"Flexible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spun from selected wool, took kindly to the natural dyes, and our friend, the Puritan housewife, soon found herself in possession of a stock of home-manufactured material, soft and flexible in quality, and quite as good in color as that of the lamented English crewels. The homespun and woven linens with which her chests were stocked were exactly the ground for decorative needlework of the kind which she had ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... (and that either an absolute necessity, and unavoidable decree; or a placable and flexible Providence) or all is a mere casual confusion, void of all order and government. If an absolute and unavoidable necessity, why doest thou resist? If a placable and exorable Providence, make thyself worthy ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... obtained as a by-product of sheet mica and from deposits where the crystals are not so well developed. Black mica (biotite) and chlorite minerals, which are soft and flexible but not elastic and are found extensively developed in certain schists, have been used to a limited extent for the ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... A judge on the bench may try a case lasting two weeks, and his hat will not be hopelessly behind the times when it is finished. A man can stoop to pick up a fallen magazine without pausing to remember that his front steels are not so flexible this ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... that, whatever emergency occurred, he might do all that was possible. The young girl herself was a presence not soon to be forgotten. Her lips were slightly parted, her eye glowing with a joyous sense of power, and her pose, flexible to the eccentric motions of the horse, grace itself. They passed on down the winding carriage-drive, out upon the main street, and then she turned, waved her handkerchief to Mr. Muir, and with her ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... also say, in his favor, that light voices were very differently trained from heavy ones. Madame Carvalho, who began her studies in his school, did not alter the flexible but feeble organ she brought there. Mlle. Chaudesaigues and Mlle. Jacob, under Delsarte's tuition, attained to marvels of flexibility, without losing any ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... brown and white and pink, beautifully shaded, and his body was covered with rings of brown satin. Blacky and Greeny were not so handsome. They had orange-spotted bodies, great wings of sober gray, and carried long flexible tubes curled like a watch-spring, that could be stretched out to suck ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... the intensity of the effect produced, it suffices to substitute for the iron diaphragm a thin disk of any sort of slightly flexible substance, metallic or otherwise, cardboard, for example, and through the aperture of the usual cover of the instrument to scatter over it from 11/2 to 3 grains of iron filings. In this way we obtain an iron filings telephone. By properly increasing the intensity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... years ago, given place to more showy and flexible vehicles; but long before such were invented the Jersey wagon was an established institution, and was handed down, with the family name, from father to son. It was the great original of the modern emigrant wagon of the West; but as I have ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... this period was mellow and flexible. He was a mimic, too; the brighter things he had seen, whether glories of nature or acts of man, had turned to pictures in this man's mind. He flashed these pictures one after another upon the trio; he peopled ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... spider's geometrical web.'' The poet, however, seems hard to convince hereof. Emerson will have it that "Nature loves the gliding train of cars''; "instead of which'' the poet still goes about the country singing purling brooks. Painters have been more flexible and liberal. Turner saw and did his best to seize the spirit of the thing, its kinship with the elements, and to blend furnace-glare and rush of iron with the storm-shower, the wind and the thwart-flashing sun-rays, and to make the whole a single expression ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... richly clad, but we are told that to appear in a grand tournament even the horse had to have sumptuous trappings of velvet or satin made by the tailor. We have not mentioned the suit of armour, which was the most expensive item of all; being made at this period lighter and more elaborate, with its flexible over-lying plates of thin, tempered steel, it was far more costly than it had ever been before. The bravest knights at the Court were proud to try their fortune against Messire Claude. It was the rule that after the contest ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... Gibraltar diamonds, cairngorms, the smoky topaz; rock crystals inclosing foreign substances, and in a wrought state: of these Dr. Dee's snow-stone is one. The next two cases (21, 22) are devoted to the varieties of common quartz, including the flexible sandstones of Brazil (of which there are some larger specimens upon a separate table) and to those of the east; milk quartz; the Salzburg blue quartz, &c.; some varieties of the cat's eye; hornstones, including wood changed into hornstone: ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... than she could ever have flattered herself to be. 'Tis a charming paragraph; I must not skip one word of it. Thus it begins, and I will observe upon it as I go along. Sec. 177: "But under whose care soever a child is put to be taught, during the tender and flexible years of his life, this is certain, it should be one who thinks Latin and language ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the back of the neck and under the throat. The dog's forelegs pass through the loops, and the ends are joined over the small of the back, where the trace is attached. This harness is very simple and flexible, and it allows the dog to exert his whole strength. The objection to sealskin as a harness material is a gastronomic one. When the dogs are on short rations they eat their harnesses at night in camp. To obviate this difficulty, ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... anticipated,—a method of preparing the muscles and ligaments to respond instantly to the dancer's call upon them for precise action. It is the object of this series of exercises to eliminate fatigue, create sturdy yet symmetrical and flexible frames and increase the health, grace and beauty of the participant. It is, therefore, no wonder that others than those who expect to enter upon a stage career have sought these exercises for their own improvement in personal appearance ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... no doubt of it; but I shan't give you a chance now. I've turned 'onest, and intends to lead a different life." And Steel Spring grinned in triumph, and opened and shut his long, flexible ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... better growths. They wonder at his quick perception, profound discrimination, and marvelous craft of readjustment. That this British subject can see in the different policies of more absolute powers and in less flexible modes of civic alignment so much to commend or excuse to them is queer indeed. They surmise that by habitual globe-trotting Oswald has become a ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... respect to others in such a way as at the same time implies, in his own feelings, and habitually, an assured anticipation of reciprocal respect from them to himself. In short, the gentlemanly character arises out of the feeling of equality acting as a habit, yet flexible to the varieties of rank, and modified without being disturbed or superseded by them." Definitions of a gentleman are numerous, and some of them famous; but we do not find such copiousness for choice in definitions of a lady. Perhaps ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... these stanzas has the true Byronic swing. But note how freely the rhythm is handled in the second. Spanish rhythm is so flexible and free that little practical advantage is gained by counting feet. We distinguish only two sorts of verse-measure, the binary, where in general there is stress on one syllable out of two—that is there are trochees (' ) or iambics ( ') ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... the eyes of the spirit all things appear transfigured, because lifted out of the sphere of material vision. But when we try to put these "beautiful things made new, for the delight of the sky-children" on paper or canvas, in motionless marble or flexible rhyme,—we are weighted by grosser air and the density of bodily feeling. So it was with Angela Sovrani, iwhose compact little head were folded the splendid dreams of genius like sleeping fairies in a magic cave;—and thoughtful and brilliant though she ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Bryce, Flexible and Rigid Constitutions, in Studies in History and Jurisprudence (London and ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... to combine in herself more completely than a man the qualities necessary for the exercise of magic, whether legitimate or otherwise: she saw and heard that which the eyes and ears of man could not perceive; her voice, being more flexible and piercing, was heard at greater distances; she was by nature mistress of the art of summoning or banishing invisible beings. While Pharaoh was engaged in sacrificing, the queen, by her incantations, protected him from malignant deities, whose ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... lifted her thin flexible shoulders airily and this time her color did not flow. "How is one to tell...a girl in her first season...when all men look so much alike? It is fun to flirt with them, when you have been shut up in boarding-school and ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... turned, something struck me on the cheek. I stooped and picked it up. A piece of flexible cord about five inches long. I swung round and looked at the girl. On the table a pair of ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... glimmer back to me shamelessly different, for our circle had promptly been joined by the all-knowing and all-imposing Mademoiselle Danse aforesaid, her of the so flexible taille and the so salient smiling eyes, than which even those of Miss Rebecca Sharp, that other epic governess, were not more pleasingly green; who provided with high efficiency for our immediate looser needs—mine and Wilky's and those of our small brother Bob (l'ingenieux petit ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... explanation, he determined that she should never cease to remember him after this night. His vanity was not touched; it was something far more elusive. It was perhaps a recurrence of that inexplicable desire to hurt. Somehow he sensed the flexible steel behind which lay the soul of this baffling girl. He would presently find a chink in the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... till I ceased to see That flexible form, that nebulous white; And she who was more than my life to me Had vanished quite . ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... button is then cupelled on a very fine cupel, as already described. The method of working last described destroys the crucible. If the gold is not quite so small this may be avoided. A small piece of lead foil should be hammered out until it is perfectly flexible. It is then shaped into a tray and the gold is transferred to it. The lead is then folded over, with the help of two ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... seemed to have gone, as also her savage Spanish pride. She had rounded and softened in body too, as in mind. Her skin was fairer; her lips were not so firmly closed, so rigid in line, so constricted in motion; her brows were more flexible and not so often knit together; and her slight, lithe figure was perfect in line and movement. Still, she had enough of her former manner of being for identity. Grave, quiet, laconic, direct, she was but a modification of the former Leam as they had known her—Leam, Pepita's daughter, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... be carried into execution," he said, Congress must be allowed the discretion which "will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it, in the manner most beneficial to the people." In short, the Constitution of the United States is not a strait jacket but a flexible instrument vesting in Congress the powers necessary to meet national problems as they arise. In delivering this opinion Marshall used language almost identical with that employed by Lincoln when, standing on the battle field ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... conscience, and which accumulates in its portfolios the most terrible, as well as the most shameful secrets! In reading the memoirs of celebrated detectives, more attractive to me than the fables of our best authors I became inspired by an enthusiastic admiration for those men, so keen scented, so subtle, flexible as steel, artful and penetrating, fertile in expedients, who follow crime on the trail, armed with the law, through the rushwood of legality, as relentlessly as the savages of Cooper pursue their enemies in the depths of the American forests. The ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... only a strictly classical language should be used; no word of slang, or even word of modern origin should be employed; the translator's aim should be never to dissipate the illusion of an exotic. If I were translating the "Assommoir" into English, I should strive after a strong, flexible, but colourless language, something—what shall I say?—a ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... guarded, were specially calculated to protect the flower from the stiff-beaked humming birds which would not fertilise it, and to facilitate the access of the little proboscis of the humble bee, which would do so; whilst, on the other hand, the long pendent tube and flexible valve-like corona which retains the nectar of Tacsonia would shut out the bee, which would not, and admit the humming bird which would, fertilise that flower. The suggestion is very possibly worthless, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... poetry, no language in the world suits itself better to all the vagaries and phantasies of the Muse, since it possesses so much natural rythm and allows, like the Greek, the combination of compound words and a redundancy of epithets, and it is besides so flexible that it lends itself to all the ancient as well as the modern metres with complete success: indeed it is the only modern language that I know of which ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... I worked at first at a mangle, running spreads and sheets and towels between two revolving cylinders. Here I found there was danger of slipping my fingers too far under the cylinders in the process of feeding. The mangle had a guard, to be sure,—a flexible metal bar about three-quarters of an inch above the feeding-apron in front of the cylinder. But I learned that this acted as a warning rather than a protection. 'Once you get your fingers in, you never get them out,' ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... Swingers.—The easily made toy illustrated next is much more interesting than would appear from the mere picture, as it demonstrates a very striking physical phenomenon, the transference of energy. If two pendulums are hung close together from a flexible support and swung, their movements influence one another in a somewhat remarkable way—the swing of the one increasing as that of the other dies down, until a certain point is reached, after which the process is reversed, and the "dying" or "dead" ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... deny the interest there is in a sensitive, flexible line and in the rendition of mass by line. But photography is an art dealing with finished surfaces of perfect modelling, and workers in this art should preserve the "nature" of their subject. The man who feels line had better etch or ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... that it was for nothing but chiffons?' She walked up and down the room with Geordie in her arms, in an access of maternal tenderness; he was much too big to nestle gracefully in her bosom, but that only made her seem younger, more flexible, fairer in her tall, strong slimness. Her distinguished figure bent itself hither and thither, but always in perfect freedom, as she romped with her children; and there was another moment, when she came slowly down the room, holding one of them in each hand and singing ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... him and opened my arms for the purpose; but she thanked me and turned away with the child still in her embrace, his head on her shoulder. "I'm very strong," was her last word as she passed into the house, her slim flexible figure bent backward with the filial weight. So I never laid a ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... discovered that the beauty of the foot was spoilt, in this case, by a singular defect. The two toes were bound together by a flexible web, or membrane, which held them to each other as high as the insertion of the nail on ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... acquaintance, that searching half-mocking look, which saw everything in detail, and was always pressing beyond the generalisations of talk and manners, the lightness and brightness of the whole aspect, of the curls, the eyes, the flexible determined mouth, these things arrested her. She began to open her virgin heart, first in protesting against attack, then in confession, till in ten minutes her white breast was heaving under the excitement ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... that, your honor. God bless your honor! [The General being now out of hearing, she turns threateningly to her son with one of those sudden Irish changes of manner which amaze and scandalize less flexible nations, and exclaims.] And what do you mean, you lying young scald, by telling me you were going to fight agen the English? Did you take me for a fool that couldn't find out, and the papers all full of you shaking hands with the ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... importance and gravity. The fact that only by stated consecutive work can a church be evolved and built up, and a pagan nation be moulded into a Christian people, cannot be gainsaid, and yet there is an essential need for something between, something more mobile and flexible than ordinary congregational work and methods. The scattered broken units into which our African populations are divided, their various jujus and mbiams and superstitions which segregate even the houses of any common village, make it necessary for us to do more than merely pay an occasional ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... when opened, revealed bundles of numbered pieces of tough, thin flexible steel and packages of thick water-proofed canvas. Under the captain's skilled direction, the steel was quickly framed together, the canvas stretched over it, and in a short time two canvas canoes were floating lightly at their painters at the end ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... those around the little cupboard, the outer ones reaching to the back of the desk, I concluded that there must be some accessible space behind; and found, indeed, that they were formed in a separate framework, which admitted of the whole being pulled out in one piece. Behind, I found a sort of flexible portcullis of small bars of wood laid close together horizontally. After long search, and trying many ways to move it, I discovered at last a scarcely projecting point of steel on one side. I pressed this repeatedly and hard with the point of an old tool that ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... only this, but it was further explained to me that by this system of flexible cables of all sizes the electric power was applied not only to all the heavy tasks formerly done by animals, but also to the hand instruments—the spade, the shovel, and the fork—which the farmer in my time must bend his own back to, however well supplied ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... upon it a white-enamelled box, delicately painted with flowers. From this box emerged a white flexible tube with a broad mouthpiece, fitted with two leather-covered steel clasps. From the side of the box nearest the chair protruded a little ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... profile, and she was too far off for him to see it very well. Her hair was arranged simply; her head was set beautifully on her shoulders. She was dressed in black, the bodice covered with spangles that with her slightest movement shimmered and reflected the light like a coat of flexible mail. A number of men were standing about her, and many women, as they passed, held out their hands to her in the way that ladies of fashion have. Keith saw Mrs. Wentworth approach her, and a very animated ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... as it is a desire to live up to the conventional standard of decency in the amount and grade of goods consumed. This desire is not guided by a rigidly invariable standard, which must be lived up to, and beyond which there is no incentive to go. The standard is flexible; and especially it is indefinitely extensible, if only time is allowed for habituation to any increase in pecuniary ability and for acquiring facility in the new and larger scale of expenditure that follows such an increase. It is much more difficult to ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... of Kate Greenaway's quaint children now appear as favors, and are very charming. Nor is that "flexible curtain," the fan, left out. Those of paper, pretty but not expensive, are very common favors. But the opulent offer pretty satin fans painted with the recipient's monogram, or else a fan which will match flowers and dress. Fans of lace, and of tortoise-shell ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... despair. That second day was my hardest, and all that enabled me to survive it and get in the last of the night coal at the end of thirteen hours was the day fireman, who bound both my wrists with broad leather straps. So tightly were they buckled that they were like slightly flexible plaster casts. They took the stresses and pressures which hitherto had been borne by my wrists, and they were so tight that there was no room for the inflammation to rise in ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... qualities," replied Forester. "Some are light and soft, which are good qualities for certain purposes. Some are hard. Some are stiff, and some flexible. Some are brittle, and others tough. For a cane, now, do we want a hard wood ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... "minded" giving up college. This man had given up much and felt it deeply; but he had outlived the pain and the blessing of sacrifice had come to him. His voice was very melodious and beautiful, and the brown hand he held out to me was peculiarly long and shapely and flexible. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... correspondingly long set of exposures and this demand could not be realized as long as the pictures were taken on glass plates. But in that period experiments were undertaken on many sides to substitute a more flexible transparent material for the glass. Translucent papers, gelatine, celluloid, and other substances were tried. It is well known that the invention which was decisive was the film which Eastman in Rochester produced. With it came the great ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... consists of a voltmeter, Fig. 121, and two pointed brass prods which are fastened in wooden handles, as shown in Fig. 122. A length of flexible wire having a terminal at one end is soldered to each prod for attachment to the voltmeter. Fastened at right angles to one of the brass prods is ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... orange and ruby glass, through which shone a subdued and mellow light. Near the ceiling were three or four small openings, covered with iron gratings, and the air in the apartment was pure, except for the odour of tobacco. The figure on the divan was smoking a pipe; a water-pipe, whose long flexible stem reached to the floor, ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... always fought on foot. They wore helmets and rude, flexible armor, formed of iron rings, or of stout leather covered with small plates of iron and other substances. They carried oval-shaped shields. Their chief weapons were the spear, javelin, battle-ax, and sword. The wars of this ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... the turtles 'bobbed' up nearly under where we sat; and, from the elongated shape of its head, resembling a snout, and the flexible shell that bent up and down along its edges, as he swam, I saw it was a species of trionyx, or soft-shelled turtle,—in fact, it was that known as trionyx ferox, the most prized of all the turtle race for the table of the epicure. Here, then, was another luxury ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... in Itself the Embodiment of Love. But it Bore in one of its Flexible Ribs the Tangible Evidence of the Adhesive Qualities of a Love Driven Back upon itself,—the Concentration of an ...
— Love Instigated - The Story of a Carved Ivory Umbrella Handle • Douglass Sherley
... which, to those who come into it, gives confidence and repose. Within her influence the diffident grow self-possessed, the impudent are checked, the inconsiderate are admonished; even the rude are constrained to be mannerly, and the refined are perfected; all spelled, unawares, by the flexible dignity, the commanding gentleness, the thorough womanliness of her look, speech and demeanor. A sway is this, purely spiritual. Every sway, every legitimate, every enduring sway is spiritual; a regnancy of light over obscurity, of right ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... I beheld so powerful an exhibition of natural eloquence as Marnoo displayed during the course of his oration. The grace of the attitudes into which he threw his flexible figure, the striking gestures of his naked arms, and above all, the fire which shot from his brilliant eyes, imparted an effect to the continually changing accents of his voice, of which the most accomplished orator might have been proud. At one moment reclining sideways upon the mat, and ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... a strong vein of sentiment, a flexible and kindly humor, a plot directly concerned with a pair of young lovers, and a ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... turned this way and that, preening himself like a little shining bird. His smooth breastplate, his wondrous joints with their deft protection by the disks at knee and elbow and shoulder, the beautifully flexible gauntlets and sollerets, the shirt of mail and the close-fitting greave-plates were all things of joy and of beauty in his eyes. He sprang about the shop to show his lightness, and then running out he placed his hand on the pommel and vaulted into Pommers' saddle, while Wat and his boy applauded ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 1863: "He is evidently a man of keen faculties, and what is still more to the purpose, of powerful character. As to his integrity, the people have that intuition of it which is never deceived he has a flexible mind capable of much expansion." And this when Trumbull chafed in spirit because the President was too "weak" for his part and Wade railed at him as a despot. As far back as 1860, Lowell, destined to ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... along the arm of her chair, without ending her sentence, but the gesture admirably completed the speech. She saw d'Arthez watching her flexible figure, gracefully bending in the depths of her easy-chair, noting the folds of her gown, and the pretty little ruffle which sported on her breast,—one of those audacities of the toilet that are suited only to slender waists,—and ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... her earliest impressions concerning him had been of the sheer force of the man—the lithe, flexible strength like that of tempered steel—and she wondered whether this were entirely due to his magnificent physique or owed its impulse, in part, to some mental quality in him. Her eyes travelled reflectively to the lean, square-jawed face, with its sensitive, bitter-looking ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... metrical equivalents must present total time-values which, while differing from that of the full measure in direction and degree, in dependence on the whole form of their structure, maintain similar fixed relations to the primary type. The changes which these flexible quantities undergo will here only be indicated. If the substitutionary groups be of different figures, that which comprises the larger number of elements will occupy the greater time, that which contains fewer, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... unprepared for the beginning. She heard him shut the library door, and then it seemed to her that her entire body was encircled by flexible hot bars of iron and her face, her mouth, were being flagellated. If he hadn't held her in that vise-like grip she would have fallen. She lay back on his arm as he kissed her and for the moment she forgot the past ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... in cast-iron German; he responded in quite flexible English; thereafter we gave the German ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was particularly struck by his appearance as he rode up to our cottage. His costume was a hunting-shirt of dressed buckskin, ornamented with long fringes; pantaloons of the same material, decorated with porcupine-quills hanging down the outside of the leg. He wore moccasins on his feet, and a flexible felt hat upon his head. Under his right arm, and suspended from his left shoulder, hung his powder-horn and bullet-pouch, in which he carried balls, flint, and steel His long knife, in a sheath of buffalo, hung from a belt round his waist—made fast ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... an assembler, and the one-to-many translation facilities of a formula translation compiler. Problem oriented language statements may be freely intermixed with symbolic machine language instructions. A flexible loader is available to allow the specification of program location at load time. The programmer may specify that certain variables and constants are "systems" variables and constants. The symbols so defined are universally used in a system of many ...
— Preliminary Specifications: Programmed Data Processor Model Three (PDP-3) - October, 1960 • Digital Equipment Corporation
... men, one officially present, the other on the part of the promoter of the inquiry, attested the marvelous fact that there was a faint but appreciable respiration, and a corresponding action of the heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... made her debut in Clayton's "Arsinoe, Queen of Cyprus," about 1702, was the first dramatic songstress of English birth, and is described by Colley Cibber as a beautiful woman with a clear, silvery-toned, flexible soprano. Her professional career brought her fortune as well as fame, but was short-lived. In the height of her bloom her reason gave way, and although judicious treatment restored it for a time, she did not return to the stage. As the wife of Mr. Joseph Smith, art connoisseur and collector ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... himself back upon his chair, he shaded his mouth with one flexible thin hand, and prepared himself ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the balancing control of their machine that the Wrights showed such great ingenuity. Running from the edges of the lower plane were some wires which met at a point where the pilot could control them. The edges of the plane were flexible; that is, they could be bent slightly either up or down, and this movement of the flexible plane is ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... as much under his command as the keys of the instrument are under the hands of the musician. He had taken from nature a voice capable of infinite variety of modulation, a countenance of the most flexible play of expression; and he was keenly alive (as profound humourists are) equally to the ludicrous and the graver side of everything presented to his vigorous understanding. Leonard had the eloquence of a poet, Audley Egerton that of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... small conservatory. Half-inch boards made a bottom and roof, the former being supported by brackets to give strength, and the latter put on with two slanting side pieces nailed to the top of the upright narrow sash spoken of, to give the roof a pitch. Top and bottom were covered with old flexible rubber matting which was carried back under the clapboards making a weather-proof, tight joint with the side of the house. Six-inch light wooden shelves on the inside gave a conservatory of considerable capacity. How many houses there are where ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... operation, there has since been little question. To build and operate a pioneer road, to make the inevitable United States connections or extensions, to undertake the subsidiary enterprises and to enter into the flexible, intimate relations with producers and shippers necessary for success, were tasks for which government departments were not well fitted. With the traditions which has unfortunately become established {145} in Canadian politics, there would probably be campaign ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... pin him up properly, for the Scots Guards to bury him. And I thought he'd be stiff, you see. But when I took him by the arms, to lift him on, he sat up. It gave me an awful shock. 'Why he's alive!' I said. But they said he was dead. I couldn't believe it. It gave me an awful shock. He was as flexible as you or me, and looked as if he was asleep. You couldn't believe he was dead. But we pinned him up in his blanket. It was an awful shock to me. I couldn't believe a man could be like that after ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Make a cake of a rectangular form, wrap it in cloth and let it rest for a while. Meanwhile work with the hand 1/2 lb. of butter that has been kept previously on ice or, better, in a bowl of ice-water, until it becomes smooth and flexible, then make of it a little cake like that of the paste and throw it in a bowl of cold water. When the dough has rested take the butter from the water, wipe it with a cloth and dip it ...
— The Italian Cook Book - The Art of Eating Well • Maria Gentile
... would, protesting against the golden hair, have followed the same color as the brows, lashes and eyes, that is to say, a decided black. As for the unknown's figure, it was seen, when he entered the dining-room, to be tall, well-formed and flexible, denoting, if not great muscular strength, at least much suppleness ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... picture Mr. Thomas Marvel as a person of copious, flexible visage, a nose of cylindrical protrusion, a liquorish, ample, fluctuating mouth, and a beard of bristling eccentricity. His figure inclined to embonpoint; his short limbs accentuated this inclination. He wore a furry silk hat, and the frequent substitution of twine and shoe-laces for buttons, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of loss either to its unity or majesty,—subtle and flexible like a fiery serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... lay in wait for Miss Vandeleur on her road to market, and by eight o'clock beheld her stepping down a lane. She was simply, and even poorly, attired; but in the carriage of her head and body there was something flexible and noble that would have lent distinction to the meanest toilette. Even her basket, so aptly did she carry it, became her like an ornament. It seemed to Francis, as he slipped into a doorway, that the sunshine followed and the shadows fled before her as she walked; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his heart was full of generous impulses, and his thought was contemplating his own superiority. 'Drink!' repeated the engineer with amiable scorn: he was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with flexible legs. 'Not from you, captain. You're far too mean, b'gosh. You would let a good man die sooner than give him a drop of schnapps. That's what you Germans call economy. Penny wise, pound foolish.' He became sentimental. The chief had given him a four-finger nip about ten o'clock—'only ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... whip becoming broken off, and the broken part lodging in the oesophagus. Neither should such rigid objects as a broom or rake handle be introduced, because of the danger from serious injury to the walls of the pharynx and oesophagus. The flexible probang, which is usually made of spiral wire covered with leather, is a very useful instrument to relieve choke when in the hands of an experienced operator. If the object causing the choke is situated in the neck portion of the oesophagus, it may sometimes be moved forward, or toward the ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... probably be equal to all requirements. But there are black bass in the lake, and had one of them been in that particular part of it, no doubt the fly would have tempted him, and the experience and skill of Mr. J. supplemented by his long, flexible rod, his reel and landing net, would have done the rest, while the boy had little chance of such a bite and almost none of landing a game fish ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... the nomination of ex-Gov. Bonham as brigadier-general of a brigade of South Carolina cavalry, in opposition to Gen. Cooper's opinion: a rare occurrence, showing that Mr. Davis can be flexible when necessity urges. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... why? why?" she urged him, her flexible eyebrows raised in the eagerness of her inquiry. "I feel just as though I were going to hear the answer to ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... a matter in hand, and was equally capable of giving it words at a moment's notice, or of working it out thoroughly and at leisure, and that either by himself or, what is as important, through others. He would have made no enemies, and multitudes of friends; and his quiet tact and flexible persuasiveness, grafted on a clear grasp of leading principles, would have made ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... fire. He was a man of about the middle size, with a face rather bronzed and reddened by climate, a nose slightly aquiline and higher in colour, quick black eyes with an uneasy glance in them, bushy black whiskers, more like the antiquated "Dundreary" type than modern fashion permits, and a wide flexible mouth. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... silk, and steam—on the cob—for fifteen minutes. This sets the milk, besides doing many other things which blanching by steam always does. After the steaming, cold-dip the corn, and then cut it from the cob, using a very sharp and flexible knife. Cut the grains fine, but only halfway down to the cob; scrape out the remainder of the grains, being careful not to scrape off any of the chaff next to ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... livid with white and carmine tints; his eyes glow with an irresistible charm. That figure of his! The elegance of the palm tree, both straight and flexible. And the infinity of grace as he waltzed that ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... to possess a school, without going to the extremity of such foolishness as a bell, and Number Nine was not extravagant. But the schoolmaster's ingenuity had improvised a very good substitute. He stood in the doorway, hammering upon the doorpost with a long, flexible ruler, and making a peremptory clatter that echoed far away into the arches of the forest and hastened the steps of any tardy youths approaching from its depths. Good cause they had to be expeditious, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... the snow seems to fly from under them, and the twinkling lights far up the avenue come nearer and nearer with lightning speed. The slide is lined on both sides with a joyous throng of their elders, who laugh and applaud equally the poor sled and the flexible flyer of prouder pedigree, urging on the returning horde that toils panting up the steep to take its place in the line once more. Till far into the young day does the avenue resound with the merriment of the people's ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... of the nation. Observe how wisely the Constitution confines itself to a clear sketch of fundamentals, and leaves as much as possible to be developed by circumstances. In this feature lies partly the flexible strength, the adaptableness, of our Federal Constitution. That strength lies partly also in the excellent partition of powers between the federal government ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... abstraction." The real question is, how to get them again into proper practical relations with the Union. "Concede that the new government of Louisiana is to what it should be only as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it." Let us be flexible as to our methods, inflexible ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... burden of his duty is to make himself a pleasant nobody, yet natural to the position. Like the apprentice of the armorer, it is my task only to hold the hot iron on the anvil while the skilled craftsmen strike out the flexible sword-blade. There is no need for me to praise or analyze the character or fame of the great poet whose centennial we celebrate. This will be done presently by abler hands, in eloquent verse and prose. Tom Moore was a poet of all lands, and it is fitting that ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... bel canto as such, because it is so often wasted on trashy compositions. Yet, when I heard Mme. Patti for the first time in New York, I could not help indulging in the following rhapsody: "The ordinary epithets applicable to a voice, such as sweet, sympathetic, flexible, expressive, sound almost too commonplace to be applied to Patti's voice at its best, as it was when she sang the valse Ombra Leggiera from 'Dinora,' and 'Home, Sweet Home.' Her voice has a natural sensuous charm like a Cremona violin, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... that of the great men of ancient Italy. His low, broad forehead, prominent Roman nose, well-cut, yet fully outlined lips, and strong, finely moulded jaw and chin, all spoke the old Roman vigor and energy, while the flexible delicacy of all the muscles of his face and figure gave an inexpressible fascination to his appearance. Every emotion and changing thought seemed to flutter and tremble over his countenance as the shadow of leaves over sunny water. His ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... midnight sky, a general promenade is recommenced, and in its accelerated movements, we cannot detect the least symptom of fatigue among all these delicate yet enduring women; as if their light limbs possessed the flexible tenacity and elasticity ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... laborious, for rubbing with the hand over a smooth stony surface, was the only method which the rudeness of the Aborigines could devise. Yet the finished beads, whether attached in thick masses to garments, or strung in long flexible rows, were very comely and without a trace of the tawdriness, which is so characteristic of uncivilized peoples. The suckauhock with its varying shades of purple was particularly beautiful. Its value ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... give the impression of several grouped together; and its shade is dense, and impenetrable to the sun. A striking contrast to the sycamore is presented by the date-palm. Its round and slender stem rises uninterruptedly to a height of thirteen to sixteen yards; its head is crowned with a cluster of flexible leaves arranged in two or three tiers, but so scanty, so pitilessly slit, that they fail to keep off the light, and cast but a slight and unrefreshing shadow. Few trees have so elegant an appearance, yet few are so monotonously elegant. There are palm trees to be seen on every hand; isolated, clustered ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... indeed, wonderful,—not simply clear and flexible, but dazzling and glancing, like the lightning that plays around the horizon on a hot midsummer's night; and her execution was as if the Cherub All-Knowledge and the Seraph All-Love had united their divine powers in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... just opened my oldest (in use) Bible,—a small, closely, and very neatly printed volume it is, printed in Edinburgh by Sir D. Hunter Blair and J. Bruce, Printers, to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, in 1816. Yellow, now, with age, and flexible, but not unclean, with much use, except that the lower corners of the pages at 8th of 1st Kings, and 32d Deuteronomy, are worn somewhat thin and dark, the learning of these two chapters having cost me much pains. My mother's ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Brazen House; but, being soon after undeceived, and having taken an oath of them that they had no designs against him, he quitted his refuge, and himself also entered into the confederacy with them; of so gentle and flexible a disposition he was, to which Archelaus, his brother-king, alluded, when, hearing him extolled for his goodness, he said, "Who can say he is anything but good? he is so even ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to myself the general opinion that she was handsome. Her eyebrows were thick and level and long; her eyes direct in their gaze, of a flinty blue, with dark lashes; her nose firm, her lips fullish, firm when joined; her shape straight, moderately flexible. But she had no softness; she could admire herself in my presence; she claimed possession of me openly, and at the same time openly provoked a siege from the remainder of my sex: she was not maidenly. She caught imagination by the sleeve, and shut it between square whitewashed walls. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stinging: besides the Portuguese man-of-war, many jelly-fish, and the Aplysia or sea-slug of the Cape de Verd Islands, it is stated in the voyage of the Astrolabe, that an Actinia or sea-anemone, as well as a flexible coralline allied to Sertularia, both possess this means of offence or defence. In the East Indian sea, a stinging sea-weed is said ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... little holes, and kept dry; all the old leaves should be taken off, as, in their decay, they cause dampness, and the roots wrapped in dry moss or cloth. The same means may be used for the pulpy plants, such as the cactus: any dry flexible substance, not subject to dampnes, as hairwool etc. may be used to pack them. These pulpy plants, if large, should be separated from the others, so that they may not be ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... and the United States, in whose systems Canadians have naturally the deepest interest. The history of responsible government affords another illustration of a truth which stands out clear in the history of nations, that those constitutions which are of a flexible character, the natural growth of the experiences of centuries, and which have been created by the necessities and conditions of the times, possess the elements of real stability, and best ensure the prosperity of a people. ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... Injustices are bound to develop, such as were experienced by the dairymen, the flaxseed producers, the glass industry, and others, under the 1922 rates. For this reason, I have been most anxious that the broad principle of the flexible tariff as provided in the existing law should be preserved and its delays in action avoided by more expeditious methods of determining the costs of production at home and abroad, with executive authority to promulgate such changes upon recommendation ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Herbert Hoover • Herbert Hoover
... the top; hands rather compressed, smooth, thinner and slightly toothed on the inner edge; the wrist triangular, angularly produced in front; the central caudal lobes with two slightly diverging keels continued, and like the others thin and flexible at the end, the inner lateral lobes with two keels, each ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... "natural ethical idealism," "the common destinies of nations"—and now he rises up and glares at us with stained fingers and bloodshot eyes![21] In so far as we have succumbed to naturalism, we have become cold and shrewd and flexible; shallow and noisy and effusive; have been rather proud to believe anything in general and almost nothing in particular; become a sort of religious jelly fish, bumping blindly about in seas of sentiment and labeling that peace and brotherhood ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... like a great many other things for which Browning as an artist is blamed, is perfectly appropriate to the theme. A vain, ill-mannered, and untrustworthy egotist, defending his own sordid doings with his own cheap and weather-beaten philosophy, is very likely to express himself best in a language flexible and pungent, but indelicate and without dignity. But the peculiarity of these loose and almost slangy soliloquies is that every now and then in them there occur bursts of pure poetry which are like a burst of birds singing. Browning does not hesitate to put some of the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... went to their hut, we examined the water-turtle, which Timbo and Jack at once prepared for cooking. Opening it, we found that it had upwards of thirty eggs in its body. The shells were flexible, and the same size at both ends, like ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... brightening its curling masses, as though a stray sunbeam or two had been caught and entangled therein. He was arrayed in a costume of the finest silk,—his armlets, belt, and daggersheath were all of jewels,— and the general brilliancy of his attire was furthermore increased by a finely worked flexible collar of gold, set with diamonds. The first exchange of wondering glances over, he viewed Theos with a critical, half ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... after the glazing has been completed, by taking the impressions from the copperplate on a flexible strap covered with a strong gelatinous mixture of glue and treacle. This strap is then pressed on the ware, and gives the impression in glue, the colouring powder is then dusted over it, and a sufficient ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... unless cold, fog, a hawk, or a Prnssian bullet should stop them on the way. Each would bring back a small quill fastened by threads to one of its tail-feathers and containing a minute square of flexible, waterproof paper, on which had been photographed messages in characters so small as to be deciphered only by a microscope. Some of these would be official despatches, some private messages. One pigeon would ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... forth on your heels when you are talking to a man whom you want to impress with your stability of character, you will undermine everything you say by what you do. Of course you should not stand stiffly. Your leg posts are designed to serve as a flexible pedestal for your body. Your ability to shift your weight from one foot to the other easily without losing your balance suggests associated capability of your mind to keep your judgment in balance. If you have a correctly poised mind, ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... to man's estate, and, furthermore, had learnt what life was, with its hours full of health, and crammed with fresh adventures and experiences, as, of course, it should be. His muscles were hard and flexible as steel, his heart strong with life, his brain quick to learn whatsoever his master thought best that he should know. Health, strength, what happiness it all was! The neighbourhood of those waggons ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... enormously flexible—look at all that we've done to our dogs,—but we carry our hairy past with us wherever we go. The wise St. Bernards and the selfish toy lap-dogs are brothers, and some things are possible for them and others are not. So with us. There are definite ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... apart, linked the boats together; strong planks were lashed athwart the cables, making a roadway; a double line of masts, forming a series of floating squares, served as a floating boom; and across this swaying, flexible, yet mighty bridge, Wellington was able to pour his left wing, with all its artillery and material, and so draw round Bayonne ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... strongly in muscular arms, she was pressed closer and yet closer to a powerful body, whose heat burned through the thin broadcloth, she was breathless, stunned, choked. As the man bent forward over her, clasping her to him, her flexible spine bent and her head drooped backward, her face with its flush all gone, gleaming white in the dusk. At this he rained kisses on it, on her eyes, hair, cheeks, mouth, the burning softness of his full lips seeming to leave a smear on her skin where they ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... limbs growing fuller and flexible with life, his body gained an unknown strength. He was a man again, strong and rounded. And he was a child, so soothed and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... required a more extensive muscular equipment than he was able to furnish. The old English schoolmasters were 'bruisers.' They had thick skins, hard heads, and solid fists. The symbols of their office were a Greek grammar and a flexible rod. They were skillful either with the book or the birch. It has taken many years to convince the world that the short road to the moods and tenses does not necessarily lie through the valley of ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... longer objected to questions. He turned towards us with soft, shining eyes. "There's not many like him," he said, pulling at one of the flexible ears. "You could learn him anything." It seemed so, for after trying to solve the problem of the roller and bit with his tongue when it was put into his mouth, he accepted the mystery with quiet, intelligent trust; and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of a very flexible sort. It takes but a little while for it to shape itself to any new surroundings in which it may be thrown, to make itself new friends, to settle itself to new habits; and so it was that Myles fell directly into the ways of the lads of Devlen. On his first morning, ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... cannot have been intended to represent the manatee. But the feet shown in each and all of them present equally unquestionable evidence of their dissimilarity from the manatee. This animal has instead of a short, stout fore leg, terminating in flexible fingers or paws, as indicated in the several sculptures, a shapeless paddle-like flipper. The nails with which the flipper terminates are very small, and if shown at all in carving, which is wholly unlikely, as being too insignificant, ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... twilight was very soothing, the rugs and skins on the floor looked brown and soft and drowsy; the big couch was piled with cushions—I found my pipe and curled up there for an unaccustomed smoke in the smoking-room. I had chosen one with a long flexible stem, and lighting it fell to dreaming. After a while it went out, but I did not stir. I dreamed on and ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... hardly to belong to any sex, an indefinite being, condemned, as it were, to childishness? How tall, and slender, and graceful she looked in that long gown, the folds of which fell from her waist in flowing lines, a waist as round and flexible as the branch of a willow; what elegance there was in her modest corsage, which displayed for the first time her lovely arms and neck, half afraid of their own exposure. She still was not robust, but the ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... all. Strike out from the shoulder with your clenched hand; once your arm was loose-jointed and shaky; now it is firm and tense, and begins to feel like a natural arm. Moreover, strength and suppleness have grown together; you have not stiffened by becoming stronger, but find yourself more flexible. When you first came here, you could not touch your fingers to the ground without bending the knees, and now you can place your knuckles on the floor; then you could scarcely bend yourself backward, and now you can lay the back of your head in a chair, or walk, without crouching forward, under ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Obstinacy, therefore, must never be victorious. Yet, it is well known, that there sometimes occurs a sullen and hardy resolution, that laughs at all common punishment, and bids defiance to all common degrees of pain. Correction must be proportioned to occasions. The flexible will be reformed by gentle discipline, and the refractory must be subdued by harsher methods. The degrees of scholastick, as of military punishment, no stated rules can ascertain. It must be enforced till it overpowers temptation; till stubbornness ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... was he by this time closeted with Larkin in the Lodge? Lake, so to speak, stood at his wicket, and that accomplished bowler, Fortune, ball in hand, at the other end; will it be swift round-hand, or a slow twister, or a shooter, or a lob? Eye and hand, foot and bat, he must stand tense, yet flexible, lithe and swift as lightning, ready for everything—cut, block, slip, or hit to leg. It was not altogether pleasant. The stakes were enormous! and the suspense by no ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and her gown, which trailed unevenly behind, rose in a sort of peak over her abdomen. She wore ill-fitting false teeth, and her skin was as yellow as a Mongolian's from constant exposure to a pitiless wind and to the alkaline water which hardens the most transparent cuticle into a sort of flexible leather. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... genus, in 'Proceedings of the Zoological Society,' 1868, p. 232.) (Fig. 31), the male has its mouth and inter-operculum fringed with a beard of stiff hairs, of which the female shows hardly a trace. These hairs are of the nature of scales. In another species of the same genus, soft flexible tentacles project from the front part of the head of the male, which are absent in the female. These tentacles are prolongations of the true skin, and therefore are not homologous with the stiff hairs of the former species; but it can hardly be doubted that both serve the same purpose. What ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... prepared with special reference to the wants of the collector, being printed on bond paper and bound in flexible cloth. It was widely distributed and, like that of Mr. Gibbs, resulted in the collection ...
— Catalogue Of Linguistic Manuscripts In The Library Of The Bureau Of Ethnology. (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (Pages 553-578)) • James Constantine Pilling
... apposition of parts is not produced by capillary attraction, because the whole is extended; whereas capillary attraction would rather tend to bring the sides of flexible tubes together, and not to distend them. Nor is it produced by chemical affinities, for then a solution of continuity would succeed, as when sugar is dissolved in water; but it is produced by an animal process, which is the consequence of irritation, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... unearthly moan sounded through the room. Mr. Fortune spun himself with relief to his desk and applied his lips to a flexible speaking tube. "Yes?" He dodged the tube to his ear, then to his ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... resolved for our time a great debate over the role of government. Today we can declare: Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution. We—the American people—we are the solution. Our founders understood that well and gave us a democracy strong enough to endure for centuries, flexible enough to face our common challenges and advance our common ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... well, with intelligence and sympathy; her trained voice was flexible. Then, too, she loved this greatest of American legends. It appealed to her audience as perhaps no other poem would have done. It was real to them, it was "life," their life in a little different environment and told in a musical rhythm which ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... the countless bars these present to the free enjoyment of existence. His motions in walking were more graceful than can be imagined by any who have only seen those of the draped and shod animal. The deeply set yet flexible spine; the taper form of the limbs; the fulness yet perfect elasticity of the GLUTEI muscles. The hollowness of the back, and symmetrical balance of the upper part of the torso, ornamented as it was, like a piece of fine carving, with raised scarifications most tastefully placed; ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... takes on a more human shape, for he is more nearly related to the ordinary persons we meet in our own experience. Another great advance is visible in the construction of the plot. It is more varied, more flexible; it never ceases developing, the action continuing to the end instead of stopping short at a climax. Further, the Chorus begins to fall into a more humble position, it exercises but little influence on the great figures of the plot, being content to mirror the opinions ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... are deserving of attention both from the professor and the amateur, the workmanship being skilful and the material excellent. The tone is large, and frequently possesses the richness so much admired in the works of the Italians. This quality is traceable to the soft and flexible nature of the superior varnish with which these instruments are covered. Several Violas and Violoncellos are extant which were ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... our older history, and our music, and which is spoken in the majority of our counties, rather than Italian, German, or French. It would be more useful in life, more serviceable to the taste and genius of young people, and a more flexible accomplishment for an Irish man or woman to speak, sign, and ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... look at this," he said, selecting a little flexible enamel fish, and trying to lure back this small wild bird. "See this little gold and green fish, it moves its head ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... about 5 feet long and 10 inches in diameter, standing side by side. Each tube has a piston or plunger, called "dot-dot';" the packing ring of the piston is of wood covered with chicken feathers, making it slightly flexible at the rim, so it fits snugly in the tube. The lower end of the bellows tubes rests in the earth, 4 inches above which a small bamboo tube leads the compressed air to the fireplace from each bellows ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... movement of denial that came too late. He followed her to the end of the veranda; and there at last—or, as it seemed to them, again—he took her in his arms. For an instant her averted face imitated the marble nymph's face, her slender and flexible body the nymph's struggling body, before she became ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... searching about, picked up a little flexible stick, and while he talked, he used it to point out this and that object, like ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... composed of a series of layers, each of which can be easily separated from its neighbours, and, in fact, much resembling a new book, just issued from the hot-press of the binder. From a portion of this—the inner skins, I imagine—the blacks manage to make a flexible, though not over warm, covering for the winter nights, or for the newly-born piccaninnies. The whole of the process I am not acquainted with, but from all I could gather from Lizzie, the bark is stripped ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... put a flexible gray finger upon an indicator graph derived from a composite section of detector meters. "The power transmitted seems to be gross electric current conveyed by metallic cables. It is generated through a crudely governed process of ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... the treetops were always well over us. The patch of woods was dark. A soil of black loam was under us, a thick soft underbrush reached our knees, and lacy, flexible leaves and branches were about shoulder height. We pushed them aside, forcing our way softly forward. It was not far. The little murmuring voices of ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... duties up to the maximum Of 25 per cent ad valorem provided in the present law. Flat tariffs are out of date. Nations no longer accord equal tariff treatment to all other nations irrespective of the treatment from them received. Such a flexible power at the command of the Executive would serve to moderate any unfavorable tendencies on the part of those countries from which the importations into the United States are substantially confined to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... their ways of looking at things. Hamilton was bold, direct, imperious, and masculine; he went straight to his mark, and if he encountered opposition he either rode over it or broke it down. When Jefferson met with opposition he went round it or undermined it; he was adroit, flexible, and extremely averse to open fighting. There was also good ground for a genuine difference of opinion between the two secretaries in regard to the policy of the government. Jefferson was a thorough representative of the ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... British English. Of these I did not encounter half a dozen during the whole time of my attendance at the seminary; their characteristics were clean but careless dress, ill-arranged hair (compared with the tight and trim foreigners), erect carriage, flexible figures, white and taper hands, features more irregular, but also more intellectual than those of the Belgians, grave and modest countenances, a general air of native propriety and decency; by this last circumstance alone I could at a glance ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell |
