"Elastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to frown upon them in their innocent pastimes—to curdle their blood with severe rebukes, because of the buoyancy of their hearts and to drive them back with scowling reprimands, when they would walk in the sunny paths which God has kindly opened for their elastic footsteps. Hence they close their ears to its invitations; turn away from its instructions, as something designed to impose a heavy yoke upon them; and postpone its claims, to be attended to among the last ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... the fame or money for which other men toiled seemed to him but empty bubbles; the only wealth he prized was his soul's increase in love and understanding: "If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like sweet-scented herbs—is more elastic, starry ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of any sensual side to her love, could allow herself to be expansive; she boldly and confidently poured out her angelic spirit, she stripped it bare, just as during that diabolical night, La Tinti had displayed the soft lines of her body, and her firm, elastic flesh. In Emilio's eyes there was as it were a conflict between the saintly love of this white soul and that of the vehement and ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... Bosnia. Everyone is shouting to his animals and cursing in his own language. The whole mix-up is a traveling exhibition of most variegated characteristic costumes, for the most part, of course, extremely the worse for wear. Common to all these are the little wagons adapted to mountain travel, elastic and tough, which carry only half loads and are drawn by little ponylike, ambitious horses. In between are great German draft horses, stamping along with their broad high-wheeled baggage and ammunition wagons, as though they belonged to a nation ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... perhaps, but for his smarting wounds, Tscholens might have labored with some deterrent sense of sacrilege. But no! With one elastic bound he leaped upon the "holy white seat," whence he surmounted the tier of places still behind and higher; then he lightly swung himself down into the intervening space in front of the inner partition formed by a red ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of divorce proceedings against her, nor was she explicit as to the nature of her war-work, though there were those, Roger among the number, who assumed that it must have paid pretty well. At any rate, the Baron took an interest in her referring to her as his ward—a sufficiently elastic term. Finding Sir Charles attracted, he took him aside and besought him to do something for Therese. Exactly what the Baron had in mind may have been shadowy; but what Sir Charles did was definite. He ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... An elastic or swinging seat, couch, or bed, for preventing the uneasy motions of a ship or a carriage, has recently been invented. To effect this, the frame of the seat or couch is suspended on juribals or joints, turning at right ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... in the form in which protein occurs in this cereal it is called gluten, a substance that is responsible for the hardness of wheat. The gluten, when the wheat is mixed with water or some other liquid, becomes gummy and elastic, a fact that accounts for the rubbery consistency of bread dough. Cereals that contain no gluten do not make bread successfully. Next to wheat, rye contains protein in the greatest amount, and rice contains the least. Although protein is the most expensive of the food substances, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... thought of her. She appeared to his mind in every allurement of action, fulfilling all the duties and enjoying all the pleasures that she had proposed to him. He imagined her happy and healthful, journeying gaily by his side in the fresh morning, with rosy cheek and elastic step; he imagined her delighting him by her promised songs, enlivening him by her eloquent words, in the mellow stillness of evening; he imagined her sleeping, soft and warm and still, in his protecting arms—ever happy and ever gentle; girl in years, and woman in capacities; ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... from the able editors of the above valuable Journal, should strongly present itself to the minds of every person having an eye to the comforts of life. To those who have given a trial of the Superior Boots and Shoes manufactured with DICK'S Patent Elastic Metallic Shanks, information would be needless; for they could not be induced to purchase elsewhere. But we would respectfully ask attention of the entire Boot and Shoe wearing community, to call at 109 Nassau street, ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... have read about before his uncle gave it to him, for pilgrims to the Holy Land, many hundred years ago, used to wear it, as a badge on their hats or caps. It has two valves, like the oyster, which are united by a strong and very elastic hinge. It has also a strong muscle, by which it can, as it pleases, open its valves or keep them tightly shut. It helps to move itself about by rapidly opening and closing its shell. It is found in the European seas and all along the ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown
... naked feet, was a girl. A girl of fifteen or sixteen, naked, except for a kilt of gaily-striped material reaching from her waist to her knees. Her long black hair was drawn back from the forehead, and tied behind with a loop of the elastic vine. A scarlet blossom was stuck behind her right ear, after the fashion of a clerk's pen. Her face was beautiful, powdered with tiny freckles; especially under the eyes, which were of a deep, tranquil blue-grey. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... strides in discipline, instruction and morale, and early in April was in a condition to inspire the highest expectations." And Swinton well sums up: "Under Hooker's influence the tone of the army underwent a change which would appear astonishing had not its elastic vitality ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... escape by this secret passage from the prison above. Gazing through the aperture, they perceived not many feet below what had once been the castle ditch, now dry, and forming a portion of the archduke's gardens. With a joyous heart and an elastic bound, Ibrahim reached the soft turf beneath. The more timid and helpless Hassan lowered himself by clinging to a remaining iron bar, and with the aid of his companion was soon on his feet, enjoying, with many thanks to Allah, the fresh air of heaven and the consciousness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... kept up for seven or eight hours, the process requiringunremitting attention to avoid cracks and make the plank bend with the proper dip at the two ends. Wooden straddlers, made by cleaving pieces of tough elastic wood and fixing them with wedges, are inserted into the opening, their compass being altered gradually as the work goes on, but in different degrees according to the part of the boat operated upon. Our casca turned out a good one— ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... was losing, for his love going down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go—the yearning which sang and throbbed through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty of the world that evening. And with the tip of his cork-soled, elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog Balthasar, causing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for though he was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of the fact. When he had finished he rubbed the place he had been scratching against his master's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... appeared, we get the first hint of a forthcoming Second Part. "You shall see shortly," he says, "the further exploits of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza." His idea of "shortly" was a somewhat elastic one, for, as we know by the date to Sancho's letter, he had barely one-half of the book ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... curiosity was at any rate her duty; and she, feeling mightily like some devoted heroine, would not shrink from the trial. When once brought to a decision she felt a load taken from her breast; she breathed more freely, and her tread was more vigorous and elastic. She left her chamber with a lofty mien, and the gentle Alice felt more like the proud mistress of an empire than the inhabitant of a little country dwelling when she re-entered the parlour: yet there was a restless glance from her eye which ever and anon would start aside from visible ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Monsieur Vernier himself?" said the traveller, bending his vertebral column with such grace that it seemed to be elastic. ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... flowers spangled the sod, the grass was flushed with emerald, while the tender green of a willow copse formed a background for her lissom figure as she leaned forward to stroke the neck of the big gray horse, which pawed at the elastic turf. There was bright sunshine above us, dimming even the sweep of azure, and a glorious rush of breeze. All spoke of life and courage, and I strove to cheer her, until a horseman swept into sight across a rise, and my teeth closed together when I recognized ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... of accouterments and the occasional squeal of an angry thoat or the low guttural of a zitidar, the passage of the cavalcade was almost noiseless, for neither thoat nor zitidar is a hoofed animal, and the broad tires of the chariots are of an elastic composition, which gives forth ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Anton had served out a double ration of brandy, but that did not avail. Several of the men became, not rebellious, but weaker and more depressed. Fink looked with contemptuous smile at these symptoms of a condition of which his elastic spirit and iron nerves had no experience; but Anton, to whom all came with petitions and laments, felt the whole distress of these hours. Something must be done to help efficiently, or all was lost. Accordingly, he went into the court-yard, determined to sacrifice the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... youth are elastic, and even in their predicament Peggy found her heart almost singing within her at the beauty of the green little valley after their long, dusty journey ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... me, there was something inexpressibly exhilarating in the sensation of positive freedom from all worldly care, and a consequent expansion of the sinews, as it were, of mind and body, which made me feel elastic as a ball of india-rubber, and in such a state of perfect ease, that no more dread of scalping Indians entered my mind, than if I had been sitting in Broadway, in one of the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... "All in the game" was his nearest approach to a complaint, as he pegged away at his work, in between whiles going to the nearest station for killers, carting water in tanks out to "dry stage camps," and doing any other work that found itself undone. Dick's position was as elastic as his smile. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of the Pink Lady's Slipper is not so wide but that a bee must use some force to push against its elastic sloping sides and enter the large banquet chamber where he finds generous entertainment secreted among the fine white hairs in the upper part. Presently he has feasted enough. Now one can hear him buzzing about inside, trying to find a way out of the trap. Toward the two little gleams of light ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... the form-master, some wag is sure either to stamp on the shoes, accompanying the act with some satirical remark, or else to pull one of them off, and inaugurate an impromptu game of football with it. There was once a boy who went to school one morning in elastic-sided boots.... ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... how this fluid is affected in diseases of this kind, would, in my opinion, be a fruitless labour. However, as I have shewn on another occasion,[133] that it consists of very minute particles secreted from the blood in the brain, and receives and imprisons a considerable quantity of that elastic matter, universally diffused throughout all nature; it cannot be doubted, but that it may be so corrupted by some indisposition of the body or mind, as to become more or less improper for executing the functions of life, and perform all animal motions, not ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... they were few? But, instead of that, he finds reasons for complaint in the brevity of the life which, if it were as evil as he made it out to be, must often have seemed wearisomely long, and dragged very slowly. Now, both things are true—life is short, life is long. Time is elastic—you can stretch it or you can contract it. It is short compared with the duration of God; it is short, as one of the Psalms puts it pathetically, as compared with this Nature round us—'The earth abideth for ever'; we are strangers upon it, and there is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... merrily shouted Jem, and waving a farewell salute with his handkerchief he started away with a quick, elastic step that would soon bring him to his destination only ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... rank; and the episcopal successors of the apostles inflicted the censures of the church on those who deviated from the orthodox belief. But in an age of religious controversy, every act of oppression adds new force to the elastic vigor of the mind; and the zeal or obstinacy of a spiritual rebel was sometimes stimulated by secret motives of ambition or avarice. A metaphysical argument became the cause or pretence of political contests; the subtleties of the Platonic school were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... her. The figure I beheld is, and is not, my Charlotte—my thirty years' companion. There is the same symmetry of form, though those limbs are rigid which were once so gracefully elastic—but that yellow masque, with pinched features, which seems to mock life rather than emulate it, can it be the face that was once so full of lively expression? I will not look on it again. Anne thinks her little changed, because the latest idea she had formed of her mother ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... differences in the hands of people. They show all kinds of vitality, energy, stillness, and cordiality. I never realized how living the hand is until I saw those chill plaster images in Mr. Hutton's collection of casts. The hand I know in life has the fullness of blood in its veins, and is elastic with spirit. How different dear Mr. Hutton's hand was from its dull, insensate image! To me the cast lacks the very form of the hand. Of the many casts in Mr. Hutton's collection I did not recognize any, not even my own. But ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... elastic, and stretches to the shape of the time, she'll last, I suppose,' said Cornelius. 'If not—. Only think, I bought a copy of Paley's Evidences, best edition, broad margins, excellent preservation, at a bookstall the other ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... my childhood were great," continued George, "but still they were counterbalanced by many joys. In spite of the disadvantages under which I laboured, my gay, elastic spirit surmounted them all. ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... best newspapers gave full reports of the speech, with compliments. The columns of the "Evening Post" were generously declared to be "indefinitely elastic" for such utterances; and the "Tribune" expressed commendation wholly out of accord with the recent notions of its editor. The rough fellow from the crude West had made a powerful impression upon the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... small head, and his whole appearance was that of a most emaciated person. For many years of his life he was in most delicate health; so feeble he could not stand or walk. He was moved about in a chair with wheels. His intellect, however, was strong and elastic, and his voice was sufficient to enable him to make a public speech. He wrote much. He was not always consistent in his views. He opposed secession, then advocated it; then again denied that secession was warranted by ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... something very elastic, and really every man makes his own creed for himself, or—for paganism is almost never dogmatic—accepts the outward cultus with everybody else, and speculates at his leisure on the nature of the deity. The great bulk of the uneducated are naturally content to accept the old stories and ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... stitching, the matress should be sewed all round, taken out of the frame and the raw edges bound. They can be made of cotton and husks, without hair, or cotton alone. Those that have sheep can use the coarse wool, (and such as is not profitable for manufacturing,) with the husks, it is more elastic than cotton. Many persons are deprived of one of the greatest comforts in summer, and sleep on feathers, when a little care in preparing the materials, and putting them together would furnish your chambers with ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... moving with long elastic steps. Their eyes were bright, their faces flushed. They came up to Murphy, took his arm. They were solid, corporeal. They had no invisible ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... writing letters and working up sketches, and to make all smooth went to two churches and two temples in the afternoon; a fairly good ending to the year. The first temple, a pile of architecture of debased wedding-cake style, thick with innumerable elastic-legged, goggled-eyed, beastly, indecent Hindoo divinities. Thence to a Roman Catholic church in St Thome, the old Portuguese quarter—very pretty and simple in appearance. The half near the altar full of veiled European nuns in white and buff dresses. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... all that could be wrought by Heaven, for the purpose of continually confounding the local vestiges of popular reverence which might have gathered round stocks and stones, so obstinate is the hankering after this mode of superstition in man that his heart returns to it with an elastic recoil as often as the openings are restored. Agreeably to this infatuation, the temple of the true God—even its awful adytum—the holy of holies—or the places where the ark of the covenant had rested in its migrations—all were conceived to have an eternal ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... a very elastic term," she remarked. "There are so many standards. Some women think they must have maids and social status—whatever that is—and so on. It can't ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... delightful that we would gladly fill columns with extracts were space as elastic as imagination.... The text is excellent; the illustrations ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... tame, walk upon their toes with a firm, elastic gait, and their toes are not retractile. Their other external characters are so varied, that it is impossible to give a general summary of their colour or form; the largest on record (a Suliot, belonging to the king of Naples), measured four feet at the shoulders; ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... of children, followed by the dear little trim, slight figure. There was no fear that Genevieve did not look well or happy. Her olive complexion was healthy; her dark eyes lustrous with gladness; her smile frank and unquelled; her movements full of elastic life. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... street and number in a trembling gasp of gratitude. He eyed her narrowly, and then seemed to sum up his conclusion in a low, keen whistle. Her hat was hanging by its elastic on her shoulders; her hair was blown out of all order by the wind; her dress was torn and her hands were bruised and none too clean. She had no coat on, and her cheeks were flaming with cold and excitement. She was ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... these high table-lands is very pure and elastic; and I could not help wishing for some good fairy to remove my little cottage into one of the fair enclosures we passed continually by the roadside, and place it beneath the shade of some of the beautiful ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... him flying; with the second, third rebounding Touches he the vaulted roof. Anxiously the mother calleth: Spring amain, and at thy pleasure; But beware, think not of flying, unto thee is flight denied. And so warns the faithful father: In the earth the force elastic Lies, aloft that sends thee bounding; let thy toe but touch the surface, Like the son of earth, Antaeus, straightway is thy strength renewed. And so o'er these rocky masses, on from dizzy ledge to ledge, Leaps he ever, hither, thither, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ladies of Lima are celebrated for beauty and fineness of figure. They wear a very remarkable walking dress, peculiar to this city and Truxillo. It consists of two parts, one called the saya, the other the manto. The first is an elastic dress, fitting close to the figure down to the ankles; the other is an entire envelope, disclosing scarcely more than one eye to the most scrutinizing observer. A rich colored handkerchief or a silk band and tassel are frequently tied around the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... preliminary arrangements, suitable and elastic organisation of transport, the collection of material at railhead, the training of platelaying gangs provided by the troops, the utilisation of the earthwork of the enemy's line for our own railway, luck as regards the weather and the fullest use of sea transport, ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... the glossy and abundant hair. Here the resemblance ceased. I have heard my uncle say,—how often!—"Your mother, Juanita, had the most perfect form I ever saw, except in marble"; all Spanish women, indeed, he told me, had a full, elastic roundness of shape and limb, rarely seen among our spare and loose-built nation. I was American in form, at least,—slight and stooping, with a certain awkwardness, partly to be imputed to my rapid growth, partly to my shyness and reserve. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... question, but his bookkeeping, Lang found, was largely in his mind. When he received a shipment of goods he set the selling-price by multiplying the cost by two and adding the freight; which saved much calculating. Frank's notions of "mine" and "thine," Lang discovered, moreover, were elastic. His depredations were particularly heavy against a certain shipment of patent medicine called "Tolu Tonic," which he ordered in huge quantities at the company's expense and drank up himself. The secret was that Frank, who had inherited his father's proclivities, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... the worse of him for it. There is not the slightest use in arguing about these facts, any more than, as I said in my first paper upon marriage, there is in arguing about fundamental instincts, and it would be well for women to realise this elastic, unwritten law of honour in men towards them, and so not expect, at the present state of man's evolution, that they will receive anything different. They must never forget that this adjustable sense of honour springs from the same fundamental male instinct we spoke ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... tissues liked an elastic garment, but are always in a state of movement. These, again, manifestly further the destructive ferment, and bring about a softness and flaccidity in the decomposing tissues, while they without doubt, at the same time, have, by their vital activity and possible secretions, affected ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... of a framework of cartilages joined by elastic membranes or ligaments, and joints. These cartilages move freely toward and upon each other by means of attached muscles. Also the larynx as a whole can be moved in various directions by means of extrinsic muscles joined to ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... into the snow. In the clear night, it had become still drier and easily yielded to their steps. They waded stoutly on. Their limbs became even more elastic and strong as they proceeded, but they came to no edge and could not look down. Snowfield succeeded snowfield, and at the end of each ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... upon Wheat, Barley, Potatoes, and other subsidiary food crops. This has trenched somewhat largely on my space; and although the volume has been swelled to an unexpected size, I am reluctantly compelled to omit some few Sections, such as those treating of elastic and other Gums, Resins, &c.; on tropical Fruits; and on textile substances and products available for cordage and clothing. The latter section, which includes Cotton, Flax, Jute, &c., and embraces a wide and important range ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... there are Merchants, Artists, Men of Letters; three hundred and seventy-four Lawyers; (Bouille, Memoires sur la Revolution Francaise (London, 1797), i. 68.) and at least one Clergyman: the Abbe Sieyes. Him also Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him, the light thin man; cold, but elastic, wiry; instinct with the pride of Logic; passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which, in its independent concentrated greatness, seems to have soared ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... by those sensible qualities others do. He that was sharp-sighted enough to see the configuration of the minute particles of the spring of a clock, and observe upon what peculiar structure and impulse its elastic motion depends, would no doubt discover something very admirable: but if eyes so framed could not view at once the hand, and the characters of the hour-plate, and thereby at a distance see what o'clock ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... weight than a komatik and dogs and three people. The ice in the middle, however, which had looked so sure from the landwash, proved to be "black"—that is, very, very thin, though being salt-water ice, it was elastic. It was waving up and down so as almost to make one seasick, but in its elasticity lay our only chance of safety. We flung ourselves down at full length on the komatik to give as broad a surface of resistance as possible, and ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... pliable and obedient agent in the person of General Clarke, offspring of an Irish refugee family, either a mild republican or a constitutional monarchist according to circumstances, a lover of peace and order, a conciliatory spirit. To him was given the directors' confidential, elaborate, and elastic plan for territorial compensations as a basis for peace, the outcome of which in any case would leave Prussia preponderant in Germany. Liberal and well disposed to the Revolution as they believed, she could then be wooed into a firm alliance. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of Charlotte Street, and had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that, as steam was an elastic body, it would rush into a vacuum, and, if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel, it would rush into it, and might be there ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... traps for chetahs would be very powerful vermin-gins, made expressly of great size and strength, so as to lie one foot square when open. Even a common jackal-trap would hold a leopard, provided the chain was fastened to an elastic bough, so that it would yield slightly to his spring; but if it were secured to a post, or to anything that would enable him to get a dead pull against it, something would most likely give way. I have constantly set these traps for them, but always ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Bryce said as he stepped into the cubical of the revolving door. Gently tightening elastic bands drew him into position within the man-shaped mold. "What's a frontier on your terms, Roy?" When he was in place the other half of the rubbery, air-excluding mold closed on him and the airtight ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... things really true that she told him? Was he actually out of his body, and was his name really Jimbo? His thoughts kept groping backwards, ever seeking the other companions he had lost; but, like a piece of stretched elastic too short to reach its object, they always came back with a snap just when he seemed on the point of finding them. He wanted these companions very badly indeed, but the struggling of his memory was painful, and he could not keep the effort up for very ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... whatever, but led the way in silence, walking slowly enough to accommodate the ladies, and sometimes holding an overhanging branch to prevent it from springing back in their faces. Minnie walked on lightly, and with an elastic step, looking around with evident interest upon the forest. Once a passing lizard drew from her a pretty little shriek of alarm, thus showing that while she was so calm in the face of real and frightful danger, she could be alarmed by even the most innocent object that affected her fancy. ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... magnetic-soled slippers from their place on the cabin wall. He handed them out and opened the door. A biting chill came in it. Joe slipped on the shoe-soles with their elastic bands to hold them. He stepped out ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... poets, the painters and musicians, and the lights twinkling in the theatrical and journalistic firmaments, the men in velveteen jackets and peg-top trousers, the women in flounced skirts and shawls and elastic-sided boots. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... our generalship was the system which put the High Command into the hands of a group of men belonging to the old school of war, unable, by reason of their age and traditions, to get away from rigid methods and to become elastic in face ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... irreconcilable discord between the Papacy and the necessities of civil government. All Catholics are bound to oppose this opinion. Only that which is of Divine institution is unchangeable through all time. But the sovereignty of the Popes is extremely elastic, and has already gone through many forms. No contrast can be stronger than that between the use which the Popes made of their power in the thirteenth or the fifteenth century, and the system of Consalvi. There is no reason, therefore, to doubt, that it will now, after ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... up into her jolly, freckled face, and waited for the woman who came toward me with that elastic, swinging movement of hers, the well-opened eyes studying me, keeping ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or office thereof." This may be called the Elastic Clause of the Constitution; it has undergone a good deal of stretching for one purpose and another, and, as we shall presently see, it was a profound disagreement in the interpretation of this clause that after 1789 divided the American people ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... guide, first along a light elastic greensward under the shade of lofty and wide-spreading trees that skirted a sunny opening of the forest, then along labyrinthine paths, which the deer, the outlaw, or the woodman had made, through the close shoots of the young coppices, through the ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... and the swift and beautiful river from which it derived its name. The view was enchanting, and the squire and his companions paused for a moment to contemplate it, and then, stepping gleefully forward, made their way over the elastic turf towards a small thicket skirting the park. All were in high spirits, for the freshness and beauty of the morning had not been without effect, and the squire's tongue kept pace with his legs as he strode briskly ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... no whit less tireless and enduring. At this far-distant day I can close my eyes and see the gaunt, leather-clad figure of Ephraim Yeates, striding on always in the lead and ever pressing forward, tough, wiry and iron to endure, and yet withal so elastic that the shrewdest discouragement served only to make him rebound and strike the harder. Good stuff and true there was in that old man; and had Richard or I been less determined, his fine and noble heroism in a cause which was not his own would ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the extreme native Southern courtesy that clothed him always in all his dealings with every one, and the essential youthfulness of his mind when moving among his favorite subjects. His was surely one of the finest of sympathies, delicate, sensitive, elastic, vital to the highest degree, the like of which is all too rare among men, though hardly described by the term 'feminine'. In it breathed a genuine capacity for love in the most noble sense, for he was ready to identify himself with the interests of another, to etherealize ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the iron hooks that bristled from all sides, were filled with bottles and scraps of various kinds, that made a pleasant jingle as they were jostled against each other by the motion of the cart. She had never enjoyed a ride so much. Her father's easy carriage, with cushioned seat and elastic springs, could not be compared to the soap man's little box on red wheels. Besides, papa's horse could not dance, he had never learned how; and he ran so fast that she could not see the flowers and the ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May
... understand that only under the elastic system of a bourgeois government, only at the bourgeois court of the Citizen-King, could a Tullia, now metamorphosed into a Mme. du Bruel, be accepted in the society which her good sense prevented her from attempting to enter. Mme. de Bonfalot, Mme. de Chisse, and Mme. ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... mound held down by stones, with the tops of the heath turned upwards to the current. The water rose against the mound for a foot or eighteen inches, and then murmured over and through, occasioning an expansion among the hard elastic sprays. Next a party of the islanders came down the stream, beating the banks and pools, and sending a still thickening shoal of trout before them, that, on reaching the miniature dam formed by the bundles, darted ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Spring by diminishing evaporation. Evaporation may be defined to be the conversion of liquid and solid bodies into elastic fluids, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... church and convent which vied in quaint picturesqueness with anything in Europe; but, alas! the old monk who showed us round, though wearing the regulation gown and knotted cord, had replaced his sandals by elastic-sided boots and covered his tonsure with a ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... The prairie life had given a shining quality to her handsomeness, an air of depth and firmness, an exquisite health and clearness to the colour in her cheeks. Her step was as light as Nancy's, elastic and buoyant— a gliding motion which gave a sinuous grace to the movements of her body. There had also come into her eyes a vigilance such as deaf people possess, a sensitive observation imparting a deeper intelligence to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... great royal bull-fight had begun. Twenty glittering, spangled espadas marched with elastic steps into the ring, followed by the yellow-trousered picadors on their sorry horses. The three gala coaches carrying the distinguished amateur picadors and their ducal patrons who graced this marriage feast, still circled ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the four feet, with two rudimentary hoofs on the fore legs, two inguinal teats to the udder, with a short tail in the wild breed, but of varying length in the domesticated; have no incisor teeth in the upper jaw, but in their place a hard elastic cushion along the margin of the gum, on which the animal nips and breaks the herbage on which it feeds; in the lower jaw there are eight incisor teeth and six molars on each side of both jaws, making in all 32 teeth. The fleece consists of two coats, one to keep the animal ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... husbandman, on whose frame the hard and unintermitted toil of thirty generations has stamped its unmistakable impress, and, correspondently, he is a less persevering and less vigorous labourer; but, as a general rule, his stature is taller and his step far more free and elastic than that of the sturdy but slow and stunted labourer of our southern counties. There are wild mountainous districts of the west, indeed, in which the lowest type of the Irish peasantry is found, that must be taken as exceptions to our general statement; ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... comes in various shapes to the individual,—power, as he will tell you, not to "mind" things that used to vex him, power to concentrate his mind, good cheer, good temper—in short, to put it mildly, a firmer, more elastic moral tone. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... by the immense pressure given to it by the height of the mountain. There it is turned into steam. For a time it is kept down by the vast weight of the lava which is over it, but after a time the elastic force of it gets so great that a bubble of it bursts up, and comes out at the top of the mountain in a great, thundering puff, bringing up some portion of the melted lava with it, and throwing it ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... Beria to be 'the generic name of a number of vagrant, gipsy-like groups'; and a full description of them has been given by Babu Rajendra Lal Mitra, who considers them to resemble the gipsies of Europe. "They are noted for a light, elastic, wiry make, very uncommon in the people of this country. In agility and hardness they stand unrivalled. The men are of a brownish colour, like the bulk of Bengalis, but never black. The women are of lighter complexion and generally well-formed; some of them have considerable claims to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... job, and the absolute certainty of regular meals just now appeals. They get three meals a day going with the current, and four while tracking back, with meals thrown in when anything unusual happens or a moose is killed. One cannot help wondering how that elastic term "the law of heredity" works out with these people, cut off from the lives their fathers led and from the free woods-life ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... cock, or a tall silk "chimney pot," the latter denoting a chief; he also sports in full dress a broad coat, ending in a loin cloth of satin stripe or some finer stuff, about six feet long by four and a half broad; it is secured by a kerchief or an elastic waist belt; during work it is tucked up, but on ceremonial occasions it must trail upon the ground. The lieges wear European shirts, stuffed into a waist-cloth of cheaper material, calico or domestics; This ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... power of the State. He drops out of the ranks of workers and producers. Society must support him. It accepts the burden, but he must be cancelled from the ranks of the rulers likewise. So much for the pauper. About him no more need be said. But he is not the "poor man." The "poor man" is an elastic term, under which any number of social fallacies may ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... consolidation of his power, what he seemed to be seeking solely for the interest of the friends of the Republic. The limitation to the period of the continuance of the war had also a certain provisional air which afforded hope for the future. But everything provisional is, in its nature, very elastic; and Bonaparte knew how to draw it out ad infinitum. The decree, moreover, enacted that if any of the uncondemned journals should insert articles against the sovereignty of the people they would be immediately ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... wore a suit of well-brushed, "shiny" black broadcloth, and for comfort old-fashioned soft kid "gaiters," with elastic in the sides. He was a man with whom one did not easily become acquainted, having very decided opinions on most subjects. He possessed exquisite taste, a passionate love of music, flowers and all things beautiful; ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... that extravagance—I risk it rather, for the sake of the moral involved; which is not that the particular production before us exhausts the interesting questions it raises, but that the Novel remains still, under the right persuasion, the most independent, most elastic, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... kidneys, lungs, heart, mind, nerves, stomach, liver and bowels, were all set to working right. And, as a consequence, aided by the urethral remedies, the losses ceased, erectile power and sexual vigor returned, the step became buoyant and elastic, the mind clear, the memory retentive, the eyes clear and bright, the lips and cheeks ruddy with healthful color; the whole system, indeed, ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... had in reserve the Seventy-eighth Division, our Fourth Corps the Third Division, and our First Army the Thirty-fifth and Ninety-first Divisions, with the Eightieth and Thirty-third available. It should be understood that our corps organizations are very elastic, and that we have at no time had permanent assignments of divisions ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... by good eating, that they require little or no screwing up with liquid stimuli. This accounts for that "toujours gai," and happy equilibrium of the animal spirits which they enjoy with more regularity than any people: their elastic stomachs, unimpaired by spirituous liquors, digest vigorously the food they sagaciously prepare and render easily assimilable, by cooking it sufficiently,—wisely contriving to get half the work of the stomach done by fire ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... nothing from his pocket during the first year of the Revolution. For instance, in regard to the patriotic contribution, the Assembly left it to the conscience of each person to fix his own quota; at the end of six months, consciences are found too elastic, and the Assembly is obliged to confer this right on the municipalities. The result is[3248] that this or that individual who taxed himself at forty-eight livres, is taxed at a hundred and fifty; another, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and woe to the guilty master! Many of these wrongs came to Nicholas's notice; and he came to hate the system, and tried to undermine it. Opposition met him, of course; not so much the ponderous laziness of Peter's time as an opposition, polite and elastic, which never ranted and never stood up—for then Nicholas would have throttled it and stamped upon it. But it did its best to entangle his reason and thwart his action. He was told that the serfs were well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed, well-provided with religion; were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... inches broad, first bell-shaped, then flattened or depressed, polished, margin at length grooved (sulcate), flesh white, reddish under the cuticle. Stem 1 1/2 to 3 inches long, 3/4 of an inch thick, white or with a reddish hue, spongy, stuffed, stout, elastic when young, fragile when old, even, tapering slightly upward. Gills ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... able no longer to draw breath without the most intolerable pain, I proceeded forthwith to adjust around the car the apparatus belonging to the condenser. I had prepared a very strong, perfectly air-tight gum-elastic bag. In this bag, which was of sufficient size, the entire car was in a manner placed. That is to say, the bag was drawn over the whole bottom of the car, up its sides and so on, up to the upper rim where the net-work is attached. Having pulled up the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... mind stored with a variety of charming information. She has traveled a great deal and seen much of the fashionable world. Mr. Gouverneur's mother was married in the White House and—think of it!—on a Spread Eagle—that is to say, on the carpet of which that very elastic bird made the central figure. Suppose Miss Nellie Grant, of whose engagement rumor outside of Washington talks so loud and this city appears to know nothing, should take it into her head to be married on a Spread Eagle, would not the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... searching smoke and foul vapours of city air. The finest flowers of genius have grown in an atmosphere where those of nature are prone to droop and difficult to bring to maturity. The mental powers acquire their full robustness where the cheek loses its ruddy hue and the limbs their elastic step, and pale thought sits on manly brows, and the watchman, as he walks his rounds, sees the student's lamp burning far into the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... gradually rise up, telescope fashion, until it reached the skies, when, if the aspirant was considered by the spirits the proper person to inherit Karague, he would gradually be lowered again without any harm happening; but, otherwise, the elastic hill would suddenly collapse, and he would be dashed to pieces. Now, Rumanika, by his own confession, had gone through this ordeal with marked success; so I asked him if he found the atmosphere cold when so far up aloft, and as he said ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... available to the individual the guarantees of personal liberty upon which America at home prides itself, that municipal self-government and provincial autonomy may become realities in the Philippines, and possibly even that both Filipinos and Americans may realize before it is too late how our elastic territorial government could be made to exact from them much less of their independence than the sacrifice of sovereignty necessary ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... elastic and contract and expand according to circumstances. You do not remind Mrs. Smith of having met her before, but on meeting again any one who was brought to your own house, or one who showed you an especial courtesy you instinctively say, "I am so glad ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... culpability, had returned upon her under a newly-fed strength of the old fumes. She did not in the least present the ideal of the tearful, tremulous bride. Poor Gwendolen, whom some had judged much too forward and instructed in the world's ways!—with her erect head and elastic footstep she was walking among illusions; and yet, too, there was an under-consciousness of her that she was ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... recipay, 'tis smooth an' slick as silk — Jest quit yer strangle-holt on hooch, an' irrigate with milk. Lackteeal flooid is the lubrication you require; Yer nervus frame-up's like a bunch of snarled piano wire. You want to get it coated up with addypose tishoo, So's it will work elastic-like, an' milk's ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... neglect was productive of the worst mischiefs. From my childhood I had been fond of religious disputation: my poor aunt has been often puzzled by the mysteries which she strove to believe; nor had the elastic spring been totally broken by the weight of the atmosphere of Oxford. The blind activity of idleness urged me to advance without armour into the dangerous mazes of controversy; and at the ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... new-made acquaintance, in the direction of his house. I now continued my journey as before, towards the north. The weather, though beautiful, was much cooler than it had been for some time past; I walked at a great rate, with a springing and elastic step. In about two hours I came to where a kind of cottage stood a little way back from the road, with a huge oak before it, under the shade of which stood a little pony and cart, which seemed to contain various articles. I was going past, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... informed. Our State is more elastic in its laws than yours. I cannot foresee what will happen to him ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... Prairial violently infringed all three of these essential conditions of judicial equity. First, the number of the jury who had power to convict was reduced. Second, treason was made to consist in such vague and infinitely elastic kinds of action as inspiring discouragement, misleading opinion, depraving manners, corrupting patriots, abusing the principles of the Revolution by perfidious applications. Third, proof was to lie in the conscience of the jury; there was ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... than a 'gant de Suede' shows on the hand; it was closely fitted to a figure not yet fully developed, but which the creator of the chef-d'oeuvre deigned to declare was faultless. Usually, he said, he recommended his customers to wear a certain corset of a special cut, with elastic material over the hips covered by satin that matched the riding-habit, but at Mademoiselle's age, and so supple as she was, the corset was not necessary. In short, the habit was fashioned to perfection, and fitted like her skin to her little flexible ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... every new face, and had been rejected a score of times; he comforted himself, however, with the very scaly proverb, 'there is as good fish in the sea as ever was caught,' and—cast in his line for another chance. He had tried poor women and rich women, young school-girls and elastic old maids, brunettes and blondes, but all in vain; and the moment he saw Ann Harriet he determined to make one more attempt to secure a heart that should beat for him alone, an ear that should be ever on the alert for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... also set himself to devise some 'protective' which would enable Nature to do her healing work without further interference from without. Animals have the power to form quickly a natural scab over a wound, which is impermeable and at the same time elastic. The human skin, after a slight wound, in a pure atmosphere, may heal quickly; but a serious wound may continue open for a long time, discharging 'pus' at intervals, while decomposition is slowly lowering ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... to the date of present occurrences, accustomed to summarize my convictions on the subject by the conveniently elastic formula that there might be 'something in it.' I still think so; but ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... conquered Persia, and in ten days arrived at Oroomiah. Being impatient to get into the mountains, the mission assembled immediately, and delegated Mr. Stocking to accompany him. Dr. Wright said of him, at this time, that "his spirits were buoyant, his step elastic, and his energy untiring." Two Nestorians went with them, and they had letters from the governor and some Persian nobles to the Persian Khan and the Emir of the Hakary Koords. At Khosrawa, Mr. Stocking ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson |
