"Quicksilver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coaching days, indeed, when the Shrewsbury "Wonder" drove into the inn yard while the clock was striking, week after week and mouth after month, with unerring regularity, twenty-seven hours to a hundred and sixty-two miles; when the "Quicksilver" mail was timed to eleven miles an hour between London and Plymouth, with a fine of L5 to the driver if behind time; when the Brighton "Age," "tool'd" and horsed by the late Mr. Stevenson, used to dash round the square as the fifth hour was striking, having stopped ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... in stupid amazement. "Why, boy," said he, "you're too inquisitive. I once asked the doctor o' a ship that question, and says he to me, 'Tom,' says he, 'a barometer is a glass tube filled with quicksilver or mercury, which is a metal in a soft or fluid state, like water, you know, and it's meant for tellin' the ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... scythes under the swathe, and the haymakers had placed their prongs in the ditches: nothing is so likely to attract a shock of lightning as a prong carried on the shoulder with the bright steel points upwards. In the farmhouses the old folk would cover up the looking-glasses lest the quicksilver should draw the electric fluid. The haymakers will tell you that sometimes when they have been standing under a hedge out of a storm a flash of lightning has gone by with a distinct sound like 'swish,' and immediately afterwards the wet ground has sent ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... chortled; and she laughed. This dragon didn't spout flame but gentle ridicule, which was elusive as quicksilver slipping through ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... see: Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think Thou call'st for more, And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink; And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie A verier ghost than I. What I will say, I will not tell thee now, Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent, I'd rather thou should'st painfully repent, Than by my threatenings ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... law of the world in which we live that truth shall grow, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. A person who complains of the men of 1688 for not having been men of 1835 might just as well complain of a projectile for describing a parabola, or of quicksilver for ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from the Canon's Yeoman's Tale in Chaucer, that many of those who professed to turn the base metals into gold were held in bad repute as early as the 14th century. The "false chanoun" persuaded the priest, who was his dupe, to send his servant for quicksilver, which he promised to make into "as good silver and as fyn, As ther is any in youre purse or myn"; he then gave the priest a "crosselet," and bid him put it on the fire, and blow the coals. While the priest was busy ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... by no fewer than six chandeliers, with numerous burners, and between the chandeliers depend from the ceiling large glass balls, coated inside with quicksilver, which serve to reflect the light and add something of brilliancy. There are two round holes for ventilation in the ceiling: the only windows are two which are at the lower end of the hall, and look ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... went to England, and raised, as if by magic, the enthusiasm of the English; how one fortune after another has been swallowed up in the dark, deep gulf of speculation; how expectations have been disappointed; and how the great cause of this is the scarcity of quicksilver, which has been paid at the rate of one hundred and fifty dollars per quintal in real cash, when the same quantity was given at credit by the Spanish government for fifty dollars; how heaps of silver lie abandoned, because ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... toward him. He seemed to be drawing her soul to his unconsciously. Tingling in every nerve, athrob with an emotion new and inexplicable, she drew a long slow breath and turned her head away. A hot shame ran like quicksilver through her veins. She whipped herself with her own scorn. Was she the kind of girl that gave her love to a man who did not ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... the quick blood flowing in their veins to believe that a time would come when feeling would be known no more. This fierce clinging to life had at last its natural outcome. Men found that at night, when the quicksilver current of sleep ran through their veins and their bodies were quiescent, they had none the less thoughts as of life. The body lay still; but something in alliance with the body gave them impressions of vivid waking vigour and action. Men fancied ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of a pianoforte; it is elastic, and provided on the interior side with a protuberance of about a quarter of an inch long. Immediately beneath this protuberance is a little cup, also of copper, filled with quicksilver. At the instant when the orchestral conductor, desiring to mark any particular beat of a bar, presses the copper key with the forefinger of his left hand (his right being occupied in holding, as usual, the conducting-stick) this key is lowered, the protuberance passes into ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... hand. (A cry of terror from the women: they would fly but for the spears.) Not even the descendants of the gods can resist them; for they have each man seven arms, each carrying seven spears. The blood in their veins is boiling quicksilver; and their wives become mothers in three hours, and are slain and eaten the ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... came a quicksilver ball, that was put in the middle of the yard and reflected all the glory of its owner, albeit in a somewhat distorted form. This effort of human ingenuity filled the Bilton children with admiration bordering on awe; Cora Cordelia spent hours gazing at it, until called in and reproved by ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... at the seance, but he would never tell me what it was that frightened them all so; he said that he preferred to forget the whole episode. Sir Charles had an idea that I was a "sensitive," so, after getting my leave to try his experiment, he poured into the palm of my hand a little pool of quicksilver, and placing me under a powerful shaded lamp, so that a ray of light caught the mercury pool, he told me to look at the bright spot for a quarter of an hour, remaining motionless meanwhile. Any one who has shared this experience with me, knows how the speck of light flashes ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... an emergency as the present; calm, cool, and collected; not hurrying anybody, yet, as it were, infusing his own energy and vitality into the men by the sharp, incisive tones of his voice, and putting quicksilver into them by—as it seemed—the mere exercise of his will. Under such masterful supervision the work progressed rapidly, and in something over half an hour we had the ship under her fore and main-topsails (which were patent-reefing) and the fore-topmast staysail; every other ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation, of generous youth. Is there any young fellow of the present time, who aspires to take the place of a stoker? One sees occasionally in the country a dismal old drag with a lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling Quicksilver, O swift Defiance? You are passed by racers stronger and swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... was the exact opposite of his brother. He, on the contrary, had to be watched and tended, for his veins seemed to run quicksilver. One would have been justified in saying that he went out to meet the misfortune which was so surely awaiting him. Whenever it was possible he gave his nurses and attendants the slip. He planned dangerous games, and incited the children of the castle servants ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... understand. The powder which is used last seemed to me to be iron dissolved in aqua fortis: they called it, as Baretti said, marc de beau forte, which he thought was dregs. They mentioned vitriol and salt-petre. The cannon ball swam in the quicksilver. To silver them, a leaf of beaten tin is laid, and rubbed with quicksilver, to which it unites. Then more quicksilver is poured upon it, which, by its mutual [attraction] rises very high. Then a paper is laid at the nearest end of the plate, over ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... a constant one. It would presumably prove to be a general law, and not an isolated fact. If bismuth turned into mercury, what would mercury turn into? There would be no rest for me until I had solved the question. I renewed the exhausted batteries and passed the current through the bowl of quicksilver. For sixteen hours I sat watching the metal, marking how it slowly seemed to curdle, to grow firmer, to lose its silvery glitter and to take a dull yellow hue. When I at last picked it up in a forceps, and threw it upon the ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that "it is a fact humiliating to confess that the cant of negroism still has vogue as one of the minor instruments of demagoguy in Northern States." The coolness of such charges, coming from Mr. Cushing, is below the freezing-point of quicksilver. Shall we take lessons in fixedness of principle from the Whig-Antislavery Member from Federalist Essex?—in stable convictions from the Tyler-Commissioner to China?—in consistency from the Democratic Attorney-General?—in an amalgam of all three from the Coalition Judge? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... which the acid with which it is charged has no effect. The jar is charged with sulphuric acid, (common oil of vitriol) diluted in eight parts its bulk of water. The zinc plates of the battery have been amalgamated with quicksilver, and when the battery is set into the jar of acid there should be no action percieved upon them when the poles F, G, are not in contact. Should any action be percieved, it indicates imperfect amalgamation; this can be easily ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... had brought the sample of gold, and they departed. That gold was the first discovered in the Sierra Nevada, which soon revolutionized the whole country, and actually moved the whole civilized world. About this time (May and June, 1848), far more importance was attached to quicksilver. One mine, the New Almaden, twelve miles south of San Jose, was well known, and was in possession of the agent of a Scotch gentleman named Forties, who at the time was British consul at Tepic, Mexico. Mr. Forties came up from San Blas in a small brig, which proved to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... nothing is so good as the white of eggs and quicksilver. A thimbleful of quicksilver to the white of each egg; heat until well ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... let us understand our terms. I suppose, there are few of the keywords of the New Testament which have lost more of their radiance, like quicksilver, by exposure in the air during the centuries than that great word Grace, which is always on the lips of this Apostle, and to him had music in its sound, and which to us is a piece of dead doctrine, associated ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... most like there was a corpse in the house. This ain't no way to live. I do wish Elder Minnett could have minded his own business and let well enough alone. Let the girl talk, and other folks, too. Trying to stop gossip is like trying to put your finger on a drop of quicksilver. There won't be no good come o' that girl being here. That's as ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... spacious one, and of an overwhelming grandeur. Below me lay the mighty Yukon, here like a silken ribbon, there broadening out to a pool of quicksilver. It seemed motionless, dead, like a piece of tinfoil ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... stated in a Cincinnati paper, that the body of a drowned child has been discovered by means of a loaf of bread in which was deposited a quantity of quicksilver. The loaf was sent afloat in the canal, and after floating some distance, remained stationary, and beneath the spot thus indicated, the child was found. That mercury may have a natural attraction towards a human body, is possible; but the use ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... the valley, a wonderful panorama of vine-clad slopes and meadows, starred with many-coloured wild flowers, through which the river wound its way, now hidden, now visible, a thin line of gleaming quicksilver. Tall poplars fringed its banks, and there were white cottages and farmhouses, mostly built in the shelter of the vine-covered cliffs. To the left a rolling mass of woods was pierced by one long green avenue, at the summit of which stretched the grey ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ring of lawn, then marble steps going down to a round pool, where there were no water-lilies, only gold and silver fish that darted here and there like flashes of quicksilver and dark flames. And the enclosed space of water and marble and grass was lighted with a clear, white, radiant light, seven times stronger than the whitest moonlight, and in the still waters of the pool seven moons lay reflected. One could see that they were only reflections by the way their ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... windlass are sinking a shaft, prospecting for drift-deposits. To the right, in the foreground, three men are working a long-tom, which, in point of time, followed the rocker. One of the miners is keeping the dirt stirred up in the tom, under which is set a riffle-box with quicksilver to catch the gold. In the background miners are hand or shovel sluicing, in which the riffle-box of the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... besides. In the first place it affords great quantities of gold, which is carried thence to the Indies made into small plates like little ships, and in value 23 carats each[158]; large quantities of fine silk, with damasks and taffetas; large quantities of musk and of occam[159] in bars, quicksilver, cinabar, camphor, porcelain in vessels of divers sorts, painted cloth, and squares, and the drug called Chinaroot. Every year two or three large ships go from China to India laden with these rich and precious commodities. Rhubarb goes from thence over land by way of Persia, as there is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... is plain to see he is either on the King's errand or his own. A fair lady awaits his return in the city, or one has just dismissed him where he has been! Nothing like a woman to put quicksilver in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... such as silver, quicksilver, gold, and lead, came into common use in the early stages of civilization, all of which added greatly to the arts and industries. Nearly all of the metals were used for money at various times. The aids to trade and commerce which these metals gave on account of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... "Quicksilver? I should think it was quick! See it run back, now the tube is cool. But father called it something else the other ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... further admixture, mated with a Russian fur trader called Shpack, also known in his time as the Big Fat. Shpack is herein classed Russian for lack of a more adequate term; for Shpack's father, a Slavonic convict from the Lower Provinces, had escaped from the quicksilver mines into Northern Siberia, where he knew Zimba, who was a woman of the Deer People and who became the mother of Shpack, who became the grandfather of ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... vexation in his voice, but Theos heeded it not. His heart gave a great bound against his ribs as though pricked by a fire-tipped arrow,—something swift and ardent stirred in his blood like the flowing of quicksilver, . . the picture of the dusky-eyed, witchingly beautiful woman he had seen that morning in her gold-adorned ship, seemed to float between him and the light,—her face shone out like a growing glory-flower in the tangled wilderness of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... once been the defence of a fortalice, of which no vestiges now remained, but which was said to have been inhabited by the same doughty hero we have now alluded to. Brown endeavoured to make some acquaintance with the children, but 'the rogues fled from him like quicksilver,' though the two eldest stood peeping when they had got to some distance. The traveller then turned his course towards the hill, crossing the foresaid swamp by a range of stepping-stones, neither the broadest nor steadiest that could be imagined. He had not climbed far up the hill ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Espana; but the supplies and expenditures drawn from my royal exchequer for those islands are so consuming and reducing that account and fund, to such an extent, and with so injurious effect, that it hardly comes in but it must be paid out. Considering that what is carried in exchange for the quicksilver [35] is revenue derived from the same merchandise that was sent, while the receipts from the bulls for the crusade are (as you know) but moderately successful, you are accordingly informed of this in such detail, so that you may understand ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... little figure, with big blue eyes, and long, black curved lashes and eyebrows, which made her eyes the most beautiful feature in her face. Very soft, fine curly hair surrounded a rather pathetic-looking little face; but her movements were like quicksilver, and though all the little Stuarts were noted for their mischievous ways and daring escapades, ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... when the royal halls of Arabian Spain were visions of grace and beauty. The residences of the Arabs had marble balconies overhanging orange-gardens; their floors and walls were frequently of rich and graceful mosaic; fountains gushed in their courts, quicksilver often taking the place of water, and falling in a glistening spray. In summer cool air was drawn into the apartments through ventilating towers; in winter warm and perfumed air was discharged through hidden passages. From the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... for Athens once more, and thence to the Morea; but my stay depends so much on my caprice, that I can say nothing of its probable duration. I have been out a year already, and may stay another; but I am quicksilver, and say nothing positively. We are all very much occupied doing nothing, at present. We have seen every thing but the mosques, which we are to view with a firman on Tuesday next. But of these and other sundries let H. relate, with this proviso, that 'I' am to be referred to for authenticity; ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Nay, Cupid, leave to speak improperly; since we are turn'd cracks, let's study to be like cracks; practise their language, and behaviours, and not with a dead imitation: Act freely, carelessly, and capriciously, as if our veins ran with quicksilver, and not utter a phrase, but what shall come forth steep'd in the very brine of conceit, and ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... crushed by heavy stamps, or hammers, and then mixed with water and quicksilver. This curious metal, quicksilver, or mercury, is fond of gold and hunts out every little bit, the two metals mixing together and making what is called an amalgam. This is heated in an iron vessel, and the quicksilver ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... that's a good deal a matter of temperament," said the American. "A fellow like Nap, for instance, all hustle and quicksilver, might be expected to kick now and then. One makes allowances for a ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... are wealthy enough to support themselves without borrowing money. In Europe most loans are arranged by the wealthy bankers, who demand security in return. We explained this matter to you in speaking of the quicksilver mines and the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 48, October 7, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... blocks, 3 inches thick, so laid as to make a cavity or pocket at the corner of the blocks. After passing the first sluice box the water and gravel would be run in a bed rock sluice again, and then into another sluice box and so on for a mile, passing through several sluice boxes on the way. Quicksilver was placed in the upper sluice boxes, and when the particles of gold were polished up by tumbling about in the gravel, they combined with the quicksilver ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... send the blood of an ardent lover throbbing through his veins like quicksilver, are they not? Yet they excited not one atom of jubilation in me, for they were uttered in a tone of such coldness and indifference that I felt as certain as I could be of anything that it was wholly of herself, and not at all of me, that the speaker ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... combinations, from the pure metal to the lead-ore mixed with silver. Even in the highest elevations, in parts scarcely trodden by human footsteps, rich veins of silver are discovered. It is scarcely possible to pass half a day in these regions without encountering new streaks. Quicksilver is likewise found, but in such small quantities, that the gain does not pay the labor of the miners. The only quicksilver vein of any magnitude is at Huancavelica. Both mountain chains are very rich in copper-ore; but it is extracted only from the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... was made chiefly by trade with Antwerp. "The exports from Antwerp," says Burgon, "at that time consisted of jewels and precious stones, bullion, quicksilver, wrought silks, cloth of gold and silver, gold and silver thread, camblets, grograms, spices, drugs, sugar, cotton, cummin, galls, linen, serges, tapestry, madder, hops in great quantities, glass, salt-fish, small wares (or, as they were ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the oarsmen rowed the deer came down feeding by the water's side, as if they had been used to a keeper's call. On an excursion off the route they were following they overtook two canoes laden with bread. Among the bushes they found a refiner's basket. In it were quicksilver and saltpetre, prepared for assay, and the dust of ore which had been refined. It belonged to some Spaniards who escaped; but the natives, their companions, were caught. One of them, called Martino, proved a better pilot than Ferdinando and ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... always liked things short, and was himself as lively as quicksilver, many times called these long-winded fellows to order; but they kept meandering on, until daybreak, when it was time to adjourn, lest the sunshine should spoil them all, and change them ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... primarily affected, small doses of quicksilver act in a wonderful and a prodigious manner. How the stomach, when wrong, disturbs the head, is apparent to every one. How a faulty action of the liver disturbs the head is also well known; but the liver, in an especial ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... frontal attack on the position in which the shy General lay entrenched. This is not the case. There was no question of attack or siege or any military operation whatever on either side. The blessed pair just came together like two drops of quicksilver. Each recognized in the other a generous and somewhat lonely soul; an appreciation of the major experiences of life and, with that, a craving for something bigger even than the war, which would give life its greater meaning. She, born on heights ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... those beggars make me hot!" Anstice threw himself back into his corner and drew a long breath. "It's always a mystery to me how people who live in hot climates are so beastly energetic! They seem to have quicksilver ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... demonstrated even more clearly by the celebrated experiment of Torricelli, in which the tube of glass from which the quicksilver has withdrawn itself, remaining void of air, transmits Light just the same as when air is in it. For this proves that a matter different from air exists in this tube, and that this matter must have penetrated the glass or the quicksilver, either one or the other, though they ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... Pennsylvania; Massachusetts and New York were also very well represented. I had no idea before, that the mineral wealth of Austria was so great. Besides the iron and lead mines among the hills of Styria and the quicksilver of Idria, there is no small amount of gold and silver found, and the Carpathian mountains are rich in jasper, opal and lapiz lazuli. The largest opal ever found, was in this collection. It weighs thirty-four ounces and looks ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... speaks of "seeing people," quite as a matter of course. It used to give me a sharp pain at my heart; but I begin to take his way for granted now. "There's something about O'Farrell that eludes me—slips away like quicksilver. One is charmed with his voice and ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dancers; they have far more quicksilver in their feet than their English cousins. Perhaps the very best waltzers I have ever danced with were English girls, who understood the poetry of the art and knew how to reflect not merely the time of the music, but its nuances of rhythm and tone. But dancers such as these ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... brought into Port Royal, Jamaica, two Spanish prizes, one the Maria of Seville, a royal azogue carrying 1,000 quintals of quicksilver for the King of Spain's mines in Mexico, besides oil, wine, and olives. Also a number of prisoners were taken, including several friars on their way to Campeachy and Vera Cruz. The buccaneers always rejoiced at capturing a priest or a friar, and these holy men generally experienced ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... in the shaft of light looked like quicksilver. The smoke from the funnel mixed in the heavy air with the mist and the light, and formed a fantastic beam of vapor from the ship to the shore. Up this stream of quivering, scintillating irradiation, as brilliant as flashing water in the sun, flew from the land thousands of gauze-winged ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Hansen, advancing to the door with the slow and measured tread that is a characteristic of the inhabitants of Norway. There is quicksilver in the veins of their soil, but little or none in the veins of ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... I must trust in your hands—don't forget that I do so trust it. How would you like to cross Quapaw creek on this piece of quicksilver?" ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... whether the air[4] is getting lighter or heavier, or is remaining in the same state. The quicksilver falls as the air becomes lighter, rises as it becomes heavier, and remains at rest in the glass tube while the air is unchanged in weight. Air presses on everything within about forty miles of the world's surface, like a much lighter ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... with which he said that, began to set me against him once more. The perpetual shifts and contradictions in him, bewildered and irritated me. Quicksilver itself seemed to be less slippery to lay hold of than ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... device this was Jack learned to his great surprise. The arms he seized were whipped out of his clutch as if he was trying to lay hold of quicksilver. He grabbed something which proved to be a leg. A swift jerk, and his fingers slipped off the greasy limb. Finally he settled the matter by throwing both arms round the slim, bare waist, and closing upon the rogue with a bear's hug which drove the breath out ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... about nine o'clock; and there was no light except the phosphorescence of the water. When a wave came rushing through the fog, its black body invisible in the darkness, the crest glanced like quicksilver and broke into ten thousand coruscations as the boat balanced on the top,—pouring a flood of glittering water past the stern and over the canvas cover, and dripping from the sides in sparkling drops. Wherever a foam-bubble burst or oar dipped, it was like opening a silver-lined casket. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... streets were lighted and solidly paved. The houses were frescoed and carpeted; they were warmed in winter by furnaces, and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by underground pipes from flower-beds. They had baths, and libraries, and dining-halls, fountains of quicksilver and water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Instead of the drunken and gluttonous wassail orgies of their Northern neighbors, the feasts of the Saracens were marked by sobriety. Wine was prohibited. The enchanting moonlight ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... passes. This new feeling was so fresh, so unsatisfied and light of foot. It ran and was not wearied, anticipated him everywhere. It put a girdle round the earth while he was going from New York to Moorlock. At this moment, it was tingling through him, exultant, and live as quicksilver, whispering, "In July you will be ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... quicksilver? Mightn't you say that ef thar was a friend o' yourn ez knew war to go and turn out ten ton of it a day, and every ton worth two thousand dollars, that he had a soft thing, a very soft thing,—allowin', Tommy, that you used sich language, which ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... break but the shifting bits of white cloud, and the hills and mountains rolled away, solid masses of rich, dark green. The river, a beautiful river at any time, seemed from this height a great current of quicksilver. Henry pointed to a place far up the stream where black dots appeared on its surface. These dots were moving, and they ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the empty canvas and quested on over the sea in the hope of wind-ruffles on the water. But all was glassy calm, each great sea, of all the orderly procession of great seas, heaving up, round-topped and mountainous, like so much quicksilver. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... head and scanned critically the reflection of his own face in a somewhat disconsolate mirror that misdecorated a panel of the breakfast room. Old as the glass was, somewhat bereaved of its quicksilver lining at the edge, it had not got over its habit of telling the truth. Ordinarily little exception could have been taken to the mirrored face; it was intellectual; no sign-manual of cardinal sin had been placed upon it; it was neither ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... from the brook to the forest of hemlocks bristling from the opposite bank, their shaggy tops touched with silver. Beyond lay the wilderness—a rolling sea of soft hazy timber hemmed in by the big mountains, flanked by wet granite slides that shone like quicksilver. ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... He was completely cured for the time of his metaphysical malady, and "well were it for me perhaps," he exclaims, "had I never relapsed into the same mental disease; if I had continued to pluck the flowers and reap the harvest from the cultivated surface instead of delving in the unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic depths." And he goes on to add, in a passage full of the peculiar melancholy beauty of his prose, and full too of instruction for the biographer, "But if, in after-time, I have sought a refuge from bodily pain ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... just six months, after, as he put it, the hardest courtship a man ever undertook. She was more like a piece of quicksilver than a girl. She was as uncertain as a spring wind, as flighty as a ball of thistledown—"Doesn't know her own mind for ten minutes together," he groaned. "Hasn't any mind at all," he'd think an hour later. While, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... out of the question. He sank down again on his elbows, and as he rested his now powerless limbs, I saw the blood welling out of a wound in the loins, as it shone in the moonlight, and trickled off his sleek-painted hide, like globules of quicksilver. As I looked into his countenance, I saw all the devil alive there. The will remained—the power only had gone. It was a sight never to be forgotten. With head raised to the full stretch of his neck, he glared at me with an expression of such malignity, that ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... Albert. He came out of the encounter with a swollen lip and a feeling that one of his ribs was broken, and he had not had the pleasure of landing a single blow upon his slippery antagonist, who flowed about the room like quicksilver. But he had not flinched, and the statement of Francis, as they shook hands, that he had "done varry well," was as balm. Boxing is one of the few sports where the loser can feel the same thrill of triumph as the winner. There is no satisfaction equal to that which comes when one has ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... of heat; barometer, a measurer of the weight of the air; hygrometer, a measurer of moisture. Now, if you remember, on the thermometer you have seen these words at a certain mark, the heat of boiling water. The quicksilver, in a thermometer, rises to that mark when it is exposed to that degree of heat which will make the water turn into vapour. Now the degree of heat which is necessary to make oil evaporate, is not marked on the ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... had good muscles and a sort of brute courage—I assure you that the father did me some mischief. But you should have seen how I fought it out with him. Ah, Athos, such encounters never take place in these times! I had a hand which could never remain at rest, a hand like quicksilver,—you knew its quality, for you have seen me at work. My sword was no longer a piece of steel; it was a serpent that assumed every form and every length, seeking where it might thrust its head; in other words, where it might fix its bite. I advanced half ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Quicksilver is abundant from extensive veins of cinnabar in the province of Mancha. In Galicia tin has been produced from very early times. Iron ore is very abundant, and silver mines, for many centuries abandoned, are now again being reworked. Gold was at one period ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... informed, has hypothecated these bonds, and borrowed money upon them of the Baron Rothschild; the blood of Judas and Shylock flows in his veins, and he unites the qualities of both his countrymen. He has mortgages on the silver mines of Mexico and the quicksilver mines of Spain. He has advanced money to the Sublime Porte, and taken as security a mortgage upon the holy city of Jerusalem, and the sepulchre of our Saviour. It is for the people to say, whether he shall have a mortgage ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... upon full stretch; and I have seen them jump upon the back of the wildest bull, and all the efforts of the beast could not throw them. This country produces all sorts of metals; it is famous for gold, silver, iron, tin, lead, and quicksilver; but some of these they do not understand working, especially quicksilver. With copper they supply all Peru, and send likewise a great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... smoke like lace. Hideous sounds tortured the air—crackling, snapping, spitting sounds like the laughter of animals with steel throats. Never was ill work better done than when, on that radiant veld, the sky one vast turquoise vault, beneath which quivered a shimmer of quicksilver light, the pom-poms, the maulers, and the shrapnel of Kruger's men mowed down Stafford and his battery, showered them, drowned them in a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... clumsy helmets touching, the two Terrestrials stared spell-bound into the plate; watching while the insensately vicious intelligences within the sphere brought its every force to bear upon another and larger sphere which was now so close as to be plainly visible. Like a gigantic drop of quicksilver this second globe appeared—its smooth and highly-polished surface one enormous, perfect, spherical mirror. Watching tensely, they saw flash out that frightful plane of seething energy, with the effects of which they were all too familiar, and saw it strike ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... she murmured, "that some of us in our youth must have drunk from some poisoned cup, something which turned our blood into quicksilver. I must live, or I must die. I must have excitement every hour, every second, or break down. There are others too—many others. No wonder that that idiot of a man in Harley Street talked to me gravely about my heart. ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Next a little cylindrical shovel full of shot was extracted from the belt, whose spring closed as the measure was drawn out, and the shot trickled gently into the barrel, glistening in the moonlight like globules of quicksilver. Another wad was rammed down; the pan opened and found full of the black grains, and the ramrod replaced in its loops behind the barrel, the gun being stood in the corner beside the bed ready for emergencies in ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... of Leonardo again, at Rome in 1514, surrounded by his mirrors and vials and furnaces, making strange toys that seemed alive of wax and quicksilver. The hesitation which had haunted him all through life, and made him like one under a spell, was upon him now with double force. No one had ever carried political indifferentism farther; it had always ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... lower ether. The heavens were emptied of sound, and each dip of the oars was re-echoed in space by a succession of subtle harmonies. As the blades struck the dark water, it flashed fire, and the tracks of the boats resembled two sea-snakes writhing with silent undulations through a lake of quicksilver. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of horses, he hath false covers for all manner of diseases, only comes short of one thing (which he despairs not utterly to bring to perfection), to make a horse go on a wooden leg and two crutches. For powdering his ears with quicksilver, and giving him suppositories of live eels, he is expert. All the while you are cheapening, he fears you will not bite; but he laughs in his sleeve when he hath cozened you in earnest. Frenchmen are his best ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... daily practice of rising from your study-chair at regular intervals, and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's elevation on the barometrical scale. The idea of trusting, throughout all the fluctuations of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in which we live, to quicksilver, is indeed preposterous; and we have long noticed that meteorologists make an early figure in our obituaries. Seeing the head of the god above the mark "fair," or "settled," out they march in thins, without great-coat or umbrella, when such ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Karens are a dirty people. They never use soap, and their skins are enamelled with dirt. When water is thrown on them, it rolls off their backs like globules of quicksilver on a marble slab. To them bathing has a cooling, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... and the Captain was over the rail like quicksilver. The hands were all in the bow, looking and pointing to the west. Jim slid down the ratlines, bubbling over with suppressed news. Before his feet had touched the deck Kitchell had kicked him into the stays ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... I visited the principal gold, copper, and quicksilver mines in the state, not omitting the famous or infamous Mariposa tract. In company with Mr. Burlingame and General Van Valkenburg, our ministers to China and Japan, I made an excursion to the Yosemite Valley, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... to transmute one metal into another they had to produce a tincture of its soul. In Egypt lead, under the name Osiris, was thought to be the primitive base of metals; later when the still more plastic quicksilver (mercury) was discovered, they regarded this as the soul of metals. They thought they had to fix this volatile soul by some medium in order to get a ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... the S. there is little rain, and a delightful climate. Wheat is the most important product; the grape and all manner of fruits grow luxuriantly. Mineral wealth is great: it is the foremost State for gold and quicksilver; lead, silver, copper, iron, sulphur, coal, and many other minerals abound. The industries include brandy and sugar manufactures, silk-growing, shipbuilding, and fishing. All products are exported, eastward by the great Central, Union, and Southern Pacific railroads; and seaward, the chief ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the sum of $50,000,000 is needed for the payment of the soldiers, and that there is little hope of getting it from Spain, because the Rothschilds will not lend the Government any more money unless Spain sacrifices the income of the famous Almaden quicksilver mines ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 36, July 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... landscape I turned to look at the army. Never had I seen them so joyous. It would be impossible to convey any idea of the afflatus which buoyed them up. Every man's veins seemed to run with quicksilver, instead of blood. Every cheek was glowing. Every eye flashed with superb joy and defiance. You would have supposed, indeed, that the troops were under the effect of champagne or laughing gas. "I never even imagined such courage," said a Federal ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... shall I forget one morning when the two prettiest young Italian model-girls in all London were poseeing to an artist friend while the professor sat and imparted to me the lore of the Rommany. The girls behaved like moral statues till he appeared, and like quicksilver imps and devilettes for the rest of the sitting. Something of the wild and weird in the mountain Italian life of these ex-contadine seemed to wake like unholy fire, and answer sympathetically to the Gipsy wizard-spell. Over mountain and sea, and through dark forests with legends of streghe ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... glance. The thing that gave him unreasoning terror was the hundred-foot-high metal monster before him. It defied description. It was unlike any color known on Earth, a blinding color sinister with power and evil. Its shape was equally ambiguous—it rippled like quicksilver, now compact, now spread out in a thousand limbs. But what appalled Phobar was its definite possession of rational life. More, its very thoughts were transmitted to him as clearly as though written in ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... faces looked at her from round the door; she heard Bob Pillin's smothered chuckle; her mother's rich and feathery laugh. Oh! How red his forehead was! She touched it with her lips; skipped back, twirled round, danced silently a second, blew a kiss, and like quicksilver was gone. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... four-horse tyro driver, past Calistoga with its old mud-baths and chicken-soup springs, with St. Helena and its giant saddle ever towering before us, we climbed the mountains on a good grade and dropped down past the quicksilver mines to the canyon of the Geysers. After a stop over night and an exploration of the miniature-grand volcanic scene, we pulled on across the canyon and took the grade where the cicadas simmered audibly in the noon sunshine ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... of Bhot or Thibet brought for sale to Kathmandu paper, coarse woollen cloths, horses, Shawl goats, common goats, sheep, Chaury cattle, chauries, (changwari or chaungri,) musk, salt, sal ammoniac, hurtal or yellow arsenic, borax, quicksilver from China, gold-dust, silver, preserved fruits, such as almonds, walnuts, raisins, and dates, and drugs, such as Indian madder or manjit, chirata, and charas, or extract of hemp. Formerly the Lamas of Degarchi (Teeshoo) and Lassa sent much bullion to the mint at Kathmandu, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... side to side. "Great Gawd! Great Gawd!" he repeated over and over. There was a flickering look about the eyes that made Brent catch his breath. It seemed for just a passing second that they had been converted into little balls of trembling red quicksilver; that was the only thing to which he could liken those eyes just then—red quicksilver. But this passed so quickly that it might have been a reflection from the lamp. At any rate, Dale was continuing: "Why, Brent, I can't go to jail! Nor I can't run away! ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... is cured by an amalgama of tin and quicksilver, such as is used on the back of looking-glasses; an ounce should be taken every two hours, till a pound is taken; and then a brisk cathartic of Glauber's salt two ounces, and common salts one ounce, dissolved in two wine pints of water, half a pint to be taken every hour till it purges. The worm ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Annual yield, estimating upon reported shipments, was $50,000,000, to which by adding two fifths for quantity taken by private hands, besides that converted into articles of ornament and use, the total average would be seventy millions a year. The immense discoveries of gold, silver, quicksilver, tin, copper, lead, iron, and coal, within our limits, justify the estimate that our mineral riches exceed the aggregate metallic wealth of the globe. In a state of peace, with adequate revenue from ordinary sources, the Government has interposed no obstacle to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Trap Washington's Last Battle Marion's Tower Clark and his Men Daniel Boone and his Grapevine Swing Daniel Boone's Daughter and her Friends Decatur and the Pirates Stories about Jefferson A Long Journey Captain Clark's Burning Glass Quicksilver Bob The First Steamboat Washington Irving as a Boy Don't give up the Ship Grandfather's Rhyme The Star-spangled Banner How Audubon came to know about Birds Audubon in the Wild Woods Hunting a Panther Some Boys who became Authors Daniel Webster and his Brother Webster and the Poor Woman The ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... to be installed, an opening is made in the river's bank leading to an excavation which has been made, then a large flatboat is floated in this. The dredging machinery is on this float, as well as most of the machinery through which the gravel is passed accompanied by a stream of water; then with quicksilver and rockers of various designs, the gold is separated from ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... minister of warning, lifted upon a headland, and suddenly there was disclosed intimately the brilliant, shimmering surf breaking on the tortuous coral reef that banded the island a mile away. It was like a circlet of quicksilver in the sun, a quivering, shining, waving wreath. Soon we heard the eternal diapason of these shores, the constant and immortal music of the breakers on the white stone barrier, a low, deep, resonant note that lulls the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... eldest, was still his favourite. She was now a quicksilver little thing of six years old. Barbara, the youngest, was a toddler of two years. They spent most of their time down at Crockham, because he wanted to be there. And even Winifred loved the place really. But now, in her frustrated and blinded ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... bullion. The prohibition of exports and the duties upon exports should be annulled, and especially the heavy export duty on coin and bullion, so as to cheapen and facilitate the purchase of imports and permit the precious metals, untaxed, to flow out freely from Mexico into general circulation. Quicksilver and machinery for working the mines of precious metals in Mexico, for the same reasons, should also be admitted duty free, which, with the measures above indicated, would largely increase the production and circulation of the precious metals, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... a legend which declares that Eight Immortals dwell in the heavens. The first is named Dschung Li Kuan. He lived in the time of the Han dynasty, and discovered the wonderful magic of golden cinnabar, the philosopher's stone. He could melt quicksilver and burn lead and turn them into yellow gold and white silver. And he could fly through the air in his human form. He is the chief ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... such corruption creeps in to a community. You cannot embody an idea in a form or in an external association without immediately dragging it down, and running the risk of degradation. It is just like a drop of quicksilver which you cannot expose to the air but instantaneously its brightness is dimmed by the scum that forms on its surface. A church as an outward institution is exposed to all the dangers to which other institutions are exposed. And these creep on insensibly, as this abuse ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... add that Lulli gladly accepted the invitation, and had apartments assigned for his use in the Tower of London, where he refined much gold; superintended the coinage of "rose-nobles," and made gold out of iron, quicksilver, lead, and pewter, to the amount of six millions. The writers in the Biographie Universelle, an excellent authority in general, deny that Raymond was ever in England, and say, that in all these stories of his wondrous powers as an alchymist, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Head-Men of Guayaquil, are great Thieves. The Mercenary Viceroys not being permitted to Trade themselves, do use the Corregidores as middle-men, and these again employ a third hand; so that ships are constantly employed carrying Quicksilver, and all manner of precious and prohibited goods, to and from Mexico out of by-ports. Thus, too, being their own Judges, they get vast Estates, and stop all complaints in Old Spain by Bribes. But now and then comes out a Viceroy who ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... brilliance surge hurrying mobs, dodging the ceaseless traffic, trampling underfoot the wealth of the Indies, striding through pools of quicksilver, leaping gutters filled to the brim with melted rubies—horse, car, and man so many black silhouettes against a tremulous sea ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of nature affirm that quicksilver is the common seed of all metals. They do not bear in mind that nature raises substances according to the diversity of things which she wishes to produce in ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... if they were so many lanterns without reflectors. Some of them he would dash against and push out of their places; others he would burn up and consume to ashes: and others again he would split into fritters, and their fragments would instantly take a globular form, like spilled quicksilver, and become satellites to whatever other worlds they should happen to meet with in their career. In short, the whole seemed an epitome of the creation, past, present, and future; and all that passes among the stars ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... their death, had they not been made to eat them. And then I felt altogether the force of the maxim of St. Ambrose, "Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum;"—I had a great dislike of paper logic. For myself, it was not logic that carried me on; as well might one say that the quicksilver in the barometer changes the weather. It is the concrete being that reasons; pass a number of years, and I find my mind in a new place; how? the whole man moves; paper logic is but the record of it. All the logic in the world would not have made me move faster ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... ascertained where they could be taken to with safety. Upon examining the barometers to-day, I was much concerned to find that they were both out of order and useless; the damp had softened the glue fastening the bags of leather which hold the quicksilver, and the leathers that were glued over the joints of the cisterns, and so much of the mercury had escaped, before I was aware of it, that I found all the previous observations valueless. I emptied the tubes and attempted to refill them, but in so doing I unfortunately ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... and the natural. There could, and ought to, blow through the song that cold winter air, that fresh Northern wind which characterizes so much both the climate and the temperament of the North. But neither should the storm howl till the very quicksilver froze and all the more tender emotions of the ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... mercury; with this difference, that the atmosphere formed in the receiver by alkohol only supports the attached barometer about one inch in winter, and about four or five inches in summer; that formed by water, in the same situation, raises the mercury only a few lines, and that by quicksilver but a few fractions of a line. There is therefore less fluid evaporated from alkohol than from ether, less from water than from alkohol, and still less from mercury than from either; consequently there is less caloric employed, and ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... the clouds, the smoke from Canada. The sun shone with a high brilliancy, the elms of the Common cast sharp, black shadow-patterns on the pavements, and when she reached the office and looked out of his window she saw the blue river covered with quicksilver waves chasing one another across the current. Ditmar had not yet returned to Hampton. About ten o'clock, as she was copying out some figures for Mr. Price, young Mr. Caldwell approached her. He had a Boston newspaper in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on thinking: my eyes are so weak, so imperfect, that they do not even distinguish hard bodies, if they are as transparent as glass! If a glass without quicksilver behind it were to bar my way, I should run into it, just like a bird which has flown into a room breaks its head against the windowpanes. A thousand things, moreover, deceive a man and lead him astray. How then is it surprising that he cannot perceive a new body which is penetrated and pervaded ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... see? There is a great deal of quicksilver in this glass ball, and we can play with it. I'll show you how." And away they went downstairs to find ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... surrender the new Government of Gloria had absurdly demanded. There were questions of tariff, of duties, of smuggling, all sorts of questions, which, after flickering about separately for some time, ran together at last like drops of quicksilver, and so formed for the diplomatists and for the newspapers the ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Drops of quicksilver, if they are put anywise near together, will run into each other. And that is the law of the kingdom of good. Circumstances are far more fluid to the blessed magnetism than we think. The whole tendency of the right, neighborly life is to reach forth and draw together; to bring into one ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... dilute and temper the blood, rendering it more fit to answer the great purpose of sustaining life and health. Now, there is nothing that can do this but water. Alcohol cannot do it, nor can turpentine, oil, quicksilver, melted lead, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... silent in company like he was mostly thinking of something else. I reckon perhaps he likely was, for he was splendidly educated, with rows on rows of books in his cabin, and a cyclopediar six feet long. The mate said he knew everything in it up to R, not to speak of working lunars in a saucer of quicksilver, and reckonizing squid by its ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... like manner, St. Anthony's fire burn you, Mahoom's disease whirl you, the squinance with a stitch in your side, and the wolf in your stomach truss you, the bloody flux seize upon you, the cursed sharp inflammations of wild fire, as slender and thin as cow's hair strengthened with quicksilver, enter into you,... and, like those of Sodom and Gomorrha, may you fall into sulphur, fire, and bottomless pits, in case you do not firmly believe all that I shall relate unto you in ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... last; and Alan, leaping back to get his distance, ran upon the others like a bull, roaring as he went. They broke before him like water, turning, and running, and falling one against another in their haste. The sword in his hands flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of our fleeing enemies; and at every flash there came the scream of a man hurt. I was still thinking we were lost, when lo! they were all gone, and Alan was driving them along the deck ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... And for what reason? It was not enough to say that time, and gravity worked against the things of men's hands. It was not enough to say that all good things must pass. No, here was Old Loki the Mischief-maker at work. The one who destroyed for no reason at all—who ran through space like quicksilver and laughed as blossoms and leaves, towers and trees, the old and the young, ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... pay a hostler for the feeding of his horse; as I rubbed the money between my finger and thumb, I perceived that the white surface came off, and the piece looked yellow: I recollected that my master had the day before been showing some experiments with quicksilver and gold, and that he had covered a guinea with quicksilver: so I immediately took the money back, and my master, for the first time in his life, thanked me very cordially; for this was in reality a guinea, and not a shilling. He was also surprised at my directly ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... already said we shall be better able to understand Lionardo's love of the bizarre and grotesque. One day a vine-dresser brought him a very curious lizard. The master fitted it with wings injected with quicksilver to give them motion as the creature crawled. Eyes, horns, and a beard, a marvellous dragon's mask, were placed upon its head. This strange beast lived in a cage, where Lionardo tamed it; but no one, says ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... only hurt his own foot by stamping on the floor. For eight days did he pursue the cat everywhere: up and down the palace he was after it from morning till night, but with no better success; the tail seemed made of quicksilver, so very lively was it. At last the king had the good fortune to catch Minon sleeping, when tramp! tramp! he trod on the tail ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... two, like globules of quicksilver, were detached from the burnished skin of air that clothed him, ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... always in the afternoon, his treasonous brother stole upon him in his sleep, and poured the juice of poisonous henbane into his ears, which has such an antipathy to the life of man, that swift as quicksilver it courses through all the veins of the body, baking up the blood, and spreading a crustlike leprosy all over the skin: thus sleeping, by a brother's hand he was cut off at once from his crown, his queen, and his life: ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... engage extensively in trade there. They take all kinds of merchandise there from China, namely, silks, cottons, china-ware, gunpowder, sulphur, iron, steel, quicksilver, copper, flour, walnuts, chestnuts, biscuits, dates, all sorts of ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... one morning an able-bodied constable appeared on the scene and informed the amazed school that he was there to prevent them playing on the Terrace. No doubt he did his duty according to his light, but neither he nor six constables could have quelled the Seminary any more than you can hold quicksilver in your hand. When he walked with stately step up and down the broad pavement before Bulldog's windows, the Seminary went up and played opposite the Bailie's house, introducing his name into conversation, with opprobrious remarks regarding the stoutness of his person, and ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... Channel into the Japan sea, trading sometimes, smuggling sometimes, and once, as far as the Kuriles, sealing in forbidden waters. She was caught by the Russians and her crew clubbed to death or sent to the quicksilver mines and then she came back to China, somehow, by way of Vladivostok and was sold and sold again till she fell into the hands of one, Chang, a sea scraper to whom everything came in handy from beche de mer to ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the sand. In other cases this was blown carefully off from a sheet of paper, but a few of the miners, who managed matters in a more extensive and thorough manner, effected the separation by means of quicksilver. They mixed it with the sand, added a little water, and stirred it about until the gold amalgamated with the quicksilver, converting it into a little massive, tangible, and soft heap. It was then put into a buckskin cloth, through ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... salt-mines and work you till you die. Never see daylight again. Why, I've heard tell of one fellow that was chained to his mate, and that mate died. And they were both chained together! And if they send you to the quicksilver mines you get salivated. I'd ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... condition (which, however, has been amply proved to exist) that the mean density of the fluid mass is less than the mean density of the earth. Everything else remaining the same, if we substituted an ocean of quicksilver for the actual ocean, this stability would disappear. The fluid would frequently overflow its boundaries, to ravage continents even to the height of the snowy peaks which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... its sharp, inquisitive point almost at right angles with the bridge. He had the wide, mobile mouth of the born comedian, and his chin was as much to the right as his nose was to the left. He was extremely light and slender in figure and his movements were like quicksilver. His hair was black and straight and long, especially over the ears, and he had long, slender, delicate hands, which one noticed at once for their uncommon ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Jim Hooley's elbow when the story was being filmed. So, with the author working with the director, the picture was almost sure to be a success. At least, the hopes of all—including those of Mr. Hammond, who had already put much money into the venture—began to rise like the quicksilver in a thermometer on ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... him. "See! The Yumuri!" Don Esteban flung a long arm outward. "Do you think there is a sight like that in heaven? And yonder—" He turned to the harbor far below, with its fleet of sailing-ships resting like a flock of gulls upon a sea of quicksilver. Beyond the bay, twenty miles distant, a range of hazy mountains hid the horizon. Facing to the south, Esteban looked up the full length of the valley of the San Juan, clear to the majestic Pan de Matanzas, a wonderful sight indeed; then his eyes returned, as they always did, to the ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... 249. The editor of Astleys collection gives no notice of the source whence he procured this narrative. The Spanish ships with quicksilver are usually called azogue or assogue ships; the word ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... to a solution of corrosive sublimate. I washed the brown-red precipitate obtained, and dried it; then I placed it, for reduction, upon the open fire in a small retort, which was provided with a bladder empty of air. As soon as the calx began to glow, the bladder became expanded, and quicksilver rose into the neck. The fire-air obtained had some aerial acid ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... castings of iron pots, tankards, balls and the like out of their minerals, and we firmly believe all that is wanting here is to have a beginning made; for there are in New Netherland two kinds of marcasite, and mines of white and yellow quicksilver, of gold, silver, copper, iron, black lead and hard coal. It is supposed that tin and lead will also be found; but who will seek after them or who will make use of them as long as there are ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... by El Oro. It was formerly called Cuenca, and formed part of the department of Azuay, which also included the province of Loja. Azuay is an elevated mountainous district with a great variety of climates and products; among the latter are silver, quicksilver, wheat, Indian corn, barley, cattle, wool, cinchona and straw hats. The capital ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... of water. After I had washed my face and hands I filled the kettle from a stream bright and lively as quicksilver (a stream presenting, as the autumn leaves tossed in the eddies which went leaping and singing over the stones, a truly enchanting spectacle), and, returning, and peeping through the bushes, perceived the woman to be crawling ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... divisive and directive force of the current, is a magical machine for accomplishment of the metamorphoses desired by the creative chemist. A hundred years ago Davy, by dipping the poles of his battery into melted soda lye, saw forming on one of them a shining globule like quicksilver. It was the metal sodium, never before seen by man. Nowadays this process of electrolysis (electric loosening) is carried out daily by the ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson |
