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Tonic   /tˈɑnɪk/   Listen
Tonic

adjective
1.
Of or relating to or producing normal tone or tonus in muscles or tissue.  "Tonic muscle contraction"
2.
Employing variations in pitch to distinguish meanings of otherwise similar words.  Synonym: tonal.
3.
Used of syllables.  Synonym: accented.
4.
Relating to or being the keynote of a major or minor scale.
5.
Imparting vitality and energy.  Synonyms: bracing, brisk, fresh, refreshful, refreshing.



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"Tonic" Quotes from Famous Books



... Canadians call spice-berry, she showed them was good to eat, and she would crush the leaves, draw forth their fine aromatic flavour in her hands, and then inhale their fragrance with delight. She made an infusion of the leaves, and drank it as a tonic. The inner bark of the wild black cherry, she said was good to cure ague and fever. The root of the dulcamara, or bitter-sweet, she scraped down and boiled in the deer-fat, or the fat of any other animal, and made an ointment that possessed very healing qualities, especially ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... commit suicide, before he would join himself for life to any girl he had never seen, especially old Thornton's daughter, who seemed so willing to jump at him. Not he. In vain they urged him to cultivate the fair damsel. Not till he had braced his nerves with country air, he said. This tonic secured, he graciously consented to be introduced, but would reserve the ratification of ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... my project, and make my suggestion. From the look of this lightsome feast, I conclude that what you need is a tonic. Send for 'The Master of Palmyra.' You are trying to make yourself believe that life is a comedy, that its sole business is fun, that there is nothing serious in it. You are ignoring the skeleton in your closet. Send for 'The Master of Palmyra.' You are neglecting a valuable ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the sort of remark that always acted on him like a tonic. He had been intending to go all the time, but it was this speech of Welch's that definitely clinched the matter. One of his mottoes for everyday use was 'Let not thyself ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... character of the doer, of time, and of place.[1640] Sin is cast off like the filth on one's body,—a little with a little exertion and a greater quantity when the exertion is greater. A person, after purging his bowels, should take ghee, which operates most beneficially on his system (as a healthy tonic). After the same manner, when one has cleansed oneself of all faults and sets oneself to the acquisition of righteousness, that righteousness, in the next world, proves to be productive of the highest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Steep these ingredients, for a week or more, in a quart of Madeira or sherry wine, or brandy. When they are thoroughly infused, strain and filter the liquor, and bottle it for use. This is considered a good tonic, taken in a ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... progression of sound consequent upon the division and subdivision of a single string. It ought to be familiar to every student of acoustics. The sound produced by the striking or twanging of a single string (on a monochord) is called the tonic, and also, from its position as the lowest note, the bass. If we divide this string in half, we will obtain a series of vibrations producing a sound the same in character, but, so to speak, doubly high in pitch. This sound is named the octave, because it is the eighth note ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... infinite exquisiteness of the shoals of living coral in the mirror-surfaced lagoons; the crashing sunrises of raw colours spread with lawless cunning; the palm-tufted islets set in turquoise deeps; the tonic wine of the trade-winds; the heave and send of the orderly, crested seas; the moving deck beneath his feet, the straining canvas overhead; the flower-garlanded, golden-glowing men and maids of Polynesia, half-children and ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... much more stimulating than truth; they are also almost always more tonic and more healthy. I have come to this conclusion rather late in life. For utilitarian and practical ends, it is clearly our duty to cultivate falsehood, arbitrariness, and partial truths. Nevertheless, we do not do so. Can it be that, unconsciously, we have something ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... always nervously anxious to be quite ready for him at the appointed time. But, to my surprise, at a quarter past twelve he had not appeared. I felt all the impatience of a convalescent who has nothing particular to do, and who has just taken a tonic in the prospect of immediate exercise that would carry off ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot

... case was rather puzzling to the doctor, who stared at her, and considered her from that day forward a very fanciful woman. He repeated his injunctions to give Daisy plenty of milk, and to see that she took her tonic three times a day; and then he took ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... Her words were a tonic which restored my voice. "So they think I'm going to die!" I cried. "Well, I'm not! I'm going to ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... General Butler. They were brought suddenly to an end by the reappearance of his old trouble, which in time made it necessary for him to take a sick-leave. The surgeon who had him in charge directed him to again seek the tonic climate of Brattleborough in his native State. According to promise, his good friend, the Governor, took the earliest opportunity to send him his commission as Colonel of the Third Regiment of Vermont Volunteer Infantry, ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson

... not discuss with you some substances indigenous to the country which are already in use, whether in medicine, or in the arts—of eucalyptus gum, for example, which is at once astringent and tonic to a very high degree, and is likely soon to become one of our most energetic drugs. Nor will I say much about the resin furnished by the tree which the English mis-name gourmier,* (* Note 35: Peron's ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... of change came swiftly in the next half-hour. Storm had washed the air until it was like tonic; a salty perfume rose from the sea; and Olaf stood up and stretched himself and shook the wet from his body as he drank the sweetness into his lungs. Shoreward Alan saw the mountains taking form, and one after another ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... had chafed under the taciturnity surrounding him: had passionately longed to cry out his humiliation, his rebellion, his despair. Then he began to feel the tonic effect of silence; and the next stage was reached when it became clear to him that there was nothing to say. There were thoughts and thoughts: they bubbled up perpetually from the black springs of his hidden misery, they stole on him in the darkness of night, they blotted out the ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... Maurice was attracted to her; for not only was Ephie pretty and charming; she was also adorably equable—she did not know what it was to be out of humour. And she was always glad to see him, always in the best possible spirits. When he was dull or tired, it acted like a tonic on him, to sit and let her merry chatter run over him. And soon, he found plenty of makeshifts to see her; amongst other things, he arranged to help her twice a week with harmony, which was, to her, an unexplorable abyss; and he ransacked the rooms and shelves of his acquaintances ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... said in a tone of acquiescence. "What on earth should I do without you, Penny, to bully me and generally lick me into shape?" She dropped a light kiss on the top of Penelope's bent head. "But, truly, I hate to miss Kit Seymour. She's as good as a tonic—and just now I feel like a bottle of champagne that's ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... Bloomsbury in person to be even more wonderful than her photograph suggested. Obviously she had brains; it was apparent, too that she had breeding. Her cheerful view of the world was like a tonic for tired nerves; and withal, she had a gentle sort of courtesy in her manner that may have been old-fashioned, but it was almost too much for Phil. Before the dinner was over, he would have laid his heart at her feet. It gave him a thrill that went to his head, to have her by his ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer

... range Beyond their seeming scope, How tonic were the words, how strange, Cheer up! Use ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang

... take wine and iron. I need a tonic, mother says, to repair the waste of brain-tissue while I'm studying,' protested Stuffy, putting down the mug as if it ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... cause water to spirt high in the air. This number eight, and the pertinacity of its recurrence, puzzled him intensely. It seemed to point so clearly, much as in music the sensitive seventh points to the tonic, to a sort of resolution on the number nine. And if only nine could be established, it would seem to explain so much.... For five being man's numeral in creation (and is not the measurement of his face also five eyes?), it makes, when added to four, the number ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... seem that the rubbing is the only treatment which is directly effective. The papaya, which is a very digestible fruit, can hardly be of assistance, but may be eaten from some magical idea of its resemblance to a foetus. The mixture drunk is perhaps designed to be a tonic to the stomach against the painful ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... you have been thinking about, and which you would never imagine she could know, unless she was a witch. This was the knowing bit in that letter:—"Your dear father's note this morning did me more good than bottles of tonic. It is due to you, my trustworthy little daughter, to tell you of the bit that pleased me most. He says—'The children seem to me to be behaving unusually well, and I must say, I believe the credit belongs to Mary. She seems to have a genius for keeping them amused, which luckily ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... of fact. Then, the vision of a beautiful woman with a strange rose-scarlet dress, in whose eyes sorrow struggled with mocking laughter, once again assailed him. Who she might be, and what her history, he most emphatically knew not; yet that she breathed a keener and more tonic air than that to which he was habituated, that feelings in her case did not stand for actions, or suppositions for fact, he was ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... down the hill. Somehow he had missed the usual tonic of his mother's company, and Harry's unexpected expenses troubled him, for it is the petty details of life rather than its great sorrows which fret and irritate the soul. Indeed, to face simple daily duties and trials bravely and cheerfully is the most heroic struggle ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... any symptoms that I can discover," the doctor answered. "Yet, as I told you before, there are certain things about his condition which I do not understand. I should like to see him again in the morning! I am giving him a tonic, more as a matter of form. I scarcely think his system will ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... by the battalions who were in reserve. In Ploegsteert Wood, "Woodcote Farm," and "Red Lodge," were also used for the same purpose. The wood in those days was a very pleasant place to wander through. Anything that reminded us of the free life of nature acted as a tonic to the nerves, and the little paths among the trees which whispered overhead in the summer breezes made one imagine that one was wandering through the forests in Canada. In the wood were several cemeteries kept by different units, very neatly laid out and ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... it serious and concentrated attention. To such a reader the subtle yet clear distinctions, and the lofty and rigorous principles of action, which it lays down, will prove an intellectual and moral tonic such as hardly any other ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... been doing to yourself?" he exclaimed. "Is the fresh air so wonderful a tonic, or have you been asleep and ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Russia would have learned that Austra is a diver that knows how to fish for pearls. We would have rescued the Porte from the Black Sea, and if he had not been strong enough to sustain himself, we would have exacted a tonic at your hands in the form of more advantageous ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the countries described, the reading of Mr. Stidger's sketches will help you. If it be said that what one after all is getting is the Stidger view, it must not be forgotten that the Stidger view is marvellously vital and enkindling. The Stidger vitality is bracing and health-giving. It is a tonic for all of us who are getting a little old and sluggish. The contagion of youth and energy are in this book: it will reach and ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... "hog wallows" or "cradle holes." To dash into one of these at full speed gives a shock like a boat's thumping on the shore. It is only with pillows, furs, and hay that a traveler can escape contusions. In mild doses oukhabas are an excellent tonic, but the traveler who takes them in excess may easily imagine himself enjoying ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... snow had quite gone and the weather was bright and warm until now. Molly, feeling a touch of rheumatism, was somewhere in the lower thicket seeking a tea-berry tonic. Rag was sitting in the weak sunlight on a bank in the east side. The smoke from the familiar gable chimney of Olifant's house came fitfully drifting a pale blue haze through the under-woods and showing as a dull brown against the brightness ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... account. But New Year's Day, except in Scotland, where, I believe, you are expected to go out and get drunk—always an easy obligation!—brings with it nothing but another year, and possesses all the "tonic" quality of novelty, besides the promise of a much happier and luckier one than the Old Year which has just been scratched off the calendar. It is like an annual Beginning Again, and beginning again much better. Besides, New Year's Day seems to be an anniversary which belongs to ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... her mind abruptly down to the simple realities and animal pleasures and necessities of life. She made a strong effort to be quite normal, to think of the moment, to live for it. The morning was fresh and lively; the warmth of the sun, the tonic vivacity of the air from the sea, caressed and ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... be administered in the feed when necessary. The following formula is useful as a digestive tonic: Sodium bicarbonate and sodium sulfate, one pound of each, powdered gentian one-half pound, and oil meal five pounds. A small handful of this mixture may be given with the feed two or three ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... author, no account of the author's indications whatever is observed. Thus in the "Cradle Song," where the author has indicated that the pedal be put on each measure and taken off in the middle of it, modern editions preserve the pedal throughout the entire measure, thus mixing up hopelessly the tonic with the dominant, which the composer was ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens

... what a tonic those provisions and a moderate taste of aguardiente formed. The daylight, too, lent its aid to restore the equilibrium of our nerves, and things wore an entirely ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... well the inanity of such consolations to offer the like to my friends. Time alone does a little cicatrize such wounds; and, let us add, work. Let us keep on our feet and at work as long as we are able. I know no better tonic." (16/5.) ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... shores, would afford a wide field of comparison. This was not to be, however. The Medical College refused, indeed, to accept his resignation, granting him, at the same time, a year of absence. But it soon became evident that his health was seriously shaken, and that he needed the tonic of the northern winter. He was, indeed, never afterward as strong as he ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... anasarca has been maintained to originate, in all instances, in debility, and to be curable only by a tonic and invigorating plan. It is true that some writers, especially among the ancients, (for we can hardly class PORTAL among the moderns,) have spoken of the disease as arising occasionally from a plethoric state of the ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... much, all of you," he said. "It will be the best tonic I can offer your mother. Her greatest trial is this very necessity, which she foresaw the instant the plan was formed—so much sacrifice on the part of her children. Yet she agreed with me that the experience might not be wholly ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... needed fresh air and regular exercise. Confinement to the house tried her, and the small rooms and low ceilings at No. 1, Galvaston Terrace, were certainly rather cramping. Half an hour's brisk walk always refreshed her and acted like a tonic. She would look in at Mayfield Villas for ten minutes and give her report of the invalids, and then come back to tea looking so fresh and invigorated that Alwyn once told her that she was as good as a whiff ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... good-naturedly. "Didn't you have to dig an awful long grave for him?" asked the boy; but the man said he reckoned they curled him up some, and smiled as he turned to his lions, who looked as if they needed a tonic. Everybody lingered longest before the monkeys, who seemed to be the only lively creatures in the whole collection; and finally we made our way into the other tent, and perched ourselves on a high seat, from whence we had a capital view of the audience and the ring, and could see the people ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... to her that Harry might ask her to take her departed sister's place. She was older than that sister, much older than he, but she looked in her glass and suddenly her passed youth seemed to look forth upon her. The revival of hopes sometimes serves as a tonic. Aunt Maria actually did look younger than she had done, even with her scanty frizzes. She regarded other women, not older than herself, with ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... with his air of satisfaction and importance, proved an unexpected tonic to her strength. It was as though he had brought into the room, marshalled behind him, all the horrors of her marriage, and she marvelled and shuddered anew at the thought of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... star-shot void above, acted as a powerful tonic to his shattered hopes and overwrought nerves. He lay inhaling great lungsful of pure, invigorating air. He listened to the voices of the Austrian soldiery above him. All the buoyancy of his inherent Americanism returned ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... passions to appear authentically, it may even seem inadequate from first to last. Not so to me; I cannot count that a poor dinner, or a poor book, where I meet with those I love; and, above all, in this last volume, I find a singular charm of spirit. It breathes a pleasant and a tonic sadness, always brave, never hysterical. Upon the crowded, noisy life of this long tale, evening gradually falls; and the lights are extinguished, and the heroes pass away one by one. One by one they ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... love to Mamie, and hope she is better. I am, of course, tired (the pull of "Marigold" upon one's energy, in the Free Trade Hall, was great); but I stick to my tonic, and feel, all things considered, in very good tone. The room here (I mean the hall) being my special favourite and extraordinarily easy, is ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... fragrant with pine and spruce and some subtle nameless tang, sweet and tonic, made Madeline stand erect and breathe slowly and deeply. It was like drinking of a magic draught. She felt it in her blood, that it quickened its flow. Turning to look in the other direction, beyond the tent, she saw the remnants of last night's temporary ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... tired, or when you feel out of trim, stay in bed a few hours more if it is possible. A boy should wake up each morning feeling like a fighting cock. When he doesn't he ought to get to bed earlier that night. Sleep is a wonderful restorative and tonic. It helps to store ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... thought that, she felt a tear on her lips. Licking it off, she demanded furiously of herself how she could be such a fool as to cry about nothing. She must be run down. She must want a tonic. ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... you think of this for a misanthropical man, Mr. Olmney? there's a better tonic to be found in the woods than in any remedies of ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... sir, but I am not your sister; and as for your religion you remind me with it of Doctor Jaynes and his hair tonic." ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... is notoriously capricious. Even as Janet trudged homeward on that Memorial Day afternoon from her Cinderella-like adventure in Silliston the sun grew hot, the air lost its tonic, becoming moist and tepid, white clouds with dark edges were piled up in the western sky. The automobiles of the holiday makers swarmed ceaselessly over the tarvia. Valiantly as she strove to cling to her dream, remorseless reality was at work dragging her back, reclaiming her; excitement ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the sensations of hunger with that vague feeling of debility which is produced by want of nutrition, and by other pathologic causes. The sensation of hunger ceases long before digestion takes place, or the chyme is converted into chyle. It ceases either by a nervous and tonic impression exerted by the aliments on the coats of the stomach; or, because the digestive apparatus is filled with substances that excite the mucous membranes to an abundant secretion of the gastric juice. To this tonic impression on the nerves of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... of the fire and hot strong tea he forgot all about his uncomfortable premonitions of age. Now it seemed to him that he had never been younger in the sense of being merely alive; after the tonic of the cold his nerves were strung like steel, his blood was in a full tide. Lee was aware of a marked sense of pleasure at the closeness to him of Anette; settling back, she willingly, voluntarily, leaned her firm elastic body against him; her legs, as evident in woolen stockings ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... her chair and opened several envelopes. Priscilla ate her chicken and ham, drank her coffee and felt the benefit of the double tonic which had been administered in so timely a fashion. It was one of Miss Oliphant's peculiarities to inspire in those she wanted to fascinate absolute and almost unreasoning faith for the time being. Doubts would and might return in her absence, ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... went outside to Langley, whom he found sitting down near the fire, looking, if possible, more ghastly than before. The presence of Whitson seemed, however, to act on him as a kind of tonic, and he soon pulled himself together sufficiently to assist in piling a quantity of fuel upon the already sinking fire, which soon blazed brightly, lighting up the mouth of the cavern and the space ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully

... the tonic of the soul. Affliction at once humbles us and gives us a relish for spiritual food. Those providences which teach us the insufficiency of earth, make us lean ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston

... tonic and cosmetic, We may take our beauty sleep; We may rub and punch and powder But the claws go deep and deep; And before we understand it All our beauty's on the bum For the years are turning yellow ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... also had the half-obsequious, half-insulting manner Dave had found most people expected from their barbers. While he shaved and trimmed Dave, he made insultingly solicitous comments about Dave's skin needing a massage, suggested a tonic for thinning hair and practically insisted on a singe. Ser Perth watched with a mixture of intentness and amusement. The barber trimmed the tufts from over Dave's ears and clipped the hair in his nose, while a tray was pushed up and a slatternly ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey

... intention, and wait till he could obtain some fresh evidence of evil intentions. The day passed without any other noticeable occurrence. The doctor called, found Helen somewhat better, and ascribed it to his medicines, especially to the effect of his tonic draught the first thing in the morning. Helen smiled. "Nay, Doctor," said she, "this morning, at least, it was forgotten. I did not find it by my bedside. Don't tell my aunt; she would be so angry." ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... table, and then in small glasses, and as, moreover, on these occasions, the servants passed by the pedagogue, Beaupre soon accustomed himself to Russian brandy, and, in time, preferred it, as a better tonic, to the wines of his native country. We became great friends, and although according to contract he was engaged to teach me French, German, and all the sciences, yet he was content that I should teach him to chatter Russian. But as each of us minded his own ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin

... everything is O.K., and that you are still smiling. Thank God for that. Whatever happens, still keep smiling. The greatest tonic out here is to know the girls are working so hard, and all the time willingly and smilingly. We know you all miss the boys as they do you, and to read that our friends at home are enjoying themselves is enjoyment to us. We are out to have the harder tasks, and we want you all at home ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams

... uncombed hair in the morning, perfect pictures of dejection. We let them rest as long as we could, for their swollen eyes and stiffened joints told how sadly unprepared they were to go forward at once. The sun came out early and made it comfortable, while a cool and tonic breeze, came down from the great snow mountain the very thing to brace them up ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... before these prohibition fanatics got her by the throat. Oh, Lord Jesus, do thou make these deluded preachers see the error of their ways. Do help the sweet inhabitants of this city. [Cries of 'Amen!'] Do restore to them pure liquor, and not compel them to drink the vile stuff sold as 'nerve tonic,' 'rice beer' and 'bitters.' [Applause and laughter.] Give us power to win the fight. [Cries of 'Amen.'] Put to rout the miserable hypocrites who parade as thy servants under the guise of Prohibitionists. Oh, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various

... and to cool a feverish world. Miss Anna's very appearance allayed irritation and became a provocation to good health, to good sense. Her mission in life seemed not so much to distribute honey as to sprinkle salt, to render things salubrious, to enable them to keep their tonic naturalness. Not within the range of womankind could so marked a contrast have been found for Harriet as in this maiden lady of her own age, who was her most patient friend and who supported her clinging nature (which still could not resist the attempt to ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... languages, the need of scrupulous search to find the nearest equivalents for words that differ widely in their scope of meaning from their derivatives in any modern vocabulary, the effort of lifting one's self out of the familiar rut of ideas into so foreign a world, all these things act as a tonic exercise to the brain. And it is a demonstrable fact that students of the classics do actually surpass their unclassical rivals in any field where a fair test can be made. At Princeton, for instance, Professor West has shown this superiority by tables of achievements and grades, which he published ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... accent on the penultima. I never observed any of those who read Saboth, Zablon, and sabachthni, read either Samara or Cesrea. The Greek accents on Hebrew words always accord, as Hebraists know, with the tonic accent in that language. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... them. We forgot the scholar's proverbial reproach of timidity and selfishness, in watching him. While he lived, it seemed a matter of course that the greatest acquirements and the heartiest self-devotion should go together. Can we keep our strength, without the tonic of his example? How petty it now seems to ask for any fine-drawn subtilties of poet or seer in him who gave his life to the cause of the humblest! Life speaks the loudest. We do not ask what Luther said or wrote, but only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... approaching, when Hagen seizes a cowhorn and calls the tribesmen to welcome their chief and his bride. It is most exhilarating, this colloquy with the startled and hastily armed clan, ending with a thundering chorus, the drums marking the time with mighty pulses from dominant to tonic, much as Rossini would have made them do if he had been ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... Collier, arrived soon afterwards. It was a party of which Ward strongly approved. While I was trying to make the kettle boil, I heard Dennison say that we were the pick of the freshers, a statement which no one was very likely to deny. I felt badly in need of some tonic after my afternoon, and I swallowed the one provided by Dennison without any hesitation, not stopping to wonder how often he had said the same thing to other men. As a matter-of-fact we were rather an odd lot to be the ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... a lot of little chickens and the jonquils are in bloom. The sun is as warm as June, but I'm shivering all the time, and Miss Katherine says she don't understand me. She gave me a tonic to make me eat more. I don't want to eat. I want ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher

... my dear," she said demurely, "—though I have heard some people call her a tonic. Pollyanna ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... often wanted to see the Mourne mountains. Must be a great tonic in the air down there. But a long threatening comes at last, they say. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... only for these reasons that they are so valuable to the modern spirit. It is rather for their tonic qualities that they should be prescribed in 1934. The post-war vintage of poetry is the thinnest and the most watery that England has ever produced. But here, in these ballads, are great draughts of poetry which have lost none of their sparkle ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... As a digestive tonic the following is good: Glauber's salt, 2 pounds; common salt, 1 pound; baking soda, one-half pound. Of this a heaping tablespoonful may be given in each feed. If diarrhea exists, the treatment ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... dissolving in the water of springs gives them a chalybeate character. Copious springs of this kind occur at the edge of a peat-bed at Woodstock, Conn., which are in no small repute for their medicinal qualities, having a tonic effect from the iron they contain. Such waters, on exposure to the air, shortly absorb oxygen, and the substance is thereby converted into crenate and afterwards into apocrenate of peroxide of iron, which, being but slightly soluble, or insoluble, separates as a ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... his mind. It was a mere shadow, something vague and dark and uncertain in outline. But it existed, and would assume recognizable shape when an active imagination had fitted some shreds of proof to that which was yet without form and void. At that crisis, contradiction was a tonic. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... her writings revealed into many and subtle aspects of sorrow, made her the recipient of hosts of letters from strangers, opening to her their griefs, and asking her counsel; and to all she gave freely and joyfully as far as her strength and time and judgment would allow. There was a tonic vein mingling with her comforts. Her touch was firm as well as tender. She knew the shoals of morbid sentimentality which skirt the deeps of trouble, and sought to pilot the sorrowing past the shoals ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... guide), with the mien of an ardent and fearless traveller. He was clad in a knickerbocker suit, but as at the same time he wore short socks under his laced boots, for reasons which, whether hygienic or conscientious, were surely imaginative, his calves, exposed to the public gaze and to the tonic air of high altitudes, dazzled the beholder by the splendour of their marble-like condition and their rich tone of young ivory. He was the leader of a small caravan. The light of a headlong, exalted satisfaction with the world of men and the scenery of mountains illumined his clean-cut, very ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... a strong tonic. When I look at you I seem to be regarding an effervescing saline draught. Still, I really must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various

... to say that she was better; she had never been ill; it was a mere fad of the doctor and her sisters; she supposed they were tired of her and wanted a little peace. However, she continued to absorb large quantities of strengthening food, beef tea, meat jelly and heady tonic, for she loved food, and she was determined ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... of China. The bark has tonic and astringent properties, and is used in fevers and for external application in the cure ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... great tonic. Mr. Keith could hardly believe the story that Mary and Tom jointly told him. But at length he grasped the idea that he was a wealthy man again, ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... Merwyn resumed: "I shall soon take my train. Would you not like to write a few lines to Strahan? As I told you, in effect, once before, they may prove the best possible tonic in ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... and rhythmic motion. Average child. Frequent blunders. Appeal to intellect. Teacher with strong personality. Experimenting with beginners. Legal protection. Vienna musician. Class instruction. French solfege. English tonic sol-fa. Mrs. John Spencer Curwen. Rev. John Curwen. Time a mental science. Musical perception of the blind. Music in public schools. Phillips Brooks on school song. Compulsory study. Socrates. Mirabeau. Schumann on brilliancy. Unrighteous mammon of technique. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... was good tonic for Wallace, and an hour later he sipped broth, while Mrs. Allen and the Deacon and Herman stood watching the process with apparently consuming interest. Mattie was still ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... intensity had lived here since. The Covenanters, the Jacobites, Sir Walter Scott and his fellows, had dropped nothing in the pool that could break the ripples started by that stone, that precious stone, flung there from France so long ago. The town had settled down into something that the tonic magic of the place prevented being decay, but it was though time still turned the hour-glass, but did it dreamingly, infatuated with the marvellous thing she had brought forth that now was not. So greatly had the play declined in plot and character ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... have heard from Rivers, and——What is it, my love? You really do look very pale. You are overdoing yourself, and I cannot allow it. Now that Judy is better you must rest. I shall get Dr. Pettifer to look you up and give you a tonic when we get ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... from the Southern system of education, both of the past and as proposed for the future. Education is in a broad sense a remedy for all social ills; but the disease we have to deal with now is not only constitutional but acute. A wise physician does not simply give a tonic for a diseased limb, or a high fever; the patient might be dead before the constitutional remedy could become effective. The evils of slavery, its injury to whites and blacks, and to the body politic, was clearly perceived and acknowledged by the educated leaders ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... wholesome duties; again he has to be an idler among idlers; but this time at a great altitude, far among the mountains, with the snow piled before his door and the frost flowers every morning on his window. The mere fact is tonic to his nerves. His choice of a place of wintering has somehow to his own eyes the air of an act of bold contract; and, since he has wilfully sought low temperatures, he is not so apt to shudder at a touch of chill. He came for that, he looked for it, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... accomplish was brought to pass by a few weeks of mental suffering, and her clothes were beginning to hang on her. Her appetite began to fail her, and her aunt, noticing this, bought her a big bottle of tonic, which, taken before meals, killed any small desire for food she may have had. Then Aunt Phoebe decided that the two-mile walk to school was too much for her, and had her taken and called for in the machine, much to Hinpoha's disgust, for that walk was her chief joy these days. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... were discovered by Count Strzelecki, who in speaking of them, says, "I have endeavoured to ascertain both—the latter on my own constitution, and the former by chemical analysis. They belong to a class of carbonated waters." From his examination he concludes, "that they are aperient and tonic, and sufficiently disgusting to the palate ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... water about three feet deep. A ledge enabled them to reach the cascade, where they could drink the water as it fell. How cool and refreshing it tasted! They all felt wonderfully invigorated; and the doctor owned that, under their circumstances, no tonic medicine he could have given them would have a more beneficial effect. The rock extended some way down on the opposite side of the stream, and the path they had pursued appeared to be the only one by which the pool ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... little, All along the road; Every life must have its burden, Every heart its load. Why sit down in gloom and darkness, With your grief to sup? As you drink Fate's bitter tonic, ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... apparent. In few things is this so marked as in the changed attitude of the medical profession towards alcohol. One of the most dangerous, and, at the same time, one of the most securely intrenched of all our enemies, was the family doctor. Among his remedies and restoratives, wine, brandy, whisky and tonic ale all held a high place, and were administered more frequently, perhaps, than any other articles in the Materia Medica. The disease of his patients arrested by special remedies or broken by an effort of nature, he too often commenced the administration of ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... of that week's TIMES acted like a tonic on the town streets. New life followed in the wake of the boy as he carried the paper from door to door. It began at the corner of Main and Cross Streets, and as the boy proceeded, the merchants, the loafers, and ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... deepest of bass voices. When asked what his main difficulty was he replied that he "didn't seem to be able to get on the key." And this was apparent when he started in and wandered up and down the tonal till he managed to strike the tonic. Then he asked me whether I would rather hear "Qui sdegno," from Mozart's "Magic Flute," or "Love Me and the World is Mine." Upon the latter being chosen he asked the accompanist to transpose it, and upon this gentleman's suggesting ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... Aryan family, Our do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do correspond with the Hindoo sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa, and the intervals are the same—two semi-tones, of which the Malaysian is destitute. The Hindoos have also terms in their language for the tonic, mediant and dominant, so that they know something of harmony, of which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... outcome of her visit was that Mary, with an aching heart, added a daily bottle to Elliston's regime. In a week the doctor came again, gave Mary a food tonic, and advised the introduction of a second bottle. Elliston immediately responded, palpably preferring his bottle feedings to the others. His fretfulness after these continued, he turned with increased eagerness to his bottle, and with tears of disappointment ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... Harpwood and notice that Lockwin was interested—this was indeed a tonic. The world of tuberoses and portes cocheres—the world of soft carpets and waltzes heard in the distance—this aromatic, conventional and dreary world ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... instead of sitting for a district in Massachusetts, would represent Dutch Gap. They had already, in his friend from Missouri, a representative of the German Flats; and he submitted that a member from Dutch Gap would be two tonic for the body politic. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various

... the foregoing, had for many years been accustomed to leave his store and landed property to the care of his partners and family, while, in company with Risk, he found in the half-savage life and keen air of the ice-fields a bracing tonic, which prepared them for the enervating cares of the rest of the year. The two had little in common—Risk being a stanch Episcopalian, and Davies an uncompromising Methodist. Risk, rather conservative, and his comrade ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... go to the woods and git herbs and roots and make tea and medicine. We used to git Blackhaw root and cherry bark and dogwood and chinquapin bark, what make good tonic. Black snakeroot and swamproot make good ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... live stock of all kinds. It keeps healthy animals in the pink | |of condition; it quickly puts half-sick, unprofitable stock in the | |money-making class. | | | |Pratts Animal Regulator, America's original guaranteed Stock Tonic and | |Conditioner, is not a food. It is a combination of roots, herbs, spices | |and medicines which sharpen appetite and improves digestion, regulates | |the bowels, makes rich, red blood, and naturally ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.

... oz., sulphate of quinine 20 grs., brandy 6 ozs., water 1-1/2 pint, bruise the calumba and pour the water on it boiling hot, cover tightly for two hours, then strain, bottle, and add all the other ingredients, when the quinine is dissolved it is ready for use. This forms an excellent tonic in cases of debility. Dose, one tablespoonful three times a-day ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... your kindness," he said. "I am, as you see, a traveling peddler of hair tonic. May I present you with a bottle?" ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope

... mingled now with an enervating tenderness. He was still confident of himself, but he became suddenly conscious that these women were necessary to his happiness and his success, that his nature demanded the constant daily tonic of their love and service. He understood now the primal necessity of woman, not as an individual, but as an incentive and an appendage to the dominant personality ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... differs widely from this. Confronting us with a bluff and not unkindly demeanour, worthy of the nation that invented cold baths as a tonic against all spiritual anguish, the practical, modern Englishman speaks out his mind in straight-flung words and few. "You fellows," he says, "brood too much over the past. After all, this is the twentieth century, ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... shots were fired. The marines armed with binoculars were not unduly elated by any one shot, but merely reported progress in a characteristic American fashion—that is, by a system of chaffing. This provided tonic, and presently the bullets crept in so close to the marks that all chaff was forgotten. Sometimes it took an hour, or even two, to bring down a single man; but no matter how long the time necessary might be, the Americans ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... the large view, and we are most reasonable when we seek that which is most wholesome and tonic for our natures as a whole; and we know, when we put aside pedantry, that the great middle object in life—the object that lies between religion on one hand, and food and clothing on the other, establishing ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson

... one of the excellences of the soldier in the civil war. But presently, after five hours of laborious work, a halt is called. The men dive into their haversacks, and even the brackish water in the nearest sedge pond has a flavor of nectar and the invigoration of a tonic. On they tear again, the whole body pushing on in skirmish-like dispersion. Suddenly the land changes. They are climbing a rolling table-land, cleared in some places as though the axe of the settler had been at work. The march is now easier and the picket-lines are strengthened. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... place to speak of work in general, and of its tonic effect upon education. But I have discussed the subject in my books Justice, Jeunesse, and Vaillanos. I must limit myself to referring ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... West and I did most of the talking. She was breezy, vivacious, tonic, and I noted again that the delicate, almost fragile oval of her face was given the lie by her body. She was a robust, healthy young woman. That was undeniable. Not fat—heaven forbid!—not even plump; yet her lines had ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... is very healthy generally, and the Halmund water delicious—by some it is said to be an actual tonic—but the hot winds of the summer and the salt sand cause severe injury to the eyes. Cataract is a most common complaint, even in comparatively young persons. Also ophthalmia in its two forms. Confusion of vision is frequent ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... New Brunswick breeze is the best tonic I can prescribe," exclaimed the doctor, eyeing Mrs. Verne with close study, "but this one must ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... last word to describe religious faith is the word anesthetic. Religious faith is a comfort to the old, the sick, and the suffering; but in general it is not a sedative, it is a tonic. It is a dynamo; it is a driving force. Henry Drummond, the most effective speaker on religion I can remember, said to a group of students: "I ask you to become Christians not because you may die tonight but because you are going to live tomorrow. I come not to save your ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... commercial aspect of producing hazilberts is engrossing me at the present time, my greatest pleasure in nut culture still comes, as it always shall come, from actual work with these trees. It is both a physical and mental tonic. I recommend nut tree culture to everyone who enjoys spending his time out-of-doors, who is inspired by work of a creative nature, and who appreciates having trees, or even one tree, of his own. Suggested reading on ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... a tonic for the mind; the stories are gems, and for pith and vigor of description ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... prudence and regard for the medium's physical well-being would dictate. There is a certain stimulation and excitement arising from the manifestation of phenomena through the medium, and this in itself is helpful rather than hurtful—a tonic rather than a depressant; but like all other forms of overindulgence, and excessive yielding to this excitement tends to bring on a reaction and a swing to the opposite emotional extreme, and the medium suffers thereby in many cases. There comes a time in all seances ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... progression of chords in which the sub-dominant or chord on the fourth degree of the scale precedes the tonic or chord on the first degree of the scale. The name arises from the modes used in early church music called Plagal Modes, which were a transposition of the authentic modes beginning on the fourth degree of the ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... Gopher Prairie that spring. It was a "tent show, presenting snappy new dramas under canvas." The hard-working actors doubled in brass, and took tickets; and between acts sang about the moon in June, and sold Dr. Wintergreen's Surefire Tonic for Ills of the Heart, Lungs, Kidneys, and Bowels. They presented "Sunbonnet Nell: A Dramatic Comedy of the Ozarks," with J. Witherbee Boothby wringing the soul by his resonant "Yuh ain't done right by mah little gal, Mr. City Man, but yer a-goin' to find that back ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis



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