downcast eyes and stiffened manner she ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... up on the rope, standing up on his hind legs, and balancing the pole with his front paws and he steadied himself for a moment and then took a step. My! but that rope wiggled, though, from side to side, almost like a hammock, only, of course, not as safe as a hammock. But Buddy kept bravely on, and took another step—and land sakes laddy-da! if ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... semicircle of eagerly watching girls, sympathetically thrilled by the spectacle, clapped their hands, shouting for joy; and balancing themselves on tiptoe, joined in the headlong dance. And as they glided to and fro, the wild roses and ivy and long tendrils of the vine, flaunting it on the crumbling walls, seemed to wave in unison and dance ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... showing some connexion with the rainy season in the rainy region. Two men were employed in drawing water in a curious manner. The other buckets were not being worked. One end of the shaft is made very heavy, so as to assist in bringing up the water by over-balancing on a swivel; the other end, to which the cord and bucket ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... sped homeward, he didn't spin the plate in air, but tried out a new plan of balancing it on ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... heavy, but in his excitement Ken swung it up as though it had been no more than a feather. Balancing it, he charged straight ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... was exhaustedly trifling with my meridian meal, and balancing the gratification against the trouble of eating lumpy tapioca pudding, a muffled, rolling thud broke upon my ears, making the window and floor vibrate slightly. It seemed so distant and unimportant that ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... answer, except by a sigh, half-suppressed. She sat motionless, with the exception of her foot, which kept balancing upward and downward the little slipper of blue satin, while the fresh breeze of the evening blowing in from the window, caused a gentle tremulous movement among the tresses of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... the movements of the flanks become irregular and accelerated, and the act of respiration is accompanied by a kind of balancing motion of the whole body. The sides of the chest become as tender as the loins, or more so; for the animal immediately throws himself down, if pressed upon with any force. The elbows become, in many subjects, more and more separated from the sides of the chest. The pulse ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... was this, he asked himself. Could it be that this horse, black as night, was truly of the lower regions? Certainly he looked it, balancing there on his hind legs, with his reddened eyes and inflamed nostrils! And—But what was this? From the corral had come a shrill nicker, the voice of the aged mare. But that was not it! With the outcry, seemingly an answer to the black's maddened outcry, the black dropped to ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... in balancing the period, than in developing the thought or image that was present to his mind. Sometimes we find that he multiplies words without amplifying the sense, and that the ear is gratified at the expense of the understanding. This is more particularly the case in the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... in honour bound to support Addington. At the close of January he held friendly converse with him, before setting out for Walmer for a time of rest and seclusion. Canning's only consolation was that Bonaparte would come to their help, and by some new act of violence end Pitt's scrupulous balancing between the claims of national duty and of private obligations. The First Consul dealt blow upon blow. Yet even so, Canning's hopes were long to remain unfulfilled. As we saw in the former volume, the relations of Pitt to Addington had for many years been of an ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling. The politician will acquire greater foresight and subtility, in the subdividing and balancing of power; the lawyer more method and finer principles in his reasonings; and the general more regularity in his discipline, and more caution in his plans and operations. The stability of modern governments above the ancient, and the accuracy ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... Levantine Turks, splendid of dress and arrogant of demeanour, and there were humble Cololies, Kabyles and Biscaries. Here a water-seller, laden with his goatskin vessel, tinkled his little bell; there an orange-hawker, balancing a basket of the golden fruit upon his ragged turban, bawled his wares. There were men on foot and men on mules, men on donkeys and men on slim Arab horses, an ever-shifting medley of colours, all jostling, laughing, cursing in the ardent African sunshine under the blue ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the smuggler. The counterfeit bowed his head by the side of the silent Alida, without reply. The 'Skimmer of the Seas' regarded the group, a moment, with manly interest; and then touching the arm of Ludlow, he walked, with a balancing step, along the spars, until they had reached a spot where they might confer without causing unnecessary ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... large limbs, his bemused face, his air of hopeless failure, idleness, content. Edward Rider gazed involuntarily from one to another of this two. He saw the sprite place herself between the husband and wife, a vain little Quixote, balancing these extremes of helplessness and ruin. He could not help looking at her with a certain unconscious admiration and amazement, as he might have looked at a forlorn hope. Thousands of miles away from her friends, wherever and whatever ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... gray and hot between the bright green cane-fields, horsemen approached, and a number of slave women moved slowly: women with erect rigid backs balancing large baskets or stacks of cane on their heads, the body below the waist revolving with a pivotal motion which suggests an anatomy peculiar to the tropics. They had a dash of red about them somewhere, and their turbans were white. Rachael's ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... There has been, as you see, one shot fired from it. Of the six chambers one is empty." He reached down and picked up a small something and held it in the hollow of the other hand, balancing one against the other as he talked. "Sir Nigel, I ask you. This we recognize as a bullet which belongs to this same revolver, the revolver which you have recognized and claimed as your own. It is identical with those that are used in ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... however that bloweth no good to some one. The little cities of Italy, by a process of careful balancing, had managed to increase their power and their independence at the expense of both Emperors and Popes. When the rush for the Holy Land began, they were able to handle the transportation problem of the thousands of eager ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... by way of emphasizing his denial, raised his foot and sent the mat flying along the passage. Honor satisfied, he returned to the door-post and, looking idly out on the street again, exchanged a few desultory remarks with Mr. Joe Brown, who, with his hands in his pockets, was balancing himself with great skill on the edge of ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... is hurrying to and fro, and a clang of many voices, and the clatter of much crockery, and a lifting, and balancing, and battering against walls and curving around corners, and sundry contusions, and a great waste of expletives, and a loading of wagons, and a driving of patient oxen back and forth with me generally on the top of the load, steadying a basket of eggs with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... detail of the scene is strange, wild, arctic,—even to the fur-clad, frost-whitened men who come riding up to the tents astride the shoulders of panting reindeer and salute you with a drawling "Zdar-o-o-va!" as they put one end of their balancing poles to the ground and spring from their flat, stirrupless saddles. You can hardly realise that you are in the same active, bustling, money-getting world in which you remember once to have lived. The cold, still atmosphere, the white, barren mountains, and the great ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... "falling in love" with the works of a relatively limited number of authors who kindle him personally. It is all right to widen the field occasionally, for diversion, for contrast, for sharpening style, and for balancing of ideas, but strength comes of finding a main line and holding to it. No man can read a book with sympathetic understanding without taking from it something that makes him ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... the other, Austria and Great Britain. With the former at first joined the elector of Saxony, who wished to play off Prussia against Austria for the benefit of his Saxon and Polish lands, and the king of Sardinia, who was ever balancing in Italy between Habsburg and Bourbon pretensions. With Austria and Great Britain was united Holland, because of her desire to protect herself from ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... satisfied if the student plays his notes correctly, in a general way. With Kneisel the very least detail, a trill, a scale, has to be given its proper tone-color and dynamic shading in absolute proportion with the balancing harmonies. This trill, in the first movement of the Beethoven concerto—(and Mr. ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... ill made, which must be a natural, and not an acquired defect, as they seldom injure their feet by wearing shoes. The figures of some of the women are handsome, and their carriage, from the absence of any confining or tightening clothing, and the habit they have of balancing great weights on their heads, erect ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... the Atlantic, I have seen a Book of Facts printed in America, which charges us with more than one geographical robbery in the Arctic Seas, in which regions, it is well known, American enterprise and sympathy have been most nobly employed. As I am incapable of balancing the respective claims, I leave that subject to the Hydrographer's office ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... from a cross-section at any subsequent moment in the process? What reason is there for assuming primordial homogeneity, since every backward step would show us, together with the unravelling of what is now in process of weaving, a counter-balancing weaving of what is now in process of disintegration? Were this earth all, we might dream of universal advance by shutting our eyes to a great many incompatible facts; but when our telescopes show us the co-existence of integration and disintegration everywhere, what can we conclude ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... from his chair, dropping an empty shoe with a thump, but, being of the West, without cavil or waste of wind, he stretched his hands above his head, balancing on one foot to keep his unshod member from the damp floor. He had unbuckled his belt, and now, loosened by the movement, his overalls seemed bent on sinking floorward in an ecstasy of abashment at the intrusion, whereupon with convulsive grip he hugged them to ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... part-sectional view of a 1500-kilowatt Curtis steam turbine. If one should go into the exhaust base of one of these turbines, all that could be seen would be the under side of the lower or fourth-stage wheel, with a few threaded holes for the balancing plugs which are sometimes used. The internal arrangement is clearly indicated by the illustration, Fig. 8. It will be noticed that each of the four wheels has an upper and a lower row of buckets and that there is a set of stationary buckets for each wheel between the two rows of moving buckets. ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... heavy loads of plunder in their arms, and Lugui was balancing a mince pie on the top of a pile of her mother's best evening dresses. Victor came next with an armful of bric-a-brac, a brass candelabra and the parlor clock. Beni had the family Bible, the basket of silverware from the ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... Thus, nothing but a balancing of very dubious probabilities is to be attained by approaching the question from this side. It is otherwise if we make the documents tell their own story: if we study them, as we study fossils, to discover internal evidence, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... firelock, when a ladder was placed, and Luard, leaping on it, stood first upon the wall. He was followed by a Frenchman, the bandmaster of the 59th, and Colonel Hope Graham. At the same time, Stuart, of the Engineers, was balancing in air on a breaking ladder at the north side of the bastion; but though he sprang to another, two or three Frenchmen got up before him. Here, also, Corporal Perkins and Daniel Donovan, volunteer sappers, pushing on with the French, were among ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... reckless and headstrong, so brave himself that he hardly thought of danger to those whom he led. Godfrey McCulloch, on the other hand, was cautious and long-sighted. He argued out every possibility, and arranged what was to be done if things fell out so and so. Sometimes he even hesitated too long, balancing between two wise courses, while Stair, leading his men with a rush, would thresh his way through to victory. On the whole, Godfrey was the safer, Stair ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... were emancipated from dulness by the approach of summer. Their lessons could be carried on in the garden; and, one day, Lola, who had shut her eyes while repeating to herself an irregular verb, saw, on opening them, a jewelled humming-bird balancing itself in the air on a level with her hat, and apparently inspecting that head-dress with wonder and curiosity, after which it flashed off and dived ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... general outlines I can conceive the change. We have always been friendly, and now..." said Stepan Arkadyevitch, responding with a sympathetic glance to the expression of the countess, and mentally balancing the question with which of the two ministers she was most intimate, so as to know about which to ask her to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... his cousin, as she climbed up on the wet stones. "I shall certainly do as I please. If he wants implicit obedience, he must go to Edith Chase." In another instant she was on the plank, and balancing herself, walked forward over the torrent, holding her long skirt over her arm; her head was steady, she did not know what fear was; many a time she had crossed deeper chasms in safety, and she laughed to herself as she heard Hugh crashing through the bushes ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... flushing as he had to change a five-dollar note to do so. The simple act emphasized for him, as no words could have done, his peculiar relation to this strange woman, whom he had never seen until half an hour ago. Balancing the purse in his hand, he glanced at her, taking in almost unconsciously the tragic droop of her lips, the prematurely gray locks in her dark hair, and the unchanging ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... had taken possession of our mansion we strolled out to see what was going forward. We could not help stopping to watch the feats of a juggler. First, he jumped upon a pole six feet from the ground, on which he placed a cross bar, and balancing himself on it made prodigious leaps from side to side. He had a companion, who assisted him in his feats, but how they were done it seemed impossible to discover. After leaping along to some distance, he returned ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... trees again and was outside the palisade when there came faintly to his ears from far beyond the village an old, familiar sound. Balancing lightly upon a swaying branch he stood, a graceful statue of a forest god, listening intently. For a minute he stood thus and then there broke from his lips the long, weird cry of ape calling to ape and he was away through the jungle toward the sound of the booming ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Louise, sat Herries, the ruddy little student of medicine with whom she had danced so often at the ball. He sat there, smiling and dapper, balancing his hard round hat on his knee, and holding gloves ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... absolute depletion of the fluid contents of both barrels in the refreshment stand out in the menagerie tent. They whooped their unbridled approval when the wild Indian chief, after shooting down a stuffed coon with a bow and arrow from somewhere up near the top of the centre pole while balancing himself jauntily erect upon the haunches of a coursing white charger, suddenly flung off his feathered headdress, his wig and his fringed leather garments, and revealed himself in pink fleshings as the principal ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... doing so, found himself in the midst of one of those English-speaking coteries, which spring up in all large, continental towns. Foreigners were not excluded—Maurice discovered two or three of his German friends, awkwardly balancing their cups on their knees. In order, however, to gain access to the circle, it was necessary for them to have a smattering of English; they had also to be flint against any open or covert fun that might be made of them or their country; and above all, to be skilled in the art of looking ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... foreign courts, and secured to her a controlling influence upon the traffic of the world; by developments of her military genius under the greatest of all the great generals of modern times; and by naval achievements that snatched into her hands the balancing trident of the seas,—to the place she still holds (how much longer she may hold it remains to be seen) as the leading power of the world. If she has to relinquish that position, it will only be to a power that is true to the spirit, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... was just at that moment changing his grip upon the rope, and balancing himself upon the extreme edge of the stringer, which formed the edge of the wharf. The ill-timed push caught him unawares. He threw out his arms to steady himself, and the rope slipped altogether from his grasp. The next instant, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... raised him to his own level. The old noble looked on the good notary as something more than a servant, something less than a child; he was the voluntary liege man of the house, a serf bound to his lord by all the ties of affection. There was no balancing of obligations; the sincere affection on either side put ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... on a narrow ledge while she held the four ribbons lightly in one hand and tickled the leaders with a long whip carried in the other. She drove her four horses over the rough road with the skill of a circus equestrienne, balancing easily on the crazy ledge, shifting her weight from side to side as the wagon rattled down gullies and up ridges, the horses responding gallantly to the shrill "Hi-hi-kerat! hi-kerat! hi-kerat!" ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... moment's thought, "all I can say is that the design's working out in truly elegant fashion. Charlie's done his work well—and so have the boys." She beamed pleasantly upon her audience, two men balancing themselves upon the open floor joists of the new church. "It's a real work of art. It's going to be swell, and the folks should be just proud ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... that in fact he was laughing, and that he could not but laugh, (and then the monster laughed immoderately again,) at the pleasant thought of seeing them both headless, and that with so little trouble to himself, (uno suo nutu,) he could have both their throats cut. No doubt he was continually balancing the arguments for and against such little escapades; nor had any person a reason for security in the extraordinary obligations, whether of hospitality or of religious vows, which seemed to lay him under some peculiar restraints in that case above all others; for such circumstances of peculiarity, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... likewise weighing and balancing, what you were pleased to mention concerning duty, and obedience, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... balancing his chair on two legs, his hands spread on the table. "Si, Senor, it is regrettable. Yet nothing on earth appears so easy to supply as Kings—except Queens. And after all, what is it to ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... of firms and contractors—while you have lost but the paltry fifteen thousand or so with which you began. And you have acquired great knowledge and experience. Therefore, on the whole, you have been the gainer. In balancing an account one takes but the sordid debit and credit and compares them—but in estimating the value of a firm one should consider its reputation and the goodwill it has created. The name of Andrea Contini and Company is a power in Rome. ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... been thoughtfully balancing the exploded shell between his fingers during most of the interview. As Warrington ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... in the lost days, when the Mathers and Nortons were noblemen,—should choose to neutralize so much of their ministers' lives, and destroy so much of their early training, by this undefined passion for seeing them in public. It springs from our balancing of sects. If a spirited Episcopalian takes an interest in the almshouse, and is put on the Poor Board, every other denomination must have a minister there, lest the poorhouse be changed into St. Paul's Cathedral. If a Sandemanian is chosen president of the Young Men's ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... I was lying on a heap of nets at the bottom of the boat; my heart was full, my lips were mute, my eyes were fixed on hers. What need had we to speak, when the sun, the hour, the mountains, the air and water, the voluptuous balancing of the boat, the light ripple of the murmuring waters as we divided them, our looks, our silence, and our hearts, which beat in unison,—all spoke so eloquently for us? We rather seemed to fear instinctively that the least sound of voice or words would jar discordantly ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... that the salt-spoon, placed lengthwise, remained in its place. But for some time past, fashion has dictated circular salt-cellars, on the edges of which the salt-spoon will not remain without skilful balancing: it falls on the cloth. In my boyhood a jug was made of a form at once convenient and graceful. . . . Now, however, the almost universal form of jug in use is a frustum of a cone with a miniature spout. It combines ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... as if he had been called, and looked with intentness at a fallen book and upset inkstand. There was a quill pen balancing itself in an absurd manner with its nib stuck in the cane bottom of an overturned chair. He took it out and laid it on the table. He saw his hat in a corner, stooped for it, missed it several times, and then ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... that all trained seals know—that of balancing a ball on the nose. But for a seal that is not much of a feat after the experience of keeping themselves constantly in poise amidst the rolling breakers and surging swells. I taught him to rise on his flippers and march, also to turn to right ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten |
