"Pivot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the occipital foramen being situated entirely at the base of the cranium of man and not carried up behind, as in the other vertebrates, causes his head to be posed at the extremity of the vertebral column as on a pivot, not bowed down forward, his face not looking towards the ground. This position of the head of man, who can easily turn it to different sides, enables him to see better a larger number of objects at one time, than the much inclined position of the head of other mammals ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... relations, and he shall discover them. I will look for them in a way that will lead him to discover them. In drawing a circle, for instance, I will not use a compass, but a point at the end of a cord which turns on a pivot. Afterward, when I want to compare the radii of a semi-circle, Emile will laugh at me and tell me that the same cord, held with the same tension, cannot describe ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the seventy articles were reduced to twelve, which resumed the whole accusation, and became the pivot of the prosecution. They were never communicated at all to the prisoner. They were based on her visions, her wearing of a man's dress, her attitude towards the Church, which meant, in fact, her obedience to Poitiers and to the Archbishop ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... covered with papers in chaotic confusion, on a chair which moved on a pivot. His desk was against the wall, and when clients came to him, he turned himself sharp round, sticking out his dirty shoes, throwing himself back till his body was an inclined plane, with his hands thrust into his pockets. In this attitude he ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... figure in the doorway turned like a thing on a pivot; he did not start, nor spin round, as a slighter or more nervous person might have done; and a strange chill fell upon Kerry's heat when the man, whom he recognized as that one he had come to seek, faced him. The big, dark eyes looked the intruder up and down; what their owner thought ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... any one cry to suddenly lose the pivot upon which his emotions are swung. At any rate, Mrs. Morris cried. She said that she cried all night, first because it seemed so spooky to see him whose remains she had so recently buried on faith, waiving recognition in the debris, dashing about now in so matter-of-fact ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... clear, and a lot more clinging like so many lizards along the bending yard, and all in some attempt at uniform dress, in readiness to roll up the sail when the anchor was down. There was a long brass gun, too, burnished like gold, on a pivot slide, with all its equipment, trained muzzle forward in front of the main-mast. No sooner had she sagged into the open basin, with her immense sail hanging flat and heavy in the light air, than a boat from the schooner boarded her, and presently she let go ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... belonging to Porter's Mosquito fleet, in 1823. The changes in the disposition and handling of the guns had not been radical. They were still arranged "in broadside," along the two sides of the vessel; nor were the pivot guns—which, as their name implies, could be pivoted to one side or the other, according to the position of an enemy—a new idea. In these matters there had been improvement and development, but not revolution. But while the mode of placing and handling was essentially the ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... held that the Christian precept of morality has no advantage in respect of purity over the moral conceptions of the Stoics; the distinction between them is, however, very obvious. The Stoic system made the consciousness of strength of mind the pivot on which all moral dispositions should turn; and although its disciples spoke of duties and even defined them very well, yet they placed the spring and proper determining principle of the will in an elevation of the mind above ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... occasions by their dress of ceremony. The civilians have a bird, and the military a tyger, embroidered on the breast and back of their upper robe; and their several ranks are pointed out by different coloured globes, mounted on a pivot on the top of the cap or bonnet. The Emperor has also two orders of distinction, which are conferred by him alone, as marks of particular favour; the order of the yellow vest and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... which this official had been accustomed to refer to the authorities at Paris he was now authorized to dispose of at his own discretion. Throughout the Second Empire the prefect, more truly than ever before, was the pivot of the administrative system. Despite the survival of elective councils in the departments, the arrondissements, and the communes, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... unceremoniously aside at the head of the stairs and ran past him. Long concealment of the deadly poverty within the walls had taught her to close the gates behind her whenever she entered, but now for greater security, or to gain time, she swung the great oaken beam round on its pivot across the doors on the inside. Then turning round on her heels she watched the bell that hung above her head. The Abbe, who had followed her as quickly as he could, was naively looking for a peep-hole between the timbers of the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... or any women's club in existence. Whenever you see in your drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging in easy chairs, cigar in hand, and now and then bringing their heads together over the small round Japanese table which is always the pivot of these social circles, you may be sure that they are discussing Tom's engagement, or Dick's extravagance, or Harry's hopeless passion for the younger Miss Fleurdelys. It is here old Tippleton gets execrated for that everlasting bon mot of his which was quite a success at ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... collar, C. To the centre is attached a little eye, from which hangs a link, L. Pivoted at P from one edge of the box is a floating weight, having a circular opening immediately under the eye. The link passes through this to the left end of a tiny lever, which rocks on a pivot projecting from the weight. To the right end of the lever is affixed a sapphire bar, or stylus, with a ball end of a diameter equal to that of the cutting point of the recorder. The floating weight presses the stylus against the record, and also keeps the link between the rocking ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... enunciating in the most violent and untenable form and the most offensive language the proposition that all slave-holding is sin and every slave-holder a criminal, and making the whole attack on slavery to turn on this weak pivot and fail if this failed. The argument of this sort of abolitionist was: If there can be found anywhere a good man holding a bond-servant unselfishly, kindly, and for good reason justifiably, then the system of American slavery is right.[277:1] It is not strange that men in the southern ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... was succeeded in command of the XII. corps by his brother Prince George, who had served under him in Bohemia. He took a leading part in the operations which preceded the battle of Sedan, the 4th army being the pivot on which the whole army wheeled round in pursuit of Macmahon; and the actions of Buzancy and Beaumont on the 29th and 30th of August were fought under his direction; in the battle of Sedan itself, with the troops under his orders, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her industry, or to give her the right to the proceeds of her industry without giving her the power to protect the property she may acquire; she must therefore have the legal and political rights, or she has nothing. The ballot-box is the focus of all other rights, it is the pivot upon which all others hang; the legal rights are embraced in it, for if once possessed of the right to the ballot-box, to self-representation, she will see to it that the laws shall be just, and protect her person ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... inches in diameter, the escapement is jewelled, and the pendulum, which is in itself a curiosity, is over fourteen feet in length. It is a curious fact that the pendulum bob weighs over three hundred pounds; but so finely finished is every wheel, pinion, and pivot in the clock, and so little power is required to drive them, that a weight of only one hundred pounds is all that is necessary to keep this ponderous mass of metal vibrating, and turn four pairs of hands on the dials of the cupola. ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... in the Christian Scriptures: 'Those who obey not God, and believe not the Gospel of his Son, shall be punished with everlasting destruction.' This is the pivot upon which all religions turn:—they all assume that it is in our power to believe or not to believe; whereas the mind can only believe that which it thinks true. A human being can only be supposed accountable for those actions ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... but my friend with whom I was traveling was peremptory in the matter. He had heard of gun-boats and mortar-boats, of forts built upon the river, of Columbiads, Dahlgrens, and Parrotts, of all the pomps and circumstance of glorious war, and entertained an idea that Cairo was the nucleus or pivot of all really strategetic movements in this terrible national struggle. Under such circumstances I was as it were forced to go to Cairo, and bore myself, under the circumstances, as much like Mark Tapley as my nature would permit. I was not jolly while I was there certainly, ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... with which folks will turn right round and revolve, I will tell how Josiah seemin'ly forgot mawlstroms, bad air, rumatiz, ages, meetin' housen, principles, etc., and turned right round on the pivot of his inclination. A day or two after he heard down in the office about the dancin' parties they had in the parlor anon or oftener, and he come up into our room enthused with the idee and wanted to branch out and go that ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... become the fashion among novelists to introduce their hero in knee pants, their heroine in pinafore and pigtails. Time was when we were rushed up to a stalwart young man of twenty-four, who was presented as the pivot about whom the plot would revolve. Now we are led, protesting, up to a grubby urchin of five and are invited to watch him through twenty years of intimate minutiae. In extreme cases we have been obliged to witness his evolution from swaddling clothes to dresses, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... mills of those days were somewhat rude contrivances. The mill proper consisted of two cogged wooden cylinders about fourteen inches in diameter and perhaps twenty-six inches in length, placed in an upright position in a frame. The pivot of one of these extended upward about six feet, and at its top was secured the long shaft to which the horse was attached, and as it was driven round and round, the mill crunched the apples, with ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... considerable, is a creamy white. The wood has a dull surface and very fine grain. It is valuable for turnery, tool handles, and mallets, and being so free from silex, watchmakers use small splinters of it for cleaning out the pivot holes of watches, and opticians for removing dust from deep-seated lenses. It is also used for butchers' skewers, and shuttle blocks and wheel stock, and is suitable for turnery and inlaid work. Occurs scattered in all the broad-leaved forests ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... parlor we found Pa and Ma Lovegrove already receiving. About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old married couples, which, after paying their devoirs, fell in two like unriveted scissors,—the gentlemen finding a new pivot in pa and the ladies in ma, where they mildly opened and shut upon such questions as severally concerned them, such as "the way gold closed," and "how ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... the Home Rule Bill was resumed the subject of debate was the Irish Council, the pivot on which all hopes of unity are centred. Exactly fifty Members were present to listen to this epoch-marking discussion, carried on entirely by a few English enthusiasts and the Members from Ulster. They differed profoundly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... that lifts the whole of this wall on to its pivot. You surely don't expect it to move of itself, by enchantment! If you watch, you will see the mirror first rise an inch or two and then shift an inch or two from left to right. It will then be on a pivot and will ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... after monitor, and then wooden flagships. Steadily and majestically they marched; marched as columns of men would march, obedient to commands, independent of waves and winds, mobilized by steam and science to turn on a pivot and manoeuvre as the directing mind required them; they halted in front of the fort; they did not anchor as Sir Peter Parker's ships had done near a hundred years before in front of Moultrie, which was hard by and frowning still at her ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... buoyancy as a sea-boat, and diminishing the area exposed to the enemy's shot and shell. Then a berth-deck was laid for the accommodation of officers and crew, and the main deck renewed and strengthened to carry the heavy 8-inch shell-gun, mounted on a pivot between the fore and mainmasts, and the four 24 pounder howitzers of 13 cwt. each, to be mounted as a broadside battery. Additional coal-bunkers were also constructed, and a magazine and shell-room ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... end of the great eye-bolt was released from its clamp, and a small piston gave it a little shove. In a long, slow, graceful arc, it swung away from the hull, swiveling around the pivot clamp that held the eye. The braking effect of the pivot clamp was precisely set to stop the eye-bolt when it was at right angles to the hull. Moving carefully, St. Simon maneuvered the ship until the far end of the bolt was directly over the ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... and raw materials from other lands. Imports of food and raw materials were offset by exports of coal and of textiles and hardware produced by coal. The spirit of invention has pushed on to electricity and oil, but coal is still the pivot of English industry and commerce. And therefore, seeing that coal has meant all this to England, let us look at the men who raised the coal. How did they live, what did they think about, what did they count for then, what do they count ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... The pivot round which the religious life, as we have traced it, revolves, is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny. Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. The gods believed in—whether by crude ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... realised the meaning of history until now. Never had the greatness of his country so impressed him. Hitherto he had not realised what his ambitions meant. Now they became clear. The House of Commons became the pivot of the world, and it seemed to him as though he had his hand upon the pulse of humanity. London was the great heart of the Empire, sending out its streams of life-blood through the length and breadth of the world. And the heart of London was the great pile of ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... to as home. At Pittsburg it is a round black spot on the map, in the main ganglia of the great A. and P. and the junction point of two other railroads. At Cincinnati it is a commercial centre of considerable importance, almost a rival. While Torso to Torso is the coming pivot of the universe. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... impossible. Accordingly turntable sheds have been adopted. The shed is mounted upon a double turn-table, there being two circular tracks the one near the centre of the shed and the other towards its extremities. The shed is mounted upon a centre pivot and wheels engaged with these inner and outer tracks. In this manner the shed may be swung round to the most favourable point of the compass according ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... table, in the round pivot-chair he always used,—a chair which enabled him to swing round suddenly and face a patient, or to turn away very quietly ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... by its advance compresses it into a block. The blocks m, once formed, by their friction in the channel e, oppose enough resistance to the peat to effect its compression. In order to regulate this resistance according to the varying quality of the peat, the piece of metal g, which hangs on a pivot at o, is depressed or raised, by the screw i, so as to contract or enlarge the channel. At each stroke of the plunger a block is formed, and when the channel e is once filled, the peats fall continuously from its extremity. Their ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... find my true pivot inside. All my life I've been howling in my soul and haven't known what I was howling for. I thought to-day that you might ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... is again the pivot on which a system turns. Its place is not essentially different from that which it held in the systems of Kant and Schiller. As the objective possibility for the bridge between sense and reason, as the vindication of freedom ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... close to my eye. The light of this bulb is reflected in a mirror which is moved by the moving needle. When the sound is loudest the two horns are at right angles to the direction whence it comes. So it is only necessary to twist the phonometer about on its pivot until the sound is received most loudly in the horns and the band of light is greatest. I know then that the horns are at right angles to the direction from which the sound proceeds, and that, as I lift my head, I am looking straight toward the source of the sound. ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... board. Then a pointed piece of wood ten inches long should be fastened with a nail in the center of the circle. At the ends of the pointer pins should be placed vertically so that they are in line with the pivot nail. This will form a sight for measuring the angles. The board is then mounted upon a pointed stick or tripod. You will need a hatchet and a half dozen sharpened sticks for markers and a boy for rod man. You are now ready ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... forward. The bill lately passed in England, prohibiting the business of this country with France from passing through the medium of England, is a temporary embarrassment to our commerce, from the unhappy predicament of its all hanging on the pivot of London. It will be happy for us, should it be continued till our merchants may establish connections in the countries in which our produce is consumed, and to which ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the after-masts, as well as on the stays between the main and mizen masts. Their effect is to balance the head-sails, in the manner that a weather-cock or vane is moved, of which the main-mast must be considered the pivot or centre. The reverse of head-sails. "Square the after-yards," refers to the yards on the main and ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... smoke, of desks crowded with paper-weights, paper-knives, pens, and inkstands of "artistic" pat terns. He was seated at the table, with his back to the fire, his arm lifted, and a hairpin between his finger and thumb—the pivot round which his paper twist was spinning briskly. Across the table stood his daughter, leaning forward with her chin on her hands and her white teeth showing as she laughed for laughing's sake, to give play to her young ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... more nearly to the place advancing, Descending rather quickly the declivity, Through the waved branches o'er the greensward glancing, 'Midst other indications of festivity, Seeing a troop of his domestics dancing Like Dervises, who turn as on a pivot, he Perceived it was the Pyrrhic dance[178] so martial, To which the Levantines ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Lohengrin. While doing this, I proceeded in a manner that I have not since repeated. I first of all completed the third act, and in view of the criticism already mentioned of the characters and conclusion of this act, I determined to try to make it the very pivot of the whole opera. I wished to do this, if only for the sake of the musical motive appearing in the story of the Holy Grail; but in other respects the plan struck me as ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... his feet. His teeth had come together with a click. He wabbled, swayed. His whip fell from his relaxed fingers. The Kid's footwork had been as swift and cunning as a mountain cat's! He had stepped aside, rocked his body in a pivot from the hips and landed a knock-out punch full on the point of the big-chested outlaw's jaw! With a grunt, Blacksnake went down, first to his knees, and then face thudding the ground. He landed with ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... brace a new heavy bow and one will require assistance. In the absence of help he can place it in the vise, one of those revolving on a pivot, and having the string properly adjusted on the lower limb, pull on the upper end in such a way that the other presses against the wall or a stationary brace, thus bending the bow while you slip the expectant loop over the open nock. Or you can have an assistant pull on the upper ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... but carrying garments and towels. LOIS is a year older than JULIE and is nearly her double in face and voice, but in her clothes and expression are the marks of the conservative. Yes, you've guessed it. Mistaken identity is the old rusty pivot ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of Paulina and the whole foreign colony. This event was none other than the marriage of Anka Kusmuk and Jacob Wassyl, Paulina's most popular lodger. A wedding is a great human event. To the principals the event becomes the pivot of existence; to the relatives and friends it is at once the consummation of a series of happenings that have absorbed their anxious and amused attention, and the point of departure for a new phase of existence offering infinite possibilities in the way of speculation. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... themselves out at full length and spinning round and round like a wagon wheel upon its nave. They revolve with great rapidity, using their humped shoulders as a pivot, and their legs as levers. They sometimes continue this motion for half-an-hour at a time. No doubt they do this, as has been said, to scratch themselves; for, notwithstanding their thick hides and hair, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... the Superintendent whirled back into place in her pivot-chair and with her left hand which had all this time been rummaging busily in a lower desk drawer proffered Rae Malgregor a small ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... The lobster Newburg made my lunch rather an expensive one, and, of course, I had to tip that boy for what he did to the Kestrel-Smith locks. I've got rather a useful idea, though. I feel certain that I belong to the Pivot Club; I'll go back to town and ask the hall porter there if there are any letters for me. He knows all the members by sight, and if there are any letters or telephone messages waiting for me of course that will solve the problem. If he says there aren't any I shall say: 'You know ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... he finds out about this break in training we'll have a new third-baseman. No doubt Blake will play the bag. Graves is the only drag in Worry's baseball machine now, and he'll not last.... So, Peg, don't think any more about it. Mind you, the whole team circles round you. You're the pivot, and as sure as you're born you'll be Wayne's captain next year. That's something for you to keep in mind and work for. If Graves keeps after you—hand him one! That's not against rules. Punch him! If Worry knew the truth he would pat you on the back for ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... in early times for the purpose of making the Gospel intelligible have been fused with the contents of the Gospel and raised to dogma. This dogma, next to the Church, has become a real world power, the pivot in the history of the Christian religion. The transformation of the Christian faith into dogma is indeed no accident, but has its reason in the spiritual character of the Christian religion, which at all times will feel the need of a scientific apologetic.[10] But the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... This cup was the compass, which old writers have called Lapis Heracleus. Pisander says Oceanus lent him the cup, and Lucian says it was a sea-shell. Tradition affirms that the magnet originally was not on a pivot, but set to float on water in a cup. The old antiquarian is wildly theoretical on this point, and sees a compass in the Golden Fleece of Argos, in the oracular needle which Nero worshipped, and in everything else. Yet undoubtedly there are some curious facts connected with ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... Town, And, since he donned a posh Sam B., O.C. Amusements, L. of C. He steadfastly refused to whine Because he never saw the Line, But carried on, stout fellow, and Is now at home, I understand. A pivot so well-paid and prized Just had to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... his Eve to Adam was that of an invisible God. Man knows that it is not good for him to be alone. Separated from woman's influence, man is narrow, churlish, brutal. Woman is a helper suited to him. With her help he reaches a loftier stature; for love is the very heart of life, the pivot upon which its whole machinery turns, without which no human existence can be complete, and with which it becomes noble ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... a weight which floats upon the open surface of the mercury is attached to a string, having a nearly equal weight at the other extremity; the string is laid over a revolving pivot, to which the hand is fixed, and the friction of the string turns the hand as the mercury ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the needle was taken from the pivot and had to be replaced before the record could be continued. Other government stations throughout the country also noted the earthquake shock, and they agree in a general way that the disturbance began according to the record of the seismograph at nineteen minutes and twenty seconds after ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... unscrewing the white lady who smiled there, fixed in her place a hideous griffin's head, which, like the ribbon, was also bright scarlet. While these changes were being effected, others of the crew removed the boat that lay on the deck, bottom up, between the masts, and uncovered a long brass pivot-gun of the largest calibre, which shone in the saffron light of morning like a mass of burnished gold. This gun was kept scrupulously clean and neat in all its arrangements; the rammers, sponges, screws, and other apparatus ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... Rachel to detail the arrangements made for her at Myrtlewood, while the two boys were each accommodated with a window; but each moment they were claiming their mother's attention, or rushing across the ladies' feet to each other's window, treating Rachel's knees as a pivot, and vouchsafing not the slightest heed to her attempts at intelligent pointing out of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to believe that Marsh's views of England and Ireland were largely prejudiced views. "I don't feel any less friendly to Gilbert and Ninian and Roger than I do to John Marsh or any other Irishman, and I don't feel that John understands me better than they do!" That was the pivot on which all his opinions turned. He could only argue from his experience, and his experience was that this fundamental antagonism between the Irish and the English, on which John Marsh insisted, did not exist. When Marsh declared passionately that he did ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... indeed forced the turgid river to run within the narrow channels hewn by established custom, but, released from the bondage of convention, the soul of Elisabeth Durward was that of sheer primitive woman, and the pivot of all her actions her love for her mate and for the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... disfranchisement of the negro has merely changed the form of the same old problem. The negro had no vote before the rebellion, and few other rights, and yet the negro question was, for a century, the pivot of American politics. It plunged the nation into a bloody war, and it will trouble the American government and the American conscience until a sustained attempt is made to settle it upon principles of justice ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... think, to find among English scholars any parallel to the mass of absurdities, which several intelligent and very learned German critics have conspired to heap upon two simple names in the Philippian Epistle, Euodia and Syntyche; first, Baur suggesting that the pivot of the Epistle, which has a conciliatory tendency, is the mention of Clement, a mythical or almost mythical person, who represents the union of the Petrine and Pauline parties in the Church [24:2]; then Schwegler, carrying the theory a step further, ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... their money. This leaves people abroad with a number of evenings on their hands, unoccupied hours that are generally passed at the theatre. Only the other day a diplomatist said to me, “I am surprised to see how small a place the theatre occupies in your thoughts and conversation. With us it is the pivot ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... so far as naval defence was concerned, was lamentable. The regular C. S. naval fleet consisted of the Louisiana (Captain McIntosh) and carrying the flag of Commodore Mitchell; the steamer McRae (Captain Huger), carrying six light 32-pounders and nine-inch pivot gun; the steamer Jackson (Captain Renshaw), with two pivoted smooth bore 32-pounders; the small ironplated "Ram" Manassas (Captain Warley), carrying one 32-pounder carronade in the bow; and two launches, each carrying a howitzer and a crew ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... they seen it in their dreams, that dreadful mahogany cylinder turning lazily upon its pivot and rolling in its womb, along with that of a hundred others, the fate of all that was dear to them on earth! How often, too, had their poor brains, racked and fired by doubt, fear and anguish, followed their child as he stood beside it, and grown ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... forth with the priest at their head to a place at some distance from the village. Here at sunset they erect a couple of poles with a cross-bar between them, to which they attach bags of rice, wooden models of pivot-guns, gongs, bracelets, and so on. Then, when everybody has taken his place at the poles and a death-like silence reigns, the priest lifts up his voice and addresses the spirits in their own language as follows: "Ho! ho! ho! ye evil spirits who dwell ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... lonely teepee now and then shuddered violently, as a stronger blast than usual almost lifted it from the ground. No one stirred except from time to time one of the dogs, who got up snarling and sniffing the cold air, turned himself round several times as if on a pivot, and finally ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... into battle with Macdonough's fleet was slightly superior. It was headed by the flagship "Confiance," a frigate of the class of the United States ship "Constitution," carrying thirty long twenty-fours, a long twenty-four-pounder on a pivot, and six thirty-two or forty-two pound carronades. The other vessels were the "Linnet," a brig mounting sixteen long twelves; and the "Chubb" and "Finch" (captured from the Americans under the names of "Growler" and "Eagle"),—sloops carrying respectively ten eighteen-pound carronades and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... who had fallen in such a position that the calf could not suck. The cow's foreleg was caught over her own head, and so she held herself from rising. The sand was rolled and grooved into a wheel by her circlings; her body heaved and fell with breathing, and the sand was wet where her pivot nostrils had ground it. While Genesmere untangled her and gave her tongue the last of his canteen the calf walked round and round. He placed the cow upon her feet, and as soon as he moved away to his horse ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... cross is the pivot around which all his ceremonies and festivals move. He always dances to the cross, and on certain occasions he attaches strings of beads, ears of corn, and other offerings to it. It is used by the heathen as well as by the Christian Tarahumares. The question is whether this tribe has changed ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... which the axes are marked (which may be done by setting the centres of the slots true to the lines passing through the axis) and set the pivots as follows: Place the pencil-point G so that it coincides with one of the points as C, and place the pivot E so that it comes directly at the point of intersection of the two slots, and fasten it there. Then turn the arm so that the pencil-point G coincides with one of the points of the minor axis as D, the arm lying parallel to B D, and place the pivot ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... start it again, the machine tilts and slides down sideways. If it occurs higher up a vrille is the probable result. In this the plane plunges toward the ground spinning round and round with the corner of one wing as a pivot. In either case a serious accident ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... cease rowing—back!" continued the coxswain, with admirable dignity and self-possession; and the Zephyr, acted upon by this maneuver, came about as though upon a pivot, without going either backward ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... ships) subakvigxi. Pitcher krucxo. Pitchfork forkego. Piteous kompatinda. Pitfall enfalujo. Pith suko. Pitiable kompatinda. Pitiful kompatinda. Pitiless senkompata. Pity kompati, bedauxri. Pity, it is a estas domagxo. Pivot akso. Placable kvietebla, kvietema. Placard afisxo, kartego. Place (to put) meti. Place loko. Place, a public placo. Place of abode restadejo. Placid kvieta. Plagiarist verkosxtelisto. Plague pesto—ego. Plague-stricken (person) pestulo. Plain malbela. Plain senornama. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... came to a bridge that led across the canal. This bridge turned on a pivot placed out near the middle of the canal, so that it could be moved out of the way when there was a boat to go by. A man was turning it when Mr. George and Rollo came along. They stopped to witness the operation. They were quite amused, ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... written in 1719; exactly a century later The Monastery was published. And, significantly enough, the text which shines with such luster in Daniel Defoe's masterpiece forms also the pivot of Sir Walter Scott's weird story. Mary Avenel comes to the climax of her sorrows. She seems to have lost everything and everybody. Her life is desolate; her grief is inconsolable. Her faithful attendant, Tibbie, exhausts herself in futile attempts ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... knew, also, that that stood for skookum mamook pukapuk—excuse Chinook, I mean there was a big fight coming. Now the mouth of my valley was very narrow, and the walls steep. High up on one side was one of those big pivot rocks, or balancing rocks, as some call them, weighing all of a couple of hundred tons. Just the thing. I hit back for camp, keeping an eye open so the bull couldn't slip past, and got my ammunition. It wasn't worth anything with the rifle smashed; so I ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... as he termed it; then, grasping the eaves with both hands, he pulled himself along, the slip-noose over the cupola turning about on its pivot without a hitch. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... It consists of an apparatus of copper ribbons, leading from a Voltaic battery placed beneath the stage, attached to the conductor's desk, and terminating in a movable stick fastened at one end on a pivot before a board at a certain distance from the orchestral conductor. To this latter's desk is affixed a key of copper, something like the ivory key of a pianoforte; it is elastic, and provided on the interior side with a protuberance of about a quarter of an inch long. Immediately ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... childhood—and a kind of strange, happy terror. I struggle to wonder my way out. Thousands of railways—after this—bind Johnstown to me; miles of high, narrow, steel-built streets—the whole world lifting itself mightily up, rolling itself along, turning itself over on a great steel pivot, down in Pennsylvania—for its days and nights. I am whirled away from it as from a vision. I am as one who has seen men lifting their souls up in a great flame and laying down floors on a star. I have stood and watched, in the melting-down place, the making and the welding place of ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... cross and autocratic, and to oppose people; but there was hidden somewhere in his heart a warm spot of affectionateness and desire for approval. When he had quarreled for a certain time, he turned square about on this instinct as on a pivot. The self-love that made him wish to rule ended in making him wish to please; he could not very well bear being disliked. The bully is always a coward, but there was a good sound spot of right-mindedness, after all, ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... time the lieutenant had an opportunity to examine the prize, as she would be if he succeeded in getting her out of the bay. She was certainly a fine little steamer, and, with the heavy gun mounted on a pivot, she would have been capable of doing a great deal of mischief among the unprotected merchant ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... ambassador did not know, nor the Nuncius, nor even the friendly Aerssens, was the vast amount of supplies which had been prepared for the coming conflict by the finance minister. Henry did not know it himself. "The war will turn on France as on a pivot," said Sully; "it remains to be seen if we have supplies and money enough. I will engage if the war is not to last more than three years and you require no more than 40,000 men at a time that I will show you munitions and ammunition and artillery and the like to such ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ranger, who held picket on that side of the village, sprang forth from his hiding-place, and challenged the horseman to halt. The challenge was unheeded. Another jerk of the rein spun the mustang round, as upon a pivot; and the next instant, impelled by the spur, the animal resumed his gallop. He did not return by the road, but shot off in a new direction, nearly at right angles to his former course. A rifle-bullet would have followed, and most likely have stopped the career of either ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... future badly enough. Consider what might have been. The pivot of the Mediterranean world, in the sixth century, was not Athens, but in Magna Graecia: at Croton, where Pythagoras had built his school. But the mob wrecked Croton, and smashed the Pythagorean Movement ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... when studied according to the diagrams in the manuals, but it is not particularly difficult in practice. Its use is to get the company out of the double line formation into a column of four men abreast, the usual marching formation. At the executive command, "March!" No. 1 front rank acts as the pivot, and makes a right-angled turn to the right, marking time in that position until the three other men in the front rank have executed a right-oblique movement and have come up on the new line. The rear-rank men follow suit, but Nos. 2 and 1 have to turn momentarily to the left in order to get behind ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... Or, "the creaking of the oar." (The word kaji to-day means "helm";—the single oar, or scull, working upon a pivot, and serving at once for rudder and oar, being now called ro.) The mist passing across the Amanogawa is, according to commentators, the spray from ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... women, and children are coming into or passing through this harbour on their way to the southward. By a nice arrangement the little east window points to the north—if that is not Irish—and two large bracket lamps can be turned on a pivot, so that the lamps and their reflectors throw a light out to sea. The good planter, at his own expense, often maintains a light here on stormy or dark nights, and "steering straight for it" ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... her attention upon it or even to sit still. Her hand still burned where M. Raoul's lips had touched it. She recalled Endymion's prophecy that these entertainments would throw the domestic mechanism—always more delicately poised on Sundays than on weekdays—completely oft its pivot. She had pledged herself to prevent this, and had made a private appeal to the maidservants with whose Sunday-out they interfered. ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... WALL PIVOT.—One foot is placed against a wall at about the height of the knee. The other foot is thrown over it, the body making a complete turn in the air, so that the free foot may touch the ground in time to sustain the weight before a tumble. Thus, if the right foot be ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... divided between the opening buds of her daffodils, and the breaking of the eggs of the first little chickens, for she has a fine poultry yard too, and is very successful in her management of it. She is full of vitality, and is the pivot on which every member of the house turns. Blessed with an adoring husband, and healthy, handsome, obedient children, who come to her for everything and tell her anything, ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... for instance, ascend the stem of a fruiting plant, of shepherd's-purse, let us say, and select a well-filled but green pod, mid-way up the stem, those below being ready to shed their seeds at a touch. Then seizing it in its jaws, and fixing its hind legs firmly as a pivot, it contrives to turn round and round, and so to strain the fibres of the fruit-stalk until they snap; it then patiently backs down the stem. Sometimes two ants combine their efforts; one, at the base of the peduncle, gnaws at the point of greatest tension, while the other hauls upon ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Berrington turned the carpet back as far as it would go, but nothing suspicious presented itself to his searching eye. As he dropped the carpet back his foot touched the curb of the fireplace, and one end slid along. It seemed a curious thing that one end of the old oak curb should work on a pivot, but so it did, and Berrington pushed it as far as it would go. An instant later and he jumped nimbly ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... to drift over the street; a moment more, and they had become separated from the other bees, and, drawing together in a more compact mass or cloud, away they went, a humming, flying vortex of bees, the queen in the centre, and the swarm revolving around her as a pivot,—over meadows, across creeks and swamps, straight for the heart of the mountain, about a mile distant,—slow at first, so that the youth who gave chase kept up with them, but increasing their speed till only a fox hound could have kept them in sight. I saw their pursuer laboring ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the silver, microscopes are necessary. These are shown in the sketch, each one being fixed into an aperture in the wall which supports one end of the instrument. At the opposite side is a lamp, the light from which passes through the perforated axis of the pivot, and is thence ingeniously deflected by mirrors so as to provide the requisite illumination for the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... cold, Mr. Lidgerwood," the man behind the counter warned him, and Lidgerwood whirled around on the pivot stool and turned his back upon the malcontents and their watcher. The keen inner sense, which neither the physiologists nor the psychologists have yet been able to define or to name, apprised him of a threat developing in the distant corner, but he resolutely ignored it, drank ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... miscellaneous. A king, to be the equal of his Ministers in discussion, must work as they work; he must be a man of business as they are men of business. Yet a constitutional prince is the man who is most tempted to pleasure, and the least forced to business. A despot must feel that he is the pivot of the State. The stress of his kingdom is upon him. As he is, so are his affairs. He may be seduced into pleasure; he may neglect all else; but the risk is evident. He will hurt himself; he may cause a revolution. If he becomes unfit to govern, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot |
