"Balloon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sort, there's no doubt about that," said the Captain, "so I guess the great problem has got solved at last. And yet it ain't a balloon, because it's coming against the wind, and it's nothing of the aeroplane sort neither, because it hasn't planes or kites or any fixings of that kind. Still it's made of something like metal and glass, and ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... Pegasus runs restive in his "Waggon," Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain? Or pray Medea for a single dragon?[220] Or if, too classic for his vulgar brain, He feared his neck to venture such a nag on, And he must needs mount nearer to the moon, Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... ponderous figure of Mrs. Chapman formed a sort of central object. The lady was indeed got up in a gorgeous style of dress, for she wore all the colors of the rainbow, without their blending, had flounces nearly to her waist, giving her the appearance of an half-inflated balloon; and she had made a very flower-basket of her head. In short, the lady had made a bold attempt to improve on all known styles of dress, and at the same time to show her contempt for what other people might call taste in such matters. Thus elaborately arrayed she fancied herself as much a ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... probable that an engine sufficiently strong, built of the best steel, and propelled by the explosive power of gun cotton, or some similar explosive, would overcome the difficulty. If I were to construct such an engine I would substitute for the lifting power of a balloon that of a sail ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... bookstalls and stopped short and stared with unseeing eyes at the display of popular literature. He was wondering now whether after all he ought to have let her go. He experienced something of the blank amazement of a child who has burst its toy balloon. His golden globe of satisfaction in an instant had gone. An irrational sense of loss was flooding every other feeling about V.V. If she had loved him truly and altogether could she have left him like this? Neither of them surely had intended so complete a separation. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... said to be 'Up in a balloon,'" continued Proteus (now looking rather like the Ancient Mariner,) "long and lean and brown, but letters written to the Times even from the utmost height lately attained by the French Aeronauts—to say nothing of the top of the tallest Lightning Conductor—would, I fear, be hot and ill-balanced. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... I fell to wondering! Not that it makes any difference whether you drown in one fathom or in ten thousand, whether you fall from a balloon or from the attic window. But the greater depth or distance is the worse to contemplate; and I was as a man hanging by his hands so high above the world, that his dangling feet cover countries, continents; a man who must fall very soon, and wonders how long he will be falling, falling; and ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... M'Dougall, swelling with vulgar pompousness, "to see that you recognize the rights of property and the claims of vested interests. And we trust," he added, "that Labour has learned a lesson it will not soon forget." Then he sat down with the majesty of a balloon descending. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... as may be seen, were occurring with startling rapidity. Before the surrender of Bazaine the advance of the German army had appeared before Paris and on September 19 the siege of that city began. Soon it was so closely invested that food could not enter and the only way out was by balloon. The German bombardment did little damage to the great city, which was defended obstinately. But the Germans had a powerful ally within, where the grisly demon of famine ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... a perforated lung, my liver is a swelling sponge, eating crowds my waistband like a balloon, I have a swimming in my head and a sinking at my heart, and I can not say litany for happy release from these for my knees creak with rheumatism. The devil has done his worst, Robert, for these are his—plague and pestilence, being final, are the will of God—and, upon my soul, it is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... holding each other's arms, propped one against another. Every reach-me-down that had been hanging these twenty years flapped about their limbs, hindering their progress. Trousers with baggy ankles or with gaiter tops, balloon-shaped or close-fitting, made of loose-woven stuff or so shrunk that they would not meet the boot, displaying feet where the elastic sides wriggled like living vermin, and ankles covered with vermicelli dipped in ink; ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... suffering in Paris during the siege was probably mental, suffering from the want of news; but by the middle of November the balloon and pigeon postal service was organized. Balloons were manufactured in Paris, and sent out whenever the wind was favorable. It was found necessary, however, to send them off by night, lest they should be fired ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... catching her smile, "let it stand, it's true.... No, madam, the time has come; let me tell you it's not a time for laughter and feminine arts now. We are not in the boudoir of a mincing lady, but like two abstract creatures in a balloon who have met to speak the truth." (He was no doubt confused and could not find the right words for his ideas, however just they were.) "It is you, madam, you who have destroyed my happy past. I took up this post simply for your sake, for the sake ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... be asked why they had not entertained the thought, and endeavoured to carry it into practical effect: since a balloon would have been far more likely to have delivered them out of their "mountain prison" than ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... abrupt check of movement, a shock, and no more, save the silent rolling of the boat from side to side like a balloon in the air. This ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... again in his sombre eyes. Later on he drove along the sinuous road on the top of the ridge, and as he looked over Delhi, hidden amongst its foliage, he saw the great white dome of the Jumma Musjid rising above the tree-tops, like a balloon. "The Mosque," he said, standing up in his carriage. "To-morrow ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... bores it is, to bore Congress for a hundred thousand dollars to go to the Pole! If Captain HALL wants adventure, let him travel to the Halls of the MONTEZUMAS. If he wishes only to be left out in the cold, let him go to Chili; or else up in a balloon; or let him make himself Republican candidate for something in New York. We believe the North Pole would rather be let alone. The whole subject is, at all events, too HAYES-y just now to be comprehended. There is a sort of KANE-ine madness, which shows itself not in fear ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... Given the vehicle, no doubt many volunteers would offer for the journey; Columbus could get a ship, but the chances of his arriving at his proposed destination must have appeared as problematical to him as the Moon enterprise in a balloon would to a world-weary globe-trotter of to-day. It was not merely that the ship was small and the Atlantic large and stormy; there were legends of vast whirlpools, of abysmal oceanic cataracts, of sea-monsters, malignant genii, and other ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... defending Australia. But there's Union men and Union men. They're mainly good, but some are bad. That's one of the bad ones there. His name is Neverwork, and he never worked in his life. He's a blowhard, a gasbagger, a balloon full of curses and twaddle. This bloke thinks we're fools. He's kidded his Union on that he's a smart fellow—a sort of High Priest of Salvation. He's talked himself into a job, and he's drawing about five hundred a year out of another fellow's pockets. He's called a Socialist ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... is folly and madness. For me, a humble clerk, to connect myself, even in imagination, with her! What have I to offer her? Or what even in prospect? I have been sailing in the clouds, and my tattered balloon is precipitated to the earth—I have been dreaming. How delicious was the dream! But I am now awake, and will never expose myself to the mortification of ——. I have been foolish. No, not so; for, who could come within the range of such fascinations, and not be ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... stage which leaves at nine. Went into a large Quakers' meeting house—both Pilling and John Wood in town, but could not manage to meet them. Visited the Exchange, a handsome edifice built of white marble. Another balloon in the sky. ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... billion in damages and will probably see GDP shrink by 2% in 1999 and unemployment rise. Hardest hit was the all-important agricultural sector, which is responsible for the majority of exports. As a result, the trade deficit is likely to balloon in 1999 to $445 million. However, significant aid has helped to stabilize the country. In addition, the Paris Club and bilateral creditors have offered substantial debt relief, and Tegucigalpa is currently under consideration for inclusion in ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Gryce. There was no resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way—he looked like a clever pupil's drawing from a plaster-cast—while Gwen's countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on a toy balloon. But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two had the same prejudices and ideals, and the same quality of making other standards non-existent by ignoring them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they had a force of negation which eliminated ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... a balloon, Moonstone would have looked like a Noah's ark town set out in the sand and lightly shaded by gray-green tamarisks and cottonwoods. A few people were trying to make soft maples grow in their turfed lawns, but the fashion of planting incongruous trees from the North Atlantic ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Jack, "and I am rather afraid to swim under there. The balloon may sink and carry me under. But if I were certain in exactly what spot the man is imprisoned, I'd have a ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... perfected a parachute device. He was taken up in a balloon to make a test of the apparatus. Arrived at a height of a thousand feet, he climbed over the edge of the basket, and dropped out. He had fallen two hundred yards when he remarked to himself, in ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... Jean lay . . . of asking whether or not the girl was still alive . . . then the great weariness overpowered him. He sank down on the sand beside Jean, and Lollie's glad shout, as he was clasped in his mother's arms, floated through his mental numbness like a clear toy balloon drifting up in ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... said Mrs. Porter from the doorway, and Steve, wheeling round, caught her eye and collapsed like a pricked balloon. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... country are given in miniature. In fact it gives you the same idea of the places themselves and of the environing country as if you were held up in the air over them to inspect them; or as if you viewed them from a balloon at the distance of 800 yards from the earth. The models of Strassburg, Lille and three or four others have been taken away by the Austrians and Prussians, but I have seen those of Calais, Dunkirk, Villefranche, Toulon, and Brest, and in fact almost ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... There was a balloon ascent from Hyde Park, which was a comparative failure, for it descended in Marylebone Lane, quite done up with its short journey, and another sent up from Vauxhall, which was more successful. There were grand displays of fireworks in the Green and Hyde ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... page 14 of pamphlet How to Become Strong), and through it a bent probe is inserted to determine the depth of the dilatation or abnormal cavity, it is as if one were poking inside of an inflated balloon: ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... this precaution, I myself flew the biplane over to Westchester on the morrow, and explained the controls to Monsieur Power in an extended passenger flight. He was, it appeared, an amateur of the balloon, and accustomed to great heights. When I handed the machine over to him, with the engine throttled down so that he might try rolling practice on the ground, he waited until he was out of our reach, whipped the motor into its full power, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... hold out at this rate much longer!" the elder Filmore cried, as he watched the bustle in the valley below. "I'm as empty as a collapsed balloon, and what's more, we're in ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... where the Austrians and the French fought a battle in the year 1794, in which the former were defeated. This victory is ascribed to the information obtained in consequence of reconnoitering the army of the enemy by the elevation of a balloon. The balloon employed on this occasion was called the Entreprenent; and it was under the direction of M. Coutel, the captain of the aeronauts at Meudon, accompanied by an adjutant and a general. He ascended ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... he who forgives has divested himself of envy and resentment, of all that oppressed and fettered the spirit, making it powerless to rise. This is why we must forgive: that so we may burst the bonds which impede our free movement, our ascent. When we cut the cable of a balloon, we do not consider whether this is just towards the earth, and whether the cable deserves it; we do it because it is necessary, to enable the balloon to rise. He who ascends, moreover, enjoys the marvels of a spectacle which cannot be enjoyed on earth. Who ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... with the troops. The problem of making a concerted advance through the thick underbrush was a difficult one, and the disposition of the American troops was at once revealed by a battery of artillery which used black powder, and by a captive balloon which ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... outside world had found their way into this fairyland, but all except one had been companions of Dorothy and had turned out to be very agreeable people. The exception I speak of was the wonderful Wizard of Oz, a sleight-of-hand performer from Omaha who went up in a balloon and was carried by a current of air to the Emerald City. His queer and puzzling tricks made the people of Oz believe him a great wizard for a time, and he ruled over them until Dorothy arrived on her first visit and showed the Wizard to be a mere humbug. He ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... man has been trying to learn how to fly, but always, until of recent years, he has suffered the sad fate of 'Darius Green and His Flying Machine.' For many centuries man has been impatient because he has had to stay down on earth or else go up in a clumsy balloon, which is not a flying machine at all! But, at last, he has made for himself a machine which he calls the aeroplane and the tedious problem has been solved quite satisfactorily, so that we now hear a great deal ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... up in a kind of moral balloon," suggested Rainham laughingly, "and get a bird's-eye ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... than I could possibly need, for I never believed in the siege. But during the first few weeks I played at whist with bad luck, and since then so many old friends have borrowed of me that I doubt if I have 200 francs left. I have despatched four letters to Duplessis by pigeon and balloon, entreating him to send me 25,000 francs by some trusty fellow who will pierce the Prussian lines. I have had two answers: 1st, that he will find a man; 2nd, that the man is found and on his way. Trust to that man, my dear friend, and meanwhile ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it is apparent that the gas itself is pushing back—struggling against being compressed, if you will—with an equal power. Suppose the bulk of the gas is such that at this pressure it occupies a cubical space six inches on a side—something like the bulk of a child's toy balloon, let us say. Then the total outward pressure which that tiny bulk of gas exerts, in its desperate molecular struggle, is little less than five thousand tons. It would support an enormous building without budging a hair's-breadth. If the building weighed less than five thousand ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... slag, burnt clay, &c., used to form the bed in which the sleepers or ties of a railway track are laid, and also to the sand which a balloonist takes up with him, in order that, by throwing portions of it out of the car from time to time, he may lighten his balloon when he desires to rise ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... assume that moon was called mown, and is severe on Mr. Fox for saying Touloon. He forgets that we have other words of the same termination in English for whose pronunciation Mr. Fox did not set the fashion. The French termination on became oon in bassoon, pontoon, balloon, galloon, spontoon, raccoon, (Fr. raton,) Quiberoon, Cape Bretoon, without any help from Mr. Fox. So also croon from (Fr.) carogne,—of which Dr. Richardson (following Jamieson) gives a false etymology. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... for the Child, the sightless Boy, It is the triumph of his joy! The bravest Traveller in balloon, Mounting as if to reach the moon, Was never ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... world female instead of male. What Providence had overlooked, mortal ability would do everything possible to make up for—so argued a disappointed father. From four years of age on I was taught to do everything a boy could or would do; from jumping off cars while they were moving to going up in a balloon. A good part of my life I have played tennis and basketball and hockey, and swum, and climbed mountains, and ridden horseback, and rowed, and fished. I do not know what it is to have an ache or a pain from one ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... continued Challenger—"I put it in the third person rather than appear to be too self-complacent—the ideal scientific mind should be capable of thinking out a point of abstract knowledge in the interval between its owner falling from a balloon and reaching the earth. Men of this strong fibre are needed to form the conquerors of nature ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sheets flapping in the wind... big slippered feet flapping too... big-balloon-face rushing up the alley... houses closing up again... windows looking round... ... Mabel pulls you in the gate and shakes you and tells you not to tell your mama... And you wonder ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... the best of it. One winter they snowballed us to such a pitch that as long as the snow was on the ground a lot of the little kids would no more venture to school alone than a sane man would step over the side of a balloon. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... dancers—the strangest group was collected. Squatting down on the floor, in every ungraceful attitude imaginable, sat about a dozen Indian women, dressed in printed calico gowns, the chief peculiarity of which was the immense size of the balloon-shaped sleeves, and the extreme scantiness, both in length and width, of the skirts. Coloured handkerchiefs covered their heads, and ornamented moccasins decorated their feet; besides which, each one wore a blanket in the form ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... circle. Keok was frankly amazed. Mary Standish's eyes were shining, and she clapped her hands when she saw that he had observed her. He tried to laugh, and waved his hand, but he felt too foolish to go to her. And then the balloon went up, a big, six-foot balloon, and with all its fire made only a pale glow in the sky, and after another hour of hand-shaking, shoulder-clapping, and asking of questions about health and domestic matters, Alan went to ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... the personality: the keen, eccentric character which took to balloons just after the Montgolfiers, and fell with his balloon into the North Sea, wrote his Treatise on the use of such instruments in War, and was never happy unless he was seeing or doing something—preferably under arms. And in every sentence also there is that curious directness ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... yet,—he could not—admit that he, himself, was to meet with such a bitter disappointment. "You'll see, all right," he told her, "and so will I." But, after a second's thought he added: "I will if I can hire a balloon!" ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... readiness to make an ascension at the proper moment, and of his making careful observations upon what is going on below, whilst floating at the mercy of the winds above, has led to the abandonment of this method of gaining information. By giving the balloon no great elevation, sending up with it an officer capable of forming correct opinions as to the enemy's movements, and perfecting a system of signals to be used in connection with the balloon, considerable advantages might be expected from its use. Sometimes the smoke of the battle, and the difficulty ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... hanging in the Lydford house. She now resumed her labors unflaggingly, waving away to the closet a mauve satin, and beckoning into a trunk a favorite black-and-white chiffon. To Sylvia she said, "Now I know exactly how a balloon feels when ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... in the use of smokeless powder were conspicuous throughout the scenes of fighting both at Santiago and Manila. We had, however, at Santiago a war balloon of the actual service, of which General Shafter says: "General Kent forced the head of his column alongside of the cavalry column as far as the narrow trail permitted, and thus hurried his arrival at the San Juan and the formation beyond that stream. A few hundred ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... of O'Hara had mixed itself with his thoughts of the copse, so now the image of Fred Bates mixed itself with the balloon. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... bartender, did you ever put on a straw hat with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a pretty girl with $8,000,000 in your pocket all at the same time? That's what thirty drops of it would make you feel like. With two fingers of it inside you you would bury your face in your hands and cry because there wasn't anything more worth while ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... as that of yesterday wrapped about the farmhouse of Craig Ronald. The hens were all down under the lee of the great orchard hedge, chuckling low to themselves, and nestling with their feathers spread balloon-wise, while they flirted the hot summer dust over them. Down where the grass was in shadow a mower was sharpening his blade. The clear metallic sound of the "strake" or sharpening strop, covered with pure white Loch Skerrow sand set in grease, which scythemen universally use ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... lasted. We were the salt of the earth; we were lifted above those grovelling instincts which we saw manifested in the lives of others. Each contributed his share of gas to inflate the painted balloon to which we all clung, in the expectation that it would presently soar with us to the stars. But it only went up over the out-houses, dodged backwards and forwards two or three times, and finally flopped down with us ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... had been a professor in one of the colleges, who, having taken up aeronautics, had made many balloon voyages in quest of scientific information, so that his name had become quite famous. Then, about a year before, he had been lost when attempting to solve the air currents on the Panama Isthmus, where the government had thirty thousand ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... wish it had been a balloon. It would have been greater fun to have gone to the Pole ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... Frank, "as far as I can make out it's a dirigible balloon that has been blown out to sea. They tried to give me their position, and as near as I can comprehend their message, they are between us and the shore somewhere within a radius of ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... at the sky; but there was to be seen no balloon from which she could have fallen on that spot. When he brought his distracted gaze down, it rested on a child holding on with a brown little paw to the pink satin gown. He had run out of the grass after her. Had Davidson ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Some one, by and by, felt something warm and wet and rough against his icy cheek and was grateful for the feeling. Some one was reading to me from a book which described the sensations of a man lifted up and carried in a broken balloon that could only ride a foot from the ground, bumping and jarring horribly, and I was that man, in some strange way, and at the same time I was the illustrations that accompanied the tale. I read the story myself finally, aloud and very shrilly, as that unfortunate man bumped ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... mich conceit on himsen as would lift a balloon, an' he wor so pleeased wi' his sham Rip he wor for tekking him to Mrs. DeSussa before she went away. But Mulvaney an' me stopped thot, knowin' Orth'ris's work, though niver so cliver, was ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... good plan to have a balloon inflated and tied in the back yard during the season in which mad dogs mature, and get into it on the approach of the infuriated animal (get into the balloon, I mean, not ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... there are going to be big doings to-morrow—races, balloon ascension, murders and everything like that. But I'm afraid you boys are going to be disappointed. There's a train comes through here about four or five in the morning, going east. I think that'll be the ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... says we've got to fight f'r th' supreemacy iv th' Passyfic. Much fightin' I'd do f'r an ocean, but havin' taken th' Philippeens, which ar-re a blamed nuisance, an th' Sandwich Islands, that're about as vallyable as a toy balloon to a horse-shoer, we've got to grab a lot iv th' surroundin' dampness to protect thim. That's wan reason why we're sure to have war. Another reason is that th' Japs want to sind their little forty-five-year-old childher to be iddycated in th' San Francisco ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... only joking" rejoined the former soldier. "The cake is so light, Norah, that I'll have to tie strings to it to keep it from goin' up to the sky like a balloon!" ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... of the Ettrick Shepherd's eerie stories, alone in their kind; and above all there was a miniature copy of Shelley, whose verse did much for the music of Donal's, while yet he could not quite appreciate the truth for the iridescence of it: he said it seemed to him to have been all composed in a balloon. I have mentioned only works of imagination, but it must not be supposed they had not a relish for stronger food: the books more severe came afterwards, when they had liberty to choose their own labours; now they had plenty of the harder ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... sometimes prudent not to speak the mind. With wine inflated, man is all upblown, And feels a power which he believes his own; With fancy soaring to the skies, he thinks His all the virtues all the while he drinks; But when the gas from the balloon is gone, When sober thoughts and serious cares come on, Where then the worth that in himself he found? Vanish'd—and he sank grov'lling on the ground. Still some conceit will Benbow's mind inflate, Poor as he is,—'tis pleasant to relate The joys he once possess'd—it soothes his ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... share of execution on the hostile infantry, our artillery in this quarter brought down a German captive balloon. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... motion of the schooner, which was sliding along on the surface of the quiet sea, with a slight list to starboard. And yet, there was neither rolling nor pitching. Yes, I felt myself carried off as though my bunk were the car of an air-balloon. I was not mistaken, and I had fallen from dreamland ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... as fine a pair of horns as ever grew on a buck. At present they were soft and not more than an inch and a half in length as they sprouted through its dingy wool. Thin in the shoulders and rump, yet "Mary's" sides were distended until their contour resembled that of a toy balloon ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... sight the town is all astir. Fishermen shake themselves up out of their mid-day snooze, to admire the beauty, as she slips on and on through water smooth as glass, her hull hidden by the vast curve of the balloon-jib, and her broad wings boomed out alow and aloft, till it seems marvellous how that vast screen does not topple headlong, instead of floating (as it seems) self-supporting above its image in the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... is to a Dutchman. He puts it away in skin sacks to bask in the sun for a year or more and ripen. This particular sackful was "ripe"; it was over ripe and had been for some time. Johnny could tell that by the smooth, balloon-like rotundity of the thing. In fact, he guessed it was about due to burst. Once Johnny had taken a cup of this liquid for tea. He had it close enough to his face to catch a whiff of it. He could still ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... it happening to be a Thursday, Paul started on his travels. He started buoyantly, but by evening he was as a punctured balloon. Every dealer had the same remark to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... be the cause, and in the second to be not a cause at all? The rapidity of my motion in the first instance cannot account for this judgment. He who rides in the police van and he who is thrown from the car of a balloon may move with great rapidity and yet be regarded ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... certain cliffs and the extent of certain valleys, till he has crawled like a maimed insect at their base and looked thence upward to the narrowed sky. Yet such an investigation of the Canon is, after all, merely like going down from a balloon into a great city to examine one of its myriad streets, since any gorge we may select for our descending path is but a tiny section of a labyrinth. That which is unique and incomparable here is the view from the brink; and when the promised hotel is built upon the border ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... up rode another member of the Surrey Hunt in uniform, whom Jorrocks hailed as Mr. Crane. "By Jove, 'ow beautiful the moon is," said the latter, after the usual salutations. "Moon!" said Mr. Jorrocks, "that's not never no moon—I reckon it's Mrs. Graham's balloon." "Come, that's a good 'un," said Crane, "perhaps you'll lay me an 'at about it". "Done!" said Mr. Jorrocks, "a guinea one—and we'll ax my friend here.—Now, what's that?" "Why, judging from its position and the hour, I should say it is the ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... should enable us to rise into and sail through the air, seems often to have occupied the attention of mankind, even from remote times, but it was never realised until within the last sixty or seventy years. The first public ascent of a fire-balloon in France, in 1783, led to an experiment on the part of Joseph Mongolfier. He constructed a balloon of linen, lined with paper, which, when inflated by means of burning chopped straw and coal, was found to be ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... few of the peculiarities of the London multitude, when no riot, no execution, no murder, no balloon, disturbs the even current of their thoughts. These are the whimseys of the mass - the harmless follies by which they unconsciously endeavour to lighten the load of care which presses upon their existence. The wise man, even though he smile at ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... had been good originally, and age had improved it. Used as he was to the appalling balloon juice sold in the drinking dens of the "Barbary coast" at San Francisco, or the public-houses of the docks, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... left for this big push we had a most interesting fight between a fleet of German planes and a French observation balloon, right over our heads. We saw five planes circle over our town, then put on, what we thought afterwards, a sham fight. One of them, after many fancy stunts, headed right for the balloon. They were all painted with ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... in water if its gravity is less than that of water; for example, wood floats for this reason in water, and a balloon ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... forms, a comparatively small and simple one, is drawn for us in Plate M. It will be seen that we have here a shape roughly representing that of a balloon, having a scalloped outline consisting of a double violet line. Within that there is an arrangement of variously-coloured lines moving almost parallel with this outline; and then another somewhat ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... celebrated French aeronaut, inventor of the parachute; he fell from his balloon and was killed ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... waterfall having the "exact appearance of water." More daring efforts were to come later, such as the allegorical transparency of the Prince of Wales leaning against a horse held by Britannia, a Submarine Cavern, a Hermit's Cottage, and balloon ascents. The most glorious of these attractions presented a sordid sight by daylight, but in the dim light of the countless lamps hung in the trees at night passed muster with ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... ascended with some difficulty, accompanied by a Mr. Sheldon, a surgeon, whom he landed at Sunbury, from whence Blanchard proceeded in his balloon to Romsey, in Hampshire, where he came down in safety, after having been between three and ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... I, sittin' up, "did you ever pause to excogitate that if all the hot air you is dispensin' was to be collected together it would fill a balloon big enough to waft you and me over that Bullyvard of Palms to yonder gin mill on ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... front of him, who has stopped dead at the sound. A strange tingling feeling goes up his spine. There is a hush! No one speaks. The whole essence of vitality strains to listen. A faint whir crescendoes rapidly into the shrill whoop of a steam-siren, and a great balloon-shaped cloud of smoke and dust has already arisen from amidst the marching mass of men ahead. There is no sign whence came the shot. Nothing can be more peaceful-looking than the shoulders of these hills lying bathed in the quiet morning light. There ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... troubles, so when Martin proposed to show me over the ship, away I went with him to look at the theodolites and chronometers and sextants, and sledges and skis, and the aeronautic outfit and the captive balloon, and the double-barrelled guns, and the place where they kept the petroleum and the gun cotton for blasting the ice, and the hold forward for the men's provisions in hermetically-sealed tins, and the hold aft for the dried fish and biscuit that were the food ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... talk as they will Of their steam-engine skill, But, as sure as the sun shines at noon, Straps, boilers, and springs Are a wagon to wings, Compared with the air-balloon. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... swallow, of course; he had to gulp desperately, to keep from being choked; and pretty soon the water filled him up, and then began the most fearful agony he had yet endured. It was like the pain of the ether-gas, only infinitely worse. He was blown out like a balloon; his insides were about to burst; his whole body was one sore boil—and Connor, sitting on his stomach, sat a little harder now and then, to make sure the water got jostled into place. Jimmie could not scream, but his face turned purple and the cords stood ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... United States had possessed in | |1898 a single dirigible balloon, even of | |the size of the one now at Fort Myer, | |Virginia, which cost less than $10,000, | |the American army and navy would not have| |long remained in doubt of the presence of| |Cervera's fleet in Santiago harbor." | | | |This statement was ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... alone and has already thrown down over four bushels of cobs. Even if the corn holds out there is still danger that the boy will reach a height where he will be frozen to death. There is some talk of attempting his rescue with a balloon.—Topeka Capital. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... in short, quick leaps. He knew he was the quicker, and the knowledge made him frolicsome. He flapped at his naked body as he ran, as if he had no joints, swayed from side to side like a balloon, pranced and stamped on the ground, and then darted on again. Then the young firs closed round them again, only the movement of their tops showing where the boys ran, farther and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... The balloon men, the penny whistle and pop gun dealers frequent the upper streets, where they are apt to be seen by children. The lame soldier sets up his stand anywhere, and deals principally in shoe strings, neckties, or in books and papers that no one ever reads. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... It is certain acid fruits will cause distress if you do not chew them to a cream. I would swell up like a toad if I ate only one apple hurriedly. I don't dare think what might happen to me if I ate three or four in that way. I might possibly find myself transformed into a human balloon and float away into space. But I don't eat apples that way—not now. Some who read these pages may think it very strange, yet it is quite true that there really are persons suffering with "nerves" who have not gumption enough to follow this simple rule of chewing all ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... along the road through Barnet, but also through Edgware and Waltham Abbey, and along the roads eastward to Southend and Shoeburyness, and south of the Thames to Deal and Broadstairs, poured the same frantic rout. If one could have hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives, each dot a human agony of terror and physical ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... things!" cried Mrs. No-Tail. "That chocolate must have disappeared. It must have gone up like a balloon. I will have to buy some more of you, and put that on." Then she went over and looked at the cake, and she wondered at the queer scratches in the top, just as if a cat had clawed off the chocolate. But there ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... over in Bohemia, endeavoring to bring Army matters to a footing; and is no doubt shocked to find them still in such backwardness, with a Friedrich at hand. The Kaiser's Letter, we perceive, is pilot-balloon to the Kaunitz episcopal Document, and to an actual meeting of Prussian and Austrian Ministers on the Bavarian point; and had been seen to be a salutary measure by an Austria in alarm. It asks, as the Kaunitz Memorial will, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... gun as it spoke to the enemy, and such a sight as their shooting the world has possibly never witnessed. Not a shell was wasted; cool as if on the decks of a pleasure yacht our tars moved through the fight, obeying orders with smiling alacrity. Whenever the signal came from the balloon above us that the enemy were moving behind their lines, the sailors sent a message from England into their midst, and the name of the messenger was Destruction; and when, at 1.30 p.m. of Tuesday, we drew off to Modder ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... water because it is lighter than water; iron sinks because it is heavier; but a substance which possessed exactly the specific gravity of water would neither float nor sink, but would remain suspended in the water like a balloon in midair. Taken, then, a liquid which is heavy—the most convenient is methylene iodide, whose specific gravity is 3.3—a fragment of zircon will sink in this, and a fragment of tourmaline will float, but a fragment of the mineral augite, whose specific gravity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... in detail from the 'Aurora' in January 1913 and found to be an island, which was named Drygalski Island, for it is evidently the ice-covered "high-land" observed by Professor Drygalski (German Expedition, 1902) from his balloon.—ED. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... appearance of an apple. She was sunk in snow to some planks above the garboard-streak, but her lines forward were fine, making her almost wedge-shaped, though the flair of her bows was great, so that she swelled up like a balloon to the catheads. She had something of the look of the barca-longas of half a century ago—that is, half a century ago from the date of my adventure; but that which, in sober truth, a man would have taken her to be ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... followed by a second and then a third, at intervals during which you might have counted ten, and I became sensible of a strange sickening motion, which lasted about twenty or thirty moments, such as might be experienced by one swiftly descending in a balloon, or in falling from a height whilst ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... marble Court of the Lions in Granada's Alhambra: let me swing it on a high bluff of the Mississippi—one swing in the pure ether for every swing over the green grass; or let me oscillate in it beneath the cool dome of St. Peter's; or drop me in it, as in a balloon, from the zenith, with the whole firmament to rock and expatiate in; and I would not exchange my coarse canvas hammock for the grand state-bed, like a stately coach-and-four, in which they tuck in a king when he passes a night ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... you know, Sig-nor Garlic," he calmly observed. "If I thought you did I'd smack you on both wrists. Why, you little red balloon, I ain't afraid of any mutt on earth that carries a knife like that, as long as I got my back to ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... about sessiges: Folks wun't take a bond ez a basis to trade on, Without nosin' round to find out wut it's made on, An' the thought more an' more thru the public min' crosses Thet our Treshry hez gut 'mos' too many dead hosses. Wut's called credit, you see, is some like a balloon, Thet looks while it's up 'most ez harnsome 'z a moon, But once git a leak in 't an' wut looked so grand Caves righ' down in a jiffy ez flat ez your hand. Now the world is a dreffle mean place, for our sins, Where ther' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... matter? Let those who have made the mistake learn their error by knocking against the world. Why need I bother about their plight? For the present I find it wearisome to keep Bimala soaring much longer, like a captive balloon, in regions ethereal. I had better get quite through with the ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... about with unusual alacrity. By half-past nine dressed-up children were flitting along the side streets hurrying their seniors. On the main thoroughfare flags were flying, and the streams of strangers that had been flowing into town were eddying at the street corners. The balloon-vender wormed his way through the buzzing crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail behind him. The bark of the fakir rasped the tightening nerves of the town. Everywhere was hubbub; everywhere was the dusty, heated air of the ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... time Morey had explained the changes to Fuller, Arcot had the suit on, and was floating five or six feet in the air, like a grotesque captive balloon. ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... always wanted to travel and see the world, but he did not know how to start. Until, all of a sudden, a diamond ring was hidden in his leg and a balloon carried him off ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... was shouted. The whole regiment rushed for cover to a hedge which ran by the roadside. I naturally followed. My friend told me that the Germans had sent up an observation balloon, so we dare not advance until nightfall, or they would be sure to see us and begin shelling our column before we arrived at the trenches. In the rain we sat huddled close together. Notwithstanding the uncomfortable ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... night or two since that I drove myself through the upper regions in a balloon and pair, with the greatest ease and security. Having finished the tour I intended, I made a short turn, and with one flourish of my whip, descended; my horses prancing and curvetting with an infinite share of spirit, but without the least ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... then rots. The spirit is raised by any great and unselfish emotion. There is buoyancy and glad consciousness of elevation in all the self-sacrifice of love, which dilates and lifts the spirit as the light gas smoothes out the limp folds of silk in a balloon, and sends it heavenwards, a full sphere. Only service or surrender, which is thus cheerful because it is the natural expression of love, is true service in God's sight. Whosoever, then, had his spirit raised and made buoyant by a great glad ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... he's scared," said the agent; "so would you be if they was to put you in some kind of a whale of a balloon an' ship you in a ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... transitively associated by any links whatever, but immanently intertwisted, indwelling in the idea. Therefore it happened that a man, however heartsick of this tumid, bladdery delusion, although to him it was a balloon, by science punctured, lacerated, collapsing, trailed through ditch and mud under the rough handling and the fearful realities of life, yet he durst not avow his private feelings. That would have been even worse than with us: it would have been to proclaim virtue and ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... furrow was traced; thenceforth Fabre never ceased to multiply his pin-pricks in "the vast and luminous balloon of transformism (evolution), in order to empty it and expose it in all its inanity." (9/12.) By no means the least original feature of his work is this passionate and incisive argument, in which, with a remarkable power of dialectic, and at times in a tone of lively banter, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... to counteract, so far as we can, the operation of one physical or organic law by employing the agency of another, as in the appliances of Mechanics, the experiments of Chemistry, and the art of Navigation. When the aeronaut inflates his balloon with a gas specifically lighter than atmospheric air, or the ship-builder constructs vessels of wood or iron, so that when filled with air they shall be lighter than water, and float with their cargo on its surface, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... work," he went on, desperately, "or else we might as well go home. I guess I'm the whole show, for a little while, at least, as the feller said when he fell out o' the balloon." The house ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... it blowing!" said the small boy in freckles, indifferent to his nurse's lamentations of farewell. "Look at Nannie's skirts, like a balloon. . . ." ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... make sure, and a little blue ball puffed out like a child's balloon, burst, and dissipated itself in a thin, trailing ribbon, which the wind caught and swept to nothing. At the same time something spatted into the trail ahead of him, sending up a little ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... would reap their monthly harvest. They were all ready to start off anywhere at a moment's notice; but apart from them and their clamour, reposed a row of camels previously engaged, free, therefore, to enjoy themselves until after dinner. As we gazed down as if from a captive balloon, at the line of sitting forms, they looked immense, like giant, newborn birds, with their huge egg-shaped bodies and thin necks. Along the arboured road from Cairo, flashed motor-car after motor-car, their lights winking in and out between the dark trees, now blazing, now ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... my LEECH—a leech Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings, 185 Capaciously expatiative, which make His little body like a red balloon, As full of blood as that of hydrogen, Sucked from men's hearts; insatiably he sucks And clings and pulls—a horse-leech, whose deep maw 190 The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill, And who, till full, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley |
