"Compactness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... space forbids us to do more than touch lightly upon the many excellences of these books. We have given extracts enough to enable our readers to see for themselves the severe elegance of style, the compactness and force of the narrative, the verisimilitude of the characters, the unity of plan, and the cogency of the reasoning. We trust they will also perceive the great moral effect that cannot fail to be produced. Such books ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... were acknowledged in a way most gratifying to me, by its rapid adoption by engineers of every class, especially by marine engineers. It has been adopted for driving the shafts of screw-propelled steamships of the largest kind. The comparatively small space it occupies, its compactness, its get-at-ability of parts, and the action of gravity on the piston, which, working vertically, and having no undue action in causing wearing of the cylinder on one side (which was the case with horizontal engines), has now brought my Steam Hammer Engine into almost universal ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... walls were of timbering and plaster, often white- or colour-washed.[5] Panelling was used occasionally. The ventilation and hygienic conditions generally were far from good, as may be imagined from a consideration of the smallness of the houses, the compactness of the city, particularly the parts occupied by the people, and especially of the primitive system of sanitation, which was content to use the front street as a main sewer. There were, of course, no drains; at ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... I am about to describe took place some six years after the commencement of the constitutional Home Rule agitation, I think it well, as it was connected with Fenianism, for the sake of compactness, ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... intercourse has involved personal presence at the point where intercourse occurs. The possibility, therefore, of going and coming and doing that day's work has hitherto fixed the extreme limits to which a city could grow, and has exacted a compactness which has always been very undesirable and which is now for the first time in the world's ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... soil, than by a compact and close one. Water is held in the soil between the minute particles of earth. If these particles be pressed together compactly, there is no space left between them for water. The same is true of soil naturally compact. This compactness exists more or less in most subsoils, certainly in all through which water does not readily pass. Hence, all these subsoils are rendered more permeable to water by being broken up and divided; and more ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... this edition is "a marvel of beauty, cheapness, and compactness. . . . For the busy man, above all for the working student, this is the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... strange as some of it is, the beautiful rich yellow of the stone under the blue sky and the dark shadows thrown by the brilliant sun make the whole a building of real beauty. Even the wild west window is helped by the compactness of its outline and by the plainness of the wall in which it is set, and only the great coral branches of the round buttresses are actually unpleasing. The size too of the windows and the great thickness of the wall give ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... will imbibe the most moisture. But here a modifying influence comes in, not sufficiently considered by the investigators of glacial structure. We have already seen that snow and ice at different degrees of compactness are not equally permeable to moisture. Above the line at which the annual winter snow melts, there is, of course, little moisture; but below that point, as soon as the temperature rises in summer sufficiently to melt the surface, the water ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... somewhat indifferent to the adventure, was caught by the redness and whiteness, the brandnewness and compactness of the little houses; she was seduced beyond prudence by the ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... for English oak and English comfort, mine host?" said the immovable captain; "do you think, good sir, that I measure fitness and propriety by square and compass, as if I were planning Solomon's temple anew? All I mean to say is, that the Alacrity is a vessel of singular compactness and magical arrangement of room. Like the tent of that handsome brother of the fairy, in the Arabian Nights, she is big or she is little, as occasion needeth; and now, hang me, if I don't think I have uttered more in her favor than her commander would say to help me to a recruit, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sufficient speed to satisfy the average person without acquiring any of those breakneck velocities which are so universally condemned; a machine which will be admired by man, woman, and child alike for its compactness, its simplicity, its safety, its all-around convenience, and—last but not least—its exceedingly reasonable price, which places it within the reach of many thousands who could not think of paying the comparatively fabulous prices ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... historical property which he possesses, and which, so far as we can perceive (all honour to him), is kept in the same excellent condition that characterized it during the novelist's lifetime. What is particularly striking about it is at once its compactness, completeness, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... men shall find much in experience, little in books." The essays contain the quintessence of Bacon's practical wisdom, his wide knowledge of the world of {92} men. The truth and depth of his sayings, and the extent of ground which they cover, as well as the weighty compactness of his style, have given many of them the currency of proverbs. "Revenge is a kind of wild justice." "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune." "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." Bacon's reason ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... was becoming too compressed, it was said; there was not room enough to get away from your troubles. All the better. It was getting to a compactness that could be easily poked up and divinely appropriated. A new cable was landed at Rockport, Mass., that was to bring the world into closer reunion of messages. We were to have cheaper cable service under the management of the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... conquered city. The classical poets are turned to great and frequent account throughout the poem; and yet the work has a strong air of originality, partly owing to the subject, partly to the abundance of love-scenes, and to a certain compactness in the treatment of the main story, notwithstanding the luxuriance of the episodes. The Jerusalem Delivered is stately, well-ordered, full of action and character, sometimes sublime, always elegant, and very interesting-more so, I think, as a whole, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... convenience in storage, and the housing of the various stock, grains, implements, and whatever else may demand accommodation, are other considerations to be taken into the account, all to have a bearing upon them. Compactness is always an object in such buildings, when not obtained at a sacrifice of some greater advantage, and should be one of the items considered in placing them; and in their construction, next to the arrangement of them in the most convenient possible manner for their various objects, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... of beauty, cheapness, and compactness. The whole works— poems, and sonnets—are contained in one small volume: yet the page is perfectly clear and readable... For the busy man, above all for the working Student, the Globe Edition is the best of all ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... getting into space wasn't as easy as they made it sound. The bubbs, one of the basic inventions that made interplanetary travel possible, were, for all their almost vagabondish simplicity, still a concession in lightness and compactness for atmospheric transit, to that first and greatest problem—breaking the terrific initial grip of Earth's gravity from the ground upward, and gaining stable orbital speed. Only a tremendously costly rocket, with a thrust greater than its own weight when fully loaded, ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... decision, vigilance, self-control, arrogance, love of power, firmness, and hardihood. These faculties express concentration of purpose and their functional equivalents are power of elaboration, constructiveness, condensation, firmness of fiber, compactness of frame, and endurance of organization. The pulse is full, firm, and regular, the muscles are strong and well marked, the hair and skin dark, the temporal region is not broadly developed, the face is angular, its lines denoting both power of purpose ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... obtainable from it, more light per unit of space occupied by it. This higher light-yielding capacity of calcium carbide, ready to be developed through acetylene, gives the latter gas a great advantage over all other illuminants in respect of compactness for transport or storage. Hence, where facilities for transport or storage are bad or costly, acetylene may be the most convenient or cheapest illuminant, notwithstanding its relatively high cost in many other cases. For example, in a district to which coal and oil ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... ashes do not contain any carbonate of lime; hence the concretions have probably been formed, as is so often the case, by the aggregation of this substance. I have not met with any account of similar concretions; and considering their great toughness and compactness, their occurrence in a bed, which probably has been subjected only to ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... more credit and honour than old sedate Bannerman; for his lads were lighter in the heel, glegger in the eye, and brisker in the manoeuvres of war: moreover, they were all far more similar in their garb and appearance, which gave them a seeming compactness that the countrymen had nothing like. But when the sham contest began, it was not long till Bannerman's disciples showed the proofs of their master's better skill to such a mark, that Hepburn grew hot, and so kindled his men by reproaches, that ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... alternate pairs of the web strands are inclosed by the twined pairs of the woof. Cloths woven in the first method are often quite close, as the woof threads are readily pressed or pounded down on one another entirely hiding the web strands, giving a fabric of much compactness and strength. The second variety is usually somewhat open and net-like, and very often the pairs of twined woof strands are placed far apart, as shown in several of the illustrations given in this paper. The finest mesh observed is ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... place in his ninth heaven, if he could have foreseen his translation. It is most astonishing, giving not only the literal corresponding phrase, but the spirit of the original, the true Dantesque manner. It should be cited as an evidence of the compactness, the pliability, the sweetness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... tools of France are excellent, and our manufacturers must look well to their laurels. We have as yet the advantage in compactness and simplicity, with adjustability and adaptation to varying classes of work. The band-saw is claimed as a French invention, and the crowds around the workman who saws a roomful of dolls' furniture out of a single ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... absence of either friends or acquaintances. His Majesty, it is true, had bidden me go to certain pretty baggages, meaning, apparently, five ladies who were seated at the farther end of the room, diverting themselves with as many cavaliers; but the compactness of this party, the beauty of the ladies, and the merry peals of laughter which proceeded from them, telling of a wit and vivacity beyond the ordinary, sapped the resolution which had borne me well hitherto. I felt that to attack such a phalanx, even with a king's ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... to the public last April. When finished, this work will cover the period from Lincoln to Garfield, with a review of the events which led to the political revolution of 1860. The story he tells in his first volume is given with the simplicity and compactness of a trained journalist, and yet with sufficient fulness to make the picture distinct and clear in almost every detail. The book is as easy to read as a well-written novel; it is clear and interesting, and commands the attention throughout, the more for the absence of ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... interior of the building like a floor and serves to furnish the family with a dry sitting or lying down place when, as often happens, the whole region is under water. The thatching of the roof is quite a work of art: inside, the regularity and compactness of the laying of the leaves display much skill and taste on the part of the builder; outside—with the outer layers there seems to have been less care taken than with those within—the mass of leaves of which the roof is composed is held in place and made firm by heavy logs, which, bound ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... inflated real estate values, has no meaning in these towns, with the result that they are compact. One may search in vain for the "house to let" sign. When no more houses were needed, no more houses were built. This compactness of form, cleanliness, and the elimination to a great extent of the rectangular block, contribute in no small measure to that indefinable suggestion of the Old World—a charm that haunts the memory ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... uniform in size, shape and construction, there was nothing to prevent the occupant from subsequently enlarging and improving his house. For the present, however, the interests of all were best served by speed and compactness. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... manipulated alternately until the bow of the sledge was manoeuvred slowly through the gaping hole in the snow-lid and was finally hauled up on to level ground. No more remarkable test of the efficiency of the sledge straps and the compactness of the load could ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags, and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... virtue of Turgenef's art is the skill with which he contrives to tell the most with the least number of words, the skill with which he contrives to produce the greatest effect with the least expenditure of force. There is a compactness in his stories which I can only describe as Emersonian. Of his six great novels, only one has as many as three hundred pages; of the other five, not one has over two hundred. Turgenef's art is thus in striking contrast with that required by the English standard ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... front well to the fore two protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... made them find more ease in the application of themselves to more athletic, or to more violent exercises, either of war or of the chace: while all together bred that firmness of their muscles, that robust compactness and vigor of body, which enabled them to atchieve that military valor, to which they owed all their conquests ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... the Gauls it goes on to the reign of the Franks, Charlemagne, the Carlovingian race, the history of Normandy, and the history of France from the first crusade through its lines of monarchies and its revolutions, to 1848. The style is clear and forcible, and from the compactness of the work, forming, as it does, a complete chain of events in a most important part of the history of Europe, it will be found interesting and valuable for general readers, or as a text-book in our schools. It is comprised in 444 pages, 12mo., and ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... not one of the great sensations of antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite of having been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvelously preserved. Its slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charming compactness, seemed to bring one nearer to the century that built it than the great superpositions of arenas and bridges, and give it the interest that vibrates from one age to another when the note of taste ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... broad bands of floriated tracery that occupied its entire width, were the only indications of changes of chapter or subject. In printer's phrase the composition was "close-up and solid" to the extreme degree of compactness. The uncommonly free use of red ink for the smaller initials was not altogether a matter of taste; if the page had been written entirely in black ink it would have been unreadable through its blackness. This nicety in writing consumed much time, but the mediaeval copyist was seldom governed by ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the Rhone and the Alps, Russia during the same period had annexed the bulk of Poland, and the two great German powers had enlarged themselves both to the east and the west. The Empire had practically ceased to be; but its ruin had given fresh extension and compactness to the states which had profited by it. The cessions of Prussia had been small beside her gains. The losses of Austria had been more than counterbalanced in Italy by her acquisition of Venice, and far more than counterbalanced by secularizations and annexations ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... compactness. This is the result of scriptura continua, which knows no separation of words and no punctuation. See the ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... almost certain to make upon the visitor is its compactness. Its population, including the outskirts, is nowadays rather over 600,000; but it is almost impossible to realize that nearly one-eleventh of the whole population of Belgium is concentrated in this one city, or, as might be said, in Greater Brussels. Perhaps the real reason of this ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... in English bond, it is generally selected for the external walls of domestic and other buildings where good effect is desirable. In buildings erected for manufacturing and similar purposes, and in engineering works where the greatest degree of strength and compactness is considered of the highest importance, English bond should ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... physique, but as they sat facing each other an observer would have remarked that Elton's visage possessed a clean-cut compactness of expression despite its rotund contour. His closely trimmed whiskers, his small, clear, penetrating eyes, and the effect of neatness conveyed by his personal appearance were so many external indications of his ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... being designed and built with a shiplike compactness, there was but one room on the ground floor besides the kitchen and its offices. It was a plain, comfortable place, wainscoted about, with shelves and lockers in the whimsical copy of a vessel's cabin. And it contained the single work of art our establishment could show; that is, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... disappeared by some subterranean passage from the bottom of Halemaumau. There was no material change in the sunken portion of the crater except a continual falling in of rocks and debris from its banks as the contraction from its former intense heat loosened their compactness and sent them hurling some 200 or 300 feet below, giving forth at times a boom as of distant thunder, followed by clouds of cinders and ashes shooting up into the air 100 to 300 feet, proportionate, doubtless, to the size ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... he, pointing to a tall, powerful young fellow, whose tweed suit and billycock hat could not completely conceal a soldierlike bearing and a sort of compactness ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... to some height, then came another tier of timbers, crossed as before, and this was repeated again to a considerable height, the inner ends of the beams being fastened to a planking within the wall, so that the whole was of immense compactness. Fire could not damage the mineral part of the construction, nor the battering ram hurt the wood, and the Romans had been often placed in great difficulties by these rude but admirable constructions, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been, that it was a wonder he lived so long. His weakness of body seems to have acted upon his strong mind, which must account for much that is satirical and splenetic in his writings. Very short, thin, and ill-shaped, his person wanted the compactness necessary to stand alone, until it was encased in stays. He needed a high chair at table, such as children use; but he was an epicure, and a fastidious one; and despite his infirmities, his bright, intellectual eye and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... of that union must each be prepared to relinquish a further portion of the sovereign or quasi-sovereign powers which it possessed. Under those circumstances, what was the course taken by the thirteen States? They perceived that it was quite possible to maintain complete unity and compactness as a nation if, in addition to investing the Supreme Government with Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers, they added full power to impose federal taxes on the component States and established an Executive furnished with ample means to carry ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... streams of warm air would be almost wholly obstructed by the compactness of a trodden path, and they would naturally divide at some distance below it, and pass up through the loose earth on each side, leaving the ground along the line of the path, to a great depth beneath it, a cold, dead ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... that is to be tested. If the pipe is steel, under a magnifying glass the texture of the filed surface will appear to be smooth and have small irregular-shaped grains, and there will also be an appearance of compactness. If the pipe is iron, the texture will have the appearance of being ragged and will show streaks of slag or black. When screw pipe is cut there is always left a large burr on the inside of the pipe. This burr greatly reduces the bore of the pipe and is ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... The remarkable lightness and compactness of the new boiler invented by Ericsson led to the employment of steam in many instances in which it had been previously inapplicable. Among these may be mentioned the steam fire-engine constructed by him in conjunction with Mr. Braithwaite, about the same time with the Novelty, and which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Memory', in 1792; the 'Epistle to a Friend', in 1798; 'Columbus', in 1812; 'Jacqueline', in 1813; 'Human Life', in 1819; 'Italy', in 1822-34. His later years were occupied in revising, correcting, or amplifying his published poems, and in preparing the notes to 'Italy', which are admirable studies in compactness and precision of language. A disciple of Pope, an imitator of Goldsmith, Rogers was rather a skilful adapter than an original poet. His chief talent was his taste; if he could not originate, he could appreciate. The fastidious care which he lavished ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... making a trip in the ill-fated Red Cloud to the cave of the diamond makers, and he determined to have his new craft thus provided against emergencies. The wireless outfit of the Humming-Bird was a marvel of compactness. ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... must be owned, however, as before intimated, that the practical operation did not always correspond with the theory of their respective functions in these rude times; and that the powers of the executive, being susceptible of greater compactness and energy in their movements, than could possibly belong to those of more complex bodies, were sufficiently strong in the hands of a resolute prince, to break down the comparatively feeble barriers of the law. Neither were the relative privileges, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... me give the credit due to that wonderful civiliser, the tailor—clothes neat, decent, and plain, such as any 'prentice lad might wear. They fitted well his figure, which had increased both in height, compactness, and grace. Round his neck was a coarse but white shirt frill; and over it fell, carefully arranged, the bright curls of his bonny hair. Easily might Jael or any one else have "mistaken" him, as she cuttingly said, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of these boats in No. 25, Vol. XXI., special mention was made of the compactness of ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... has ever before been known. The removal of the monopoly of slave labor is a pledge that those regions will be peopled by a numerous and enterprising population, which will vie with any in the Union in compactness, inventive genius, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... imagines them to be vortex-rings, they may differ in size, thickness, and rate of rotation; either of these might make all the observed difference between the elements, including their density. In the second way, density implies compactness of molecules. Thus if a cubic foot of air be compressed until it occupies but half a cubic foot, each cubic inch will have twice as many molecules in it as at first. The amount of air per unit volume will have ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... For more compactness and that we may be more useful we are gathered in still smaller circles in the home group. And there you have the same varieties again; brothers, sisters, husband and wife; all different in temperaments and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss. Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... It is said to be of Asiatic invention, and was composed of four rings within a fifth, each of which was rivetted. Single-chain mail was worn by the Crusaders, in Henry III's time; and when the number of rings was doubled, it became double-chain mail. Its great advantages were compactness and pliability. Horses were now clothed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... first move towards what are now called Direct-acting Engines, in which the lateral movement of the piston is communicated by connecting-rods to the rotatory movement of the crank-shaft. Mr. Nasmyth says of it, that "on account of its great simplicity and GET-AT-ABILITY of parts, its compactness and self-contained steadiness, this engine has been the parent of a vast progeny, all more or less marked by the distinguishing features of the original design, which is still in as high favour as ever." Mr. Maudslay also directed his ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... solidity of the place takes hold of one first; but, strangely enough, the strongest impression is that of an all-pervading air of youthfulness. Doubtless the oldest homestead on the river, and one of the oldest in the country, it utterly refuses to look its age. Perhaps the solid, square compactness of the buildings has much to do with this. They appear as though built to defy time. Even the shadow of the venerable trees and the ancient ivy's telltale embrace seem powerless to break the spell ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... measurement, may be found in the Temple of Victory and Concord, in the Duke of Buckingham's gardens at Stowe. So admirable is the preservation of the original in every part, owing to the dry and pure air of Languedoc, as almost to operate as a disadvantage. Its freshness and compactness suggest rather too much the idea of a modern pavilion of twenty or thirty years standing, instead of that of a temple; and if I may venture to say so, the same want of the aerugo of age, which renders it more valuable as an architectural relic, produces an incongruous and ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... deny that it was with a secret glee I watched her. Had I been a gentleman I believe Madame would have found favour in my eyes, she was so handy, neat, thorough in all she did: some people's movements provoke the soul by their loose awkwardness, hers—satisfied by their trim compactness. I stood, in short, fascinated; but it was necessary to make an effort to break this spell a retreat must be beaten. The searcher might have turned and caught me; there would have been nothing for it then but a scene, and she and I would have had ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... there are two varieties, a larger and smaller, both useful according to the degree of range or the work required; the smaller, however, being ordinarily preferable. Whatever be his general size, strength and compactness of form are requisite. His head is long, his face smooth, and his limbs, more developed than those of the springer, should be muscular, his carcase round, and his hair long and closely curled. Good breaking is more necessary here than even with the land-spaniel, and, fortunately, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... packed down as a Buddha, the great sinews of his strength bulged in his short neck and in the backs of the calves of his legs, even rippled beneath his coat. It was as if a compress had reduced him from great height down to his tightest compactness, concentrating the strength of him. Even in repose, the undershot jaw was plunged ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... sea; except that a narrow chasm, of some twenty or thirty feet in depth and two or three feet wide, usually separates the rock from the ice, which is melted away by the heat reflected from the southern face of the aiguille. The rock all along this base line is of the most magnificent compactness and hardness, and rings under the hammer like a bell; yet, when regarded from a little distance, it is seen to be distinctly inclined to separate into grand curved flakes or sheets, of which the dark edges are well marked in the plate. The pyramidal form of the aiguille, as seen ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... of bunks, mess-tables, sizzling sauce-pans over kitchen-fires. Everywhere were endless ingenuities in the way of camp-furniture and household decoration. Farther down the road a path between fir-boughs led to a hidden hospital, a marvel of underground compactness. While we chatted with the surgeon a soldier came in from the trenches: an elderly, bearded man, with a good average civilian face—the kind that one runs against by hundreds in any French crowd. He had a scalp-wound which ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... earthy among its elements, and containing but little moisture, air, and fire, lasts for an unlimited period when buried in underground structures. It follows that when exposed to moisture, as its texture is not loose and porous, it cannot take in liquid on account of its compactness, but, withdrawing from the moisture, it resists it and warps, thus making cracks in the structures in which ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... appearance of Mr. Miller, or "Old Red," as he was familiarly named by his scientific friends, will not be forgotten by any who have seen him. A head of great massiveness, magnified by an abundant profusion of sub-Celtic hair, was set on a body of muscular compactness, but which in later years felt the undermining influence of a life of unusual physical and mental toil. Generally wrapped in a bulky plaid, and with a garb ready for any work, he had the appearance of a shepherd from the Rosshire hills ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... is its compactness, the equal division of the sections of the installation, and the celerity with which the station may be set up and dismantled in extremely mountainous country such as the Vosges, where it is even difficult for ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... the system to the Society's finances has been economy, compactness, and strength. While in several cases the personal income of the missionaries has been increased, yet, by limiting the amount of the Native agency to be employed in evangelistic work; by reducing the help hitherto granted to the Native Christians for their incidental ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... vigorously to the conflict, and dashed at them with great courage; and although the enemy wielded their huge bows with great strength, and the glistening of their weapons increased the alarm of our soldiers, yet their rage, and the compactness of their ranks, kept alive and added ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the microscope of criticism. Yet these two sonnets of Wordsworth may be fitly read in this place, not because they are quite without faults, or because they are the very best examples of their kind of style; but because they are luminous examples; the compactness of the sonnet and the gravity of the sentiment, hedging in the thoughts, restraining the fancy, and helping to ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... patient reading which he required for himself was justified by that which he always demanded for others; and he claimed it less in his own case for his possible intricacies of thought or style, than for that compactness of living structure in which every detail or group of details was essential to the whole, and in a certain sense contained it. He read few things with so much pleasure as an occasional chapter in ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... would have elected him President had he not shortened his life by intemperance. He was a solid, square-built man, with an impassive, ruddy face. He claimed to be a good farmer, but no orator, yet he was noted for the compactness of his logic, which was unenlivened by a figure of speech or a ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... had, could they have mobilized their forces, were dissipated. Their troops were scattered in small units; their rank and file were heaven knew where; their enemies, fully organized, had been mustered by the alarm bell to full alertness and compactness. And Terry's was the hand that had struck that bell! For the only time in his recorded history David Terry's ungoverned spirit was humbled. Until he found that nothing immediate was going to happen to him, and while under the silent but scathing disapprobation of his companions, he actually talked ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... majority were opaque, but there were some which were transparent and colored. The crystals are a kind of carbon containing some impurities; they are extremely hard, and withstand for a long time even an oxygen blast. When the blast is directed against them they at first form a cake of some compactness, probably in consequence of the fusion of impurities they contain. The mass withstands for a very long time the blast without further fusion; but a slow carrying off, or burning, occurs, and, finally, a small quantity of a glass-like residue is left, ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... the drum with his knee, the cymbals with his elbow, the triangle with his shoulder, the bells with this head, and the Pan's pipes with his mouth—thus uniting the powers of a full orchestra with the compactness of an individual. An immense number of Margate slippers and donkeys have been imported within the last few days, and there is every probability of this pretty little peninsula becoming a formidable rival to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... sure of that. If everybody is to have independent thought, would there not be a fearful instability and want of compactness? Another thing, too—conformity often saves so much ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... of thought; he had a profound analytic power; his visions were clear, and he was emphatically the master of statement. His pursuit of the truth was indefatigable, terrible. He reasoned from his well-chosen principles with such clearness, force, and compactness, that the tallest intellects in the land bowed to him with respect. He was the strongest man I ever saw, looking at him from the stand-point of his reason—the throne of his logic. He came down from that height with an irresistible and crushing force. His ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... is on "The Sovereignty of Law," an admirable disquisition on the supremacy of law in the intellectual life, the physical existence, the domain of morals and in every department of human activity. Dr. Peabody's style is forcible and virile, and his compactness of statement, enables him to put "infinite riches in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... novelties were in use by our ancestors! In the history of the human mind there is, indeed, a sort of antique furniture which I collect, not merely for their antiquity, but for the sound condition in which I still find them, and the compactness which they still show. Centuries have not worm-eaten their solidity! and the utility and delightfulness which they still afford make them look as fresh and as ingenious as any of our ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... influence over the affairs of all the Provinces. In his tune, moreover, the English interest, under the auspices of an undisturbed dynasty, and a cautious, politic Prince (Henry VII.), began by slow and almost imperceptible degrees to recover the unity and compactness it had lost ever ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... off into several bedrooms, sitting and dining-rooms, kitchen, smoking-room, store-rooms, oil tanks, etc. In the center was a room, fifteen feet square, that was called the engine-room. Everything that could be thought of that could add to comfort had been supplied, always with reference to compactness and weight. Not an ounce of superfluous weight would the architect allow. He had calculated very carefully and knew to a pound, almost, just what his great ship would carry, and how much fuel would keep her afloat a certain number of hours. But the thing that aroused the admiration ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... you had to choose your team whom would you put in? You have not really a large choice. What are the points by which you judge them? You want strength, novelty, compactness, intensity of interest, a single vivid impression left upon the mind. Poe is the master of all. I may remark by the way that it is the sight of his green cover, the next in order upon my favourite ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of interpreting past and predicting future states. They could account for and describe the genesis of the social union, as Plato and Aristotle had in different ways been able to do many centuries before; and they could prescribe some of the conditions of its being maintained in vigour and compactness. Some of them could even see in a vague way the interdependence of peoples and the community of the real interests of different nations, each nation, as De la Riviere expressed it, being only a province of the vast kingdom of nature, a branch from the same ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... grain backwards, on to the platform, to make good bundles. A quick walk is required to make good work in very short and scattering grain. The machine performs well, up or down hill, provided the surface be not too broken. By its compactness and ease of management, rocks, and stumps too high to be cut over, can be easily avoided. Although a rough surface is very objectionable, yet I have cut over very rocky ground with no material difficulty. I can say one thing which to some may appear incredible, ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... old granular ferment of beer, whilst those in motion may be compared with young and vigorous yeast. The absence of movement in the former seems to prove that this view is correct. Both kinds showed a tendency to form clusters, the compactness of which impeded the movements of those which were in motion. Moreover, it was noticeable that the masses of these latter rested on tartrate not yet dissolved, whilst the granular clusters of the others rested directly on the glass, at the bottom ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... by ten room constituted the entire home. A shed roof slanted from eight feet high on the door and window side to a bit more than five on the other. A bed in one corner took up most of the space, and the remaining necessities were bestowed with the compactness of a ship's cabin. The rough boards of the roof and walls had been hidden by a covering of newspapers, with a row of illustrations pasted picture height. Cushions and curtains of turkey-red calico ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... those the kinds in which the labourers are few, though the harvest is so large. In about seventy pages, close pages it is true, Mr. Symonds presents us with a sketch of Florentine history, the like of which, for compactness and minuteness of information, one knows not where to seek. Mr. Symonds is a striking example of the modern school of "culture"—using that word in its more special sense. Unwearied in the pursuit of detail, it occasionally tires the reader. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... rodents (Ctenomys Bonariensis and Kerodon antiquus) and the jaw of a Canis: when on the river I could clearly distinguish in this fine line of cliffs, "horizontal lines of variation both in tint and compactness." (I quote these words from my note-book, as written down on the spot, on account of the general absence of stratification in the Pampean formation having been insisted on by M. d'Orbigny as a proof ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... chaffinch has not that elegant finished appearance, nor is it so beautifully studded with lichens, as in a more rural district: and the wren is obliged to construct its house with straws and dry grasses, which do not give it that rotundity and compactness so remarkable in the edifices of the little architect. Again, the regular nest of the house-martin is hemispheric; but where a rafter, or a joist, or a cornice may happen to stand in the way, the nest is so contrived ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... his own, and is as copious, felicitous in the choice of words, flowing, spontaneous, flexible, engaging, clear, and as little wearisome when read continuously in quantity as any in the English tongue. This is saying a great deal, though it is not claiming for him the compactness, nor the robust vigor, nor the depth of thought, of many others masters in it. It is sometimes praised for its simplicity. It is certainly lucid, but its simplicity is not that of Benjamin Franklin's style; ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner |
