"Magnet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from his hiding-place and listened. The voices grew louder and more excited. Drawn as by a magnet he slipped up the stairs step by step. At the top was an off-set in the hall, a corner in which he could hide, unseen from the open door beyond. There he lay on his stomach and wriggled forward until his eye was on a line with the crack in ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... but the wonderful telephone. "I believe I could make one," he said later on. "I understood a good deal of what the man said. I shall require a new magnet and some other things. I'll begin tomorrow." He had forgotten all about such trifles as hidden ladders and treed sisters, and the girls ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... Lessingholm; for although he made much profession of visiting at the parsonage for the sake of seeing his juvenile brother, still there were certain looks and tokens whereby I was clearly persuaded that the magnet was of a different kind; and whereas it would have been vain and ambitious in me to lift my eyes so high, in view of matrimonial proposals, as to nearly the topmost branch in the peerage of England (the Earls Fitzoswald being known to have been barons of renown at the period of the Norman ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... could not overcome the law that Sir Isaac Newton discovered, which law is as immutable as death. Nothing can remain aloft unless it is either lighter than the air itself, or unless it keeps in motion with enough force to overcome the pull of the magnet earth, which draws ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... see a glimpse of the water here and there as the mist shredded. He turned to the west and looked towards Westminster, recollecting how his name and purposes had centred there as though drawn by a magnet. But in that clear morning light they seemed unreal and purposeless. One immediate responsibility invaded him, and, contrasted with that, his ambitions dwindled into vanities. He filled no place, he realised, which would be vacant unless he occupied it. He had to decide for ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Vaughan omitted to give us a few racy lines on Sir Matthew Hale's "Divine Contemplations of the Magnet," Sir Kenelm Digby's "Weapon-Salve," and Valentine Greatrake's "Magnetic Cures"? He should have told the world a little, too, about the strange phenomenon of the Jesuit Kircher, in whom Popery attempted to recover the very ground which Behmen ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... of the Voltaic battery we set free a certain amount of force, and we can employ it at pleasure to produce an intense light in the electric lamp, or to melt metals which resist the greatest heat of our furnaces; it will convert a bar of iron into a magnet, or decompose water into its constituents, oxygen and hydrogen, or separate a metal from its combination with oxygen. But in all these processes no new force is produced—the force set free is unchangeable in itself, and we cannot increase its amount. Owing to the imperfection of our instruments ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... 1750 he commenced the business of mathematical instrument maker. In 1751 he invented a machine to measure a ship's way at sea, and a compass of peculiar construction, touched by Dr. Knight's artificial magnet. He made two voyages in company with Dr. Knight for the purpose of ascertaining the ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... not surprised when Arthur offered to accompany her. She was aware that a powerful magnet in the person of Louison attracted him across the ocean, and when the young nobleman landed in France again, after the lapse of a few months, he was accompanied by a handsome young wife, whom the old Marquis of Montferrand warmly welcomed to the home of his fathers—for was she ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... vito-magnetic river or current flows on. Its flood is never stayed. But yet we find no accumulation. Light and heat have neither been piled up to the sky, nor have they become annihilated. Their essential element has only changed form, and proceeded on its busy way, turning earth into a magnet, vivifying and operating all organisms, travelling upon all currents, gathering up and utilizing all the fragments and waste of its workshop, transmitting and conserving its energy en route to the poles. And finally, ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... expression of absolute confidence in Michael's Amory's loyalty and honour. Her finer senses told her that it was natures like Hadassah's, natures keenly sensitive to purity and uprightness, which could judge people like Mike justly. The magnet of righteousness draws kindred souls together. If Hadassah had doubted, then indeed she might have listened to Freddy's counsel. Freddy was just and splendid in his way, but Margaret did not blind herself to the fact that his knowledge of human nature, ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Art" would have attracted me for its own sake, but I must confess that at first his charming little daughter was the sole magnet which drew me to his lectures; for on account of displaying the pictures he delivered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the return of the servant from Dunscombe, to walk over to Beechcote. The road lay through woods, two miles of shade. He pined for exercise; Diana and her young sympathy acted as a magnet both on him and on Sir James; and it was to be presumed she took a daily paper, being, as Ferrier recalled, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... clangs His solemn call, and thou, O soul! Dost stir in sense's torpid fangs, Like the blind magnet, ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... the truth, the Reverend Frederick Thomasson had so keen a scent for Gold Tufts or aught akin to them, that it would have been strange if the instinct had not kept him at home; as a magnet, though unseen, attracts the needle. The same prepossession brought him, as soon as he heard of his visitor's approach, hurrying to the head of the stairs; where, if he had had his way, he would have clasped the baronet ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... with a magnet play'd, And knew its winning ways so wily, The magnet near the needle laid, And laughing, said, "We'll steal it slily." The needle, having naught to do, Was pleased to let the magnet wheedle, Till closer still the tempter drew, And off, at ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... because he was kept in close confinement; but when they judged that he was weaned from his old home, they loosed his bonds, and—back to the plains he sped, like an arrow shot from the bow, or like a bit of iron leaping to the magnet. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not so hotly pursued. De Wet had entered the Cape Colony from the north-west; and like a magnet he drew most of the British forces irresistibly to him. This gave us a short rest, which was, alas! only too short. For De Wet, as well as Hertzog, had to fall back on the Orange Free State, and with redoubled energy the British came upon us like a mighty avalanche. The reader can hardly ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... in what he, no doubt, considered the monotonous routine of Warsaw life, our friend made another excursion, one of far greater importance in more than one respect than that to Berlin. Vienna had long attracted him like a powerful magnet, the obstacles to his going thither were now removed, and he was to see that glorious art-city in which Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and many lesser but still illustrious men had ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... that headmasters of private schools are divided into two classes: the workers and the runners-up-to-London. Mr Abney belonged to the latter class. Indeed, I doubt if a finer representative of the class could have been found in the length and breadth of southern England. London drew him like a magnet. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... in which glad young hearts had a merry-making time. How beautiful the bride looked! and how proudly the gaze of her newly-installed husband turned ever and ever toward her, move which way she would among her maidens, as if she were a magnet to his eyes. He was standing in the portico that looked out upon the distant river, about an hour after the wedding, talking with one of the bridesmaids, when the latter, pointing to ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... door.' The path it has made to ours is a wide one. The boys swarm here all hours of the day, to Norman's delight, the summer campers make our garden the Mecca of their morning pilgrimages, and the cheerful front we put up to Fate seems to be the magnet that draws them back again ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... reckless will, and full of a magnetic energy that overflowed in everything—looks, movements, talk, playing—the somewhat fickle nature of Mme. D'Agoult was drawn to the artist like steel to a magnet. Liszt, on the other hand, easily yielded to the refined and delicious sensuousness of one of the most accomplished women of her time, who to every womanly fascination added the rarest mental gifts and high ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... things which women find out by instinct, just as the needle turns towards the magnet. Shut a girl up in a tower till she is eighteen years old, and on the day of her release introduce her to the first man her eyes have ever looked upon, and she will know at a glance ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... which I don't understand, not being a scientific man myself, a magnetic connection was formed between these boxes, and also, if I got the story straight, between them and the iron hull of our vessel, so that it became, in fact, an enormous floating magnet, one of the biggest things of the kind on record. I have an idea that this magnetic condition was the cause of the trouble to our machinery; every separate part of it was probably turned to a magnet, and they all ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... particles were piling up around the rim of the port, sticking fast to the metal of the hull. They were bristling in fantastic array, like iron filings adhering to the poles of a magnet. In a flash it came to him that these particles were magnetic; the Nomad was covered with them and they piled on ever more thickly, soon weighting her down so heavily that she lost altitude. They were at the mercy of a furious electrical storm ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... broadly speaking, the stage in which the man is unconsciously trying to be converted. And the third stage is perhaps the truest and most terrible. It is that in which the man is trying not to be converted. He has come too near to the truth, and has forgotten that truth is a magnet, with the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... into Spain the use of the magnet in connection with the mariner's compass. But owing to the fact that it was not needed in the short voyages along the coast of the Mediterranean, it did not come into a large use until the great voyages on the ocean, in the beginning of the fourteenth ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... the hour when I sailed from home, Lucy's image was seldom absent from my imagination, ten minutes at a time; I thought of her, sleeping and waking; in all my troubles; the interest of the sea-fight I had seen could not prevent this recurrence of my ideas to their polar star, their powerful magnet; but I do not remember to have thought of Lucy, even, once after Marble was thus carried away from my side. Neb, too, with his patient servitude, his virtues, his faults, his dauntless courage, his unbounded devotion to myself, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... Merton sauntered out to look at the river: running water drew him like a magnet. By the side of the stream, on a woodland path, he met Lady Bude. She took his hand silently in her right, and patted it with her left. Merton turned his ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... impose on us as a miracle. After this our commander gave orders that none of the caravan should enter into the temple. Having thus seen with my own eyes, I can assuredly declare that there is neither iron nor steel, nor magnet stone by which the tomb of Mahomet is made to hang in the air, as some have falsely imagined, neither is there any mountain nearer to Medina than four miles. To this city of Medina corn and all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... is a magnet, highly and singularly sensitized. Some draw to them fields and woods and hills, and are drawn in return; and some draw swift streets and the riches which are known to cities. It is not of importance what ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... in the first there is a general account of magnetism and the properties of the loadstone, closing with a discussion "of the inquiry whence the magnet receives the natural virtue which it has." Peter attributed this virtue to a sympathy with the heavens, proposing to prove his point by the construction of a "terrella," a uniform sphere of loadstone which is to be carefully balanced and mounted in the manner of an armillary sphere, with ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... astonishingly evident from this bird's-eye point of view; but brightly as the jewels gleamed, they had lost their allurement for these two. With Vanno's arms around her, Mary wondered how she could ever have felt that the Casino was a vast magnet compelling her to come to it in spite of herself, drawing her thoughts and her money to itself, as an immense magnetic rock might draw the nails from the sides of a frail little boat. With Mary's ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of all who yield to the regenerating and sanctifying power of his spirit and example. The historical Christ meets and satisfies our deepest intellectual and moral wants. Our souls, if left to their noblest impulses and aspirations, instinctively turn to him as the needle to the magnet, as the flower to the sun, as the panting hart to the fresh fountain. We are made for him, and 'our heart is without rest until it rests in him.' He commands our assent, he wins our admiration, he overwhelms us to humble adoration ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... hates me,—she will always hate me," he was mumbling. "Why should I care? Why should I refuse to take—" Her lips were on his again, warm, firm, voluptuous, drawing his heart's blood with the resistless power of a magnet. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... once produced a dark red handkerchief of enormous size and broke the silence of the place by a nasal blast which sounded like a trumpet call to arms. When he arose to go I arose also and followed him; I could no more have helped it than if he had been a magnet and I a bit of iron filing. He walked to Oxford Street and took a seat in a 'bus bound for Chelsea. I followed and sat opposite, hardly daring to lift my eyes to him until I found that he was wholly absorbed in the notes he had taken. When ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... to the Alamo like the magnet to the pole. There was the fortress, gray and grim in the sunshine, with the dim figures of the watchers on the walls. What were they doing inside now? How were Crockett and Bowie? His heart filled with grief that he had failed them. But had he failed ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... only irritated it, and driven the foreign substance farther still into the delicate nerves of the sensitive organ. At length a skilful young physician thought of a new expedient. He came one day without lancet and probes, and holding in his hand a small but powerful magnet, which he kept before the wounded eye, as close as it could bear. Immediately the piece of steel began to move toward the powerful attraction, and soon flew up to meet it and left the suffering eye completely relieved, without an effort or a laceration. ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... whirl very swiftly, by pulling the two hands apart, and then letting them come together again,—the string twisting and untwisting alternately, all the time. There were various other articles of apparatus for performing philosophical experiments; such as a prism, a magnet, pipes for blowing soap bubbles, a syringe, or squirt-gun, as the boys called it, made of a reed, which may be said to ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... are silver mines in Norway; but the iron mines are the most profitable. We have to thank Norway for the magnet, of such inestimable ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... of the Missouri Compromise, which since the year 1820 had been the bulwark of the new territories against the encroachments of slavery. The whole anti-slavery sentiment of the North was thereby intensified, and as the establishment of north polarity at one end of the magnet excites south polarity at the other, so Southern feeling in favor of slavery was thereby increased. Up to a recent period Southern leaders had, as a rule, deprecated slavery, and hoped for its abolition; ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... is in the best savage style; but I wish the Walach had not introduced the classic name of Mysians, the experiment of the magnet or loadstone, and the passage of an old comic poet, (Nicetas in Alex. Comneno, l. i. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... her frown;—to watch them burning themselves like moths in her clear flame, and dying at her feet for love of her! The woman who can do these things is gifted with the charm which makes or ruins life,— few can resist her,—she draws sensitive souls as a magnet draws the needle,—and the odd part of it all is that she need not have any heart herself—she need not feel one pulse of the passion with which she inspires others—indeed it is better that she ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... give a description of Mr Knapton Thompson's interview with his daughter, on the same evening that Julia appeared to me. I have already said that the magnet which drew Mr Thompson to these seances was the opportunity given to him of meeting and talking to a daughter who had passed away ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... but for many days, perhaps," Frank added; for more than ever did he begin to realize the enormous task that confronted them; it was almost like looking for a needle in a haystack; but if one possesses a powerful magnet, even then the bit of steel may be recovered ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... highlands lies more in their failure to attract than in their power to resist conquest. When to abundant natural resources, a single spot adds a reputation for wealth, magnificence, an exceptional position for the control of territory or commerce, it becomes a geographical magnet. Such was Delphi for the Gauls of the Balkan Peninsula in the third century, Rome for the Germanic and Hunnish tribes of the Voelkerwanderung, Constantinople for the Normans, Turks and Russians, Venice for land-locked Austria, the Mississippi highway and the outlet at New Orleans ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... a wild, frantic attempt to draw back, a quick terror gripping her. The shouting river was calling to her, something was pulling at her body steadily as a magnet pulls at a steel, the world was slipping away under her, she was going the way the rabbit had gone . ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... of vision, Gaud, as if drawn by a magnet, followed the pathway all along the cliffs till she had to stop, because the land came to an end; she sat down at the foot of a tall cross, which rises amidst the gorse and stones. As it was rather an ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... genius drew all those within his sphere, like a magnet, to attach themselves to him and his doctrines. Nay, before he became a Romanist, what we may call his mesmeric influence acted not only on his Tractarian adherents, but even in some degree on outsiders like myself. Whenever I was at Oxford, I used to go regularly on Sunday afternoons ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... instruct the people. I should observe that beautiful as well as humorous effects are produced by certain electrical combinations. By means of sympathetic action living bodies can be attracted and raised without removing their inherent electricity, as you attract light substances with the magnet or the electricity ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... we must live our faith, we must practice what we believe. A magnet does not attract iron, as iron. It must first convert the iron into another magnet before it can attract it. It is useless for a parent to try to teach gentleness to her children when she herself is cross and irritable. ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... Northmen." ("The Landnamabok," vol. i., chap. 2.) An Italian poem Of A.D. 1190 refers to it as in use among the Italian sailors at that date. In the ancient language of the Hindoos, the Sanscrit—which has been a dead language for twenty-two hundred years—the magnet was called "the precious stone beloved of Iron." The Talmud speaks of it as "the stone of attraction;" and it is alluded to in the early Hebrew prayers as Kalamitah, the same name given it by the Greeks, from the reed upon ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... this physical aspect, is not a little like an unabashed ape. Accordingly the foreigner in Deutschland is impressed by the popular worship of the wide-hipped female. The Teuton can leave little to be inferred but that he is more interested in the magnet of her developed hips than in the magic of ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... plant that lifts its head from the meadow; See how its leaves all point to the North as true as the magnet." ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... abusing each other's opinions and practices, and yet never a whit the less absorbed in each other's society; in fact, the very contrariety seemed to unite them, like the attraction between opposite poles of the magnet. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... what seemed a long time neither rabihorcado touched her. What distance she could have placed between them but for that faithful mother instinct! She kept circling, ever returning, drawn back toward the sand by the magnet of love; and the powerful wings seemed slowly to lose strength. Closer the rabihorcados swooped and rose and swooped again, till one of them, shooting down like a black flash, struck her in the back. The white ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... diabolic tricks to be played before them, "as, for example, things of iron, and silver goblets, or other heavy articles, to be moved by bounds from one end of a table to the other, without the use of a magnet or of any attachment." The pious prince appears to have been Charles IX., and the conjuror a certain Cesare Maltesio. Another Jesuit author describes the veritable mango-trick, speaking of persons who "within three hours' space did cause a genuine shrub of a span in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Moira was dragged out of that house as by a magnet. The sky had cleared and lay far off and cold, and the wrack of the broken clouds was burning itself up in the west when I saw a dory ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... civilized man proposes to himself I take to be the finding out whatsoever he can concerning his neighbours. Nihil humanum a me alienum puto; I am curious about even John Smith. The desire next in strength to this (an opposite pole, indeed, of the same magnet) is ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... as if drawn by a magnet, Mr. Lambkin set off to the President's house. William was ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... is so pretty." Miss Ashwell was pretty, with her clear blue eyes, gold-brown hair, and a skin so fair and soft, that it made one think of apple-blossoms; and she had charm, that indefinable something, which like a magnet drew others to her. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... placing a row of small polished steel balls on the back of the left hand, in the crease between two of the fingers pressed together, and while they were rolled over and over, they were minutely examined in a strong light, and with the aid of a magnet held in the right hand, the defective balls were picked out and thrown into especial boxes. Four kinds of defects were looked for-dented, soft, scratched, and fire-cracked—and they were mostly so minute as to be invisible to an eye not especially trained to this ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... carried him out to the farm, and he analysed it—made a regular Job of it. Well, sir, we built a kiln, and we kept a lot of that paint-ore red-hot for forty-eight hours; kept the Kanuck and his family up, firing. The presence of iron in the ore showed with the magnet from the start; and when he came to test it, he found out that it contained about seventy-five per cent. of the peroxide ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one, and yet has nothing of love in it, she will glance off from him into some great passion or other. All excitements run to love in women of a certain—let us not say age, but youth. An electrical current passing through a coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, but not touching it. So a woman is turned into a love-magnet by a tingling current of life running round her. I should like to see one of them balanced on a pivot ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... potato-bugs on your egg-plants. They seem to draw these troublesome beetles as a magnet does iron filings, and I have seen plants practically ruined by them in one day. As they seem to know there will not be time to eat the whole fruit they take pains to eat into the stems. The only sure remedy ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... q, fig. 19. In front of this galvanometer coil and inclosed in the same air-tight metal case is the plunger contact Pl, fig. 21. The galvanometer pointer P swings freely below the silver contacts S{1} and S{2}, just clearing the ivory insulator i. The magnet plunger makes a contact depending upon the adjustment of a clock at intervals of 2 seconds. So long as both galvanometer coils are influenced by exactly the same strength of current, the pointer will stand in line with ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... more likely to include a prolonged visit to Washington than to any other American city not his own. The Library of Congress alone, now magnificently housed in an elaborately decorated new building, is a strong magnet. In the same way there is a growing tendency for all who can afford it to spend at least one season in Washington. The belle of Kalamazoo or Little Rock is not satisfied till she has made her bow in Washington ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... fortnight the great fair at Montreal continued. A picturesque bazaar it must have been, this meeting of the two ends of civilization, for trade has been, in all ages, a mighty magnet to draw the ends of the earth together. When all the furs had been sold, the coureurs-de-bois took some goods along with them to be used partly in trade on their own account at the western posts and partly as presents from the King to the western chieftains. There is reason ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... toil-spent year, Pledged in youth to memory dear, Still to friendship's magnet true, We our social joys renew; Bound by love's unsevered chain, Here on ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... but I am uneasy. There are many strangers in the city and more are coming for the holiday. The presence of the Prince at the unveiling of the statue of his mother—God bless her soul!—is a tremendous magnet. I would that you could be here to-morrow, John Tullis; at Prince ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... from the Forno. Now that her vigil was explained, for Bower had advanced with ready smile and outstretched hand, the Wraggs and Vavasours and de la Veres—all the little coterie of gossips and scandalmongers—were drawn to the center of the hall like steel filings to a magnet. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... in the community, being by theory a spinster, and by practice a double grass-widow. Capable and self-supporting, she attracted the ne'er-do-wells as a magnet attracts needles, but having been twice induced to forego her freedom and accept the bonds of wedlock, she had twice escaped and reverted to her original type and name. Miss Jim was evidently a victim of one of Nature's ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... Could such reasoners but look upon the matter in its true perspective, they would cease to wonder that "good" should, in their view, "work out evil." Learning and Slavery can never compromise; they are as the antagonistic poles of the magnet. ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... to her, and she thought that it would, at all events, amuse Norman, who had never seen anything of the sort. She therefore gladly jumped down to ring the bell that the servant might bring a dish of water for the swan and fish to swim in, and to be attracted by the magnet, which she found carefully wrapped up at the bottom of the box. She looked forward with pleasure to the surprise her brother would exhibit at seeing the fish and swan come at ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... hostlers will not long grace a party of ladies and gentlemen. A politician who shakes hands with the rabble will lose as much in influence as he gains in power. In spite of envy, poets cling to poets and artists to artists. Genius, like a magnet, draws only congenial natures to itself. Had a well-bred and titled fool been admitted into the Turk's-Head Club, he might have been the butt of good-natured irony; but he would have been endured, since gentlemen must live with gentlemen and scholars with scholars, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... manifestly convinced and relieved. This action seemed to be a magnet for Pearce. He detached himself from the group, and, approaching Kells, tapped him significantly on the shoulder; and whether by design or accident the fact was that he took a position where Kells was ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... enough and that luck would change shortly, but I held on. And now the others surrounded me in a small crowd and began to stake on the numbers I chose. Put the clasp where I would the needle stopped in front of it. They brought a magnet to see if this curious piece of metal had any power of attraction, but our hostess only laughed and assured them at any rate there was no steel in the pointer, as (she added) some of them ought to know by this time. When eight times I had put the buckle down and eight times had found ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mercury, and a gentleness of their Salt, except it be that the Lion overcome them, that they have triumphed on both parts, and gained a remarkable Melioration altogether; this Melioration lies concealed in their Signate star, or Magnet, out of which all Metals have ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... himself in his conflict. He was a self-made man, and before he "went in" for opera had been a showman all over the States, and had made a quantity of money. He had run a menagerie, more than one circus, had taken about a "fake-hypnotist," a "living-magnet," and other delights. Then he had "started in" as a music-hall manager. With music halls he had been marvellously successful. He still held interests in halls all over the States. More recently he had been one of the first men to see the possibilities in moving ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... from his own town nearly every day. He felt that he should not neglect the few meetings which were the only way he could repay the Tepoktans for all they did for him. On the other hand, the chance to see and talk with one of his own kind drew him like a magnet to the hospital. ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe
... till you are drenched and saturated with His glory, and all your cold vapours turned into visible divinity and manifested Jesus. Keep near to Him. As long as a bit of scrap-iron touches a magnet, it is a magnet: as soon as the contact is broken it ceases to attract. If you live in the full sunshine of Christ and have Him, not merely playing upon the surface of your mind, but sinking deep ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... controlled. Others are mechanically controlled by what are called the 'mule's ear,' and other devices. You CAN'T win. These wires and magnets can be made to attract the little ball into any pocket the operator desires. Each one of the pockets contains an electro-magnet. One set of electro-magnets in the red pockets is connected with one button under the carpet and a set of batteries. The other series of little magnets in the black pockets is connected with another button ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... Sunday morning was conspicuous by the absence of Potts and Benz. But Curns was present with a smiling face and piece of court plaster attached to his chin. He attracted crowds of students as a magnet attracts iron filings. The students clung to him until they heard the last word of the episodes of one Judd Billings and then, bent almost double with laughter, they rushed off to tell the news to someone else. Information was ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... convenience exclude the altogether charming places, like the Tour d'Argent of Paris, Simpson's of the Strand,[1] and a dozen others that will spring to every traveller's memory, where the personality of the host, or of a chef, or even a waiter, is at once a magnet for the attraction of visitors and a reward for their coming. These, too, are many. In the interest to which I would draw attention, the hotel as a building or as an institution has little part. It is indeed a ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... picture her as a sphinx, mysterious, elusive, inscrutable. It is impossible to govern her, declare these theorists, because it is impossible to understand her. She is the femme incomprise of modern politics. Her temperament is a magnet for disaster, her soul a sanctuary of inviolable secrets. So runs the rhapsody, and many of my own countrymen have thought it good strategy to accept and exploit it. They have this to urge, indeed, that failure to make oneself understood ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... giants could move the iron, yet Tom had no difficulty in doing so. Of course my readers have already guessed how the trick was done. It was worked by a strong magnet, hidden in the floor. At a signal from Tom, Ned would switch on the current. The iron would be held fast and immovable, but when Tom himself went to raise it Ned would cut off the electricity and the bar was lifted as easily as an ordinary piece of iron. But simple as ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... much more simple booster. The Entz booster has no series coil and only one shunt coil, the direction and value of excitation due to this being controlled by a carbon regulator, it having two arms, the resistance of each of which can be varied by pressure due to the magnet- izing action of a solenoid. The main current from the generator passes through the solenoid and causes one or other of the two carbon arms to have ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Palmer and a boatman he embarks in a skiff and crosses the Gulf of Greediness, deadly whirlpools on one side, and on the other the Magnet Mountain with wrecks of ships strewed about its foot. Sighting the fair Wandering Isles, he attempts to land, attracted here by a beautiful damsel, there by a woman in distress; but the Palmer tells him that these seeming women are evil shadows placed there to lead men astray. Next ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... its head. But it takes such delight in virgins that the hunters place a maiden on its trail. As soon as the unicorn sees the maiden, it lays its head into her lap and falls asleep, when it may easily be caught." Of the magnet we learn among other things that it restores peace between husband and wife, softens the heart of all men and cures dropsy. "If a magnet is made into a powder and burnt on charcoal in the four corners of the house, the inhabitants imagine that they cannot keep on their legs and run away, sorely ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... with that seductive formation of the lips used by her countrywomen when speaking English, 'for a magnet to attract putty. Still—there ees the American. At least I shall not ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... rim shall bite No more upon this forehead ... Where's my glass? O mirror, mirror, hath it bit so deep? My love is coming, hark! O, say not grey, Sweet mirror! Tell, what time to cure it now? And he so near, so near! How shall I meet him? Why how but as the river leaps to sea, Steel to its magnet, child ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... has indeed achieved so many undisputed inventions, that he can readily afford to divide the honour in this case with others. He has contrived things so various as the self-acting mule and the best electro-magnet, wet gas-meters and dry planing machines, iron billard-tables and turret-clocks, the centrifugal railway and the drill slotting-machine, an apparatus for making cigars and machinery for the propulsion and equipment ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... this, and are happy. If I might send you a new sensation in every line, I should be happy, too, for your prodigal nature demands novelty. I should then be master for a moment. And love is mastery and submission, the two poles of a strong magnet. Adieu. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... Prophet Emanuel. But, as it happened, a new, or a revived, order of facts was just about to solicit scientific attention. Kant had (1766) heard rumours of healing by magnetism, and of the alleged effect of the magnet on the human frame. The subject was in the air, and had already won the attention of Mesmer, about whom Kant had information. It were superfluous to tell again the familiar story of Mesmer's performances at Paris. While Mesmer's ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... presence seemed to give the skipper special pleasure. It was astonishing what a gentle, tender soul was hidden beneath the commanding exterior. Before disclosing a bit of that soul, he always puffed harder at his cigar and gave Frederick a long, searching look. By degrees Frederick discovered what magnet was tugging strongly at the blond giant's heart. He kept recurring alternately to the Black Forest and the Thueringian Forest, and Frederick had a mental picture of the magnificent man clipping his privet hedge ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... 2,000 works treating of earth-motions. The phenomena are taken quite out of the realm of superstition. By means of delicate instruments of various kinds, called seismometers, the direction of earth-movements can be traced, and their force gauged, while by means of a simple magnet with a metal piece attached to it, an earthquake can be foretold. These instruments tell us that scarcely a day passes without an earthquake in some portion of the globe. The internal causes of these manifestations are ever active, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the top of the dead tree, a pair of pine martens had made their den in the hollow trunk, and reared a family of young martens that drew Kagax's evil thoughts like a magnet. The marten belongs to the weasel's own family; therefore, as a choice bit of revenge, Kagax would rather kill him than anything else. A score of times he had crouched in this same place and waited for his chance. But the marten is larger and stronger every way than ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... How young she would look! Why couldn't he find some fault with her?—imagine her cold, priggish, dull, too cautious. But he could only think of her as lovely, as beyond expression attractive, drawing him like a magnet, as marvellously kind, gentle, graceful, and clever. He was obliged to use the stupid word clever, as there was no other. He suddenly remembered her teeth when she smiled, and a certain slight wave in her thick hair that was a natural one. It is really barely ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... by Danish gun-boats in a calm, and suffered so severely as to oblige her to return to Carlscrona. The Mars, Orion, and two bombs, made an unsuccessful attack on Eurtholms; but the last convoy which left Carlscrona, under the Salsette, Magnet, and two Swedish sloops of war, was the most disastrous undertaking of all. They sailed on the 23rd December, after the winter set in with unusual severity. A storm coming on from the northward, brought the already-formed ice down on the ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... raw gold, Ellen!" he mused looking up at her with glowing dark eyes. "There's no greater magnet for a man in the world, little fellow—except the love of a woman," he added softly with the smile that had won his wife's heart ten years ago and made her happy ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... conducted every experiment with great certainty, never failing; and though much knowledge might be gained from his lecture, people seemed more inclined to laugh than to learn; perhaps from his peculiar manner, and partly from his introducing something ludicrous, as on exhibiting the powers of a magnet, by lifting a large box, he observed it was not empty, and on opening the lid, five or six black cats put up their heads, which he instantly put down, saying, "it is not your hour yet." Also when about to prove the truth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... the preceding, is quite a modern toy. A small wooden box containing a magnet and a tiny top made of a red wooden button with a steel nail driven through it. Set the top spinning with a twirl of the fingers; then hold the magnet over the nail, and the top will leap up to the magnet and there ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... shouted, seizing both the extended little hands and kissing the musical wrinkles from her brow, "why am I like a magnet? You'll never guess." ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... originals, and only now and then caught a tantalizing glimpse of one of their familiars: as when Claud Walsingham Popple, engaged on the portrait of a lady whom the Lipscombs described as "the wife of a Steel Magnet," felt it his duty to attend one of his client's teas, where it became Mabel's privilege to make his acquaintance and to name to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... he know this,—not for many days, in which he looked from the factory door among the women, singling out one who wore no brilliant garment, yet whose shining head drew the eyes of the men like a magnet. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... to introduce Gillian. But Storran's glance only rested cursorily on Gillian's soft, pretty face, returning at once to Magda's as though drawn thither by a magnet. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... refraction, Hariot believes in the theory of the vacuum; ' where we still stick in the mud '. Hopes God (Deum optimum maximum) will soon put an end to this. Wishes for Kepler's meteorological records for the last two years, and will send his own notes in return. Gilbert, author of a work on the magnet, had recently died, leaving in his brother's hands a book entitled ' De Globo et Mundo nostro sub lunari Philosophia nova contra Peripateticos, lib. 5." [A treatise, in five books, on Natural Philosophy, in ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... not happened to read "Real Folks," you will not know what that means. If you have, you will now get a glimpse of how it had come to Ruth and Dakie that their horse-shoe,—their little section of the world's great magnet of loving relation,—might be made. Indeed, I do know, and can tell you, the very words Ruth said to Dakie one day when they had ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... with an electric eye, radio brain and magnet hands functioned without human supervision in an improvised laboratory recently before members of the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the vade mecum of slaveholders, and they never venture abroad without it. It is a pocket-piece for sudden occasion—a keepsake to dote over—a charm to spell-bind opposition, and a magnet to attract "whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie." But closely as they cling to it, "cursed be Canaan" is a poor drug to stupify a throbbing conscience—a mocking lullaby, vainly wooing slumber to unquiet tossings, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... slightly forward—her face was white as death, her eyes strange and troubled. The strength and fire of his passion drew her toward him as a magnet draws steel. Was she yielding? Would she ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... things would work together for good. He could not but contrast with this experience of serenity, that broken peace and complaining spirit with which he had met a like trial in August, 1831, twenty-one years before. How, like a magnet among steel filings, the thankful heart finds the mercies and picks them out of the black ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the morning wheat was up two cents. Buying orders had poured in upon the market. The price had stiffened almost of itself. Above the indicator upon the great dial there seemed to be an invisible, inexplicable magnet that lifted it higher and higher, for all the strenuous efforts of the Bears ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... Everett's pride, but made him desire her the more. He loved her just then so much that, if it had been in his power, he would have married her instantly. Her fine-fibered spirit attracted all the evil in him as a magnet draws a needle. Fledra brought him ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... shame! They made us many soldiers. Chatham still Consulting England's happiness at home, Secured it by an unforgiving frown If any wronged her. Wolfe, where'er he fought, Put so much of his heart into his act, That his example had a magnet's force, And all were swift to follow ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... into the air. It was an August night. I remember Leyburn threw back his head and drank it in. "I haven't breathed this air for five-and-twenty years," he said. "I thought I hated the place, and in spite of that drunken crew in there, it draws me to it like a magnet. I feel, after all, that I have the fells in my blood." He was a curious man, a refined-looking melancholy creature, with a face that reminded you of Wordsworth, and cold donnish ways, except to his children ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... left alone, the gipsy produced, out of her chest, a pack of cards, bearing signs of constant usage, a magnet, a dried chameleon, and a few other indispensable adjuncts of her art. Then she bade me cross my left hand with a silver coin, and the magic ceremonies duly began. It is unnecessary to chronicle her predictions, and as for the style of her performance, it proved her to ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... this group are reduced to the metallic state when fused with carbonate of soda upon charcoal in the reduction flame. Metals when thus reduced form powders, are not fusible or volatile in the blowpipe flame, but they are attracted by the magnet. ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... the former being analogous to deep sleep, and the latter to a light slumber. In lethargy the respiratory movements are slow and deep; in catalepsy slight, shallow, very slow, and separated by a long interval. In lethargy the application of a magnet over the region of the stomach causes profound modifications in the breathing and circulation, while there is no such effect in catalepsy. This shows the connection of hypnotism with magnetism, and various other experiments with magnets have produced some remarkable ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... of its kind, was a product of the Catholic counter-reformation designed to stem the rising tide of Protestantism. It came into being in 1616, and was of the Ursuline order, which had been introduced into France not many years earlier. From the first it proved a magnet for the daughters of the nobility, and soon boasted a ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... observed the old man, simply; but the tone he used was a magnet to attract the son's heart. "You look very much like him, only his eyes were blue, and yours, as I now see, are dark; but you might be ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... friends of Madame de Polignac perceived the growing attachment of the young Queen to the palladium of their hopes, in order to impel Her Majesty's friendship to repair the deficiencies of fortune, they advised the magnet to quit the Court abruptly, assigning the want of means as the motive of her retreat. The story got wind, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... interest in them. A poor man in London has great opportunities of cultivating himself if he will only make the best of them; and such an institution as the British Museum can hardly fail to attract, as the magnet does steel, the minds that are likeliest to be benefited by it in its various departments. I saw many children there, and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and the quiet set his pulses beating and his ears drumming. Presently he turned away. But as by a magnet drawn, he turned quickly again and his eyes once more rested upon his brother's body. Then all in a moment a stifled cry broke from his lips, and, throwing himself upon his knees, he thrust his arms about ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... The only objection which can be urged against the automatic feeder is that the steel points of picks, gads, drills, and other tools may be allowed to pass into the mortar or mill, and thus cause considerable wear and tear. This, I think, can be avoided by the adoption of the magnet device, described in "Rules ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... usual self-confidence, that from the moment she came within the reach of his faith and took a place by his side she would find no difficulties that he could not easily overcome. "Love is the great magnet of life, and Religion," he said "is Love." Nothing could be simpler than his plan, as he explained to her. She had but to trust herself to him and all was sure to go well. So long as he was with her and could gently thrust aside ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... the great wall of the Emerald City, the gates were opened by the Guardian who always tended them. Over the gateway hung a dull-colored metal magnet shaped like a horse-shoe, placed against ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... perhaps his music had to do with it. As a child he had only a poor concertina, but by it he drew the traveller and the mountaineer and the worker in the valley to him like a magnet. Some touch of the mysterious, some sweet fantastical melody in all he played, charmed them, even when he gave them old familiar airs. From the concertina he passed to the violin, and his skill and mastery over his followers grew; and then there came a notable day when ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their magnet as they made the down grade—miles of gray lines. The lower land was trampled and dusty; the breeze lost itself in the hollows. Just as an orchardist, discovering a certain parasite on his trees, thinks of a specific poison, so they knew that this great "forward" of the ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... apparatus. We therefore endeavor to give somewhat in detail the arrangement adopted by M.L. Regray, chief engineer of the Chemin de Fer de l'Est, the electrical system being that of M. Achard. An electro-magnet, A, is suspended on a hinged axis, so that the poles of the magnet have for armatures cylinders of metal fixed upon the axle of the carriage. Suppose now the poles, D D, of the magnet brought into contact with the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... place a thin sheet of cardboard or glass upon a magnet and scatter iron filings over it, we observe the iron to take certain positions and trace certain lines which Faraday has styled lines of magnetic force, or, more simply, lines of force. The figure, as a whole, which is thus formed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... said: 'Node, by golly, you got it,' then they went right down street and told everybody that I was a dam fool and that's what disheartened me and I quit working on it. If I hadn't invited anybody to look at my work I'd had perpetual motion down to a nicety today. Why, I invented a magnet with which you could find gold or silver, no matter if it was buried ten feet deep." (It was the belief of many that there was gold buried in the hills around the old town; that eccentric, wealthy persons in the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... phrases to dance with the barrel-organ; again snatching a detached gaiety from a drunken man; then altogether absorbed by words the poor shout across the street at each other (so outright, so lusty)—yet all the while having for centre, for magnet, a young man alone in ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... which is timeless and spaceless—Spirit. By the word propinquity is indicated an influence exerted by Purusha on Prakriti, and this, where material objects are concerned, would be brought about by their propinquity. If a magnet be brought near to a piece of soft iron or an electrified body be brought near to a neutral one, certain changes are wrought in the soft iron or in the neutral body by that bringing near. The propinquity of the magnet ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... It calls out the best that is in him to meet the tasks of every day. It ministers to him in times of greatest need. It teaches him how to relate himself to an Unseen Power and to the fellowship of human kind. The meeting-house is a community centre drawing to itself like a magnet family groups and individuals from miles around, overcoming their isolation and breaking into the daily monotony of their lives, and with its worship and its sermon awakening new thoughts and impulses for the enrichment of life. Nor does its ministry confine itself to things of ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... had gone to the magnet of Alice Price's face, and always he had seen her looking straight at him—steadily, understandingly, as if she read his purpose. He was satisfied that she knew him to be innocent of that crime, as well as any ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... lorcha began to rise by the head; the bowsprit went up slowly like a finger pointing solemnly to heaven; then, without a sound, almost instantaneously, the whole fabric disappeared. Across the now unoccupied space Miller and I rushed smoothly toward each other, as if drawn by some gigantic magnet; our crafts bumped gently, like two savages caressingly rubbing noses; they swung apart a little and lay side ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... farm-implements and empty cases. Rather to the fore of the pile stood one large packing case, sacking and straw sticking from under its loose lid. Christine had just decided there was nothing here to warrant her scrutiny when, lying in front of this case, she saw something that drew her gaze like a magnet. It ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... matter—nor, throughout Nature, is there a law of wider application than this, that a body impelled by two forces takes the direction of their resultant. But living bodies may be regarded as nothing but extremely complex bundles of forces held in a mass of matter, as the complex forces of a magnet are held in the steel by its coercive force; and, since the differences of sex are comparatively slight, or, in other words, the sum of the forces in each has a very similar tendency, their resultant, the offspring, may reasonably be expected ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... at Milan were not unmarked. I have known some happy hours, but they all lead to sorrow, and not only the cups of wine, but of milk, seem drugged with poison, for me. It does not seem to be my fault, this destiny. I do not court these things,—they come. I am a poor magnet, with power to be wounded by the bodies ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... became the magnet of the day. All idlers crowded to peruse them; and it would be endless to notice the "God bless me's"—the "Lord have a care of us"—the "Saw you ever the like's" of gossips, any more than the "Dear ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and with them all token of him. Time and again she would hear allusions to him. "Dr. Kemp has developed into a misogynist," pouted Dorothy Gwynne. "He was one of the few decided eligibles on the horizon, but it requires the magnet of illness to draw him now. I really must look up the symptoms of a possible ache; the toilet and expression of an invalid are ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... Alexander Neckham, De Utensilibus; De Natura Rerum, book II., chap, xcviii.; Guyot de Provins, La Bible, Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis; Brunette Latini, Epistolas, who mentions Roger Bacon as showing him a magnet at Oxford in 1258. Quoted in Beazley, Hakluyt Soc, Publications, 1899, cxliv., etc.] But its properties savored of magic; the earlier sailors, who hugged the shore, scarcely needed it, and it came into general use as slowly ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... daughter was the magnet which drew the young man to his poor home. They were evenings ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... of the Klondike stampede of 1896-97, Circle City was already established as a flourishing mining camp and boasted itself the largest log-cabin town in the world. Before the Klondike drew away its people as a stronger magnet draws iron filings from a lesser one, Circle had a population of about three thousand. Take a town of three thousand and reduce it to thirty or forty, and it is hard to resist the melancholy impression which entrance ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck |
