"Avoirdupois" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... among them all is a duplicate of mine. What is to be done. Le portier looks as dejected as though Paris was about to be bombarded, as he goes down and breaks the dreadful news to le proprietaire. Up comes le proprietaire - avoirdupois three hundred pounds - sighing like an exhaust-pipe at every step. For fifteen unhappy minutes the skeleton-key is wriggled and twisted about again in the key- hole, and the fat proprietaire rubs his bald head impatiently, but all to no purpose. Each ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... shillings for my daughter's portion. Use her kindly, and thank Heaven for her; for it is not every wife that is worth her weight in silver.' And Master Sewell took Mistress Sewall and thirty thousand pounds (not avoirdupois, but sterling). ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... avdp. avoirdupois c.i.f. cost, insurance, and freight CY calendar year DWT deadweight ton est. estimate Ex-Im Export-Import Bank of the United States f.o.b. free on board FRG Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany); used for information dated before 3 October 1990 or CY91 FY fiscal ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the rising of the tide. A roly-poly woman of forty or so is caught on the islet by the closing of old Ocean's drawbridge. She is a fair being with dark hair and eyes, a sweet smile, a clear complexion, and some two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, richly dressed, pleasant-mannered, and in all respects no doubt a lady to be admired and loved, as well as respected, in the social circle. But at present she is at a sad disadvantage. I noticed her a few minutes ago at the top of the iron staircase, and said to myself that she would have just ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... him aloft like the saintly Herbert[10] as a shining model of a rural priest. We are glad, therefore, for Wordsworth's sake, that no judge from the Consistorial Court ever happened to meet with Walker when trudging over the Furness Fells to Ulverston with a long cwt. (120 lb. avoirdupois) of wool on his back, a thing which he did in all weathers. The wool would have been condemned as a good prize, and we much fear that Walker's gown would have been stripped over his head; which is a sad catastrophe for a pattern priest. Mr. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... her ballast taken in, than our captain came down to her—a little, thin, spare man, but a man of weight nevertheless, for he brought a great pair of scales with him, and weighed everything that was put on board. I forget his real name, but the sailors christened him Captain Avoirdupois. He had a large book, and in it he inserted the weight of the ballast, and of the shot, water, provisions, coals, standing and running rigging, cables, and everything else. Then he weighed all the men, and all the midshipmen, and all the ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... stories; and such other gambol faculties a' has, that show a weak mind and an able body, for the which the prince admits him: for the prince himself is such another; the weight of a hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois. ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... is the interpretation of Percy Mackaye, who in his play, The Canterbury Pilgrims, derives the heartiest enjoyment from Chaucer's woe lest his avoirdupois may affect Madame Eglantine unfavorably. The modern English poet who is oppressed by too, too solid flesh is inclined to follow Chaucer's precedent and take it philosophically. James Thomson allowed the stanza about himself, interpolated by his friends into the Castle of Indolence, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... and the child's heart, fresh from God, see and feel more clearly and more justly than we do. For this much is sure—Jeanette was right in keeping to the end the image of Colonel Martin Culpepper as a knight-errant, who needed only a bespangled steed, a little less avoirdupois, and a foolish cause to set him battling in the tourney. As it was, in this humdrum world, the colonel could do nothing more heroic than come rattling down Main Street into the child's heart, sitting with some dignity in his weather-beaten ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... she cried, holding up a spangled dress, admiringly. "Ain't dat beautiful!" She drew near the mirror, attempting to see the reflection of the tinsel and chiffon against her very ample background of gingham and avoirdupois. "You'd sure be a swell nigger wid dat on, Honey," she chuckled to herself. "Wouldn't dem deacons holler if dey ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... were passed over a limb of the tree, still higher up than those on which the staging was to rest. One stood above to guide the huge piece of plank-work, while all the rest exerted their strength upon the ropes below. Even little Jan pulled with all his might—though a single pound avoirdupois weight would have been about ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... a mission of my own. I was a man of the world before I was a Christian; I'm a man of the world still, and I made my mission pay. No good ever came of coddling. A man has to stand up in God's sight and work up to his weight avoirdupois; then I'll talk to him, but not before. I gave these beggars what they wanted: a judge in Israel, the bearer of the sword and scourge; I was making a new people here; and behold, the angel of the Lord smote them and they ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... process, and "see-saw" is one of its aspects. Three or four fat experts on the side against us. We find four or five plump ones on our side. Or all that we call logic and reasoning ends up as sheer preponderance of avoirdupois. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... fashion, struggling into his overcoat, he sprang forward with a light, friendly air and helped him. 'He did not do it with ostentatious politeness or with the manner of active youth giving generous aid to elderly avoirdupois. He did it as though it occurred to him as a natural result of being on ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... training, should prepare himself for the hard work in sight. I don't mean that he should be down to edge, but in good ruddy health. As a matter of fact, a man is far better off if he can start the season with eight or ten pounds of extra avoirdupois; and four or five pounds above "pink of condition" may be carried throughout the season with good results. They will prevent one's getting cold while in the water and keep one from going stale, a very ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... personality admitted of private confidences. I have listened to the touching experiences of the Bearded Lady, whose rough cheeks belie her susceptible heart. Miss Jane Campbell has allowed me to question her on the delicate subject of avoirdupois equivalents; and the armless fair one, whose embrace no monarch could hope to win, has wrought me a watch-paper with those despised digits which have been degraded from gloves to boots in our evolution from the condition ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... about one to fourteen, and computing from other known weights he determined that "when a column of quicksilver thirty inches high is sustained in the barometer, as it frequently happens, a column of air that presses upon an inch square near the surface of the earth must weigh about fifteen avoirdupois pounds."(4) As the pressure of air at the sea-level is now estimated at 14.7304 pounds to the square inch, it will be seen that Boyle's calculation ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... position in this community, would set such a ruinous example. A teacher of youth should look to the cultivation of the mind, not to the outward adorning of the person." Mrs. Dr. Little sailed away from the little group in as dignified a manner as a lady of nearly two hundred avoirdupois could be expected to do, as ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... mental. Technic is gaining such control of the medium that the subject-matter, or idea, may be fully and perfectly expressed. Ideas are the only substantial things in the universe, and that there is a difference in the quality of ideas need not be argued. Two men of the same avoirdupois may be walking side by side on the street, but one of them may be a genius and the ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... Uncle Moses, as the entire party addressed him, "Brother Avoirdupois;" and the lawyer retorted by christening the surgeon "Brother Adipose Tissue." The conductor of the party in Egypt had called them both "cupids;" and this term became very popular for the time. The other gentleman who had been saved from an untimely ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... a place in New South Wales named Grabben-Gullen, where the best potatoes in the world are grown. Great, solid, flowery beauties, weighing two pounds avoirdupois, are but ordinary specimens in this locality, and the allegorical bush statement for illustrating their uncommon size has it that they grow under the fences and trip the horses as they travel the lanes between the paddocks. Similarly, to explain the wonderful growth of vegetation in the fertile ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... had: but what Knowles could not or had not a propensity to commit in rapine and petty larceny, he has made up in tyranny. The papers are granted, and we are all going to turn jurymen. The rest of the day was spent in a kind of avoirdupois war. Your friend Sir George Lyttelton opened the budget; well enough in general, but was strangely bewildered in the figures; he stumbled over millions, and dwelt pompously upon farthings. Pitt attacked him pretty warmly on mortgaging the sinking fund; Sir George kept up his spirit, and returned ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... feet two inches in height and weighing over two hundred pounds avoirdupois, heretofore regarded as a marvel in physical development, now, in the presence of these eight-foot giants, felt like a shrunken pigmy. Formerly it was generally conceded that I was a rather handsome fellow. This ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... and pretty in summer. The church is said to be the finest edifice of the kind in Eastern Siberia. The double doors in front of the altar are of solid silver, and said to weigh two thousand pounds avoirdupois. Besides these doors I think I saw nearly a ton of silver in the various paraphernalia of the church. There were several fine paintings executed in Europe at heavy cost, and the floors, walls, and roof of the entire structure were of appropriate splendor. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... broke into uncontrollable spasms of mirth. Tears ran down her furrowed cheeks, and the oak step, that had not these four generations yielded to the weight of Mays, creaked beneath this onslaught of convulsive avoirdupois. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... of food required to sustain an ordinary man in health and strength, I have previously stated, is about two pounds avoirdupois daily, and an equal weight of oxygen is necessary to the integrity of the vitalizing processes undergone by the food, and to maintain the physical temperature. When the requisite supply of oxygen is reduced, the extrication of heat within ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... for poetry. But no one had seen any change in him in those months; and, indeed, there had been little or no change, for he had an equable and practical, though imaginative, disposition, despite his avoirdupois, and his new purpose did not stir him yet from his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... for furs was soon opened; the Dutch traders were scrupulously honest in their dealings and purchased by weight, establishing it as an invariable table of avoirdupois, that the hand of a Dutchman weighed one pound, and his foot two pounds. It is true, the simple Indians were often puzzled by the great disproportion between bulk and weight, for let them place a bundle of furs, never so large, in one scale, and a Dutchman ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... after machine, until finally the bulk of cotton is reduced to a fine thread, of which, in some cases, it takes two or three hundred miles to weigh one pound. Even in what are termed medium numbers or counts of cotton yarn, there are from fifteen to twenty-five miles of thread in a pound avoirdupois, and more than a thousand million pounds of such ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... has lately been deprived of his customary allowance of fat. His loss of weight (in avoirdupois) has been computed at five-sixteenths of the integral cubit of a patent accumulator's vertical boiling power, divided by the fractional resistance of a plate-glass ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... was carried. The schoolmaster, occupied with his pupils, and not liking the interruption, hastily, and without further inquiries of the messenger, turned over his Bonnycastle, and arriving at the table of avoirdupois weight, replied, "Tell your father that sixteen ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... herbage as bamboos, the foliage of the banyan, peepul, and other varieties of the Ficus family; but if it is expected to travel and perform good work, it is usual in the Commissariat department to allow each elephant seven and a half seers of flour, equal to 15 lbs. avoirdupois. In addition to this, 600 lbs. of green fodder are given, and about 1 lb. of ghee (buffalo butter), with salt and jaggery (native sugar). During a jungle expedition I have always doubled the allowance ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... to go back there, and make a long visit. But that can't be. How much I wish it could! If only there were life-renewers as well as hair-renewers! They called me pretty at fourteen—said I had pretty ways, (one of them was one hundred and thirty-five avoirdupois,) and would certainly be a belle. But I proved too much for that. One hundred and seventy-five cut off all hope. I sighed, ate nothing, studied poetry, did a good deal of melancholy by moonlight and otherwise, but nothing came of it. I ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... it will affect nothing but doses of medicines, which must be corrected as is now done; but as it would be much better that the identical pound was used by all. I would propose that the Amsterdam or Paris pound be assumed as the standard, being now the most universal in Europe: it is to our avoirdupois pound as 109 is to 100. Our avoirdupois pound contains 7,000 of our grains, and the Paris pound 7,630 of our grains, but it contains 9,376 Paris grains, so that the division into 10,000 would very little affect the Paris grain. ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... weighs 262 1/2 grains. The ladies' coloured muslin dresses, mentioned in the table subjoined, cost ten shillings per dress, and each weigh six ounces; the cotton from which they are made weighing nearly six and two-ninth ounces avoirdupois weight. ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... thoughtless moment to have carried into legislation a mildened modicum of that metaphorical language which forms the staple of debate, we should make no remonstrance. We recognize the severe justice of an ideal avoirdupois in literary criticism. We remember the unconscious sarcasm of the Atlantic Telegraph, as it sank heart-broken under the strain of conveying the answer of the Heavy Father of our political stage to the graceful ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... hats for their own use, and that he appropriated their property in the same way. Shelley was a poet, and perhaps idealized his friends. He saw them, probably, in a state of pure intellect. I am not a poet; I look at people in the concrete. The most obvious thing about my friends is their avoirdupois; and I prefer that they should wear their own cloaks and suffer me to wear mine. There is no neck in the world that I want my collar to span except my own. It is very exasperating to me to go to my bookcase and miss a book of which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... there will be a different attitude assumed towards it. But as long as the Negro prefers to construe owlish looks as wisdom, to bow down to clam like silence as profound philosophy, to stand agape over blatant mouthings as eloquence, and to measure mental calibre by bodily avoirdupois, he not only gives evidence of weakness in a lack of sound discrimination, but he subjects the entire race ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... logy, lazy beeves, while the boys quietly rode round, silently moving them together as instructed. Siringo drove to their lead, and halting, we allowed the cattle to loiter past us on either side of the conveyance. It was an easy herd to show, for the pounds avoirdupois were there. Numerous big steers, out of pure curiosity, came up near the vehicle and innocently looked at us as if expecting a dole or sweetmeat. A snap of the finger would turn them, showing their rounded buttocks, and ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... treaty "decreeing for ever a common sovereign for England and France," a treaty which, it is minded, "stood no while." Again, some dubious antiquary has put it forward as the home of that variety of weights "which are not avoirdupois." ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... government, (a fortiori then in the particular section of the Kandyan forces which we faced,) there had not been more gunpowder remaining at the hour of Major Davie's infamous capitulation than 750 lbs. avoirdupois; other munitions of war having been in the same state of bankruptcy. Five minutes more of resistance, one inspiration of English pluck, would have placed the Kandyan army in our power—would have saved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... vast numerical preponderance had solved itself in accordance with the rules of avoirdupois, and history—fond like all garrulous old crones of repeating even her inglorious episodes—had triumphantly inscribed on her bloody tablets, that once more the Few were throttled and trampled by ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... get a twenty-five check from Dolph, and be on the job Monday at the Barrett Theatre. Now run!" Mr. Vandeford gave Miss Bebe Herne's two hundred pounds of avoirdupois a gentle shove toward the door, which hint she took with an alacrity that had in it a great deal ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... at 500,000 tons. This is considerably below the mark, even if India is taken in its limited signification, as including only British subjects. On this estimate the 94,000,000 of British subjects, men, women and children, would not individually consume more than one pound avoirdupois by the month. A fat, hungry Brahmin, at any of the festivals given by the great, will digest for his own share four pounds, without at ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... gravitation; weight; heaviness &c adj.; specific gravity; pondorosity^, pressure, load; burden, burthen^; ballast, counterpoise; lump of, mass of, weight of. lead, millstone, mountain, Ossa on Pelion. weighing, ponderation^, trutination^; weights; avoirdupois weight, troy weight, apothecaries' weight; grain, scruple, drachma^, ounce, pound, lb, arroba^, load, stone, hundredweight, cwt, ton, long ton, metric ton, quintal, carat, pennyweight, tod^. [metric weights] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... with the time they lose in adjusting their spectacles, hunting in the precise shelf for the precise quality demanded, then (quality found) the haggling as to quantum,—considering whether it should be Apothecary's weight or Avoirdupois, or English measure or Flemish,—and, finally, the hullabuloo they make if the customer is not perfectly satisfied with the monstrous little he gets for his money, I don't wonder, for my part, how one loses temper and patience, and sends Pride, Honour, and Apology all to the devil. Aristophanes, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 'schoolma'am' at Valley Road, boarding at 'Wayside,' the home of Miss Janet Sweet. Janet is a dear soul and very nicelooking; tall, but not over-tall; stoutish, yet with a certain restraint of outline suggestive of a thrifty soul who is not going to be overlavish even in the matter of avoirdupois. She has a knot of soft, crimpy, brown hair with a thread of gray in it, a sunny face with rosy cheeks, and big, kind eyes as blue as forget-me-nots. Moreover, she is one of those delightful, old-fashioned cooks who don't care a bit if they ruin your digestion as long as they can give ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... then, as I fawncied, and doubtless was bestowed upon me as indicative of my lack of avoirdupois. And it was not entirely unnatural that they should do so, for at the time when I came to Winthrop I was very slight, very slight indeed. The appellation, or cognomen, was without doubt given in recognition of that fact, a custom not unknown, among the classical nations and one prevalent among ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... very lively girl, Annie Mation," pursued Neale, racking his brain to discover other punning words. "And despite her superabundance of avoirdupois, ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... of science, had endeavored to convert himself into a screw of the Artesian well. Placed feet downward on the ground again, I could not thank my deliverers or swear at the mule. I was dumb with astonishment and the mud, having swallowed eighteen ounces avoirdupois weight of the sacred soil of Mississippi while endeavoring to express my admiration of the performance of the mule. When I had removed the mire from my optics, in which cotton-seed would have grown freely, I beheld the mule in the dim distance. I could not see the brute plainly, but I could determine ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... better the simple woods lesson of substitution or doing without. You find that discomfort is as soon forgotten as pain; that almost anything can be endured if it is but for the time being; that absolute physical comfort is worth but a very small price in avoirdupois. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... name of the sender should be placed in each box. The moths, as soon as received, will be examined microscopically, and the eggs of those which are found to be free from disease will be weighed and paid for at the rate of $2.50 per ounce of 25 grammes (about 6-7 of an ounce avoirdupois). Silk culturists are advised not to attempt the production of eggs unless they are adepts at the industry, and have had at least one season's experience. We would advise each person desiring to sell, to send a sample first, with a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... structure,—an edifice erected by our forefathers, and by them christened LEMUEL, which in the vernacular tongue is called Lem "for short." The dimensions of the edifice were about 120 by 62 inches. The loss is almost irreparable, estimated at not less than 2,000 pounds, avoirdupois. May it rise like a Phoenix from its ashes!—Williams Monthly Miscellany, 1845, Vol. I. p. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... call upon them during the first month, and when, two months after the wedding, they were spending the evening with us, I asked him if his wife had told him about my relations with her avoirdupois? He laughed ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... heavily upon Abrahm Kantor in avoirdupois only. He was himself plus eighteen years, fifty pounds, and a new sleek pomposity that was absolutely oleaginous. It shone roundly in his face, doubling of chin, in the bulge of waistcoat, heavily gold-chained, and in eyes that behind ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... men of cheerful outlook and social inclination attain the age of five and fifty without contracting superfluous avoirdupois and distinctive mannerism. That Colonel William Landor was no exception to the first rule was proven by the wheezing effort with which he made his descent from the two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... The quantity of blood that flows to the lungs, to be acted upon by the air at one action of the heart, is two ounces, and this is acted on in less than one second of time. 6th. The quantity of blood in the whole body of the human adult, is twenty-five pounds avoirdupois, or twenty pints. 7th. In the mutual action that takes place between the air and blood, every twenty-four hours, the air loses thirty-seven ounces of oxygen, and the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... was much more when the native states were in a condition of greater wealth and civilisation, as they undoubtedly were some centuries ago. Valentyn says that in some years Achin had exported 80 bahars, equivalent to 32,000 or 36,000 Lbs. avoirdupois (!). Of the other products named, lign-aloes or eagle-wood is a product of Sumatra, and is or was very abundant in Campar on the eastern coast. The Ain-i-Akbari says this article was usually brought to India from Achin and Tenasserim. Both this ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Before I knew his purpose, he had tripped my feet from under me and knocked me flat on the floor. Overturning the empty coffin-box, he clapped it above my whole length, imprisoning me with the snap and celerity of a mouse-trap. Then I heard the thud of two hundred avoirdupois seating itself on top of the case. The man above my person had whisked out a book of prayers, and with lantern on the desk was conning over devotions, which, I am sure, must have been read with ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... say, "My word!" and never let on. It was a wide space; I could tell you how wide, in chains and perches and furlongs and things, but that would not help you any. Those things sound well, but they are shadowy and indefinite, like troy weight and avoirdupois; nobody knows what they mean. When you buy a pound of a drug and the man asks you which you want, troy or avoirdupois, it is best to say ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cried Wicks, viewing it with a cocked head; "that's better than a bonfire. What! we have a chest here, and bills for close upon two thousand pounds; there's no show to that—it would go in your vest-pocket—but the rest! upwards of forty pounds avoirdupois of coined gold, and close on two hundredweight of Chile silver! What! ain't that good enough to fetch a fleet? Do you mean to say that won't affect a ship's compass? Do you mean to tell me that the look-out won't turn to and smell ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... intestines contained feathers, which he probably devoured with a duck, or winter gull, as I observed an entire foot and leg of some water fowl. I had two killed previous to this, which weighed ten pounds avoirdupois each." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... runs about six miles an hour; but supposing it to be only five miles, the quantity which passes the falls in an hour is more than eighty-five millions of tuns avoirdupois; if we suppose it to be six, it will be more than one hundred and two millions; and in a day would exceed two thousand ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... thus thou stumbleth? On—up with thee and that mountain of flesh thou carriest about with thee." And the mountain of flesh would be lifted—it was carried as lightly by the finely-feathered legs and the broad haunches as if the firm avoirdupois were so much gossamer tissue. On and on the neat, strong hoofs rang their metallic click, clack along the smooth macadam. They had carried us past the farm-houses, the cliffs, the meadows, and the Norman roofed manoirs buried in their apple-orchards. These same ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... he returned and entered the room where the plunder he sought lay. Thanks to his friend, the way was easy, and his art was not required to secure it. There were 600 ounces in silver bars, a pretty good load in avoirdupois, but he only made one journey of it, mounted the wall and speedily ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... doin' up here, Parker Boomsby?" snarled the wife of that worthy; and as I stood at the door of my prison, I could hear her pant from the violence of her exertions in ascending the stairs, for, like her liege lord, she had greatly increased her avoirdupois since I lived with the family at Glossenbury. Possibly she drank too much whiskey, like the companion of her joys and sorrows, though I had no information on this point. I only knew that she used to take a little when she was too hot or too cold, when she was wet ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... whose names have so much personality in them that a sovereign presence fills the place where they are spoken,—sculptors whose statues step as it were unexpectedly (themselves surprised) into sight, with none of the avoirdupois of later stone-work; that heaviness which, in some of the finest of these modern figures, causes them to pause involuntarily, as if snowed upon. The high degree of smoothness of the old statues, as well as their mellowed whiteness, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... not weigh less than five or more than five and one-quarter ounces avoirdupois, and measure not less than nine nor more than nine and one-quarter inches in circumference. The Spalding League Ball, or the Reach American Association Ball must be used in all games ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... despair into which she had slipped, and could only clearly figure to herself that "the country of the Gergesenes lay to the southeast of the Sea of Tiberias and that a shekel weighed ten hundred-weights and ninety-two grains, Troy weight, equal to in avoirdupois—" her brain whirled. She could not work out the sum. She could not pray. She could recall no prayer. She could look to nothing beyond the country of the Gergesenes. And yet, never in her life had she so needed ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... since then I have had a business, and a colony, and a mission of my own. I was a man of the world before I was a Christian; I'm a man of the world still, and I made my mission pay. No good ever came of coddling. A man has to stand up in God's sight and work up to his weight avoirdupois: then I'll talk to him, but not before. I gave these beggars what they wanted: a judge in Israel, the bearer of the sword and scourge; I was making a new people here; and behold, the angel of the Lord smote them and they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... general use in the East. The word is found variously spelled, "bahare," "bare," and "vare." Its value varies in different localities, there being two distinct weights—one, the great bahar, used for weighing cloves, other spices, etc.; and the small bahar, about 150 kilos or 400 pounds avoirdupois, used for weighing quicksilver, various metals, certain drugs, etc. John Saris, writing of the commerce of Bantam, says: "A sacke is called a Timbang, and two Timbanges is one Peecull, three Peeculls is a small bahar, and foure Peeculls and an halfe a great Bahar, which is foure ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... cup or vessel of convenient form, capable of holding a suitable quantity of water, say about two pounds avoirdupois. Berthelot decidedly prefers a simple can of platinum, very thin, with a light cover of the same metal, to be fastened on by a bayonet hitch. For strictly laboratory work this may be the best form; but for the hasty manipulation and rough usage of practical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... there are many species which are concededly courageous, as species. In making up this list I would place first of all the baboons of eastern Africa, whom I regard collectively as the most bold and reckless fighters per pound avoirdupois to be found in the whole Order Primates. They have weapons, agility, strength and cyclonic courage. On no other basis could they have so long survived on land in a country full of lions, leopards, cheetahs, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... of the parent stem, succeeds, and bears fruit in about three months more. The only care necessary is to dig once or twice a year round the roots. According to our author, on 1,076 square feet, from 30 to 40 banana trees may be planted in Mexico, which will yield in the space of the year 4,414 lbs. avoirdupois of fruit; while the same space would yield only 33 lbs. avoirdupois of wheat, and 99 of potatoes. The immediate effect of this facility of supplying the wants of nature is, that the man who can, by labouring two days ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... means at one crop. The quantity in the text, reduced to avoirdupois weight, amounts to twenty-eight hogsheads, at sixteen hundred ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... pint used in the compounding of medicines, chemicals, &c. consisted of sixteen fluid ounces, weighing one pound Avoirdupois weight. Now the imperial pint of twenty ounces is in general use. The Troy and apothecaries' ounce are the same, and contain forty grains more than the Avoirdupois ounce. In making collodion, take any quantity ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... far as the door, when it burst open and an elderly woman of considerable avoirdupois broke into the room, to sink helplessly upon a flimsy chair which creaked ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... principal bell-ringer in the steeple of St. Giles's, Cripplegate; and her grandmother, for long and long, not only head dry-nurse to one of the noblest families in all England, but bona fide twenty-two stone avoirdupois—so that it was once proposed, by the undertaker, to bury her at twice! As to this nonpareil of lovely flesh and blood, her name was Lucy Mainspring, the daughter of a horologer, sir,—a watchmaker—vulgo so called—and though fattish, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... had the very latest widow here for two days "charring." She is the lady alluded to by Rex when he told Stephen that she had been weighed, and was found wanting. In justice to her physique, I must say that this was not according to avoirdupois measure!! but figurative. She whipped about as nimbly as an elephant. She was rather given to panting and groaning. You can fancy her. [Sketch.] "Mrs. Hewin, ma'am, don't soil your 'ands! Let me! As I says to the parties at the 'Imperial' at Folkstone, ladies ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois; and in this estimate I have not included one hundred and ninety-seven superb gold watches, three of the number being worth each five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as timekeepers valueless, the works having suffered more or less from corrosion; but all ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... bottom, while the cylinder was turned around its axis by the force of horses. To measure the heat developed, a small round hole was bored in the cylinder for the purpose of introducing a small mercurial thermometer. The weight of the cylinder was 113.13 pounds avoirdupois. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... his face was drawn, his eyes were sunken as if from hunger, and his whole body seemed to have fallen away till his uniform hung upon him loose, unkempt, and careless. It was as if hope had been a thing of avoirdupois, and when taken away had caused a shrinkage. He had interrogated Stark again after getting the doctor, but the man had only cursed at him, declaring that his daughter was out of reach, where he would take care to keep her, and torturing the lover anew by linking Runnion's name with ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... representation of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia meekly displaying the contents of her apron before her lord, the Landgrave—that heavy, sporadic type of whiskered ass whose only mission in life seems to be that of pulling the stars and all else down about his wassail-soaked head and ears through sheer avoirdupois and stupidity. Padre Antonio experienced a sudden thrill as he gazed at the picture. Clearly, it was the hand of God directing him. So did Saint Elizabeth deliberately deny the truth, and yet the bread in her ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... don't look as if I had lost any avoirdupois," said Jack, glancing at his round limbs. "And when you give us a fling I seem to strike pretty hard, though in other respects I confess I do feel a good deal ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... or flattened out like shovels, while along the edge rise the points or antlers. The width from horn to horn at their tops is often more than four feet, and the breadth of a single one, antlers included, is frequently above thirty inches. A single pair has been known to weigh as much as 60 pounds avoirdupois! ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... former. All calculations of prices would then be made by simple multiplication. What a gala-day for school-boys when the pence and shilling table would be abolished by act of parliament, and there would no longer be the table of avoirdupois-weight to learn, nor troy-weight, nor apothecaries', nor long-measure, nor square-measure, nor cloth-measure, nor liquid-measure, nor dry-measure, but one decimal scale of weights and measures would suffice for every commodity, and there would only be their names to get by heart in order! ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... young noblemen would talk with Kalora, and, finding her bright-eyed, witty, ready in conversation and with enthusiasm for big and masculine undertakings, be attracted to her. At the same time her father decided that there was no reason why her pitiful shortage of avoirdupois should be candidly advertised. Even at a garden-party, where the guests of honor are two English subjects, the young women would be required to veil themselves up to the nose-tips and hide themselves within a ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... of Grasse are the distilling of perfumes and the preserving of fruits. The flowers are cultivated on terraces resembling great nursery-beds. Of the perfumes, the most precious are the Otto of Roses and the Nroly. It requires 45 lbs. avoirdupois of rose leaves (petals) to make 1 gramme, or 15 grains troy of the Otto of Roses, which costs from 2 to 3 frs. the gramme; and 2 lbs. troy of the petals of orange flowers to make 1 gramme of Nroly, which costs 8 to 10 sous the gramme. The best Nroly, the Nroly Bigarrade, is made from ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Sherlock Holmes. 'The fact is, I followed Sir George Newnes into the Capital and Counties Bank this afternoon, where he demanded six thousand pounds in gold; but when he learned this would weigh ninety-six pounds seven ounces avoirdupois weight, and that even troy weight would make the sum no lighter, he took two small bags of gold and the rest in Bank of England notes. I came from London on the same train with him, but he was off in the automobile before I could make myself known, and so I had to walk up. I was further delayed ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... shoe-blacks, all were buying and selling tulips like mad. In order to make the commodity of the day accessible to all, a new weight was invented, called a perit, so small that there were about eight thousand of them in one pound avoirdupois, and a single tulip root weighing from half an ounce to an ounce, would contain from 200 to 400 of these perits. Thus, anybody unable to buy a whole tulip, could buy a perit or two, and have what the lawyers call an "undivided interest" in a root. This way ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... open doors of Paradise. The stout horses scrambled up the steep hills altogether unmindful of the wagon-loads of people behind. Perhaps the light hearts and buoyant spirits of the party lessened their avoirdupois and the tonnage was actually less ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... another rotund citizen, whose avoirdupois made necessary an almost alarming display of starched shirt bosom, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... right are huge stables where the royal elephants are kept, and on the left stand a row of curious arches, beneath one of which the Maharanas of old were wont to be weighed against bullion after a victory, the equivalent to the royal avoirdupois being distributed as largesse to ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... procure anything he may require or desire, from a tumbler of Brazilian rum to make glad his heart, to a poncho, or cloak of blue cloth with fluffy scarlet lining, to keep him warm o' nights; and, to speed him on his way, a pair of cast-iron spurs weighing six pounds avoirdupois, with rowels eight inches in diameter, manufactured in this island for the use of barbarous men beyond the sea. The wretched mud-and-grass building was surrounded by a foss crossed by a plank drawbridge; ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... said Isaac sternly. "What boy knows not that feathers are weighed by Avoirdupois, and gold by Troy weight, and consequently that a pound of feathers weighs sixteen ounces, and a pound ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Islington. Having spoken with the bookseller, I walked home, took the cash, walked back again, and—carried the tomes from the west end of Euston Road to a street in Islington far beyond the Angel. I did it in two journeys—this being the only time in my life when I thought of Gibbon in avoirdupois. Twice—three times, reckoning the walk for the money—did I descend Euston Road and climb Pentonville on that occasion. Of the season and the weather I have no recollection; my joy in the purchase I had made drove out ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... grammes from the hundred grammes of what the grumbling Californian miners had called, in their wrath, "dashed black dust;"[EN109] and when a second experiment yielded twenty-eight grammes (each fifteen grains and a half) and ten centigrammes from 111 grammes, or about a quarter of a pound avoirdupois. In the latter experiment also, the culot came away without the litharge, which almost always contains traces of silver and antimony. Hence we concluded that the proportions were 30:110—a magnificent result, considering that ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... circumference; but as they are cut and polished, a portion of their length and thickness has been lost. They are of a very dense substance, as their weight indicates, for even in their dressed state the pair weigh 5 lbs. 11 oz. avoirdupois. ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... one noticed Monona, and Ina did not defer even to Dwight. She, who measured delicate, troy occasions by avoirdupois, said brightly: ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... there suddenly trotted a piebald pony, drawing a low, basket phaeton, in which sat two prim, little, old ladies, a fat one and a lean one. Despite the difference in their avoirdupois the two old ladies showed themselves to ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... others, whereby the artistic qualities and the durability of the best American pianos are now generally acknowledged throughout the world. The solidity of construction is such that with a compass of seven and one-third octaves the tension of the strings amounts to about 50,000 pounds avoirdupois. The hammers are larger and heavier, the action more responsive, and the singing quality and sustaining power has reached remarkable perfection. Perhaps the most curious and important of all American improvements in this direction is the so-called ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... a like derivation. Seeds seem commonly to have supplied the unit. The original of the carat used for weighing in India is a small bean. Our own systems, both troy and avoirdupois, are derived primarily from wheat-corns. Our smallest weight, the grain, is a grain of wheat. This is not a speculation; it is an historically registered fact. Henry III. enacted that an ounce should be ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... had dropped into bed with a celerity that made the arrival upon earth anything but pleasant. I am not sure but there is some reality in these flights, after all. These aerial journeys may be foretastes of those we shall make after we are freed from the incumbrance of avoirdupois. I hope so, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... that day was equipped in a well-made suit from the tailoring establishment on the opposite side of the building. Though he had not yet gathered that avoirdupois which is associated with the dignity of office, there was in his square young frame an undeniable promise. Already he carried himself with the deliberation of a man whose future is assured, and his mouth took those upward curves of one who is humorously satisfied with himself ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... message over the telephone. Bat sat down on the table and waited. The news editor was thin-faced and nervous and alert and immaculately groomed. Bat was round-faced and sleepy-eyed—tortoise-shell eyes—and all that prevented his suit from looking positively slovenly was that his own ample avoirdupois filled ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... made for my conversion, - which would involve the rolling of several brothers and sisters on the floor, declaring that they felt all their sins in a heap on their left side, weighing so many pounds avoirdupois, as I knew from what I had seen of those repulsive ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... more generally used in this country, is the English system. The hank is 840 yards, and the number of hanks in one pound avoirdupois is the count of the yarn. It is based on the finished yarn, and singles, two or three cord yarns of the same number all have the ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... But before Lucinda could do more than despairingly ask herself what was to be done now, Romney answered—not in words, but in deeds. He coolly picked Lucinda up in his arms, as if she had been a child instead of a full grown woman of no mean avoirdupois, and began to wade with her through ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... adopted in this country for specifying the size of silk is based on the weight in drams (avoirdupois) of a skein containing 1000 yards. A skein, thus weighing 5 drams, is technically called 5-dram silk. The number of yards of 1-dram silk to a pound must accordingly be 256000. The formulas for figuring the amount of silk required ...
— Theory Of Silk Weaving • Arnold Wolfensberger
... and no one had been out this spring. Nannie, that's my cousin, is just a little larger than I am, and oh, you should see the scrumbunctious dress I am going to wear to the picnic! It is perfectly— glorious!" and Tavia wheeled around on her toe, threatening her boasted one hundred and five pounds avoirdupois with disaster. ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... possible embonpoint, but there be other matrons who hang so uncertainly about that borderland of beauty that they somehow manage to convey the hint that only by an unwinking watchfulness do they succeed in foiling the onslaughts of his ogreship of avoirdupois. In their eye lurks terror and in their lines one spells their secret of rebellious hunger; of Delsarte, gymnastics and massage. Sometimes the matron is an improvement on the maid. But this is not always true. For those who turn coarse and harsh with years, we recommend Christian Science and ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... dull, ruddy-yellow gold, which looked as though they might have been crudely smelted out of the quarried ore, and wanted to trade them with me for beads and printed calico. The quantity which they brought amounted to about twelve pounds avoirdupois altogether, which I estimated to be worth between six and seven hundred pounds sterling; but they fixed such an exorbitant value upon the metal that had I acceded to their demands my stock of trade stuff would soon have been exhausted. Of course ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... charging column numbered but two girls, the pig tossed his head, uttered a scornful grunt, and started slowly out of the garden. He was in no hurry. He had grown fat on these raids, and he did not propose to lose any of the avoirdupois thus gained, ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... was enough to account for the return of her color. It came rushing back splendidly. Cheeks, forehead, everything but nose, blushed. The hard work of lifting so much avoirdupois, and possibly, also, the novelty of supporting so much handsome fellow, intensified all her hues. Her eyes—blue, or that shade even more faithful than blue—deepened; and her pale golden hair ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... text appears to allow for the largest vessels 50,000 medimni, or 3000 tons, (since the medimnus weighed 160 Roman, or 120 avoirdupois, pounds.) I have given a more rational interpretation, by supposing that the Attic style of Procopius conceals the legal and popular modius, a sixth part of the medimnus, (Hooper's Ancient Measures, p. 152, &c.) A contrary and indeed a stranger mistake has crept into an oration ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... fat. Through the politeness of Sir Stratford Canning, English Ambassador at Constantinople, I was kindly permitted to visit the Sultan's harem as often as I pleased and there look upon the 'lights of the world.' These 'lights of the world' consisted of five hundred bodies of unwieldy avoirdupois. The ladies of the harem gazed upon my leanness ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... boy. He seemed to him much like any other boy of his age, but such remarkable things in the way of avoirdupois poundage and teething, serenity of temper and quickness of apprehension were explained to him that he felt that he must be in the ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... their purchases, and Miss Wyatt, the sister, came with them. She was typically like Mrs. Voorhees, only younger, and with her figure in better restraint. She had so far successfully fought down an hereditary tendency to avoirdupois. She had brilliant yellow hair and a brilliant complexion, like her sister, and she was as well, even better, dressed. Ida had purchased that day a steamer-rug, a close little hat, and a long coat for the voyage, and the women talked over the purchases and their plans for travel with undisguised ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... barons, from King John at Runnymede, in Surrey. Therein it is declared that the weights, all over England, shall be the same, although for different commodities there were two different kinds, Troy and Avoirdupois. The origin of both is taken from a grain of wheat gathered in the middle of an ear. The standard of measures was originally kept at Winchester, and by a law of King Edgar was ordained to ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... most articles used in cakes and pastry, a quart is generally about equal in quantity to a pound avoirdupois, (sixteen ounces.) Avoirdupois is the ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... know not of any reading so hopelessly heavy as large portions of that which claims the name of light. Light writing it may be; but, considered as reading, one would be unjust to charge upon it any lack of avoirdupois. It is like the bran of wheat, which, though of little weight in the barrel, is heavy enough in the stomach,—Dr. Sylvester Graham to the contrary notwithstanding. It is related of an Italian culprit, that, being required, in punishment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... avoirdupois—that's the correct weight. The first time or two we didn't get much—they were still shy of us. But after that we made some heavy; hauls. Twice we brought down close on two thousand. Once there was three thousand, almost to a sovereign. Even men trained to ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... library. We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper which lies before us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shallum. But unhappily the life of man is now three-score years and ten; and we cannot but think it somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... meaning and its splendor? Perhaps it was as well that they did not exploit that passion of patriotism as an advertisement in the style of Barnum or Perham. "I scale one hundred and eighty pounds, but when I'm mad I weigh two ton," said the Kentuckian, with a true notion of moral avoirdupois. That ideal kind of weight is wonderfully increased by a national feeling, whereby one man is conscious that thirty millions of men go into the balance with him. The Roman in ancient, and the Englishman in modern times, have been most conscious of this representative ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... The Attic talent weighed about sixty minae, or avoirdupois pounds (see Hooper on Ancient Weights, Measures, &c.;) but among the modern Greeks, that classic appellation was extended to a weight of one hundred, or one hundred and twenty-five pounds, (Ducange, talanton.) ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... is inclined to get into and out of psychological experiences quickly, so he is inclined to sudden illnesses and to sudden recuperations. A Thoracic seldom has any kind of chronic ailment. If he acquires a superabundance of avoirdupois he is in danger of apoplexy. The combination of extreme Thoracic and extreme Alimentive tendencies is the ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... made up in endurance what I lacked in avoirdupois, along with a firm determination to take up the first honest work that presented itself, regardless of choice, and in the meantime to secure a few gold claims, the fame of which had for ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... went up as a second group pushed before Slim another youth who, so far as size, shape and avoirdupois was concerned, might have been his twin brother. They looked at each other and both burst ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... share," grumbled Bess. "But what about Tubby's additional avoirdupois, Frankie? He's as big as ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... net in avoirdupois ounces. Each complete ration with its tin container weighed nearly twenty-seven pounds. The five pounds over net weight of daily ration was taken up in tin necessary for protection of food. The weight of component parts of daily ration had ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... to-day alone, but for to-morrow, for next month, for the next year, for ten years. This is the man whose volume will just as surely weigh down that of the unthinking man as a ton will weigh down a pound in the scale. Avoirdupois is moral, industrial, as well as material, in this respect; and the primary, most usual cause of unprosperity in industrial callings therefore lies in the want of intelligence,—either in the slender endowment of the man, or more likely the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... station. She had taken my words literally and was steadfastly occupying the automatic weighing machine, with her back impassively turned upon an indignant youth who was itching to gamble a penny on the chance of guessing his avoirdupois. Quietly I crept behind her and placed a coin in the slot, simultaneously pressing my foot upon the platform. Suzanne gazed with mingled horror and fascination at the mounting indicator, and at sixteen stone jumped off with a gasp on to my disengaged foot. For a few moments ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... elephant, took off his fire extinguisher, and handed Bolivar a piece of rag carpet, and said: "Eat it, you old catamaran, or I'll kill you," and Bolivar was so scared of pa he eat the carpet, which shows the power of brain over avoirdupois, pa says. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... this was that each of them told me that though organically I was as sound as a nut in fact much sounder than some of the nuts they knew professionally—I was carrying an overload of avoirdupois about with me. In other words, I was too fat for my own good. I was eating too much sweet stuff and entirely too much starch—especially starch. They agreed on this point emphatically. As well as I could gather, I was subjecting my interior to that highly ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... canny Scot, a Royal Engineer, and weighs fully three hundred pounds; but with this avoirdupois he is far from being inactive, and together we ramble up the Asterabad Pass to take a look at the Bostam Valley on the other side. The valley isn't much to look at; no verdure, only a brown, barren plain, surrounded on all sides by equally brown, barren mountains. In the evening the Prince ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... hung under his nose, a shirt-collar cut low enough to permit of his breathing, and a skin-tight waistcoat buttoned over a rotundity that rested on his knees. He had restless, quick eyes, and, before his "ex" life began and his avoirdupois gained upon him, restless, quick fingers with steel springs inside of them—good fingers for handling the particular people ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that 11; that all the numbers are numbers of the same or of equal units. Let this be doubtful, and not one of the propositions of arithmetic will hold true. How can we know that one pound and one pound make two pounds, if one of the pounds may be troy, and the other avoirdupois? They may not make two pounds of either, or of any weight. How can we know that a forty-horse power is always equal to itself, unless we assume that all horses are of equal strength? It is certain that 1 is always equal in number to 1; and where the mere number of objects, or of the parts ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... their pile was coarse and open; and few of them gave more than six or eight quarts of milk a day when in their best condition, or weighed, when fat, more than from a hundred to a hundred and sixty pounds avoirdupois, rejecting offal. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... "Avoirdupois!" he snorted. "Can't a man continue to have ideas now and then, even if he does become a—a trifle plump. And that boy—why, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... the continuance of any one regulated proportion between the respective values of the different metals in coin, the value of the most precious metal regulates the value of the whole coin. Twelve copper pence contain half a pound avoirdupois of copper, of not the best quality, which, before it is coined, is seldom worth seven-pence in silver. But as, by the regulation, twelve such pence are ordered to exchange for a shilling, they are in the market considered as worth ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... felt so small after the weary weeks of watching that he went and had himself weighed, devoutly certain that he shrunk respectably. He even went in for a savage system of training, calculated to reduce his avoirdupois. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... child who distinctly perceives that the perpendicular columns, or places in which figures are written, may distinguish their value under various different denominations, as gallons, furlongs, shillings, &c. We should not tease children with long sums in avoirdupois weight, or load their frail memories with tables of long-measure, and dry-measure, and ale-measure in the country, and ale-measure in London; only let them cast up a few sums in different denominations, with the tables ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... table of the weights per cubic foot and the number of cubic feet per ton of some of the principal ore-forming minerals and gangue rocks will be useful for approximating the weight of a cubic foot of ore by the third method. Weights are in pounds avoirdupois, and two thousand pounds ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... French war, say thirty able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them. She has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away at the public charges some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there until wanted. And now ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... arondissement compared with the domain that does homage to her sceptre. Sheffield is the great arsenal of her armaments. Sheffield cases ships of war with iron plates a foot thick; but that is nothing, in pounds avoirdupois, compared with the weight of steel it spins into elastic springs for casing the skirts of two hundred millions of the fair Eugenie's sex and lieges in the two hemispheres. It is estimated that ten thousand tons of steel are annually absorbed into this use in Christendom; ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... equal to about an ounce, in our modern avoirdupois system. There was no accurate standard weight anywhere. Honest dealers tried to have weights which corresponded to custom. But it was easy to cheat by having two sets of weights, one for buying and one for selling. So when our shepherds came to town, they ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... the sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand and clutch many a thing and swing it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the miracle lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the true miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth my ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... taken, and some I saw. I measured them, and found that, from nose to tail, they were just two inches and a quarter, and their tails just two inches long. Two of them, in a scale, weighed down just one copper halfpenny, which is about the third of an ounce avoirdupois: so that I suppose they are the smallest quadrupeds in this island. A full-grown Mus medius domesticus weighs, I find, one ounce lumping weight, which is more than six times as much as the mouse above; and measures from nose to rump four inches and a quarter, and the same ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... impression which you appear to harbor, touching my physique, I remit to you a photograph of a majority of myself. The photograph was made last December, when I was, so to speak, at my perihelion in the matter of avoirdupois. You may be gratified to know that I have not shrunken much since that time. I have taken the timely precaution to label the picture in order that none of your Fredericton people thumbing over your domestic album shall mistake me for ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the sweat coming out on his brow. 'I'm confidant with you, as you have, somehow, enlisted my regards. Did you ever,' he says, 'feel the avoirdupois power of gold—not the troy weight of it, but ...
— Options • O. Henry
... about, especially when I was sent up aloft; dragging myself up step by step, as if I were weighing the anchor. Small time then, to strip, and wring it out in a rain, when no hanging back or delay was permitted. No, no; up you go: fat or lean: Lambert or Edson: never mind how much avoirdupois you might weigh. And thus, in my own proper person, did many showers of rain reascend toward the skies, in ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... for Round and Square Steel. Table of Weight of Flat Steel Bars. Avoirdupois Weight. Troy Weight. Apothecaries' Weight. Linear Measure. Long Measure. Square Measure. Solid or Cubic Measure. Dry Measure. Liquid Measure. Paper Measure. Table of Temperatures. Strength of ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... weighed. Food tables are then consulted to discover the protein percentage. Suppose, for instance, the only ingredient having a noticeable quantity of protein is rice, and 1 lb. is used. The table is consulted and shows rice to contain eight per cent. protein. In 1 lb. avoirdupois there are 7,000 grains; eight per cent. of 7,000 is 70.00 x 8 560 grains. Therefore, in the dish prepared there are 560 grains of protein. It is as well after cooking to weight the entree or pudding and divide the number of ounces it weighs into 560, thus obtaining the number of grains per ounce. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... paused, and from his coign of vantage looked and listened. The solitude was profound. Then mounting the tree and standing over its axis he tried to rock it as the others had. Alas! Johnny's heart was stout, his courage unlimited, his perception all-embracing, his ambition boundless; but his actual avoirdupois was only that of a boy of ten. The tree did not move. But Johnny had played see-saw before, and quietly moved towards its highest part. It slowly descended under the changed centre of gravity, and ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... pounds," I said, "for a five-pound pig. Since then I 've paid fifty-five pounds more, and I have been led to expect, that at the very least the pig was keeping pace. But it isn't. The sterling is increasing by leaps and bounds; the avoirdupois is not even stationary. That's not counting several tons of swill that ought to be inside him but aren't. It can't go on." I paused and added darkly, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... hobby-horse, made of papier-mache, and, when he saw that Hawkinson was taking his picture, cavorted and grimaced, to the huge delight of the onlookers. The female clowns, all of whom were burdened by excessive avoirdupois, wiggled their hips and shoulders as they marched in ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... horse, quirt and Stetson hat with Peter's nothing and argued that all the weight was in his own favor. The keeka (girl) had made a mistake. And to a man who measured everything by worldly icties this was sound argument, for the only big thing about Peter was his avoirdupois—barring his heart, of course. In the heat of his argument Johnny determined to deprive Peter of his sacred property. And among the Indians this is not nearly so hazardous or hopeless or criminal an undertaking as it may seem through an Anglo-Saxon microscope. ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... Stoneleigh was a generous eater; his foods were truly simple in variety but luxurious in their quality and richness. Prime roast-beef, fried potatoes, waffles and griddle-cakes supplied him with heat, energy and avoirdupois. He suddenly quit eating at fifty-eight—there was a cerebral hemorrhage one night. His remains weighed one hundred ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... sixteen years of age and this is my third wife." He pointed over his shoulder to a tow-headed German for all I could see, and who certainly showed no sign of the native except in her dress and manners and avoirdupois. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... engaged about five weeks when I saw him, and up to that time his Indians had used simply closely woven willow baskets. His nett proceeds (which I saw) were about $16,000 worth of gold. He showed me the proceeds of his last week's work— fourteen pounds avoirdupois of ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... where he read all he could find about gold. Thence descending to the kitchen, he rummaged out a rusty old pair of scales, and with their help arrived at the conclusion that the horse weighed about three pounds avoirdupois: it might be worth about a hundred and fifty pounds. Ready money, this was a treasure in the eyes of one whose hand had seldom indeed closed upon more than ten pounds at once. Here was large provision for the four ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... for weighing foods is the table of AVOIRDUPOIS WEIGHT. Another table of weights, called the table of Troy weight, is used by goldsmiths and jewelers for weighing precious metals. It should not be confused with avoirdupois weight, however, because its pound contains only 12 ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... is a Chinese money of account, worth formerly about $1.50; now $1.68, "Tael" is the trade name in China for the ounce of silver; it also designates a weight, of 1 1/3 oz. avoirdupois. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... man once. It was in a railway station. He stood at one side holding all the luggage, and his wife bought the tickets. She was larger than he—I should say about one hundred and fifty pounds larger. To take and hold such an enviable position as this woman held needs, I think, an excess of avoirdupois." ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... truth in this. Pressure was high. People were mashed and squeezed together. Those who, by reason of a lack of avoirdupois, were less firmly attached to the ground, were lifted bodily. Walter hung suspended in mid-air and looked over the heads of men ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... called for dominion. Each, in the divine plan, is to be a ruler in the universe, not a "mollusk with aimless revery;" he is to be a man with vitality, not "dead matter known only as avoirdupois." By this measure a man is not worth so much as a sheep which furnishes two substantial commodities—food and clothing. Minus the attributes which qualify him for a high rank, man is a being with a buried talent, only a unit in the great ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... ultimately been introduced into all the lighthouses of the united kingdom. In the northern lighthouses, the reflectors consist of copper coated with silver, in the proportion of six ounces of silver to one pound avoirdupois of copper, which are rolled together, and then, with much labour and great nicety, by a process of hammering and polishing, formed to the parabolic curve of a mould made with mathematical precision. The focal distance of the curve is four inches. The diagram ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... Fluid.—Take two drams (avoirdupois) dry salt of tartar; (carbonate of potassa) powdered cochineal, half dram; liquor of ammonia and spirit de rose, each one fluid dram; glycerine, one-fourth ounce; rectified spirit, one and one-half imperial fluid ounces; distilled water, eighteen ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... make the wedding-cake! Cora to recite her "piece." Francie and Sammy to be dressed as pages and bear, each, a tray spread with the gifts it was to be her own task and privilege to contrive. Sabina to hover over all as a sort of Cupid, who, if somewhat "hefty" as to avoirdupois, was in all other respects a perfect ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann |
