"Contrivance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hound to a page or a horse-boy, and only released at night when he returned to his evening orgies. The fierce Campbells were not men to bear tamely these outrages from a drunken savage on the sister of their chief, and Sussex conceived that if the Scots, by any contrivance, were separated from Shane, they might be used as a whip ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... rage, and fell upon all whom they met, and actually slew several men. Tidings came to the theater, and the word was spread from rank to rank among the people that the emperor was slain. The people did not, however, at first, believe the story. They supposed that the report was a cunning contrivance of the emperor himself, intended to entrap them into some expression of pleasure and gratification, on their part, at his death, in order to give him an excuse for inflicting some cruel punishment upon them. The noise and tumult in the streets soon convinced them, however, that something ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... his own brain and hand that this Holy Ghost, formally the most nebulous person in the Trinity, and now become its sole survivor as it has always been its real Unity, can help him in any way. And so, if the Superman is to come, he must be born of Woman by Man's intentional and well-considered contrivance. Conviction of this will smash everything that opposes it. Even Property and Marriage, which laugh at the laborer's petty complaint that he is defrauded of "surplus value," and at the domestic ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... credit and praise should be awarded to Chief Engineer William W. W. Wood, of the navy, to whose inventive abilities and experience in submarine warfare we owe the contrivance of the torpedo and the successful arrangement by which it is handled and exploded. The one fired by Lieutenant Cushing contained but fifty pounds of powder; but it did its work to a charm. There was no chance of its failing in his hands. The entire arrangement is exceedingly ingenious, ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... bell rang, the stage-plank; was hauled in, and the vessel proceeded up the river. The children and the slaves were not much more at ease after finding out that this monster was a creature of human contrivance than they were the night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss, and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The shivering of the boat under the beating ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... always painted standing, and never used a stick for resting his hand on; for such was his accuracy of eye, and steadiness of nerve, that he could introduce the most delicate touches, or the almost mechanical regularity of line, without aid, or other contrivance than fair off-hand dexterity. He remained in his painting-room till a little after five o'clock, when he walked home, and dined at six.... From one who knew him in his youthful days, and sat to him when he rose in fame, I have this description of his way of going to work. "He ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... contemptible to be angry with.—But I must return to the castle of Ham, to tell you what a dreadful black-hold there is in that tower; it is a trap called by the French des Obliettes, of so horrible a contrivance, that when the prisoners are to suffer in it, the mechanical powers are so constructed, as to render it impossible to be again opened, nor would it signify, but to see the body molue, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... I, indeed, the hero of the haunted room? Is there really a spell laid upon me, or is this all some contrivance of mine host, to raise a laugh at my expense? The idea of being hag-ridden by my own fancy all night, and then bantered on my haggard looks the next day was intolerable; but the very idea was sufficient to produce the effect, and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... exalted be He!) of His grace made the way easy to him and guided him into the right road, so that he reached his own land and came upon his father's capital, after he had despaired of life. Now all this befel by the contrivance of the Wazir, who travelled with him, to the end that he might cause him to perish on the way; but Almighty Allah succoured him. "And this" (said the damsel) "have I told thee, O King, that thou mayst know that wicked Wazirs deal not honestly by nor counsel with sincere intent their Kings; wherefore ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... not going to trust ourselves to any such harem-scarem contrivance as this. We are going up ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... sudden illness, and that he had something important to disclose to me. I bade my gentlemen, save one, proceed to Bleiberg. My aide and I entered the carriage which was to convey us to the castle. We never reached it. On the road we fell into an ambush, a contrivance of Madame's. I was brought to the chateau. Whatever happened to Hofer, my aide, I do not know. Doubtless he is dead. But Madame shall pay, both in pride and wealth. I will lay waste this duchy of hers, though in the end the emperor crush me. Let ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... the dinner, and the poor creature was cruelly loaded with various kinds of iron machines; she had one particularly on her head, which locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak; and could not eat nor drink. I was much astonished and shocked at this contrivance, which I afterwards learned was called the iron muzzle. Soon after I had a fan put into my hand, to fan the gentleman while he slept; and so I did indeed with great fear. While he was fast asleep I indulged myself a great deal in looking about the room, which to me appeared ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... learned that their guest was really hungry, Larry immediately started to get something going. He drew out a little square black tin box; this, on being opened disclosed a brass contrivance which turned out to be a German Jewel kerosene gas stove. This was quickly started, and began a cheery song, as though inviting a kettle to ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... a contrivance of the priests, to increase their power and wealth. There was always a temple built near, with priests and priestesses; the questions were put through them; and they would not ask them except on great occasions, or for people of consequence, who could pay them well, by making splendid ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... unnoticed, with the servants and the villagers who had crowded about the house and lodges, and all he heard confirmed him in his belief that the worst had happened, that Lionel Dale had, indeed, come by his death, either through the successful contrivance of Carrington, or by an extraordinary accident, coincident with his enemy's fell designs. Mr. Larkspur asked a great many questions of several persons that night, and as talking to a stranger helped the watchers and loiterers over ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... finesse, invention, stratagem, blind, cunning, fraud, machination, subterfuge, cheat, device, guile, maneuver, trick, contrivance, dodge, imposture, ruse, wile. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... assertions with contempt, as usual; I ventured to tell him that I had the evening before supped with M. Begouen, one of the deputies, who said that there were very respectable persons who thought that this horrible contrivance had been proposed without the King's knowledge. "Then," said his Majesty, "as the idea of such an atrocity was not revolting to so worthy a man as M. Begouen, I will order the chamber to be examined early to-morrow morning." In fact, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... stretched in close parallel lines. By varying the colour of the threads that are thus manipulated upon the warp, patterns of any degree of complexity can be built up directly by hand, and without the assistance of any further mechanical contrivance. The peculiarity of this ancient weaving is that the patterns are frequently woven upon the warp-threads of some fabric, from which the weft either has been removed, or, what is perhaps more probable, been purposely left out when the material was made, to leave space for this decorative ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... the least frightened. I crept cautiously along the floor, on tip-toe, to examine the contrivance. A hollow shaft of light wood, a sort of big wooden pipe, led down through the floor, probably to the ground-floor or basement, much as a mast goes down through a ship's decks into the hold. It was slowly revolving, being worked by some simple, not very strong ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... stories high, with a funny red mansard roof of oval slates. The interior was cut up into innumerable tiny rooms, some of them so small as to be hardly better than sleeping closets. In the back yard was a contrivance for pumping water from the cistern that interested McTeague at once. It was a dog-wheel, a huge revolving box in which the unhappy black greyhound spent most of his waking hours. It was his kennel; he slept ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Katherine. "I call it my happiness skirt, and I wear it only when I feel happy. To-day the winter has somehow got into my bones or up in my head, and I feel as light-hearted and reckless as if I had been having oxygen pumped into me by a special contrivance; so plainly this is the proper time for my ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... candle, and saw how that part of the wall against his friend's right side slowly turned into the dark as the fourth brick was pressed, and a little brick-lined passage appeared beyond. Mr. Buxton edged himself sideways into the passage, and then stood nearly upright. It was an excellent contrivance. Even if the searchers should find the chamber beneath the stairs, which was unlikely, they would never suspect that it was only a blind to a passage beyond. The door into the passage consisted of a strong oaken door disguised on the outside by a facing of brick-slabs; ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... adding with an air of gracious humility, "So, Senor Ludwig, you, too, have beaten me! Beaten us all! You've set us on the right trail now; one which, if I mistake not, will conduct us to the end of our journey, without need of sunshine, or any other contrivance." ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... 307. He was the son of Amyntor. Having engaged in an intrigue, by the contrivance of his mother, with his father's mistress, he fled to the court of Peleus, king of Thessaly, who entrusted to him the education of Achilles, and the command of the Dolopians. He attended his pupil to the Trojan war, and became blind in his ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... to rare exploits. He had thus discovered in himself a sharp eye for the mystery of mechanics, and had invented an improvement in the cotton-spinning process which was now largely used and was known by his name. You might have seen it in the newspapers in connection with this fruitful contrivance; assurance of which he had given to Isabel by showing her in the columns of the New York Interviewer an exhaustive article on the Goodwood patent—an article not prepared by Miss Stackpole, friendly as she had proved herself ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... front of the cottage, fastened to a tree on the bank, was a beautifully-modelled sail-boat, which was worthy to rank with the miniature yachts of our large cities. She was schooner-rigged, with a small cabin forward. Her masts, by an ingenious contrivance, could be lowered down aft, and, by means of a rope attached to the fore-top, and running through a block on the bowsprit, could be instantly restored to their original upright position. This arrangement the owner found necessary, on account of the overhanging trees, which nearly ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... all natural laws clamped its curious hold upon his family and even upon himself. Eliza Marshall had almost come to regard him as she regarded his business: each was a respectable and estimable abstraction which held its own without too direct a heed from her; each an admirable contrivance that had accomplished its purposes so long and with so trustworthy a regularity that the thought of hitch, lapse, failure never presented itself as a really tangible consideration. Each day he grew ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Dussardier, he experienced nevertheless that admiration which is inspired by every man who sacrifices himself for an idea. He said to himself that, if he had helped this man, he would not be in his present position; and the two friends anxiously sought to devise some contrivance whereby they could set ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... rooms thus named were not intended for bathing, but simply to preserve two intermediate gradations of temperature, between the burning heat of the caldarium or laconicum and the open air. In fact, no trace of any contrivance for the introduction or reception of water has been found in No. 22. It was simply a cold chamber, cella frigidaria. Nor was the little chamber, 23, large enough to receive conveniently a bathing vessel; but seats of wood were found there for the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... career. And in the midst of so many antagonistic interests, he alone remained unshaken and unappalled, his oratory rendering him still the mouth-piece of the Revolution, his duplicity its diplomatist, and his intellectual contrivance its statesman. Nor was he satisfied with these successes; he sought others, and was equally fortunate. Profligacy and legislation equally divided his enthusiasm between them, and proved him to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Imagine the future of music if every piece were to be played in the selfsame way by every player like a series of ordinary piano playing machines. The remarkable apparatus for recording the playing of virtuosos, and then reproducing it through a mechanical contrivance, is somewhat of a revelation to the pianist who tries it for the first time. In the records of the playing of artists whose interpretations are perfectly familiar to me, there still remain unquestioned marks of ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... the well-known door. A voice—of another sweetness—cried 'Come!' and instantly he had the sensation that his touch on the handle had launched upon him, as by some elaborate electric contrivance, a tall and beautiful American, a rustling tea-gown, a shimmer of rings, a reek of patchouli, and a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... conceive how you all stow yourselves in that little wreck of a mansion. Please to write over, in some way, the erased part of your letter. You must be very destitute of wit and contrivance. No essence in Washington. I still prefer musk, but not to be had. One would think you had suffered some injury from perfumes. Your message and commission to Mrs. Madison will be delivered. My mode of life, establishment, &c., are the same as last year, except that I bought a chariot, having some ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... took place. I added, what indeed was the fact, that the ball had been prepared for the verses, and that it was only for the appropriateness of their application that the First Consul had pressed her to dance. He adopted this strange contrivance for contradicting an article which appeared in an English journal announcing that Hortense was delivered. Bonaparte was highly indignant at that premature announcement, which he clearly saw was made ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... semi-consciousness, in an ill-smelling place. His first impulse was to raise his hands to his aching head, but he could not do this on account of two iron bands that held his wrists to a stanchion. His legs, too, he next became vaguely aware, were fastened by a similar contrivance to the deck. He closed his eyes, and leaned back; the throbbings seemed to beat on his brain like the angry surf, smiting harder and harder until nature at length came to his relief and ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... majesty will pardon me for the freedom with which I have given my sentiments and advice; which I should not have done, had not your majesty commanded it, and had I not been certain that your peace is much disturbed by the contrivance of that turbulent man. I shall only add that I will dispose several whom I know to wish him well to solicit for his establishment in power, that you may seem to yield to their entreaties, and the finesse be less liable ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... surround—at least eighteen inches in solid thickness where his arm held it. Yet the stone did move, and had been moved. The matter became now more incomprehensible than ever. It could be moved. It had been moved, yet there was a secret contrivance here into ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... not the dog. And more, my Lord," she continued, with vehemence equal to his own, "I should be glad if you would explain how you came into possession of this dog. A dog so nearly resembling my dog—and yet not my dog—could not be found in a moment nor without some foul contrivance." ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... completed, proved to be a hybrid contrivance with two large wheels. The wheels had a cumbersome appearance, owing to the double rims, which were tired with barrel-staves cut in two and mailed crosswise to prevent sinking into the sand. The top of the cart was a platform eight feet long and four wide, with two handles projecting at each ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... their best and ablest men. The general theory with many Indians was, that the written speech of the white man was one of the mysterious gifts of the Great Spirit. Se-quo-yah boldly avowed it to be a mere ingenious contrivance that the red man could master, if he ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... "A very wonderful contrivance, and one that requires some skill to operate. From lack of experience, I cannot hope to be of much practical assistance at first, but possibly a theoretical knowledge of the laws and principles governing ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... affair, hanging feebly between two grandfatherly old posts, which hypocritically tried to maintain an air of solidity, though perfectly aware that they were wellnigh rotted away at the base. The action of this gate was assisted—or more correctly encumbered—by the contrivance of a sliding ball and chain, creating a most dismal clatter and flap as often as it was opened. The white-washed picket fence, scaled and patched by the weather, kept the posts in excellent countenance; ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... fair weather were taken. Divers also swam in under water from the harbour, dragging by a cord in skins poppyseed mixed with honey, and bruised linseed; these at first escaped notice, but afterwards a look-out was kept for them. In short, both sides tried every possible contrivance, the one to throw in provisions, and the other to ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... attached. Several individuals had their peduncles imbedded in the same ball, "which floated like a cork on the water." As this species grows into an unusually bulky animal, we here see a beautiful and unique contrivance, in the cement forming a vesicular membranous mass, serving as a buoy to float the individuals, which, when young and light, were supported on the small objects to which they originally had been cemented in the ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... Dempster, to buy presents. She came in her carriage, with the driver and another chap in regimentals on the front seat, outside, and a great white bear-skin inside that just swallowed us up to the waist, as if we had settled down in a snow-bank of fur. Under that was a muff for your feet, and some contrivance that must have been a foot-stove hid away, for it ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... my elbow, upon the table, lay the knife, a heavy, clumsy contrivance I had bought to use in my carpentry, and I now, mechanically, picked it up. As I did so the light gleamed evilly upon its ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... down his baskets, Jean unwinds his tackle. This is very primitive—a switch, with a piece of thread and a bent pin at the end of it. Jean supplied the rod, Jeanne gave the line and the hook; so the tackle is the common property of brother and sister. Both want it all to themselves, and this simple contrivance, only meant to do mischief to the fishes, becomes the cause of domestic broils and a rain of blows by the peaceful riverside. Brother and sister fight for the free use of the rod and line. Jean's ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... clean already; and the Captain being an orderly man, and accustomed to make things ship-shape, converted the bed into a couch, by covering it all over with a clean white drapery. By a similar contrivance, the Captain converted the little dressing-table into a species of altar, on which he set forth two silver teaspoons, a flower-pot, a telescope, his celebrated watch, a pocket-comb, and a song-book, as a small collection of rarities, that made ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... traveller had but one rough route from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. You can now go a third of the distance by railroad, and, getting into a canal-boat, are dragged over the Alleghany mountains, through a series of locks not to be surpassed for strength or ingenuity of contrivance. ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... beeswax and rosin, being careful not to have the fire too hot. Add the charcoal, stirring constantly, and then add the oil. Mould into bricks by pouring into greased pans. When desiring to use break off a few lumps and melt in such a contrivance as is shown in the plate of grafting tools. The wax must be quite ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... mechanical and chemical powers that it would find and assimilate the material to supply its own waste, and then by a further evolution of internal molecular movements reproduce itself by some process of fission or budding. This last stage having been reached, either by man's contrivance or as an unforeseen result, one sees that the process of natural selection must drive men altogether out of the field; for they will long before have begun to sink into the miserable condition of those unhappy characters in fable who, having demons or djinns at their beck, and being ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the city the plateau falls off abruptly toward the river. Here the water of the Tigris is raised by a contrivance, which makes use of a high kind of derrick, leathern hose, and a rope which is pulled by a horse. The long nozzle of the hose empties into huge brick basins whence the water is distributed over fields and gardens. But only ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... colour, like a piece of pottery. He was sickly, thin, and short, with wrists like a boy of ten. But from that debile body there issued a bullying voice, tremendously loud, harsh and resonant, as if produced by some powerful mechanical contrivance in the nature of a fog-horn. I do not know what he did with it in the private life of his home, but in the larger sphere of business it presented the advantage of overcoming arguments without the slightest mental effort, by the mere volume of sound. We had had several passages of arms. It took me ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... raft of reeds or bamboo; on which is erected an apparatus not unlike the mast and yard of a square-rigged ship. To one end of the yard is attached a net which may be raised from and lowered into the water. This contrivance is called by the natives timba. See full description of the salambao, and of other native modes of fishing, in Zuniga's Estadismo (Retana's ed.), i, pp. 199, 200; and illustration of this apparatus in F. Jagor's Travels in the Philippines ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... readers may not know what the contrivance known as a "tic-tac" is like. Those of you who have made them, of course, do not need to be told. If you ever put them on any person's window, I hope you selected a house where there were only boys and girls or young people ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... a sufficient number of persons can be found ready to undertake the journey at the same time—until the flock of sheep is big enough to fancy itself a match for wolves. They could not, I think, really secure themselves against any serious danger by this contrivance, for though they have arms, they are so little accustomed to use them, and so utterly unorganised, that they never could make good their resistance to robbers of the slightest respectability. It is not of the Bedouins that such travellers are afraid, for the safe conduct granted by the chief of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... for success on their numbers, the Persians did not wholly despise the use of contrivance and stratagem. At Arbela, Darius Codomannus had spiked balls strewn over the ground where he expected the Greek cavalry to make its attacks. [PLATE XXX., Fig. 5]; and, at Sardis, Cyrus obtained his victory over the Lydian horse by frightening them with the grotesque and unfamiliar ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... his head if he was silly enough to put them on. And a helmet of invisibility! How could a helmet make him invisible, unless it were big enough for him to hide under it? And an enchanted wallet! What sort of a contrivance may that be, I wonder? No, no, good stranger! we can tell you nothing of these marvelous things. You have two eyes of your own and we have but a single one amongst us three. You can find out such wonders better than three ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... are in the tomb, examine this spot. There is probably some spring or mechanical contrivance for opening the receptacle. What it may be, there is no use guessing. You will know what best to do, when you are on ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... done; the ship remained, and it was possible one or other might come into the river that might be acquainted with her, and so discover the roguery. But Teach thought of a contrivance to prevent this, for, upon a pretence that she was leaky, and that she might sink, and so stop up the mouth of the inlet or cove where she lay, he obtained an order from the governor to bring her out into ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... went on down the aisle. Presently I heard the tinkle of a bell from the box which he had unlocked. Following the example of others around me, I took from it a sort of two-pronged fork with the tines spread in the similitude of a chicken's wishbone. This contrivance, which was attached to the side of the car by a cord, I proceeded to apply to my ears, as I ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... particular," Dundee said. "But I grant it's a good one, provided Dr. Price's autopsy bears you out as to the course of the bullet, and that Carraway finds Sprague's fingerprints on that contrivance for raising the ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... knowledge of South America was limited, and he viewed the sights with a keener interest than he does today. While he was waiting for the train in which he was to travel to Barranquilla, two peons went by with a wheelbarrow minus the wheel. It was a contrivance with handles at both ends, and it required the services of two men ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... he got workmen and began to build the court. At the end of the day he had the workmen put a great stone on top of the work. When the great stone was raised up, the tailor put some sort of contrivance under it, that he might be able to throw it down as soon as the giant would come as far as it. The workpeople went home then, and the tailor went in hiding behind the ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... means of escape from the consequences of his fall. He considered, now, however, that it was useless to think of such a possibility. His education had been that success for that mighty blue machine was certain; that it would make victories as a contrivance turns out buttons. He presently discarded all his speculations in the other direction. He returned to the creed ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... brothers, and she had scarcely enough to pay her debts; while the rebukes were renewed from the mouths of her brothers, one of whom, being civil lieutenant, had the power to separate her again from her lover. This must be prevented. Lachaussee left the service of Sainte-Croix, and by a contrivance of the marquise was installed three months later as servant of the elder brother, who lived with the civil lieutenant. The poison to be used on this occasion was not so swift as the one taken by M. d'Aubray so violent a death happening so ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and redundance of fancy, than his riper judgement would have allowed. But for the main of it I will affirm, that it is a better instance and beginning of a divine poem, than ever I yet saw in any language. The contrivance is perfectly ancient, which is certainly the true form of an heroic poem, and such as was never yet done by any new devices of modern wits. The subject was truly divine, even according to God's own heart. The matters of his invention, all the treasures of knowledge and histories of the bible. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... banners of the several Knights in being, which hang up over the stalls. And so to other discourse very pretty, about the Order. Was shown where the late King is buried, and King Henry the Eighth, and my Lady Seymour. This being done, to the King's house, and to observe the neatness and contrivance of the house and gates: it is the most romantique castle that is in the world. But, Lord! the prospect that is in the balcone in the Queene's lodgings, and the terrace and walk, are strange things to consider, being the best in the world, sure; and so giving a ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... ancestral portraits; but he was enamoured of Paula to weakness. Perhaps the composition of his love would hardly bear looking into, but it was recklessly frank and not quite mercenary. His photographic scheme was nothing worse than a lover's not too scrupulous contrivance. After the refusal of his request to copy her picture he fumed and fretted at the prospect of Somerset's return before any impression had been made on her heart by himself; he swore at Dare, and asked him hotly why he had dragged him into such ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... and became more elaborate and efficient. He sheltered his heat in houses and made his way easier by paths and roads. He complicated his social relationships and increased his efficiency by the division of labour. He began to store up knowledge. Contrivance followed contrivance, each making it possible for a man to do more. Always down the lengthening record, save for a set-back ever and again, he is doing more.... A quarter of a million years ago the utmost man was a savage, a being ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... smoked. With the view of guarding against this inconvenience before the winter should have set in, I summoned the fumiste of the establishment, who, after entering into details and fixing upon the remedy,—some contrivance on the roof in the nature of a hooded chimney-pot,—observed that the expense, amounting to a hundred francs or so, was one of those which are chargeable to the landlord, that is to say, in this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... combination of rotten wood and musty straw and ragged garments that it was compelled to show itself a man, in spite of the reality of things; so it stepped into the bar of sunshine. There it stood, poor devil of a contrivance that it was, with only the thinnest vesture of human similitude about it, through which was evident the stiff, rickety, incongruous, faded, tattered, good-for-nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... of the number of Chinamen who persisted in committing suicide by placing themselves in front of the train as a protest—and a most effective protest, it must be admitted—against the introduction into their country of this contrivance of the "foreign devils." The contrast in the manner in which the introduction of railways was received in China and Japan respectively is, I think, characteristic of the difference in the disposition and mental attitude of the people of ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... issue, Wedderburn made it the occasion for delivering, much to the delight of the Tory lords present, a long and utterly unjustified tirade against Franklin. With thunderous voice and violent beating of his fist on the cushion before him, he denounced Franklin as the "prime mover of this whole contrivance against his majesty's two governors." Although the letters had been given to Franklin for the express purpose of having them conveyed to America, Wedderburn accused him of base treachery; turning to the committee he said: "I hope, my Lords, you will mark and brand the man, for the honor ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... thus full of fears, doubts, misgivings, whence came the fierce and cruel courage with which he dominated his liege burghers and harassed the country round about for a hundred leagues? The cunning of a weak man? Say, rather, the contrivance of a strong servant to hide the frailty of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the pistol-shot and the scream of the woman have been heard. All eyes turn to Randolph. He stands in the shadow of the mechanical contrivance on which he has been illustrating his points; leans for support on it. He essays to speak, the muscles of his face work, but no sound comes. Only after a time is he able to gasp: "Did you hear something—from below?" They answer "yes" in chorus; then ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... contrive an instrument with properties similar to the one of which he had been informed; and in the following words describes the process of reasoning by which he arrived at a successful result: 'I argued in the following manner. The contrivance consists either of one glass or of more—one is not sufficient, since it must be either convex, concave, or plane. The last does not produce any sensible alteration in objects; the concave diminishes them. It is true that the convex ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... Then they resolved to go for their comrades and return with them to continue their labours at what they named Grizzly Bear Gulch. As Watty was still unable to walk without great pain, they made a sort of litter of a blanket between two poles. In this contrivance they carried him, with their gold and their other belongings, back to the ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... joy, uttered by outbursts of harmony, shall wake the amphitheatre of the skies with impassioned hallelujahs,—who can as yet tell! But it must be that each soul in heaven being for ever full of love, will for ever be full of praise. Every new sight of grandeur or of beauty, and every new contrivance of the Creator's wisdom or power, will but prompt the beholder to praise the wondrous Creator. Every intellectual height reached in the infinite progress of the soul, onward and upward, must awe it into a profounder sense of the glory of the great Intelligence. Every active pursuit will swell the ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... if such a proverb existed. Crawling behind an infirm horse, a metropolitan hackney carriage drew up on wobbly wheels and with a maimed driver on the box. This last peculiarity caused some embarrassment. Catching sight of a hooked iron contrivance protruding from the left sleeve of the man's coat, Mrs Verloc's mother lost suddenly the heroic courage of these days. She really couldn't trust herself. "What do you think, Winnie?" She hung back. The passionate expostulations of the big-faced cabman seemed to be squeezed out of a blocked ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... and publisher. Who knows better than I that your representative author face to face with your representative publisher was, is, and ever will be, at a ludicrous disadvantage? And there is no reason in the nature and the decency of things why this wrong should not by some contrivance be remedied. A big, blusterous, genial brute of a Trollope could very fairly hold his own, and exact at all events an acceptable share in the profits of his work. A shrewd and vigorous man of business such as Dickens, aided by a lawyer who was his devoted friend, could do even ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... boon she could obtain, by dint of the most woful supplication, was a promise to defer the execution of his baleful purpose for the space of four-and-twenty hours, during which she hoped Heaven would compassionate her sufferings, and inspire her with some contrivance for their mutual relief. Thus he yielded to her fervent request, rather with a view to calm the present transports of her sorrow, than with any expectation of seeing himself redeemed from his fate ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... instant the teeth struck him he gave a jump which lifted the trap off the twig platform, and it immediately sank in the deep water and soon drowned him; for the water-rat, though continually diving, can only stay a short time under water. It proved a fatal contrivance, chiefly, as was supposed, because the gin, being just under the water, could not be smelt. No fewer than eleven rats were thus captured in succession at the mouth of one hole. Altogether 150 were taken in the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... refuse of worked-out cities and exhausted civilizations, among the bones of the dead. In the case of the Congress meetings, the only notable fact is that the priests of the altar are British, not Buddhist, Jain or Brahminical, and that the whole thing is a British contrivance kept alive by the efforts of Messrs. Hume, Eardley, Norton, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... white-washed and thatched; then two-storied, white-washed and slated, all alike lying under a blue canopy of fragrant peat smoke. The turn to the right was the Dublin road, the road which ultimately led to the sea, and to a curious heaving contrivance which somehow led over angry waters to new and sunnier lands. No; the guiding hands directed its course to the left, down the brae, and along the over-familiar road to the station. The old Clarence must have recognised with a sigh that its roaming days were definitely over, and that henceforth, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... commanded such a cheerful outlook into one of the pretty gardens, with a pink thorn, a laburnum-tree or two, and some sycamores which still flourish fresh and fair on Campden Hill—was obscured now by some detestable contrivance in transparent ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... Yorkshire dolly; a contrivance for washing, by means of a kind of wheel fixed in a tub, which being turned about, agitates and cleanses the linen put into ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... plots formed by you and your accomplices, plots of which all the details must be exactly known to you, you tell me stories, without authority, without date, without place, about noblemen and gentlemen with whom you do not pretend to have had any intercourse. In short your confession appears to be a contrivance intended to screen those who are really engaged in designs against me, and to make me suspect and discard those in whom I have good reason to place confidence. If you look for any favour from me, give me, this moment and on this ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from the pen our pleasure find, When we've no greater things to mind. Yet if you look with care intense, These tales your toil shall recompense; Appearance is not always true, And thousands err by such a view. 'Tis a choice spirit that has pried Where clean contrivance chose to hide; That this is not at random said, I shall produce upon this head A fable of an arch device, About the ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... removed from the vernacular idiom both in the language itself and in the arrangement of it, we shall not long doubt which of these two very different species of verse threatens the composer with most expense of study and contrivance. I feel it unpleasant to appeal to my own experience, but, having no other voucher at hand, am constrained to it. As I affirm, so I have found. I have dealt pretty largely in both kinds, and have frequently ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... such an assertion would be backed by an appeal to some learned Rabbi of a Zoological Society, who had written a deep pamphlet, upon what he would probably call the Theory of Hair. But to whom does Paley refer us? To any dealer in rabbit skins. The curious contrivance in the bones of birds, to unite strength with lightness, is noticed. The bore is larger, in proportion to the weight of the bone, than in other animals; it is empty; the substance of the bone itself is of a closer texture. For these facts, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... by coincidences which prove this novel, yet common afflatus. Two astronomers, with the ocean between them, calculate at the same moment, in the same direction, and simultaneously light upon the same new orb. Two inventors, falling in with the same necessity, think of the same contrivance, and meet for the first time in a newspaper war, or a duel of pamphlets, for the credit of its authorship. A dozen widely scattered philosophers as quickly hit upon the self-same idea as if they were in council together. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... all about it, for the thing was simple enough. The paper was a will, or, as I heard long after, a thing called a codicil—a contrivance what you add to a will. And it revoked and denied everything as the dead man had wrote before. In a few words the paper swept away Squire Champernowne's former wills and testaments, and left Woodcotes to Lawrence Champernowne, the son of General Sir Arthur and the brother ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... anything to eat. And as fuel was then, as now, dear and scarce in those regions, great seems to have been the dexterity exercised in preparing as many things as possible with as little fire. An admirable contrivance of this nature may be still seen in the Neapolitan Museum, viz., a portable kitchen, about the size of a folio volume, containing stoves for four dishes, and an apparatus for heating ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the sacrifice of his country and himself. The canvass for Lincoln was conducted by the ablest men in the party, and was marked by great earnestness and enthusiasm. It was a repetition of the Fremont campaign, with the added difference of a little more contrivance and spectacular display in its demonstrations, as witnessed in the famous organization known as the "Wide-Awakes." The doctrines of the Chicago platform were very thoroughly discussed, and powerfully contributed ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... then is in a despair how to get them down again. Pharaoh is behind my flock Israel, in the south is Baal-zephon, in the north Midgol, and before us the sea lies spread out. [24] Thou knowest, O Lord, that it is beyond human strength and human contrivance to surmount the difficulties standing in our way. Thine alone is the work of procuring deliverance for this army, which left Egypt at Thy appointment. We despair of all other assistance or device, and we have recourse only to our hope in Thee. If there be any escape possible, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... melancholy death was concealed, and hushed up between Ali Baba, his widow, and Morgiana, his slave, with so much contrivance that nobody in the city had the least knowledge or suspicion of the cause of it. Three or four days after the funeral, Ali Baba removed his few goods openly to his sister-in- law's house, in which ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... valuable work, and in many respects to be presented to the greatest prince upon earth: for the matter it contains is the richest of all treasures. The laborious composure of it into this excellent form of an Harmony, the judicious contrivance of the method, the curious workmanship in so neatly cutting out and disposing the text, the nice laying of these costly pictures, and the exquisite art expressed in the binding, are, I really think, not to be ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... number of experimenters took the matter up and the fame of the new instrument spread rapidly abroad. Galileo, down in Italy, heard rumors of this remarkable contrivance, through the use of which it was said "distant objects might be seen as clearly as those near at hand." He at once set to work to construct for himself a similar instrument, and his efforts were so far successful ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... relieve, at the earliest moment possible, the anxieties of a sister and a mother. Robina's new hat, not intended for sport, had broken away from its fastenings. With it, it had brought down her hair. There is a harmless contrivance for building up the female hair called, I am told, a pad. It can be made of combings, and then, of course, is literally the girl's own hair. He came upon Robina at the moment when, retracing her steps and with her back towards him, she was looking for ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... is no evidence whatever to show that they ever try to improve their conditions by deliberately providing themselves with warm bedding. In no well-attested case has a dog shown any sense as to the nature of any mechanical contrivance. They will learn which way a door opens, and rarely if ever do they undiscerningly close it when it is slightly ajar and they wish to pass through the opening; but I have never been able to observe or obtain evidence to show that they would without teaching pull down a latch in the way in which ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... think that it is easier for me to accept mine than it will be for you to accept yours. I have just been thinking that to have any difficulty in the Hearing Organ is not so serious as a difficulty with the Seeing. You can read and write, and with a little contrivance and patience you can hear any communication that may be specially interesting and important. It is true, you are shut out from the pleasure and profit that comes from the general conversation of a company, and from listening to Public Speakers, although a great deal that ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... exclaimed Schaunard, "my feathered clock goes too fast: it cannot possibly be today yet!" So saying, he leaped precipitately out of a piece of furniture of his own ingenious contrivance, which, sustaining the part of bed by night, (sustaining it badly enough too,) did duty by day for all the rest of the furniture which was absent by reason of the severe cold for which the ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... is wholesome, straight-forward elbow-work. They have not got to inventing any contrivance for that yet, thank Heaven! It does not seem to me natural, nor according to Scripture, that iron and steel (whose brows can't sweat) should be made to do man's work. And so I say, all those trades where iron and steel do the work ordained to man at the Fall, are unlawful, and ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... gigantic bird, the ux, which has been so often reported to exist among the inaccessible peaks of the Tasmanian Mountains. Needless, perhaps, to say that the skin proved a fraud, being nothing more than a Barnum contrivance made up out of the skins of a dozen ostriches and cassowaries, and most cleverly put together by Chinese workmen; at least, such was the report made on it by Sir Peter Grebe, who had been sent by the British Society to Antwerp to examine ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... manner in which it was constructed. Many guesses were made by all the spectators about the internal structure of the cuckoo, and the astonishment of the company was universal, when the bellows were cut open, and the simple contrivance was revealed to view; probably, more was learnt from this cuckoo, than was ever learnt from any cuckoo before. So far from being indifferent to the destruction of this plaything, H—— the little girl of four years old, to ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... amazed at the sight of the glass, seemingly reduced to a thin vapor, being drawn into a funnel-like opening near the top of the device. I was too startled to speak and could only watch as Drayle started the contrivance again. Once more its noise cut through me with physical pain. I cried out. But my voice was overwhelmed by the terrific din of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... a pang, of the position in which political chance or contrivance might hereafter place some one of our fellow-citizens. It has happened hitherto, so far as my limited knowledge goes, that the President of the United States has always been what might be called in general ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... retarded." Mr. Solicitor St. John appears as the reporter of the Order. Cromwell, in fact, had quietly formed a little phalanx of the right men to carry the thing through. The younger Vane was one of them. Even Stephen Marshall, the Presbyterian and Smectymnuan, had to some extent aided in the contrivance, without consulting any of ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... young chief, the bridge slowly descended and the cavalcade passed over; but the folding gates, which were composed of blocks of stone curiously dovetailed together, and which revolved upon hinges of the same material by a ball and socket contrivance above and below, were not yet opened, and the party were detained on the bridge. A small oval orifice only appeared, less than a human face, and an ear was applied there to receive an expected word in a whisper. This ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... was sleeping heavily, and breathing melodiously. Satisfied on this point, Evan opened a commodious wardrobe near the bed, threw down some clothing, spread it out smoothly, and then stepping within, he drew the doors together, fastening them by a hook of his own contrivance, on the inside; for Evan had made this wardrobe do service before. Then he laid himself down as comfortably as possible, and applied his eye to some small holes punctured in the dark wood, and quite ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... body, the legs or arms as it may be, are subjected to the same force as this wire, which as the fellow keeps turning you see—strains, and straightens, and strains, till—crack!—there!—that is what we call a rack. A most ingenious contrivance and of great use. This is going up within the hour to the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... material. It may not even be more serviceable than a machine-made spoon of some "base" metal, such as aluminum, the value of which may be no more than some ten to twenty cents. The former of the two utensils is, in fact, commonly a less effective contrivance for its ostensible purpose than the latter. The objection is of course ready to hand that, in taking this view of the matter, one of the chief uses, if not the chief use, of the costlier spoon is ignored; the hand-wrought spoon gratifies our taste, our sense of the beautiful, while that made ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... birch woods provided for the fire, she carved a set of draughtsmen, and made a board by ruling squares on the end of a settle, and painting the alternate ones with a compound of oil and charcoal. Even the old Baron was delighted with this contrivance, and the pleasure it gave his daughter. He remembered playing at draughts in that portion of his youth which had been a shade more polished, and he felt as if the game were making Ermentrude more hike a lady. Christina was encouraged to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... architecture, we find not only the pyramids, which date from the very earliest period of Egyptian history, and which are to this hour the wonder of the world for size, for boldness, for exactness, and for skilful contrivance, but also the temples, with long ranges of colossal columns wrought in polished granite, with wonderful beauty of ornamentation, with architraves and roofs vast in size and exquisite in adjustment, which by their proportions tax the imagination, and lead the beholder to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... walls that look as if smashed with a club. Farther on, half hidden under the drooping bushes, a canoe containing a man and a woman, together with a dozen green cocoanuts in a heap, rocked helplessly after the Sofala had passed, like a navigating contrivance of venturesome insects, of traveling ants; while two glassy folds of water streaming away from each bow of the steamer across the whole width of the river ran with her up stream smoothly, fretting their outer ends into ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... first to make war upon machinery. In 1758, for example, Everet's first machine for dressing wool, an ingenious contrivance worked by water power, was set upon by a mob and reduced to ashes. From that time on similar outbreaks occurred with more or less frequency; but it was not until 1810 that the organized bodies of Luddites ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... distinctly understood as utterly opposed, not only to go-carts, leading strings, and every other mechanical contrivance, to induce children to walk before their legs are fit for it, but to efforts of every kind, whose main object is the same. Teaching them to walk by taking hold of one of their hands, is in some respects quite as bad as any other mode; for if the child should fall while we have ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... boring separate wells for a weight behind the hinges on either side. Copper wire running on minute pulleys let into grooves suspended these weights and connected them with the flaps, and powerful door-springs supplemented the more elaborate contrivance. The lever controlling the whole was concealed under the counter, and reached by thrusting a foot through a panel, which also opened inward ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... mortals to frame such predictions as these, which to him would seem as strange and unaccountable as prophesy doth to others. Even they who are blessed with the visive faculty may (though familiarity make it less observed) find therein sufficient cause of admiration. The wonderful art and contrivance wherewith it is adjusted to those ends and purposes for which it was apparently designed, the vast extent, number, and variety of objects that are at once with so much ease and quickness and pleasure suggested by it: all these afford subject for much and pleasing speculation, and ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... the meantime had been chosen preacher at St. Mary's in Nottingham, made two serious mistakes. He allowed accusations to be preferred against Alice Freeman, sister of an alderman,[22] and he let Somers be taken out of his hands. By the contrivance of some citizens who doubted the possession, Somers was placed in the house of correction, on a trumped-up charge that he had bewitched a Mr. Sterland to death.[23] Removed from the clergyman's influence, he made confession that his possessions were ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... to the gate leading to the back avenue and looked out. Hidden by the gate-post were a number of pots and pans and bright glittering new cans. A little away lay another heap. He stooped. There was a contrivance, something like a yoke for the shoulders, to which the cans were attached. He had seen, also in England, gipsy carts covered with such wares. He had not known that human shoulders could be adapted to ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... telescopes with large lens, not with large mirror.] However, accumulating infirmities and eventually death prevented Sir William Herschel from applying his plan, which 'evinced the most profound research in optical science, and the most dexterous ingenuity in mechanical contrivance. But his son, Sir John Herschel, nursed and cradled in the observatory, and a practical astronomer from his boyhood, determined upon testing it at whatever cost. Within two years of his father's death he completed his new apparatus, and adapted it to the old telescope with nearly perfect success.' ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... a graphic Description of a Martian Home and Surroundings, then shows how the Food is manipulated. It is brought from a Central Depot in a Mechanical Contrivance which is run underground, thence up into the Dining room. The Soiled Dishes are run down and off the same way. No Drudgery for ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... as a work of art, to that advanced geometrical contrivance, the Garden Spider's net; and, in spite of its ingenuity, it does not give a favourable notion of its constructor. It is hardly more than a shapeless scaffolding, run up anyhow. And yet, like the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Margaret, coming into the room, agreed with her that she had been foolish and awkward. Margaret said that ribbon might have been tied over my feet from the first, without using glue or gimlet either; and Rose called herself more stupid than ever, for not having thought of such an easy contrivance. ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... given to the crafts by Ruskin and Morris, it came to be seen that it was impossible to detach design from craft in this way, and that, in the widest sense, true design is an inseparable element of good quality, involving as it does the selection of good and suitable material, contrivance for special purpose, expert workmanship, proper finish, and so on, far more than mere ornament, and indeed, that ornamentation itself was rather an exuberance of fine workmanship than a matter of merely ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... concavities, that is to say, withal a man justly related to all things and men, a good man.... And his intellect is an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of.... His art is not artifice; the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or pre-contrivance. It grows up from the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature.... It is Nature's highest reward to a true, simple, great soul that he got thus to be part of herself." Of his works nothing can or need be said here; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... they had left them, they sailed round Sunion, purposing to arrive at the city before the Athenians. And an accusation became current among the Athenians to the effect that they formed this design by contrivance of the Alcmaionidai; for these, it was said, having concerted matters with the Persians, displayed to them a shield when they had now embarked in ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... be more complicated, because it was necessary to account for the fact that a planet sometimes advanced and that it sometimes retrograded. The ancient geometers refused to believe that any movement, except revolution in a circle, was possible for a celestial body: accordingly a contrivance was devised by which each planet was supposed to revolve in a circle, of which the centre described ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... to produce, and I think it may be described more closely. But I return meanwhile to the device of the first person, and to another example of the way in which it is used for its dramatic energy. For my point is so oddly illustrated by the old contrivance of the "epistolary" novel that I cannot omit to glance at it briefly; the kind of enhancement which is sought by the method of The Ambassadors is actually the very same as that which is sought by the method of Clarissa ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... a shot through its loopholes and windows. Others of the enemy hastened by another side to gather bundles of thatch by uncovering the roofs of the houses; and by fastening together what wood and bamboo they could gather, and pushing this contrivance toward the fort, they set it afire. The fire burned a quantity of rice and abaca (which is the hemp of this country), and many men were choked by the smoke. The besieged, seeing that the fire had caught the timber-work ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... placed a small box, something like a watch-case, but smaller; into this box was introduced a watch- spring in a wheel, round about which wheel was wound an elastic cord, for regulating the force of which there was a separate contrivance. To the two ends of this cord were attached hooks, which hooks were carried through a small aperture in the pockets, and so passing down the inner and the outer side of the thigh, caught hold of two loops which were fixed on the off side and the near side of each stocking. As might be expected, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... however, is far from being consistent in his various statements on this subject. For not content with saying, "Most decidedly I believe that the present order of Nature is insufficient to prove the existence of an intelligent Creator," he adds that "no imaginable order, that no contrivance, however mechanical, precise, or clear, would be sufficient to prove it."[261] At one time he tells us that "an increasing party respectfully and deferentially avow their inability to subscribe to the arguments supposed to establish the existence of a Being distinct from ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... convinced by Reason of the Thing, nor so easily rebuked, as to amend by Admonitions. I thought therefore fit to acquaint you with a convenient Mechanical Way, which may easily prevent or correct Staring, by an Optical Contrivance of new Perspective-Glasses, short and commodious like Opera Glasses, fit for short-sighted People as well as others, these Glasses making the Objects appear, either as they are seen by the naked Eye, or more distinct, though somewhat less than Life, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Aunt Becky, who, as usual, had got up a skirmish, and was firing away in the cause of Mossop and Smock-alley play-house; 'why, she would be fraudulently arrested in her own chair, on her way to the play-house, by the contrivance of the rogue Barry, and that ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... when Mrs. Ripwinkley was a widow, and poor,—that is, comparative; and it took all her and my contrivance to look after the place and keep things going, and paying, up in Homesworth; there was something to buckle to, then; but now, everything is eased and flatted out, as it were; it makes me res'less, like a child put to bed in ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... believe the lengths he goes about things. His rooms are all—what do you call it?—er—er—en suite. Very well; just suppose, now, that he opens his room door or the door of his study; presto! all the other doors fly open of themselves by a patent contrivance; and then he can go from one end of the house to the other and not find a single door shut; which is all very nice and pleasant and convenient for us great folk! But, on my word, it cost us a lot of money! And, after all, M. Porriquet, he said ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... best, biographer of Savonarola, Signor Villari, endeavours to show that the Law of Appeal ultimately enacted, being wider than the law originally contemplated by Savonarola, was a source of bitter annoyance to him, as a contrivance of the aristocratic party for attaching to the measures of the popular government the injurious results of licence. But in taking this view the estimable biographer lost sight of the fact that, not only in his sermons, but in a deliberately prepared book (the Compendium Revelationum) written ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... as for its having been opened, that was an impossibility; the padlock hung in front of it as usual, and it would have taken a man half a lifetime to have hit upon its open sesame by trial. He was justly proud of that letter lock, which was his own contrivance, invented when he was quite a young man, and had been perforce compelled to turn his attention to mechanics, and he considered it a marvel of skill. It was characteristic in him that he had never revealed its secret even to his daughter. Indeed, with the exception of Harry, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... the outside. The whole is hammered on and must be intensely uncomfortable. A special pillow, consisting of a piece of wood hollowed out for the head is necessary, as sleep would otherwise be impossible with such a contrivance round the neck. A great number of children run about and seem to be well nourished. Some have large heads and protruding stomachs, without however, other signs of rickets. Many of the men are painted with yellow ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... bodies and their appetites from putrefying! Your cotton-spinning and thrice-miraculous mechanism, what is this too, by itself, but a larger kind of Animalism? Spiders can spin, Beavers can build and show contrivance; the Ant lays-up accumulation of capital, and has, for aught I know, a Bank of Antland. If there is no soul in man higher than all that, did it reach to sailing on the cloud-rack and spinning sea-sand; then I say, man is but an animal, a more cunning kind of brute: ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... conveniently accommodate a family of six or eight persons; but some economy and contrivance will be needed, in storing away articles of dress and bedclothing. For this end, in the bedpress, k, of the parlor, b, (Fig. 18,) a wide shelf may be placed, two feet from the ceiling, where winter bedding, or folded clothing, can be stowed, while a short curtain in front, hung from ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... is justly ridiculed by Dacier, for sending Laius forth with a numerous party of guards, to avoid the indecorum of a king going abroad too slenderly attended. The guards lose their way within a league of their master's capital; and, by this awkward contrivance, their absence is accounted for, when he ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... after rigging this contrivance, whenever anyone reported "tracks," Mac and the Boy would hasten to the scene of action, and set a new snare, piling brush on each side of the track that the game had run in, so barring other ways, and presenting a line of least ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... persecutors was unable to put down the preaching of the gospel in the fields, and to crush the spirit of liberty in the breasts of multitudes of the people of Scotland, the Indulgence was a master contrivance of the arch-enemy to divide the Presbyterians, and to seduce them to abandon some of their fundamental principles, for the sake of outward advantages. The first indulgence was issued by Charles II. and his council in June, 1669. It was proclaimed as flowing directly from the royal supremacy. ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... kuntirigxi. Contractor entreprenisto. Contradict kontrauxdiri. Contrariwise kontrauxe. Contrary kontrauxa. Contrary, on the male, kontrauxe. Contrast kontrasti. Contrast kontrasto. Contravention malobeo. Contribution depago. Contrite penta. Contrition pento—eco. Contrivance elpensajxo. Contrive elpensi. Control kontroli. Controversy disputado. Contumacious obstinema. Contumacy obstineco. Contumely malestimo. Contuse kontuzi. Convalescence resanigxo. Convalescent (man) resanigxanto. Convene kunvoki. Convenience oportuneco. Convenient oportuna. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... ecclesiastical trick intended to impress the populace. There is a saying by an antique wit that no two priests or augurs could ever meet and look at each other without a knowing wink of recognition. Hero is said to have been the author of this contrivance also. The temple doors would open by themselves when the fire burned on the altar, and would close again when that fire was extinguished, and the worshippers would think it a miracle. It is interesting because it contained the principle ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... odd corners and under conditions which render the hobby somewhat irksome if a large number of plates have to be treated. The main difficulty is to secure an adequate water supply and to dispose of the waste water. At a small expenditure of money and energy it is easy, however, to rig up a contrivance which, if it does not afford the conveniences of a properly equipped dark room, is in advance of the jug-and-basin arrangement with which one might otherwise have to be content. A strong point in ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... His first contrivance was to change names with an old American in the depot. It so happened that the captain of a French privateer had applied to the prison for a crew of foreigners to man his ship, then lying at Morlaix. The trick, by ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... inevitably recall the other—a name and an era which with regard to each other are like two clouds, aerial, insulated, mutually repulsive, and throwing out no points for grappling or locking on, neither offering any natural indications of interconnection, nor apparently by art, contrivance,[21] or fiction, susceptible ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... against the parching sun by its bulbous roots, which lie dormant for a considerable time, but grow again very readily when the wet weather sets in,—a curious circumstance, which gives us an ample proof of the wise contrivance of the great Author of Nature to fertilize all kinds of soil for the benefit of his creatures here below. There is another instance of this in the Poa bulbosa, Bulbous Meadow-grass, which grows on the Steine at Brighton, and which I ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... contrivance to announce the passage of juices into condensing pipes has rendered considerable service in beet ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... Dong Mine, where he introduced many improvements; and a few years later he was busily engaged in designing a genuine steam-carriage, which was finished and made its first short trip on Christmas Eve, 1801, carrying the first passengers ever known to have been conveyed by steam. Locally this contrivance was known as the "puffing devil," or as "Cap'n Dick's Puffer." The next step was to produce an engine running on rails. This was done in 1804, when Trevithick completed a machine which carried ten tons ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... she produced from the contrivance the tiniest little mirror ever seen. As she raised it to let it perform its dainty function, her glance fell on Queed, sitting darkly in his rocking-chair. A look of mild surprise came into her eye: not that it was of any consequence, but plainly she ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... used to call it) of St. Stephen, wallowing in red upon his belly in an exhausted receiver, and a crowd of Hebrews in blue, green, and yellow, pelting him—apparently with buns; and while we gazed upon this contrivance, regaled us with a piece of his own recent biography, of which his mind was still very full, and which he seemed to fancy, represented him in a heroic posture. I was one of those cosmopolitan Americans, who accept the world (whether at home or abroad) ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Age, two Shepherds whom Silenus had often promis'd a Song, and as often deceived, seize upon him being drunk and asleep, and bind him with wreath'd Flowers; AEgle comes in and incourages the timorous youths, and stains his jolly red Face with Blackberries, Silenus laughs at their innocent contrivance, and desires to be unbound, and then with a premeditated Song satisfies the Nymph's and Boys Curiosity; The incomparable Poet sings wonders, the Rocks rejoyce, the Vales eccho, and happy Eurotas as if Phoebus himself sang, hears all, and bids the Laurels that ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... arranged in compartments. I put several together myself, taking pieces at hazard as they came to hand, and they fitted in the most perfect manner. The advantages of this, when arms need repair, are evident. He effects it by tools of his own contrivance, which, at the same time, abridge the work, so that he thinks he shall be able to furnish the musket two livres cheaper than the common price. But it will be two or three years before he will be able to furnish any quantity. I mention it now, as it may have an influence ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... at the sky, the aneroid and the wind—not the arrow; old sea-dogs know which way the wind blows without depending on any such contrivance—the way the clouds drift, the trend of the white-caps, the set of a distant sail, and on black, almost breathless nights, by the feel of a wet finger held quickly in the air, the coolest side determining the ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... has thrown out a suggestion, that if a contrivance could be devised to enable us to convert at will the wheels of the steam-carriage into magnets, we should be enabled to ascend and descend acclivities with great facility. This notion may ultimately be, to a ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... was as neat as a pin, with a lovely bright rocking-horse upon which Nancy had never ridden; a pink doll's-house with every modern contrivance, whose doors had never been opened; a number of expensive dolls, which had never been disrobed. Nancy approached these joys—diffidently and with caution. She rode upon the horse, opened the doll's-house, embraced ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... of the agency of the Spirit of God, which the Quakers thus consider to be the purest cause of a good life and character, we may reckon a subordinate cause, which may be artificial, and within the contrivance and wisdom of man. When the early Quakers met together as a religious body, though they consisted of spiritually minded men, they resolved on a system of discipline, which should be followed by those who became members of the society. This discipline we have already seen. We have seen ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... of milk,—for we shall not be home to dinner,—and armed with a compass, a hatchet, a pail, and a box with a piece of comb-honey neatly fitted into it—any box the size of your hand with a lid will do nearly as well as the elaborate and ingenious contrivance of the regular bee-hunter—we sally forth. Our course at first lies along the highway, under great chestnut-trees whose nuts are just dropping, then through an orchard and across a little creek, thence gently rising through a long ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Another contrivance, used in keeping small birds from the fields, is a bird-like form cut from the bark of a banana or palm tree. Many of these are suspended by lines from bamboo poles, and, as the wind blows them to and fro, they appear like giant ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... features; they gave to their votaries Gods inimical to other Gods as well as the forms of worship, dogmas, ceremonies, separately; they persuaded them especially that the religions of others were ungodly and abominable. By this infamous contrivance, these ambitious impostors took exclusive possession of the minds of their votaries, rendered them unsocial, and made them consider as outcasts all those who had not the same ideas and form of worship as their own. This is the way religion succeeded in closing the heart, and in banishing from ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier |
