"Vapor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is in mist and vapor among the mountains!" he exclaimed. "With their help, one single scene becomes a thousand. The cloud scenery gives such variety to a hilly landscape that it would be worth while to journalize its aspect from hour to hour. A cloud, however,—as I have myself ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to you and your—children!" and the little man swung his boot vehemently over his head and laughed like a boy at his own joke, while poor, frightened, scandalized Miranda turned and scudded, like a patch of thin vapor blown by an unexpected gust of wind, through the door into the kitchen, with a face colored scarlet from an actual, unmistakable blush, though whence the blood came that reddened the clean cold-white of her thin ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... shone on the cloud with as serene a face as that with which Mr. Yocomb had watched its approach, but now a scud of vapor swept like a sudden pallor across her disk, giving one the odd impression that she had just realized her peril, and then an abyss of darkness swallowed her up. For a few moments longer the fire burned on, and then the cloud with its torrents settled ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... the country, through which we passed on the morning of our ride from Palmyra, over which there is spread a thin veil of purple haze, adding a new charm to whatever objects are dimly discerned through it. At one point only can we, when this vapor is by any cause diminished, catch a glimpse of the loftier buildings of the distant city. But the palace itself, though it be the work of man, and not of gods, is not less beautiful than all these aspects of nature. It is wholly built after ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... that afternoon and evening. The camp-fire, which had been left burning, had smouldered so low that none of the embers were discernible, and only a thin column of smoke crept slowly upward marking where it had been. But this vapor was so clearly seen in the wonderful moonlight that it was easy to fix the precise point where ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... huge buildings containing the machinery and other apparatus for making sugar, which stood at the foot of the eminence, the power of steam, which had been toiling all the week, was now at rest. As the hour of sunset approached, a smoke was seen rising from its chimney, presently pufis of vapor issued from the engine, its motion began to be heard, and the negroes, men and women, were summoned to begin the work of the week. Some feed the fire under the boiler with coal; others were seen rushing ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... of man's first knowledge and use of the expansive force of the vapor of water is unknown, records show that such knowledge existed earlier than 150 B. C. In a treatise of about that time entitled "Pneumatica", Hero, of Alexander, described not only existing devices of his predecessors and contemporaries but also an invention of his own ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... up with his mules; I resumed my binoculars and my silent inspection of the great, smooth path left by the Graham Glacier when something or other exploded that vast mass of ice into vapor. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... refreshing; in the east, clouds, which might be likened to the retreating masses of a discomfited army, hung around the horizon in awful and increasing darkness. At a little elevation above the cottage, the thin vapor was still rushing towards the east with amazing velocity; while in the west the sun had broken forth and shed his parting radiance on the scene below, aided by the fullest richness of a clear atmosphere and a freshened ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... doubt at all that those beams were highly effective. Invisible for the most part, whenever one struck a Dilipic ship or plane everything in its path flared almost instantly into vapor and the beam glared incandescently, blindingly white or violet or high blue—never anything lower than blue. Almost everything material, that is; for guns, ammunition, and missiles were not affected. They did not even explode. When whatever ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... fire, sword, teeth, or scourges, or insensible of dolors and aches; yea, heats, colds, and fevers sink into all our parts alike. But pleasures, like gales of soft wind, move simpering, one towards one extreme of the body and another towards another, and then go off in a vapor. Nor are they of any long durance, but, as so many glancing meteors, they are no sooner kindled in the body than they are quenched by it. As to pain, Aeschylus's Philoctetes ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... in the night, the burning trees serving him for torches. Nearly all the soldiers were busy. Some were gathering up the wounded and others were building breastworks. His eyes were reddened by the powder-smoke, and often the heavy black masses of vapor were impenetrable, save where the forest burned. Now he came to a region where the dead and wounded were so thick that he dismounted and led his horse, lest a hoof be planted upon any one of them. But he noticed that here as in other battles ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... on the yellow river,—clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by. The long train of mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through the narrow street, have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides. Here, inside, is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted and black. Smoke everywhere! A dirty canary chirps desolately in a cage ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... impressions of it are extremely vague and misty,—or, rather, smoky: for Sheffield seems to me smokier than Manchester. Liverpool, or Birmingham,—smokier than all England besides, unless Newcastle be the exception. It might have been Pluto's own metropolis, shrouded in sulphurous vapor; and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the Valley of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel three miles in length, quite traversing the breadth and depth ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds; and sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... is the antagonist of heat, {yet} a moist vapor creates all things, and this discordant concord is suited for generation; when, therefore, the Earth, covered with mud by the late deluge, was thoroughly heated by the aethereal sunshine and a penetrating warmth, it produced species {of creatures} ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... buttercups,—-Earth saying to the mortal body, with her sweet symbolism, "You have scarred my bosom, but you are forgiven"; then a glimpse of the soul as a floating consciousness without very definite form or place, but dimly conceived of as an upright column of vapor or mist several times larger than life-size, so far as it could be said to have any size at all, wandering about and living a thin and half-awake life for want of good old-fashioned solid matter to come down upon with foot and fist,—in fact, having neither foot ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... caused so much damage to our men," reported a physicist, "was analyzed, and found to have some extraordinary lines. It was largely mercury-vapor spectrum, but the spectrum of mercury-atoms in an impossibly strained condition. I would suggest that great care be used hereafter, and all men be equipped with protective masks when observations are needed. This sun is very rich in the infra-X-rays and ultra-visible light. The explosion of light, ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... constantly pricked by sudden scarlet jets as the flame leaped from the mouths of the carefully concealed French guns, which seemed to be literally everywhere, while countless geyser-like irruptions of the earth, succeeded by drifting patches of white vapor, showed where the German shells were bursting. Sweeping the landscape with my field-glasses, a long column of motor-trucks laden with ammunition came within my field of vision. As I looked there suddenly appeared, squarely in the path of the foremost vehicle, a splotch of yellow smoke shot ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... With liquid belts each verdant mound of earth, To aid the colon's as the carrier's toil, To drive the coulter, and to fat the soil, Learn all mechanic arts, and oft regain Their native hills in vapor and in rain. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... armor; the heart-shaking solemnity of its language, and the appropriate scenery of its haunt, viz., the ramparts of a capital fortress, with no witnesses but a few gentlemen mounting guard at the dead of night,—what a mist, what a mirage of vapor, is here accumulated, through which the dreadful being in the centre looms upon us in far larger proportions, than could have happened had it been insulated and left naked of this circumstantial pomp! In the Tempest, again, what ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... two ardent hands. And over her own face as she looked at him there went a little wave of change. Her rich color stirred and deepened; her lips parted for the quick passage of her breath; and her blue eyes looked gray as if veiled in a light vapor. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... pitchforks, with heavy cudgelling or gnawing of their flesh. In the anguish of death, and the crush by the way, mothers trod down their infants and fathers their daughters; and when the damned reached the spiked threshold of hell itself, a hideous and poisoned vapor rose up to meet them, choking them, and yet giving them renewed strength to feel fresh torments with increased keenness of every sense. Then the devil's shrieks of anguish, which shake the vault of hell, came thundering on their ears; with hideous ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of being the most poisonous of New England plants. The treacherous beauty of its autumn leaves is a source of grief to collectors. Many are seriously affected, without actual contact, by the exhalation of vapor from the leaves, by grains of pollen floating in the air, and even by the ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... 80.) PROF. KIRCHHOFF was led to the study of a coincidence between the bright yellow line given in an incandescent sodium vapor, and the solar line "D," which coincidence had already been noticed by FRAUENHOFER. Upon applying a greater dispersive power he noticed that the line "D" was a double one; but so also was the sodium ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... followed by instant nothing except stampede on the part of the Germans to get out of reach of something. Then the something grew denser; invisible hot vapor became a pall of steam that bid the launch from view, three more shots from Fred's rifle finding the proper mark by sheer accident, for there was another explosion; the cloud increased ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the color came to her cheek and surged up to her temples, not suddenly or hotly, but with the semi-diaphanous lightness of roseate vapor mounting into winter air. As he came nearer, rounding the protective barrier of the arm-chair, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... to dissolve the starch fibre unaided. Each of the digestive juices has its own work to do, and the saliva acts directly upon the starchy food; hence the importance of thoroughly masticating such food as bread, potatoes, rice, cereals, etc. The action of heat, in baking, which causes the vapor to rise, and forms the crust of starchy food, produces what is called dextrine, or partially digested starch. Dextrine is soluble in cold water, hence the ease with which crust and toast—when properly made—are digested. ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... as a shadow; It passed like a vapor away— As the mist which hangs over the meadow Dissolves ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... matter, the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that 295:21 one which has lost much materiality - much error - in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... away, and went ashore with her father. Then the big steamer throbbed its way out of the harbor, and by and by the island of Lewis lay but as a thin blue cloud along the horizon; and who could tell that human beings, with strange hopes and fancies and griefs, were hidden away in that pale line of vapor? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... atmosphere by the action of cold. During the day, the powerful heat of the sun causes to arise from the earth and water a moist vapor, which, after the sun sinks below the horizon, is condensed by the cold, and falls in the form of dew. Dews are more copious in the Spring and Autumn than at any other season; in warm countries than in cold ones: because ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... had just looked in with Laurie's note to give the news. It was a heavy fog outside, woolly in texture and orange in color, and the tall windows seemed opaque in the lamplight; the room, by contrast, appeared a safe and pleasant refuge from the reek and stinging vapor ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... the doctor replied, "by the abruptness of the mountains which face the Bay of Bengal, from which they are separated by low swamps and marshes. The winds arrive among the hills heavily charged with the vapor they have absorbed from the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean. When they strike the hills and are forced up to a higher elevation, they give out their moisture with great rapidity, and the rain falls in torrents. As soon as the clouds have crossed the ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... and lighting up the splendid building in the hour of its ruin in the grandest manner, now illuminating this and now that part of the gigantic structure, and then again relapsing into a fearful darkness of smoke and vapor. ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... absolute rhythm come what may, and giving instant obedience to orders. The trireme is in one sense like a latter-day steamer in her methods of propulsion; but the driving force is 174 straining, panting humans, not insensate water vapor and steel. ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... not be coined into votes. The demagogue has a sincere respect and a salutary fear of the voter; and he that can direct the lightning flash of the ballot-box is greater than he who possesses a continent of vapor, gilded ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to make one weep. This unexpected cold, this cold much keener than outside, is, perhaps, what from the first takes hold of you, disconcerts you; instead of the slightly heavy odor which generally fills ancient churches—the vapor of so much incense that has been burned there, the emanations of so many coffins that have been blessed there, of so many generations of men that have crowded there, for agony and prayer—instead of this, a damp and icy wind, which enters rustling through ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... slaves, With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, And forced to drink their vapor." (Antony and ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... of even equivalents of the elements named, and all but the youngest students of chemistry well remember how its formula was written HO, the atomic weight of oxygen being expressed by 8, making the molecular weight of water (H1 O8) 9. But the vapor density of water, referred to air, is 0.635, and this number multiplied by the constant 28.87, gives 18 as the molecular weight of water, or exactly twice that accepted by chemists. This discrepancy led to closer observations, and it was eventually found that in decomposing water, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... reality, before which the conventional distinctions of society melt away like a vapor when we would grasp it with the hand. Were Byron now alive, and Burns, the first would come from his ancestral abbey, flinging aside, although unwillingly, the inherited honors of a thousand years, to take the arm of the mighty peasant who grew immortal while he stooped behind his plough. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in air is gathered dim That humid vapor which to water turns Soon as the cold its rising progress learns. The fiend that ill-will joined (which aye seeks ill) To intellectual power, which mist and wind Moved by control which faculties such can ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... over the scene. About two-thirds of the distance around the verge of the horizon a faint light appeared, resembling the scene when a dense curtain of clouds hangs overhead, and the rays of the morning sun steal under the edge of the thick vapor. But the stars could be seen, and the only appearance of clouds was immediately above the circle of light. In a very few minutes the terrible truth flashed upon the mind of Glenn. The dim light along the horizon was changed to an approaching flame. Columns of smoke could be seen rolling upward, while ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... mentioned this mountain-range, I think it not out of place to describe its extent and situation, for, as is well known, it encompasses a great part of the earth with its continuous chain. Beginning 53 at the Indian Ocean, where it faces the south it is warm, giving off vapor in the sun; where it lies open to the north it is exposed to chill winds and frost. Then bending back into Syria with a curving turn, it not only sends forth many other streams, but pours from its plenteous ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... relaxation of fatigue and the bath, which had become a vapor one as he alternately rolled and dried himself in the baking grass, his eyes closed dreamily. He was awakened by the sound of voices. They were distant; they were vague; they approached no nearer. He rolled himself to the verge of the first precipitous ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... worthy of the greatest humbug (say Louis the Fourteenth) that ever sat on a throne. When he got the better of his paternal emotion, and began to speak, his voice was so big that I really thought it must have burst him. The vapor of words in which he enveloped himself (condensed on paper) amounted to these two statements. First, that he hailed in Oscar (not having, I suppose, children enough already of his own) the advent of another son. Secondly, that he saw the finger of Providence in everything ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... stiffly and painfully from the sled-box, and with the aid of his crutch, hobbled about the task of unhitching the horses. He watered them where a plume of thin vapor disclosed the whereabouts of a never-freezing spring which burbled softly between its ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... which actuates our enemies, public and private, abroad and in our bosom, to hope that we shall end this controversy without the sharpest, the sharpest conflicts; to flatter ourselves that popular resolves, popular harangues, popular acclamations, and popular vapor will vanquish our foes. Let us consider the issue. Let us look to the end. Let us weigh and consider before we advance to those measures which must bring on the most trying and terrific ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... stretched up to him in supplication, bodies prostrate before him, and not a blade of wheat more in the harvest! Who is it then who has made so much for the pleasure of knowing that it all amounts to nothing! The earth is dying; Herschell says it is of cold; who holds in his hand the drop of condensed vapor and watches it as it dries up, as an angler watches a grain of sand in his hand? That mighty law of attraction that suspends the world in space, torments it and consumes it in endless desire; every planet carries ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... not shut out, and that unlike the inhabitants of the Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient Pompeiian could contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven; could see the moon rise high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, tremulous with an atmosphere of golden vapor, below Inarnine ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Bathing establishment is in this part of the building, but that for men is entered from another street. Each has Hot and Vapor Baths of the first class for 12 cents; second class of these or first-class cold baths for 8 cents; and so down to cold water baths for 2 cents or hot ditto for 4 cents each. I think these, notwithstanding their cheapness, are not very extensively—at least not regularly—patronized. The first class ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... never ridden west. So, when the rolling hills of this newly beholden land lifted themselves for her contemplation, and the harvest sun, all in an angry and sanguinary glow sank in the veiled horizon, and at noon a scarf of golden vapor wavered up and down along the earth line, it was as if a new world had been made for her. Sometimes, at the coming of a storm, a whip-lash of purple cloud, full of electric agility, snapped along the ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... withhold from him all its sympathy. The voice of national hatred was all powerful, and was ready to forego even private interest, its certain gains; his alms even were shunned, like the fruit of an accursed tree. Like pestilential vapor, the infamy of universal reprobation hung over him. In his case gratitude believed itself absolved from its duties; his adherents shunned him; his friends were dumb in his behalf. So terribly did the people avenge the insulted majesty ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for me to get up and strike a light, for to do so with kerosene oil all over the floor and its vapor diffused through the room would probably result in setting the house on fire. So I must stay in darkness and wait. I do not think I was very much frightened—I was so astonished that there was no room in my mind for ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... using oil are operated on the principle that current can pass through them in one direction only, due to the great resistance offered to the flow of current in the opposite direction. It is, of course, not necessary to use mercury vapor for the arc. Some rectifiers operate on another principle. Examples of such rectifiers are the Tungar made by the General Electric Co., and the Reetigon, made by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co. The Tungar Rectifier is used ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... with her companion's mood, yet unconsciously turning all to sport by her attempt to assume one similar;—these two standing at the grim Doctor's footstool; he meanwhile, black, wild-bearded, heavy-browed, red-eyed, wrapped in his faded dressing-gown, puffing out volumes of vapor from his long pipe, and making, just at that instant, application to a tumbler, which, we regret to say, was generally at his elbow, with some dark-colored potation in it that required to be frequently replenished from a neighboring black bottle. Half, at least, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... could remember the "cold year," when there was a black frost every month of the twelve, and though almost all the corn along its shores shrivelled on the stalk, there were two farms where the vapor from the river saved the crops, and all the seed for the next season came from the favored spot, to be known as "Egypt" from that ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the vast prospect; but nowhere was there another sign or indication of human life and habitation. She looked in vain for the settlement, for the rugged ditches, the scattered cabins, and the unsightly heaps of gravel. In the glamour of the moonlight they had vanished; a veil of silver-gray vapor touched here and there with ebony shadows masked its site. A black strip beyond was the river bank. All else was changed. With a sudden sense of awe and loneliness she turned to the cabin and its sleeping inmates—all that seemed left to her in the vast and stupendous domination of rock and ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... the child a refuge, and he ran on quickly until he found himself in the open country. Before him stretched field after field; a few small, scattered houses, white cubes, alone varied the monotony of the scene. Below was Paris, known by its long line of reddish vapor, like the reflection of a blacksmith's forge. The child stood still. It was the first time that he had ever been alone out of doors at night. He had neither eaten nor drank all day, and was now suffering from intense thirst. He was also beginning to ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... sides nothing was to be seen except snow. The snow lay in billows and glittered like silver. Above the hare was frosty vapor, and through this vapor glistened ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Through the dense vapor they saw the sun rise, red and sullen, but the mist was so impenetrable that they dared not move about. The day and night passed, almost without their knowledge, and the second morning found them, ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... firmament here—by the way, a Greek, not a Hebrew idea, first introduced into the Septuagint—was in reality simply the atmosphere with its clouds. "The historian" [Moses], says Dr. Kitto, "speaks as things would have appeared to a spectator at the time of the creation. A portion of the heavy watery vapor had flown into the upper regions, and rested there in dense clouds, which still obscured the sun; while below, the whole earth was covered with water. Thus we see the propriety with which the firmament is said to have divided the waters from the waters." It is certainly probable that in a vision ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... looked down at him without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. Just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapor as rose to my height from this rapid train had passed me and was skimming away over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling the flag he had shown while the ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... vapors resolved from the waters which are raised above a part of the atmosphere, and from which the rain falls. But to say, as some writers alluded to by Augustine (Gen. ad lit. ii, 4), that waters resolved into vapor may be lifted above the starry heaven, is a mere absurdity. The solid nature of the firmament, the intervening region of fire, wherein all vapor must be consumed, the tendency in light and rarefied bodies to drift to one spot ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... constantly giving out a large quantity of waste materials by what is called insensible perspiration; a process which is of great importance to the preservation of health, and which is called insensible, because the exhalation, being in the form of vapor, and carried off by the surrounding air, is invisible to the eye. But its presence may often be made manifest, even to the sight, by the near approach of a dry cool mirror, on the surface of which it will soon be condensed ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... the girl whose strong limbs served her well in mountain climbing. As the sun grew warmer and clearer above the islands, she could see old "Round Top" begin to breathe. At times this mountain's snowy head became quite hidden in the obscurity of misty vapor or smoke clouds, while the double peak of Isanotski, rising as grandly as ever to its height above the others, seemed, by its longer-retained snow cap, to assure the world of ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... whom the great king confined in bottles and cast into the sea. In that collection of chronicles which the Feringhis style the Arabian Nights, you have read of the fisherman who found a bottle in his net and opened it to see a quantity of dark vapor issue forth, which, assuming great proportions, presently took form, coalesced into the gigantic figure of a terrible genii, who announced to his terrified liberator that during his captivity, he had ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... the Presidio Heights as brilliant as its predecessor had been dismal. A soft south wind had swept the fogs of the Pacific far out to sea and cleared the summer sky of every wisp of vapor. The sun of early August shone hot and strong upon the sandy wastes between the westward limits of the division camps and the foamy strand beneath the low bluffs, and beat upon the canvas homes of the rejoicing soldiery, slacking cloth and cordage so that the trim ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... where the river plunges down a sixty-foot drop in a spot of great beauty. Our third camp was on the Induruga River, in a beautiful but malarious spot; our fifth was on the Thika Thika River, where it was so cold in the morning that the vapor of our breathing was visible; and our sixth on a wind-blown hill where a whirlwind blew down our mess tent and scattered the cook's fire until the whole grass veldt was in furious flames. It took a hundred men an hour ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... also be raised to 212 deg. in the process. That is to say two pounds of steam will convert ten pounds of freezing water into boiling water, so great is the latent heat set free in the passage of steam to lower temperatures at the moment when the contact of cold surfaces converts the vapor from the gaseous into the liquid state. This heat is so thoroughly merged in the compound that the most delicate thermometer cannot detect a variation. It is undiscoverable by our senses and yet it proves its existence beyond question by ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... a real Colorado day, and these young people were off on a real Colorado picnic. How exceptionally characteristic the occasion might prove to be, no one suspected, simply because no one payed sufficient heed to a shred of gray vapor that hovered on the brow of the Peak. Amy Lovejoy, to be sure, remarked that there would be wind before night, and another old resident driving by, waved his hat toward the Peak, and cried, "Look out for hurricanes!" But no one was the wiser ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... the golden-haired, surveyed it all, and the frost- rimmed wolf-dogs and the vapor breaths of the men. "And why shall not the heart be glad?" he laughed. "It is good; it is all good. As for the grub—" He doubled up his arm and caressed the swelling biceps. "And if we have lived and worked like beasts, have we not been paid like kings? Twenty ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... in its soundless affray, Heaven its vaulting of dark-blue is framing, Where from infinity deep stars are flaming, Earth's masses sink into vapor away. Fleeing the darkness, the eyes seek the city, Meet with its torches a corpse borne in pity; These seek the night, but a flag is each light, Waving the hope of eternity bright. Gaily to dance and wine Mandolins give the sign. ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... A hazy vapor arose from these countless herds as they moved on, and more than once the Hottentots, who were standing on the wagons, which had been stopped as the herd came up to them, pointed out a lion which was journeying with the crowds to feast at his leisure. The animals appeared very tame, and ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... square, mounted on big wheels, and fitted with a high oval chimney. A halo of kitcheny smell floated about it, and the open door of its fire-box, in which brands were burning furiously, and a jet of vapor from somewhere, gave it quite the appearance of an odd steam engine. Beside the contre-torpilleur stood the two cooks, both unusually small in stature. One was about thirty-two or three years old, chunky, and gifted with short, strong, hairy arms; the other was much slighter, younger, and so juvenile ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... a faint cloud of vapor at least fifty miles distant he saw nothing of a remarkable change effected nearer home. Outwardly, Iris was attired in her wonted manner, but if her companion's mind were not wholly monopolized by the bluish haze detected on the horizon, he must have noticed the turned-up ends of a pair of trousers ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... of the engine came rocking toward them, gathering impetus on the sharp grade. Had Scottie missed his trick? But when the thunder of the iron on iron was deafening Andrew, and the engine seemed almost upon them, there was a cloud of white vapor that burst out on either side of it and the brakes were jumped on; the wheels skidded, screaming on the tracks. The engine lurched past; Andrew caught a glimpse of Scottie, a crouched, masked form in the ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... with sharp hooks, so that if they touched the gas bag they would cling fast, and burn until they had ignited the envelope and the vapor inside. And as they circled about, dropping bomb after bomb, the two air service boys saw this happen. Some at least of their bombs reached ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... seven great seas like unto the vapor of the desert, beneath our glorious and conquering footsteps and those of our faithful and victorious heroes. He has made in our royal mind the thrones of kings and the deep ocean of earthly glory more despicable than the light bubble that floats upon the surface of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... streak of vapor-trail needling down toward them from the sunrise rainbow turned the channel of ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... then the frog dived off his hand And swam out to the fence, Which was an easy thing to do— The vapor ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... fog remained white and impenetrable. After a few minutes I began to see dark shapes on either side of the road. Tall, thin, irregular shapes, some high, some low, but with outlines all softened, toned down by the banks of white vapor. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... nominis umbra [Lat.], nonentity; flash in the pan, vox et praeterea nihil [Lat.]. shadow; phantom &c (fallacy of vision) 443; dream &c (imagination) 515; ignis fatuus &c (luminary) 423 [Lat.]; such stuff as dreams are made of [Tempest]; air, thin air, vapor; bubble &c 353; baseless fabric of a vision [Tempest]; mockery. hollowness, blank; void &c (absence) 187. inanity, fool's paradise. V. vanish, evaporate, fade, dissolve, melt away; disappear &c 449. Adj. unsubstantial; baseless, groundless; ungrounded; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... wolves and foxes, and flocks of those large wild sheep with gnarled and gracefully curved horns, which are known to the natives as arkars. High in the sky flew the vultures, bearded and unbearded, and amid the clouds of white vapor we left behind us were many crows and pigeons and ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... been always so. Even across the distance of a room the mere sight of him had had for her the power to summon those wild spirits of the soul and body that turn reason to a vapor. And now so close, with his arm around her, that same power she had felt when she saw him first, the power that had made her come out and be herself then, the power that had overwhelmed her in the little restaurant, was leagued against her again to make her do this one more thing, which she wouldn't ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... dumped the pellet out. It was spoiling! The exposure to the air and the moisture of my tongue, had ruined it! I realized the catastrophe, as I held its crumbling, deliquescing fragments on my palm it melted into vapor and was gone! ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... in heaven cannot be admitted as an article of faith by those who imagine that a man after death is a soul or spirit, and who conceive of a soul or spirit as of a rarefied ether or vapor; who imagine also, that a man will not live as a man till after the day of the last judgment; and in general who know nothing respecting the spiritual world, in which angels and spirits dwell, consequently ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... stretches of glass, catching the moon's rays like levels of water, was the steam furnace that imparted their summer climate, through heavy mains carried below the basement, to every chamber of the mansion; a ragged plume of vapor escaped from the tall chimney above them, and dishevelled itself in diaphanous silver on the night-breeze. Beyond the hot-houses lay the cold graperies; and off to the left rose the stables; in a cosy nook of this low mass Northwick saw the lights of the coachman's ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... day cometh wherein the night shall be no more at all remembered; the clouds shall melt like vapor, and the voice of mourning and lamentation shall be heard no ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... made insolent, in glass and chrome and polished steel, mirrors and windows and looming electronic clerical machines. Most of one wall was taken up by a TV monitor which gave a view of the spaceport; a vast open space lighted with blue-white mercury vapor lamps, and a chained-down skyscraper of a starship, littered over with swarming ants. The process crew was getting the big ship ready for skylift tomorrow morning. I gave it a second and then a third look. I'd be ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... like a statue. His thought was confused, and it moved slowly. In the cries of the disturbed birds he seemed now to hear the warning voice of Carmen. In the watery vapor that rolled over him he seemed to feel the touch of her soft, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... sound, silence. Plant, quadruped, bird, By one music enchanted, One deity stirred,— Each the other adorning, Accompany still; Night veileth the morning, The vapor the hill. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the dazzling sunlight almost blinded him. A thousand grotesque figures danced before him, a hot red vapor seemed to envelop him. He felt a dull pain in his ears and a numb sensation about the legs. Gradually he recalled the scene that had just passed; the flying crowd lashed by that pitiless iron scourge; the cruel panic; the mad, suffocating rush; and then that crash ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... lungs for purifying. If blood or chyle is kept too long below the diaphragm, it becomes diseased before it reaches the lungs, and after renovation, but little good blood is left. Then the dead matter is separated from blood and blown out at the lungs while in vapor. Thus nutriment is not great enough to keep up normal supply. In this stage the patient is low in flesh and feeble generally, because of trouble with blood and chyle to ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... the state of vapor forms, according to the temperature and other conditions of the atmosphere, from a half per cent. to four and a half per cent. of the weight of that fluid—about 1.25 per cent. being the average; carbonic acid exists in it to the extent of 1/2000th; and ammonia forms a minute portion ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... not been quite ten thousand of the tiny machines, and some few free ships had turned to the help of their attacked sister-ships. And one after another the terrestrial machines were vanishing in puffs of incandescent vapor. ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell
... of the steaming box, and this end should be arranged a trifle lower than the other end. The hole will permit the water of condensation to escape. Steam should not escape from the box when a charge of wood is being softened. Steam which escapes from the box in the form of vapor has done no work whatever, and is just so much waste of fuel. In order to give up its heat to the wood, the steam must condense and come away from the box as water. Therefore, in steaming a charge of pieces ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... can bring out of materials that seem so simple and common. Out of the earth's dark soil, by the action of light and heat, He calls forth myriads of flowers. A heavy cloud, that contains nothing but murky vapor, by the rays of the setting sun is made to flash and glow like a burning sapphire throne. The falling shower, by another action of the sun's light, is painted with rainbow colors so pure that they seem to be reflections of heaven's own beauty. Surely God has flung these glories round ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... interchanges of cold and hot currents of air which are due to these causes? Do we not obtain thus the same effects which in South America are produced by the snowy summits of the Andes? The cold current meets the warm, chills its vapor, precipitates this in fruitful rain. Our northeast winds are the chief bringers of rain. Take these away, and what about wheat and corn? Take away Labrador and the Arctic current, and what about northeast winds? They would still blow; would they still force the warm air to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... The vapor was of a light blue, just above the tree-top's, and it rose only a few feet more, when it dissolved in the clear atmosphere. But it showed that a camp-fire was burning beneath, though it may have been kindled many hours before, and those who started it possibly were ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... details in connection with it may be described as follows: Steam from the boiler is admitted into the evaporator through a reducing valve at a pressure of about 60 lb., and passing through the volute, B, evaporates the salt water contained in the chamber, C; the vapor thus generated passing through the pipe, D, into the volute condenser, E, where it is condensed. The fresh water thus obtained flows into the filter, from which it is pumped into ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... disk, and gains and gains, Until there comes, you scarce know when, A tremble of fire o'er the parted lips Of cloud and mountain, which vanishes; then 330 From the body of day the sun-soul slips And the face of earth darkens; but now the strips Of western vapor, straight and thin, From which the horizon's swervings win A grace of contrast, take fire and burn Like splinters of touchwood, whose edges a mould Of ashes o'er feathers; northward turn For an instant, and let your eye grow cold ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... principle by the vapor of water, we must consider that it is composed of two volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen, and that one volume disappears; or that one-third of the whole atomic motion is consumed by the interference of the vibrations ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... between the assaults of the enraged wind, while from the altar came the responses in a low, Gregorian chant, and through it all the clinking of the censer chains added intermittent notes. Aloft streamed the vapor of the incense, wavering with the air currents, now lost in the deep twilight of the sanctuary, and now faintly revealed by the glow of the candles, perfuming the air with its ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... windows gray when the assault began. Their first warning came when a small object was tossed into the lobby. It exploded in a cloud of white vapor. ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... army, was seen kneeling before him with a portfolio in his hand. Napoleon opened it, and found there all the information he desired. He complied strictly with his promise, and returned the portfolio as soon as he had taken his notes, and the officer disappeared like a vapor of the night. I then turned to the surprised monarch, and offered to repeat this specimen of my skill before every subsequent battle, if he would moderate his ambition and be content to be the first ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... away, and yet the young man slept on. The light and heat were not glaring now; a change had come over earth and heaven. There were signs of one of those thunderstorms that in our climate spring up and pass over so quickly and so terribly. Masses of vapor loom' d up in the horizon, and a dark shadow settled on the woods and fields. The leaves of the great oak rustled together over the youth's head. Clouds flitted swiftly in the sky, like bodies of armed men coming up to battle at the call of their leader's trumpet. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Let but the sun shine on a pile of cloud, and what folds of beauty and deep banks of snowy whiteness does it set forth, and, at the close of day, all the exquisite tints which make the artist despair are flung profusely upon that mass of vapor which but for the sun were ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... settling, days spent in exploring and planning, it resumed suddenly its functions. It came to me out on the lake, where I had paddled to enjoy the starlight in the delicious evening, when the sky was filled with luminous vapor, through which the stars struggled dimly, and in which the landscape was almost as clearly visible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... the heart and over the carotids. The handle of a spoon pressed against the velum, the base of the tongue, and the pharynx, provoked no effort at vomiting. The glasses of our spectacles, as they came in contact with the air expired, were covered with vapor. As the patient appeared to suffer from our presence, we ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... the bright spring sunshine streamed over her where she sat;—not a cloud in the sky, not a dimming of mist or vapor on all the hills, and the broad river-sweep which, placid and beautiful, rolled along; the cattle far off on the brown fields rubbed their silky sides softly together, and gazed through the clear atmosphere with a lazy content, as though they saw the waving of green grass, and heard the rustle ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... time her little supper table was ready, the kettle began to throw up a cloud of steam from its bright spout. A soft, mellow hum arose with it, rushing out louder and louder, like an imprisoned bird carousing in the vapor. The fire glowed up around it red, and cheerfully throwing its light in a golden circle on the carpet, the stand, and on the placid face of Jane Chester as she knelt before the grate, holding a slice of bread before the coals, now a little nearer, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... tender turn, excellent vapor and slender butter, all the splinter and the trunk, all the poisonous darkening drunk, all the joy in weak success, all the joyful tenderness, all the section and the tea, all the ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... bag began to distend and then the balloon took shape and form. The bag was of the usual cigar shape, divided into many compartments so that the puncture of one would not empty out all the vapor. ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton |
