"Precipitating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... .. < chapter cvi 29 AHAB'S LEG > The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel Enderby of London, had not been unattended with some small violence to his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boat that his ivory leg had .. received a half-splintering ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet seen. It was a species of table-land, near the summit of an almost inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves into the valleys below merely by the support of the trees against which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air of still sterner ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... Margaret. She had seen them stop at the end of the walk. The figure of the man was lost in shadows and that of Margaret stood alone, outlined against a distant light. She saw Margaret's hand thrust out—was she clutching his sleeve—and heard the murmur of voices. And then the man precipitating himself into the street. His hat catapulted ahead of him and a quick outburst of half-hysterical laughter broke ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... for carrying out these manipulations, according to the size of the establishment, one or more reservoirs for precipitating the impurities of the water, and one pure water reservoir, to take up the purified water; from the latter reservoir the boilers are fed. The most practical idea would be to arrange the precipitating reservoir in such manner that the purified water can flow ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... men could not decide whether this inundation was owing to the overflow of a subterranean sheet of water penetrating fissures in the solid rock, or to some underground torrent breaking through its worn bed, and precipitating itself to the lowest level of the mine. But that very same evening they knew what to think about it, for the local papers published an account of the marvelous phenomenon which Loch ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... which the British plenipotentiaries were so far from allowing, that they refused to confer with those of France upon that foot; although, at the same time, the former had fresh apprehensions that the Dutch, in a fit of despair, would accept whatever terms the enemy pleased to offer, and, by precipitating their own peace, prevent Her Majesty from obtaining any advantages, both for ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... to this point, any one text had played a conspicuous part in precipitating the crisis which transfigured his life. But, after this, I find one sentence repeatedly on his lips. During a journey a man is often too engrossed with the perplexities of the immediate present to be able to review the path as a whole. But, when he looks back, he surveys the entire landscape ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... last year of his administration. His freedom from sectional asperity, his long life in the public service, and his peace-loving and conciliatory character, were all guarantees against his precipitating a conflict between the Federal Government and any of the States; but the feeble power that he possessed in the closing months of his term to mold the policy of the future was painfully evident. Like all who had intelligently ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... gesticulations grew more and more remarkable, while some stray words, which we half caught, sounded like English in our ears. We were now within pistol-shot distance, when suddenly the horse—for that much at least we were assured of—stumbled and fell forward, precipitating the remainder of the object headlong ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... into him, but managed to come to a standstill, before precipitating that catastrophe. They lurched back upon their heels, nearly toppling backwards, too surprised for the moment to speak. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... his entrenchments on learning the movements which announced to him our retreat. His accustomed prudence kept him from precipitating the pursuit by an effort that might become dangerous; the well-known character of Marshal Ney protected the rear- guard no less than the valor of his troops. He ranged his forces in order of battle before Pombal, which obliged Wellington to recall the troops ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... murder; and like the old Parisian jeweller Cardillac, in Louis XIV.'s time, who was stung with a perpetual lust for murdering the possessors of fine diamonds—not so much for the value of the prize (of which he never hoped to make any use), as from an unconquerable desire of precipitating himself into the difficulties and hazards of the murder,—Caligula never failed to experience (and sometimes even to acknowledge) a secret temptation to any murder which seemed either more than usually ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... ordered the second drawbridge to be lowered and the gates to be opened. In poured the mass, precipitating themselves in fury upon that hated fortress, rushing madly through all its halls and passages, breaking its cell-doors with hammer blows, releasing captives some of whom had been held there in hopeless misery for half a lifetime, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... 30 feet deep, bottle- shaped, sunk in the floor immediately before the closed and barred door, and which was gaping to receive him. Such a well-mouth would usually have a plank crossing it, but in time of danger this plank would be removed. To make doubly sure of precipitating the assailant into it, a side-chamber was contrived with slots commanding the doorway, through which slots pikes, spears and swords could ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... shrieking, pushing her way through the men, the poor mother, who had to be forcibly withheld by Miss Mohun and one of the men from precipitating herself on the pile of rubbish where her children were buried, and so shaking it as to make ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conclusive. It was the answer of not only thirty years of living at the spot, but of his secret dread. Steele saw once more the stark fear in his eyes, the fear of contact with men, of venturing out into the world, of precipitating fate. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... everyone; and suggests that hereafter bishops for the islands be selected more carefully. The provincial and other high officials of the Augustinian order state that the archbishop's rash utterances had much to do with precipitating the Chinese insurrection, and that his quarrels with the governor are unnecessary and notorious—moreover, he opposes their order in every way; and they ask the king to interpose his authority and restrain Benavides. At the same time the Audiencia complain that he interferes ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... nothing but a volcano could possess, into the most grotesque and irregular shapes. It is no uncommon thing to pass under a huge crag, leaning almost horizontally over the road, and bedded in the earth by a foundation apparently so slight, as to appear liable to fall every moment, precipitating the enormous mass upon the luckless wretch beneath. Nay, the very colour of the stones, and the quantity of what bears every resemblance to vitrification, scattered about, all tend to induce the, belief that the main island owes ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... shown that this substance may be isolated by precipitating it with alcohol, in the same way as diastase is precipitated from its solutions. [Footnote: DOEBEREINER, Journal de Chimie de Schweigger, vol. xii., p. 129, and Journal de Pharmacie, vol. ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... dispersion-fate of Sibylline leaves; how stores of mingled information gravitate into something of order, each seed herding with its fellows; and how every atom of mixed metal, educationally held in solution by the mind, is sought out by a keen precipitating test, gregariously building up in time its own ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Naples, Sicily, Minorca, Havana, Manila, and Jamaica were wrenched away, at one time or another, from this empire without a shipping. In short, while Spain's maritime impotence may have been primarily a symptom of her general decay, it became a marked factor in precipitating her into the abyss from which she has not ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... process was, I believe, about twenty-four hours. It was very much reduced and the ease of manufacture greatly facilitated by the methods now most generally used, and which were, I believe, first communicated by Messrs. Wratten and Wainright. I refer to those of precipitating with alcohol and of straining the emulsion, when set, through canvas, so as to divide it very finely. When the latter method is resorted to a comparatively short time is sufficient to wash it. This method, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... The precipitating of this casual intercourse into the more substantial form of an acquaintanceship was the work of the gentleman himself, and occurred in this wise. Meeting the two friends in the lobby one evening, he asked them to give ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... put up his hand to hold his mouth together, and the cupboard, overbalanced, fell right over, precipitating its occupant right at his father's ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... principle of strength; it gives a sort of intellectual force to the impetuosity and obstinacy of their attacks; while, on the other hand, it is in the long run a principle of debility, as blinding them to the most evident and imminent dangers, and, after defeat, burdening and precipitating their despair. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... and upon this, thinking the door locked, I threw my weight against it, precipitating myself into the room with unnecessary violence, to find the duke sitting at the desk, his head thrown back upon the cushions, and one hand on the arm of the great chair in an attitude of peaceful slumber. But there came to me a dread of the sleep which could keep a man of his temperament unconscious ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Between the claims of Holland and the aggressive policy of France, a rupture was with difficulty avoided. But eventually, by tact and firmness, Palmerston had his way, and Belgium became an independent state, without precipitating a general European war. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... revolution, over which we can have no control, must become more imminent every day. By a course of undecided action, determined by no policy but the vague will of a war-distracted people, we run the risk of precipitating that very revolutionary violence which ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... that sooner or later he must be thrown into collision with the imperial court, the Landgrave had now for some time made up his mind to found a merit with the Swedish chancellor and general officers, by precipitating an uncompromising rupture with his Catholic enemies, and thus to extract the grace of a voluntary act from what, in fact, he knew to ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... become Khan of the most progressive nation on Texcoco by other than his own abilities. He felt his way carefully now. He had no manner of assessing the powers wielded by these strangers from space. He had no intention of precipitating a situation in which he would discover such powers ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... committed by Austria, under the circumstances, was not in precipitating war, which could not well be avoided in the temper of her antagonists, but in putting, through court favor and privileges of rank, an incapable leader at the head of the army. Old Radetzky, the victor ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... remarks that it is not "easy to give us a firm grasp of any great class of truths without loosening our grasp on some other class of truths perhaps nobler and more vital;" and undoubtedly Patmore and his school in emphasizing the fallacies of neo-platonic asceticism are in danger of precipitating us into fallacies every whit as uncatholic. It is therefore as professedly formulating the principles of a certain school that we are interested in the doctrine of which Patmore constitutes ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... solution is then cooled thoroughly with ice and filtered with suction, first through two layers of toweling and then through one thickness of ordinary filter paper over cloth, in order to remove finely divided solid impurities. The solution is then placed in a precipitating jar, and cooled down thoroughly (0'0) with ice and salt; 10 cc. of concentrated sulfuric acid for each 100 cc. of solution are gradually added with constant stirring. A precipitate of hydrazine sulfate (NH2NH2H2SO4) forms. The mixture is allowed ...
— Organic Syntheses • James Bryant Conant
... were happily not difficult to discover, for in moving a pace backwards Prince Aribert had a narrow escape of precipitating himself to the bottom of them. The lantern showed that they were built ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... compromise is a purely mechanical affair, based on the principle of the Parallelogram of Forces. Sometimes disturbing forces exert their influence upon the action of Public Opinion, causing the system to swerve from its original course, and precipitating society into a course of conduct inconsistent with its former behaviour; and it is the duty of the Governing Body to eliminate as far as possible such disturbing forces, in order that society may pursue the even ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... thousand muskets per month, and three months afterwards the increase amounted only to three thousand, so little preparation had been made by the Government of Mr. Buchanan to meet the great struggle which Southern demagogues were precipitating upon us. Indeed, the number of muskets manufactured during the last year of his administration was less by several thousand than these works turned out during the year 1815; while, during this same period, the residents of streets leading to the railway-station witnessed the extraordinary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... you may have spoiled their chances with your book. You not only have revealed them in their true character to their men, but all the details of their probable methods in working up and precipitating a revolution. You have, in other words, put the German ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... that it shows any advance on the lustra-cellulose (2) and (3). He also considers that the bisulphide of carbon, which must be regarded as a noxious compound, is a serious bar to the industrial use of the process, and for economic work he considers that the regeneration of ammonia from the precipitating liquors is necessary and would be as objectionable as the denitration baths in the collodion process. The final product not being on the market he does not pronounce ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... miles of dense and saturated vapors, suddenly condensing, were precipitating the water, not in drops but in great solid masses, thundering, bellowing, crashing as they struck the sea, which, churned to a deep and raging froth, flung mighty waves even against the massive walls ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... neighbouring sea; and this condensation is greatly facilitated in the south-eastern and eastern parts of the continent by a high range of mountains which here skirts the coast for a long distance, attracting the moisture from the ocean and precipitating it in the form of snow and rain. Thus the vegetation and hence the supply of food both animal and vegetable in these well-watered portions of the continent are varied and plentiful. In striking contrast with the fertility and abundance of these favoured regions are the stony ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... awful. In utter darkness we were whirled along we knew not whither, until suddenly the car whereon we travelled gave an unexpected lurch, as a corner was turned, nearly precipitating all of us into the darkness beneath, and then continued its downward course with increased speed, until sparks flew from beneath us like flecks of fire from a blacksmith's forge, and in our breasts was a tightness that ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... was that finally converted the country to free trade is not easy to answer. Not the arguments of Cobden, for in the summer of 1845 even his buoyant spirit perceived that some precipitating event, and not reasoning, would decide. His appeals had become, as Disraeli wrote, both to nation and parliament a wearisome iteration, and he knew it. Those arguments, it is true, had laid the foundations of the case in all ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... more sober-minded took alarm. It was the moment for his political opponents to interpose and Governor Robinson from among them did interpose, being firmly convinced that Lane, by his intemperate zeal and by his guerrilla-like fighting was provoking Missouri to reprisals and thus precipitating upon Kansas the very troubles that he professed to wish to ward off. Incidentally, Robinson, unlike Fremont, was vehemently opposed ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... Washington precipitating the conflict of theories into a combat of arms for which neither party ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... forearms smeared with ink, sauntered in as if on a vacation, uttering some technical announcement and precipitating a brief panic. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... to be done to rescue us from impending anarchy. The facts that support this opinion are no longer objects of speculation. They have forced themselves upon the sensibility of the people at large, and have at length extorted from those, whose mistaken policy has had the principal share in precipitating the extremity at which we are arrived, a reluctant confession of the reality of those defects in the scheme of our federal government, which have been long pointed out and regretted by the intelligent friends of the Union. We may indeed with propriety be said to have reached ...
— The Federalist Papers
... matter was thrown up; in a few days another vent opened and gave out a lava stream which overran several villages. It flowed at first rapidly, like water, but became afterward heavy and slow, like honey. On the 11th of September more lava flowed out, covering up a village, and precipitating itself with a horrible roar into the sea. Dead fish floated on the waters in indescribable multitudes, or were thrown dying on the shore; the cattle throughout the country dropped lifeless to the ground, suffocated by putrid vapors, which ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... mountains are seen as a long table-topped range running east and west, about 4000 to 5000 feet high, with steep faces towards the Jheels, out of which they appear to rise abruptly. Though twelve miles distant, large waterfalls are very clearly seen precipitating themselves over the cliffs into a bright green mass of foliage, that seems to creep half way up their flanks. The nearly horizontal arrangement of the strata is as conspicuous here, as in the sandstone of the Kymore hills in ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... The late Mr. Temple Temple Barholm had been a client of eccentric and abominable temper. Interviews with him had been avoided as much as possible. His domineering insolence of bearing had at times been on the verge of precipitating unheard-of actions, because it was almost more than gentlemanly legal flesh and blood could bear. And now appeared this ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... step aside, a neat and, for a wonder, accurate drop-kick from Forrester sent the ball violently against the side of the unwieldy senior's head, knocking off his hat and nearly precipitating him a second ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... then it will be time to contrive ulterior measures. In the mean time it so happens that no necessity exists for precipitating matters. Yours truly, W. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... that vitriolic acid, nevertheless, during a strong distillation with powdered manganese, unites with it and makes it soluble in water; and if this manganese is separated again from the vitriolic acid by means of precipitating agents, there are found in it the most distinct traces of the inflammable substance.... I had already observed a few years ago, that if in the calcination of manganese with oil of vitriol in an open ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... huge city, dark with the smoke of ages, and groaning with the various sounds of active industry or idle revel, and the lofty and craggy hill, silent and solitary as the grave—one exhibiting the full tide of existence, pressing and precipitating itself forward with the force of an inundation; the other resembling some time-worn anchorite, whose life passes as silent and unobserved as the slender rill which escapes unheard, and scarce seen, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... built a temple. Having refused the sun worship, when the Indians demanded that he should take their faith, he was set upon, and would have been killed had not an earthquake torn the ground at his feet, opening a new channel for the Hudson and precipitating into it every one but the magus and his daughter. To him had been revealed in magic vision the secrets ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... from the tribune, amid the roar of "Hochs," and the thunder of hands and feet and sticks, and the flutter of handkerchiefs, with men precipitating themselves to kiss his hand, and others weeping and embracing, be sure that no private ambition possesses him, be sure that his heart swells only with the presentiment of great events and with uplifting ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... never more outrageously violated? At Eslingen the whole Jewish community burned themselves in their synagogue, and mothers were often seen throwing their children on the pile, to prevent their being baptised, and then precipitating themselves into the flames. In short, whatever deeds fanaticism, revenge, avarice and desperation, in fearful combination, could instigate mankind to perform,—and where in such a case is the limit?—were executed in the year 1349 throughout Germany, Italy, and France, ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... it, commonly not six feet broad; on one hand is the rock, with woods of pine-trees hanging overhead; on the other, a monstrous precipice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls a torrent that, sometimes tumbling among the fragments of stone that have fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself down vast descents with a noise like thunder, which is made still greater by the echo from the mountains on each side, concurs to form one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... immediate necessity of extending our intrenchments to the right and, although not covered by my instructions (which were to occupy the trenches from the bay to Calle Real, and to avoid precipitating an engagement), I ordered the First Colorado and one battalion of the First California, which occupied the trenches at 9 a. m., August 1, to extend the line of trenches to the Pasay road. The work was begun by these troops, and continued every day by the troops occupying ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... barely appreciable share in precipitating the Revolution and in waging the war. The "Boston Massacre" was occasioned in part by an insult offered by a slave to a British soldier two days before; and in that celebrated affray itself, Crispus Attucks, a mulatto slave, was one of the five inhabitants ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... hand could have impelled them away from the carriage-pole with which the roans threatened to impale their wretched sides. The front wheel, however, made him heroic, going off at a tangent into a cloth-merchant's shop, and precipitating a clash while he still clung to the reins. The door flew open on the under side and Hilda fell through, grasping at the dust of the road; while the driver, discovering that his seat was no longer horizontal, entered suddenly upon ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... consideration of the Court. Its action thereon was watched by members of the Republican party with manifest uneasiness and distrust. Its decision in the Dred Scott case had greatly impaired their confidence in its wisdom and freedom from political influences. Many of them looked upon that decision as precipitating the war upon the country, by the sanction it gave to efforts made to introduce slavery into the Territories; and they did not hesitate to express their belief that the sympathies of a majority of the Court were with the Confederates. Intimations to that effect were thrown out in some of the journals ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... responded to | |inquiries addressed to him with negative shakes of | |the head. He swung into the cabinet room with the | |set stride with which he mounted the steps of the | |Baltimore platform to deliver his famous speech | |attacking Charles F. Murphy and Tammany Hall, and | |precipitating his break with Champ Clark, whose | |nomination for the presidency up to that time seemed| |assured. | | | |For more than an hour after he reached the cabinet | |room the doors were closed. Across the hall the | |President's personal messenger ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... parents and Tom, Rita had treated Williams with quiet civility, and when she learned that she could do so without precipitating a too great civility on his part, she gathered confidence and received him with undisguised cordiality. Roger, in his eagerness, took undue hope. Believing that the obstacle had become very small, he determined, upon occasion, to remove ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... them some small coins, thereby precipitating a scramble and a fight, and they went ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... of silver, they cannot be employed for the recovery of gold. The latter separates out in such a case very incompletely and as a firmly adhering lustrous film in the zinc. On the other hand, finely divided zinc, the so-called zinc dust, is an excellent substance to employ for precipitating gold quantitatively and in the form of powder from spent cyanide liquors. When zinc dust is added to a spent gold bath and the liquid periodically stirred or shaken, all the gold is precipitated in two or three days. The amount of zinc ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... large bulk of impurities, the group separations must not as a rule be too much relied on. Very large precipitates carry down small quantities of bodies not belonging to the group, more especially when there is a tendency to form weak double compounds. The re-dissolving and re-precipitating of bulky ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... used in the decoration of the building caught fire, the flames spread rapidly, destroying in their course the cords by which the numerous paraffin and oil lamps were suspended across the nave and aisles, and precipitating their burning contents upon the people beneath. The great doors opened inwards; the crowd, trying to press out, closed them, and kept them hermetically sealed. The priests, anxious to save the church properties and sacred relics, shut the large iron gates across the chancel and kept them fastened, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... attitude of receptivity: no easy close of shoulder to shoulder, hand upon hand, face upon face, and, in spite of coyness, the lips in the right place at the supreme moment. That graceful though apparently accidental falling into position, which many have noticed as precipitating the end and making sweethearts the sweeter, was not here. Why? Because experience was absent. A woman must have had many kisses before she ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... at last to the dominion of its old masters without a convulsion in Christendom. Various reasons have been assigned for this; and one very generally put forward is, that Europe was wearied with continued struggles, and had become sick of "precipitating itself upon Asia." M. Guizot, in his admirable lectures upon European civilisation, successfully combats this opinion, and offers one of his own, which is far more satisfactory. He says, in his eighth lecture, "It has been often repeated that Europe was tired of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... degrees than anything we have yet contemplated, we are presented with a picture of the month getting gradually shorter than the day, the moon gradually approaching instead of receding, and so, incalculable myriads of ages hence, precipitating itself upon the surface of ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... right assurance, to the right indifference, to the right expression, and above all, as she felt, to the right view of her opportunity for happiness—unless indeed the opportunity itself, rather, were, in its mere strange amplitude, the producing, the precipitating cause. The ordered revellers, rustling and shining, with sweep of train and glitter of star and clink of sword, and yet, for all this, but so imperfectly articulate, so vaguely vocal—the double stream ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... this subject, but will proceed to consider the mode of tempering and clarifying cane juice, and the action of lime on the various substances contained therein. The expression "tempering" has, I presume, been, adopted in consequence of the use of tempered lime for the purpose of precipitating the feculencies, held in solution in the cane juice, into a state of suspension; and clarification is the process by which we afterwards clear the liquor of these and other foreign matter. Now, as I before observed, "fermentation should be most ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... great Quantities of, drying them; so keep these Nuts in great Baskets for their Use; likewise Hickerie-Nuts, which they beat betwixt two great Stones, then sift them, so thicken their Venison-Broath therewith; the small Shells precipitating to the Bottom of the Pot, whilst the Kernel in Form of Flower, mixes it with the Liquor. Both these Nuts made into Meal, makes a curious Soop, either with clear Water, or in ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... was the question he kept repeating to himself without finding an answer. Of a sudden it came to him. It must have been jerked from his pocket at the moment Wyndham caught the handle of the windlass, nearly precipitating him from the ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... General Cerale misunderstood the orders he had received, and that, by precipitating his movement, he dragged into the same mistake the whole of Durando's corps—assuming, I say, this to be the right version, you can easily explain the fact that neither of the two contending parties are as yet in a position clearly to describe ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... looking at the slate. "He will be clear at seven minutes past eight this evening. Yes, he could just manage it then. He has no one at all from seven past to the quarter past"—and so at the appointed hour I have my patient precipitating himself into my room with the demeanour of the man who charges in for his bowl of hot soup at a railway station. If he knew that he is probably the only patient who has opened my door that evening he would not be in such a hurry—or think so ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... easily, and sublimes as a white vapor. It may be prepared by precipitating and drying. When heated, it takes fire previous to melting, glows like tinder, and is converted into antimonious acid, which is now infusible. When heated upon charcoal in the flame of reduction, it is reduced to the metallic state, and partly volatilized. A white vapor ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... kind sir," said Mr. Wax, eagerly, "it is that which I have vainly sought for weeks. I have been out of employment ever since the combined efforts of our National Administration and of our incompetent Congress succeeded in sowing the seeds of distrust in every mind, thereby stagnating business and precipitating a financial crisis, from the debris of which I ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... morning after morning and night after night, to labour violently on his greatest work, though (for just as long as he was actually engaged) he might be staving off his tragedy, he was nevertheless precipitating the event. You may say that when you get him there in his study on his battlefield you are among the big forces at once; but the interesting thing is that those big forces by their very expenditure released a whole crowd of little, infinitely little ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... life; otherwise, the rising tide of revolution was certain to sweep it away. As Sir Charles Walston has shown, it was for some years doubtful whether the democratic movement would obtain control before the bureaucracy and army chiefs succeeded in precipitating a war. There was a kind of race between the two forces. This was the situation which Lord Haldane found still existing in his famous visit to Germany. In the event, the conservative powers were able to strike and ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... I have tried hard to evolve it out of hairs, wine, eggs, bones, and all manner of herbs; out of arsenic, mercury, and sulphur, and all the minerals and metals.... I have spent nights and days in dissolving, coagulating, amalgamating, and precipitating. Yet from all these things I derived neither ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... gathered on the sidewalk that edged the park. They remained thus beyond the borders of the festivities because of their dignity, which would not exactly allow them to appear in anything which was so much fun for the younger lads. These latter were careering madly through the crowd, precipitating minor accidents from time to time, but usually fleeing like mist swept by the wind before retribution could lay hands ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... to the armed neutrality, the persons attacked by the British Court have no apprehensions, and, possibly, the capture of these papers may eventually be of great advantage to the United States, by precipitating the conduct of England, and obliging the States to take a part contrary to their dispositions, and, perhaps, to the interest of one or other nation. The situation of M. Dumas is rendered more critical by this circumstance, and it would be injustice ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... vigorous measures against the filibusters was because it secretly approved of their action. This I do not believe. With President Wilson, the Jugoslavs, d'Annunzio, and the Italian army and navy arrayed against him, I am convinced that Mr. Nitti did everything that could be done without precipitating either a war or a revolution. Much credit is also due to the Jugoslavs for their forbearance and restraint under great provocation. They must have been sorely tempted to give the Poet the spanking he so ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... the firmness of their bishops, who accepted a feigned and transient conversion; but the more obstinate Jews opposed their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the Christians, barricadoed their houses, and precipitating themselves, their families, and their wealth, into the rivers or the flames, disappointed the malice, or at least the avarice, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... rejoined Mareschal, who seemed to take a mischievous delight in precipitating the movements of the enthusiasm which he had excited, like a roguish boy, who, having lifted the sluice of a mill-dam, enjoys the clatter of the wheels which he has put in motion, without thinking of the mischief he may have occasioned. "Remember your liberties," he exclaimed; ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... when he will no longer be able to resist the reaction of the party in the internal affairs of his Empire, or the temper of his army. The contest between Count Romanzov and the party opposed to that Minister seems on the point of precipitating a war between Russia and France." This, from ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the back, precipitating him over the sill, and "Jim" ran in past him. "Helloa. What are you doin'?" he ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... red, a stream of flame seemed to cut across Jimmie Dale's line of vision, came the roar of a revolver shot—and like a madman Jimmie Dale flung his body at the door. Rickety at best, it crashed inward, half wrenched from its hinges, precipitating him inside. He recovered himself and leaped forward. The room was swirling with blue eddies of smoke; Dago Jim, hands flung up, still grasping letter and pocketbook, pawed at the air—and plunged with a sagging lurch ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... day to day; she swaggering along with the set, but turning now and then to send an impatient moo toward the small brown body stuck on four long, ungainly legs,—legs which had an unfortunate habit of folding up, after the fashion of a jack knife, upon unforeseen occasions, and precipitating the owner in a huddled mass on the ground. At rare times, when heaven must have stooped close about the herd, the mother instinct would assert itself, and the cow would return to her offspring, licking it lavishly and encouraging it with mooings of deep affection, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... difficult one. After an engagement of three hours the entrenchments were stormed on all sides, the right wing of the Russians fleeing to the Narva and crowding the bridge with its retreating hosts. So dense was the mass that the bridge gave way beneath them, precipitating them into the stream, in which eighteen thousand of the panic-stricken wretches were drowned. The left wing then broke and fled in utter confusion, so many prisoners being taken that the best the captor could do was to disarm them ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... might unnerve him," was Sweetwater's thought, "precipitating the very catastrophe we dread. One look, one word on his part indicative of his inner apprehensions that his son had a hand in the crime which has so benefited him, and nothing can save Frederick from the charge of murder. Not Knapp's ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... Governments had agreed to maintain their neutrality throughout the war at any cost, and that the two Governments had exchanged mutually binding and satisfactory assurances with a view to preventing any situation growing out of the state of war in Europe from precipitating either country into acts of hostility ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... been assigned for this great mutiny of the Bengal troops, but it was probably due in part to a season of unrest, some minor event precipitating the crisis. The revolt occurred on May 10th, at Meerut, forty miles distant; at first there were but twenty-five hundred men, then other regiments joined them, and, on their arrival in Delhi, they attacked the civil offices, and the inmates were compelled to flee to the fort, where ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... aristocracy for power, the general poverty of the community on account of overpopulation leading the multitudes to seek relief through change, and a distinct passion for pilgrimages were influential in precipitating this movement. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... a ship in the distance. He determined to swim to a rock from which he could be seen, and make signals of distress. He undressed, leaving his clothing on deck. He retained nothing but his leather belt, and then, precipitating himself head first, plunged into the sea. As he dived from a height, he plunged heavily. He sank deep in the water, touched the bottom, skirted for a moment the submarine rocks, then struck out to regain the surface. At that moment he felt ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... satisfied, for whom he asks treasurer of the navy. The Duke goes to Kensington to-morrow, when all this is to be declared-however, till it is, I shall doubt it. Lord Lincoln and his principal friends are vehement against it; and indeed his grace seems to be precipitating his own ruin. If Mr. Fox could forgive all that is past, which he by no means intends, here are now provocations added—will they invite Mr. Fox's support? Not to mention what Unpopular German steps the Duke must take to recover the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... his experience. He knew not what to make of this fierce, ragged, desperate man, who wept and threatened by turns—who was now snarling in the most repulsive bass of the convict gamut, and now calling upon Heaven in tones which were little less than eloquent. At first he thought of precipitating himself upon the sleeping wretch and pinioning him, but a second glance at the sinewy, though wasted, limbs forbade him to follow out the rash suggestion of his own fears. Then a horrible prompting—arising out of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the Revolutionary War was fought there were, again, concealed all manner of personal ambitions, sectional jealousies, and partisan intrigues. It was in truth (as more than one American historian has pointed out) a party strife and not a war of peoples. The precipitating cause of the Civil War was not the desire to abolish slavery, but the bitterness aroused by the political considerations of the advantage given to one party or the other by the establishment or non-establishment of slavery in ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... semi-solid, state? It cannot be from any blind or inconsiderate haste on the part of the molecules themselves. There must be some independent principle, or law of nature—one presupposing an intelligent law-giver—to effect the "precipitating process," if any such ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... where an old gentleman had died in a fit on seeing a materialization of his mother-in-law; she had escaped from two fires in her night-gown, and at the funeral of her first cousin the horses attached to the hearse had run away and smashed the coffin, precipitating her relative into an open man-hole before the eyes of ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... with a will!" and four cold 32—pound shot were hove at once into the boat alongside, which crashing through her bottom, swamped her in a moment, precipitating the miserable crew into the boiling sea. Their shrieks still ring in my ears as they clung to the oars and some loose planks ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... which had drifted in their wake, was dashed against his boat. The violence of the collision nearly threw him backwards, and caused him to swerve as he sprang. His foot touched the rounded edge of the starling, and glanced off, precipitating him into the water. As he fell, he caught at the projecting masonry. But the stone was slippery; and the tide, which here began to feel the influence of the fall, was running with frightful velocity. He could not make good his hold. But, uttering a loud cry, he was swept away ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was very narrow and on each side sloped down sharply about ten or twelve feet to the level of the fields. It seemed almost an impossibility to turn the car in that narrow space without precipitating it down either one or the other ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... screaming and shrieking infinities of the monkey tribe. Occasionally, amongst the dense mass could be perceived the huge boa-constrictor, rolling in convolutions—now looking back with fiery eyes upon his pursuers, now precipitating his flight—while the air was thronged with its winged tenants, wildly screaming, and occasionally dropping down dead with fear. To crown the whole, high in the expanse, a multitude of vultures appeared, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... whole team. The last ten minutes of the game was marked by a slight excess of energy on both sides. Dacre's forwards were in a decidedly bad temper, and fought like tigers to break through, and Merevale's played up to them with spirit. The Babe seemed continually to be precipitating himself at the feet of rushing forwards, and Charteris felt as if at least a dozen bones were broken in various portions of his anatomy. The game ended on Merevale's line, but they had won the match and the cup by two goals and a try ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... article just quoted reference was made to "mass action." This, according to "The Revolutionary Age," is to be the main weapon used by the rebels in precipitating rebellion. The July 12, 1919, issue of the same paper explains mass action and shows how it is to be used. The article, written by Louis C. Fraina, reads in ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... some of his generals had not secretly worked to bring it about. That he and they did so work cannot now be disputed. The circle of proof is complete. The events at Brescia and Bergamo were part of a scheme for precipitating a rupture with Venice; and their success was so far assured that Bonaparte at Leoben secretly bargained away nearly the whole of the Venetian lands. Furthermore, a fortnight before the signing of these preliminaries, he had ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... and the formation of hostile alliances. It made no effort to form any alliance itself and insisted that the struggle be regarded as an American question. The dispute with England over the Alabama Claims came near precipitating war, but the matter was finally adjusted by the Treaty of Washington. The most significant feature of this treaty, as far as the present discussion is concerned, was the formal adoption of three rules which were not only to govern the decision of the "Alabama Claims," but which were to be binding ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... ladies, with flying draperies and countenances of mingled mirth and dismay, might have been seen precipitating themselves into a respectable mansion with unbecoming haste; but the squirrels were the only witnesses of this "vision of sudden flight," and, being used to ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... canoe put off, Martin Paz, concealed in a crevice of the rock, hastily undressed, and precipitating himself into the sea, swam ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... to one side and precipitating three books and a mass of papers to the floor, Red stood up. He towered above his shrinking fiend, wrath in his eye. His lips moved. If it had been three months earlier Chester would have expected to hear language of a lurid description. As it was, the first syllable or two did slip out, ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond |
