"Pivot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, it is possible to collect a great deal of important information on the subject from the funereal and religious works which have come down to us, especially concerning the great central idea of immortality, which existed unchanged for thousands of years, and formed the pivot upon which the religious and social life of the ancient Egyptians actually turned. From the beginning to the end of his life the Egyptian's chief thought was of the life beyond the grave, and the hewing of his tomb in ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... my feeling died or slumbered when I was beyond the limits of his personal influence. When in his presence I was so pervaded by it that whether I went contrary to the dictates of his will or not I moved as if under a pivot; when away my natural elasticity prevailed, and I held the same relation to others that I should have held if I had not known him. This continued till the secret was divined, and then his influence was ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... storm redoubling its violence, the hanged man revolved on his own pivot, turning every way at once towards the swarm, as if he wished to run after the birds; his teeth seemed to try and bite them. The wind was for him, the chain against him. It was as if black deities were mixing themselves up in the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and did not use his head. Thorpe planted his hard straight blows at will. In this game he was as manifestly superior as his opponent would probably have been had the rules permitted kicking, gouging, and wrestling. Finally he saw his opening and let out with a swinging pivot blow. The other picked himself out of a corner, and drew off the gloves. Thorpe's ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... this point. There is not one Greek lyric devoted to what we should designate love, with perhaps something like an exception in Alcman. In fact, while moderns rarely make a tragedy or comedy, a poem or novel, without some love-concern which is the pivot of the whole, all the great poems and dramas of the ancients revolve on entirely different passions. Love, such as we speak of, was of rather rare occurrence. Women were in such a low position, that it was a condescension to notice them,—there was no ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... instrument, called the Scavenger's Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head of the victim would be forced. In this condition, he would be thrown prone ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... books of reference should never be locked up in cases, nor placed on high or remote shelves. There should be in every library what may be termed a central bureau of reference. Here should be assembled, whether on circular cases made to revolve on a pivot, or on a rectangular case, with volumes covering both sides, or in a central alcove forming a portion of the shelves of the main library, all those books of reference, and volumes incessantly needed by students in pursuit of their various inquiries. It is important ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... be organized, and organized according to this universal method. It must consist of parts with their centres, compounded into wholes, and of these compound units formed into still larger ones; until the entire nation, as a grand whole, revolves upon a central pivot, or national government. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... baseman, whose cool head made him a good man at that pivot of the field; he was an able assistant to the right-field, a ready back-stop to the short-stop, and a perfect spider for taking into his web all the wild throws that came slashing from the home plate to cut off those who dared to try to ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... upon it or even to sit still. Her hand still burned where M. Raoul's lips had touched it. She recalled Endymion's prophecy that these entertainments would throw the domestic mechanism—always more delicately poised on Sundays than on weekdays—completely oft its pivot. She had pledged herself to prevent this, and had made a private appeal to the maidservants with whose Sunday-out they interfered. ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his grievance without looking to the right or to the left; at length, turning on his pivot, he perceived that the room was full of company, consisting of young Crotchet, and some visitors whom he had brought from London. The Reverend Doctor Folliott was introduced to Mr. Mac Quedy, the economist; Mr. Skionar, the transcendental poet; ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... pithanon]; whereupon Hortensius showed, after the principles of Antiochus, that such a basis was provided by the older philosophy, which both Carneades and Philo had wrongly abandoned. Thus Philo becomes the central point or pivot of the discussion. With this arrangement none of the indications in the Lucullus clash. Even the demand made by Hortensius upon Catulus[254] need only imply such a bare statement on the part of the latter of the negative Arcesilaean doctrines as would clear the ground for the Carneadean ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... south-west angle of the county, are the celebrated Logan, or rocking-stone, and the lofty granite rocks called Tiergh Castle. Here is a reef of rocks jutting into the sea, on the summit of one of which is a large single mass of stone, weighing about sixty tons, resting on a sort of pivot, so near the centre that the whole block may be easily made to oscillate or log, to and fro. This logging stone has created astonishment amongst the illiterate, and given rise to many fabulous stories: whilst others have imagined ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... settle down again as thick as ever and twice as savage. Do you know what meddling with the folks without names, as you call 'em, is like?—It is like riding at the quintain. You run full tilt at the board, but the board is on a pivot, with a bag of sand on an arm that balances it. The board gives way as soon as you touch it; and before you have got by, the bag of sand comes round whack on the back of your neck. "Ananias," for instance, pitches into your lecture, we will say, in some paper taken by the people ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... the ax and it gave, swinging upward on a pivot. Then a minute later the door swung inward, yielding to ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... striking low, were skipping along the hard, bare floor of the valley. Then Ladd raised the long rifle. There was no smoke, but three high, spanging reports rang out. A gap opened in the dark line of advancing horsemen; then a riderless steed sheered off to the right. Blanco Sol seemed to turn as on a pivot and charged back toward the lower end of the valley. He circled over to Gale's right and stretched out into his run. There were now five raiders in pursuit, and they came sweeping down, yelling and shooting, evidently sure of their quarry. Ladd reserved ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Montjau began to speak. It was of consequence to organize the action of the Left, to impress the unity of impulse upon the movement which was being prepared; to create a centre for it, to give a pivot to the insurrection, to the Left a direction, and to the People a support. He proposed the immediate formation of a committee representing the entire Left in all its shades, and charged with ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... of more than a mile in length, through which I was enabled to make signals by sounding a bell, (Fig. 7.) The mechanical arrangement for effecting this object was simply a steel bar, permanently magnetized, of about ten inches in length, supported on a pivot, and placed with its north end between the two arms of a horseshoe magnet. When the latter was excited by the current, the end of the bar thus placed was attracted by one arm of the horseshoe, and ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... whose temperament was hot with passion and whose temper had never known a curb. He had never realized until this moment how beautiful Elsa was, and how madly he loved her. For he called the jealous rage within by the sacred name of love, and love to a Magyar peasant is his whole existence, the pivot round which he frames his life, his thoughts of the present, his dreams of ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... three days we dress our town in bunting and bang starting guns and finishing guns, and put on fancy dresses, and march in procession with Japanese lanterns, and dance, and stare at pyrotechnical displays. But the centre, the pivot, the axis of our revelry is always the merry-go-round on the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... around this phenomenon. Finally I telegraphed King to find out if he had any suggestions himself; and I received a reply that the only way he could propose to get around the difficulty was to put the island on a pivot so it could be turned around! I found the trouble finally, and the practical introduction on the Lehigh Valley road was the result. The system was sold to a very wealthy man, and he would never sell any rights or answer letters. He became ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the reader skilful in the antique language of the drama must at once perceive, turned on the same pivot as in the old minstrel tales of the Drinking Horn of King Arthur, and the Mantle made Amiss. But the audience were neither learned nor critical enough to challenge its want of originality. The potent ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... double crown had the legend, Henricus Rosas Regna Jacobus. As Henry VII. united the Red and White Roses, James was to unite the two kingdoms. It seems probable that James intended the unite as a 20s. or pound piece to be the standard and pivot of the coinage of both countries, as the pound or sovereign has now become. This enlightened policy, though it had lasting effects, soon broke down in detail. In England the shilling proved too strong for the unite, and in Scotland the merk maintained its hold. To prevent the exportation ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... was at once right and wrong. The theme, looked at dispassionately, is unworthy of the monument in which it is entombed for eternity. But the poet looked upon the central incident as the inventive mechanician regards the tiny pivot remote amid the intricate maze of his machinery. Here, as elsewhere, Browning's real subject is too often confounded with the accidents of the subject. His triumph is not that he has created so huge a literary monument, but rather that, notwithstanding its bulk, he ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... violently, as a stronger blast than usual almost lifted it from the ground. No one stirred except from time to time one of the dogs, who got up snarling and sniffing the cold air, turned himself round several times as if on a pivot, and finally lay ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the Best Known Sovereign is a PIVOT around which all the other Sovereigns are directly or indirectly related. How, we will proceed to show. Something of the method will be intimated by the difference of type and ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... club in existence. Whenever you see in your drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging in easy chairs, cigar in hand, and now and then bringing their heads together over the small round Japanese table which is always the pivot of these social circles, you may be sure that they are discussing Tom's engagement, or Dick's extravagance, or Harry's hopeless passion for the younger Miss Fleurdelys. It is here old Tippleton gets ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... the pivot of a magazine. On him everything turns. If his gauge of the public is correct, readers will come: they cannot help coming to the man who has something to say himself, or who presents writers who have. And if the reader comes, the advertiser must come. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... turn; but the sport that seemed to afford the most merriment was a pendulous stick having an apple at one end, and on the other a lighted candle, so that the unfortunate and liquorish wight who bit at this tempting bait generally burnt his nose on the rebound, as the stick bounced to and fro on its pivot. The hall was now cleared for the masks. In this play, the Black Knight himself generally joined, laughing heartily at and hurrying on the mis-haps of the revellers. Many horrible and grotesque-looking shapes and disguises soon made their appearance; but ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Gridley," Hugh signalled to his familiar. Like a response, a thin breeze tickled the roots of his hair. He swung around with the pivot of a definite purpose. With an economy of movement that would have contented an efficiency expert he set a straight fiddle-backed chair squarely in front of Uncle Hugh's girl and settled himself in it with his back to ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... scheme? Nothing that was calculated, if he had heard aright, to benefit the agricultural population. Well, then, what would they do? Protection had been a failure when it reached a prohibitory duty of 80s. a quarter; it had been a failure when it reached the pivot price of 60s.; and it was a failure now when they had got a sliding-scale; for they had admitted the lamentable condition of their tenantry and peasantry. Let them accede, then, to his proposition for a committee, and he would ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to be the pivot on which the whole thing turns. Curious, isn't it? I wish the responsibility hadn't been laid on my shoulders. Just now I can't tell what I ought ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... a stone balanced on a pivot. "Yes," he said. "I am afraid we were not attentive enough. Will ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... about her decks in getting the cable clear, and a lot more clinging like so many lizards along the bending yard, and all in some attempt at uniform dress, in readiness to roll up the sail when the anchor was down. There was a long brass gun, too, burnished like gold, on a pivot slide, with all its equipment, trained muzzle forward in front of the main-mast. No sooner had she sagged into the open basin, with her immense sail hanging flat and heavy in the light air, than a boat from the schooner boarded her, and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... been thus suddenly made, it had not been made unadvisedly. Though he had not expected the opportunity for stating it would have offered itself so soon, he had planned his whole argument out beforehand, with Wheal Danes for its pivot. And, upon the whole, he felt satisfied with its effect upon his host. The latter had not surprised him (except by his frankness) in his disclosure respecting the rich promise of the mine. Richard's own observation, aided by the clew ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... five months." This was the walk he took his young wife on the morrow of his return. She had been used to the society of lawyers and civil servants, moving in that circle which seems to itself the pivot of the nation, and is in truth only a clique like another; and Fleeming was to her the nameless assistant of a nameless firm of engineers, doing his inglorious business, as she now saw for herself, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the mud, the Kaffir was unable to keep his face more than twelve inches from the open jaws of the dog, that in its struggles spun round as on a pivot; and Congo had to press close against the side of the pit, to keep out of the reach of the ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... the dilemma, either of which Mr. Roach may lay hold of, but he cannot swing on a pivot between them. If he accepts these figures, or anything approaching them,—and the fact that the ocean is covered by foreign built ships to the exclusion of his own is proof of their correctness,—he may go on asking for a bounty ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... statue of Nepomeck down into the earth, the seventh step was movable and turned on a pivot; if you stood on one end of this, the statue above raised itself, but if you stood on the other end, it sank gently down, The builders of this subterranean passage had chosen well the guardian of their secret. The place ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... Comte's religion has a cultus, so also it has a clergy, who are the pivot of his entire social and political system. Their nature and office will be best shown by describing his ideal of political society in its normal state, with the various classes of which ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... all poetic tones." Why joy or gladness, like that of the birds, is not equally legitimate, he does not explain. Then, to give artistic piquancy to the whole, he decided that there must be "some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn." He found that "no one had been so universally employed as the refrain." The burden of the poem should be given by the refrain, and it should be a monotone, and should have brevity. Then his task was to select a single word that would ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... 1914, Von Buelow's vanguard came within sight of Namur. Before evening German guns were hurling shells upon its forts. Began then the siege of Namur. Namur, being the second fortress hope of the Allies—the pivot upon which General Joffre had planned to swing his army into Belgium in a sweeping attack upon the advancing Germans—a brief survey of the city and fortifications will be necessary. The situation of the city is not as imposing as that of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Malakh mounted with difficulty and St. George, waiting, saw him standing before a blank stone wall. Immediately and without effort the old man's scanty strength served to displace one of the wall's huge stones which hung upon a secret pivot and rolled noiselessly within. He stepped through the aperture, and St. George sprang behind him, watched his moment to cross the threshold, crouched in the leaping shadow of the displaced stone and looked—looked ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... dejection into which this last scurvy villany (which none but wretches of her own sex could have been guilty of) has thrown her, returning love will re-enter her time-pacified mind: her thoughts will then turn once more on the conjugal pivot: of course she will have livelier notions in her head; and these will make her perform all her circumvolutions with ease and pleasure; though not with so high a degree of either, as if the dear proud ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... if he were a central pivot and their destinies revolved around him. They had no idea what he would say next, and they hung on ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... not yet turned out to grass or slaughter, ship-rigged to royals, and slow-steamed. One day the French admiral came on board to return my official visit. As he left, he paused for a moment abreast one of our big, and very old, pivot guns. "Capitaine," he said, "les vieux canons!" Two or three days later came his chief of staff on some errand or other. That discharged, when I was accompanying him to his boat at the gangway, he stopped in the ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Jon followed this train of logic his fingers were busy. Palming a wrench, he was swiftly loosening the main retaining nut on his hip joint. It dropped free in his hand, only the pivot pin remained now to hold his leg on. He climbed slowly to his feet and moved towards ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... and he afterwards transferred to canvas the features of many members of that circle of which it may be said that he had become for the time the pivot and the centre. I am afraid it must be confessed that he was a decidedly flattering painter, and that he imparted to his models a romantic grace which seemed easily and cheaply acquired by the ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... was concerned, was lamentable. The regular C. S. naval fleet consisted of the Louisiana (Captain McIntosh) and carrying the flag of Commodore Mitchell; the steamer McRae (Captain Huger), carrying six light 32-pounders and nine-inch pivot gun; the steamer Jackson (Captain Renshaw), with two pivoted smooth bore 32-pounders; the small ironplated "Ram" Manassas (Captain Warley), carrying one 32-pounder carronade in the bow; and two launches, each carrying a howitzer and a crew of twenty men. There were ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Nevertheless, here and there they seemed to touch upon what he was in search of. He was much fascinated, for instance, by the doctrine of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," and for its sake swallowed for a time, though not without wry faces, the dogmas, that self-interest is the true pivot of all social action, that population has a perpetual tendency to outstrip the means of living, and that to establish a preventive check on population is the duty of all good citizens. And so he lived ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... had they seen it in their dreams, that dreadful mahogany cylinder turning lazily upon its pivot and rolling in its womb, along with that of a hundred others, the fate of all that was dear to them on earth! How often, too, had their poor brains, racked and fired by doubt, fear and anguish, followed their child as he stood beside it, and grown dizzy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... true, my dear sisters, that you are of this opinion? Do not you thoroughly understand that if love is absent from marriage it should, on the contrary, be its real pivot? To make one's self lovable is the main thing. Believe my white hairs that it is so, and let me give you ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... rings will take care of any motion in three dimensions. These rings were pivoted, too, so that an unbelievably intricate series of motions could be given to the solenoid within them all. But the device was broken, now. A pivot had given away, and shaft and socket alike had vanished. Tommy became absorbed. Some oddity ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... everywhere quite extinct. The fields are billowing over with dense, golden grain, the cattle are wallowing in emerald lakes of juicy grass, the barns are substantial, the family-windmill buzzes merrily on its well-oiled pivot, drawing water or grinding feed, the fruit-trees are thrifty,—but the house is desolate. Even where its owner is particularly well off, and its architecture somewhat more ambitious than the average, (though, as yet, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... was Schumann's Nachtstueck, the fourth of the set. He had a peculiar way of turning the hand on the middle finger, as on a pivot, for the extended chords, at the same time raising the whole outer side of the hand, so that the fifth finger should be able to play the upper melody notes round and full. In the middle section he desired great ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... traveling was peremptory in the matter. He had heard of gun-boats and mortar-boats, of forts built upon the river, of Columbiads, Dahlgrens, and Parrotts, of all the pomps and circumstance of glorious war, and entertained an idea that Cairo was the nucleus or pivot of all really strategetic movements in this terrible national struggle. Under such circumstances I was as it were forced to go to Cairo, and bore myself, under the circumstances, as much like Mark Tapley as my nature would permit. I was not jolly while I was there certainly, but I did not ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... to mark the circle on bristol board [1] which can be tacked in the board. Then a pointed piece of wood ten inches long should be fastened with a nail in the center of the circle. At the ends of the pointer pins should be placed vertically so that they are in line with the pivot nail. This will form a sight for measuring the angles. The board is then mounted upon a pointed stick or tripod. You will need a hatchet and a half dozen sharpened sticks for markers and a boy for rod man. You are ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... buoyancy as a sea-boat, and diminishing the area exposed to the enemy's shot and shell. Then a berth-deck was laid for the accommodation of officers and crew, and the main deck renewed and strengthened to carry the heavy 8-inch shell-gun, mounted on a pivot between the fore and mainmasts, and the four 24 pounder howitzers of 13 cwt. each, to be mounted as a broadside battery. Additional coal-bunkers were also constructed, and a magazine and shell-room ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... swung about as though on a pivot. The wind filled the sail; she sped forward like a ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... himself act on them, were he pursuing the consequences of a perception of his own. Practically then MY thought terminates in HIS realities. He willingly supposes it, therefore, to be OF them, and inwardly to RESEMBLE what his own thought would be, were it of the same symbolic sort as mine. And the pivot and fulcrum and support of his mental persuasion, is the sensible operation which my thought leads me, or may lead, to effect—the bringing of Paley's book, of Newton's portrait, ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... but nothing would stop the progress of the disease, and he died in the course of two months after the last fit. The nearer he approached his end the smaller were the circles that he took; and, in the latter part of his existence, he did little more than turn as if he were on a pivot, and, when the time arrived that he could walk no more, he used to lay himself down on ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... are referable, there is in most minds some one governing influence, from which chiefly,—though, of course, biassed on some occasions by others,—all its various impulses and tendencies will be found to radiate. In Lord Byron, however, this sort of pivot of character was almost wholly wanting. Governed as he was at different moments by totally different passions, and impelled sometimes, as during his short access of parsimony in Italy, by springs of action never before developed ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... generally obtained excellent bread of unbolted wheat flour, rye being rarely used. There were many windmills of clumsy construction, the wheels having but four wings, and the whole concern turning on a pivot to bring its face to the wind. No bolting apparatus has been introduced, and the machinery is of the simplest and most primitive character. It was a period of fasting, just before Christmas, and our whole obtainable ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the couch stood a reading desk, on a movable pivot, with candles, and a book lying open, bearing this title, in large ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... while the two boys were each accommodated with a window; but each moment they were claiming their mother's attention, or rushing across the ladies' feet to each other's window, treating Rachel's knees as a pivot, and vouchsafing not the slightest heed to her attempts at intelligent pointing out ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... donned it when it arrived, and on my way to him transfixed the Rue des Saladiers with awe and wonder. Upstairs, Paragot twirled me slowly round as if I were a mannequin on a pivot, and called Blanquette to admire, and uttered strange oaths in the dozen languages of which he was master. Was I ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... be made to last even for ages. Those who word them seem to think that powers and dynasties will never pass away. But they do pass away, and the balance of power will not keep itself fixed forever on the same pivot. The time may come— that it may not come soon we will all desire—but the time may come when the name and prestige of what we call British North America will be as serviceable to Great Britain as those of Great Britain are now serviceable to ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... said in an urgent whisper, and drew them to a little distance. I saw him say something, saw them pivot to look at me, shrug their shoulders and walk away. I didn't in the least grasp the ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... adversaries. It consisted in enunciating in the most violent and untenable form and the most offensive language the proposition that all slave-holding is sin and every slave-holder a criminal, and making the whole attack on slavery to turn on this weak pivot and fail if this failed. The argument of this sort of abolitionist was: If there can be found anywhere a good man holding a bond-servant unselfishly, kindly, and for good reason justifiably, then the system of American slavery is right.[277:1] It is not strange that ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... rather the smaller hills or offshoots from the range. He found them sandstone, but very singularly formed or broken into huge blocks—some like the masses which I saw on the route from Ghadamez to Ghat, with a very narrow base, on which they might turn as on a pivot. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... for a quarrel than for a play. And this quarrel about the censorship is one on which he feels so strongly that in a book embodying any sort of sympathy it would be much better to leave out Mrs. Warren than to leave out Mr. Redford. The veto was the pivot of so very personal a movement by the dramatist, of so very positive an assertion of his own attitude towards things, that it is only just and necessary to state what were the two essential parties to the dispute; the play ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, a mast-pivot, 15 inches in length and weighing between seven and eight pounds, which had passed obliquely through the body of a sailor. The specimen is accompanied by a colored picture of the sufferer himself in two positions. The name of the sailor was Taylor, and the accident occurred aboard a brig lying in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... different bolts drawn back, and then there was a pause. He thought he heard whispering, so he resumed his thunder. Almost at once there followed the unmistakable squeak of a big beam turning on its pivot, and the door opened about ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... to bear the precious weight of Harold? I tugged at it, and thought so. I passed the rope round it like a pulley, and then tied it about my own waist. I had a happy thought: I could use myself as a windlass. I turned on my feet for a pivot. Elsie helped me to pull. 'Up you go!' I cried, cheerily. We wound slowly, for fear of shaking him. Bit by bit, I could feel the cage rise gradually from the ground; its weight, taken so, with living capstan and stone axle, was less than I should have expected. But the pulley helped ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... payment. As he sat in the sun, looking back on the last seven years, with a slow and dreaming mind, Reuben recognised, using his own phrases for the matter, that the children's thirty pounds had been the pivot of Hannah's existence. He was but a small sheep farmer, with very scanty capital. By dint of hard work and painful thrift, the childless pair had earned a sufficient living in the past—nay, even put by a bit, if the truth of Hannah's savings-bank deposits were known. But ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... relation to Anderson, Philip was here the pivot of the situation exactly as he had been in Canada. Just as his physical weakness, and the demands he founded upon it had bound the Canadian to their chariot wheels in the Rockies, so now—mutatis mutandis—in ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Martyn is both sharp and kindly disposed towards himself. He is not of opinion, like one of his predecessors, that he assisted at the creation of the world, and that the endurance of Christianity depends upon his clerical pivot; but he believes that he has a "mission," and that on the whole he is quite as good as the majority of Congregational divines. There is nothing pretentious in his appearance; nothing ecclesiastical in his general framework; and in the street ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... consists of a circular box, enclosing a magnetized bar of steel, called the needle, carefully balanced on an upright steel pivot, and having that end which points to the North shaped like the head of an arrow; attached to this needle, and turning with it, is a card on which are printed the divisions of North, South. East, and West; called the points of the compass. By simply ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... point of fact, Berne is a city where a German dialect is spoken, but among the lively groups of bourgeois who carry on this effective little drama a prettier and politer language is in vogue. Madame Carouge, whose personality is the pivot upon which the story revolves, is a native of southern France, and is the proprietor of the Hotel Beauregard. Her husband, who married her as a mere child and carried her away from a life of poverty and neglect, has died before the opening of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... of the house in the Rue de Normandie, was the pivot on which the domestic life of the nutcrackers turned; but Mme. Cibot plays so large a part in the drama which grew out of their double existence, that it will be more appropriate to give her portrait on her first appearance in this ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and canister, and tubs of wadding, while the combings of the hatchways were thickly studded with round shot. The tarpawling and lumber forward had disappeared, and there lay long Tom ready levelled, grinning on his pivot. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Long concealment of the deadly poverty within the walls had taught her to close the gates behind her whenever she entered, but now for greater security, or to gain time, she swung the great oaken beam round on its pivot across the doors on the inside. Then turning round on her heels she watched the bell that hung above her head. The Abbe, who had followed her as quickly as he could, was naively looking for a peep-hole between the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... (13), the rest being much easier to mark out geometrically (e.g., 10, 48, 60, and 64 teeth). The lunar phase volvelle can be seen through the circular opening at the back of the astrolabe. It is quite certain that no automatic action is intended; when the central pivot is turned, by hand, probably by using the astrolabe rete as a "handle," the calendrical circles and the lunar phase are moved accordingly. Using one turn for a day would be too slow for useful re-setting of the ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... curled up over a crucifix, emitted a rending laugh, then cried to Docre, "Father, father!" A crone tore her hair, leapt, whirled around and around as on a pivot and fell over beside a young girl who, huddled to the wall, was writhing in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, weeping, and spitting out frightful blasphemies. And Durtal, terrified, saw through the fog the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... peculiarly objectionable is that it is a master work of that kind of fiction which makes vice alluring under the sophistical veil of innocence. Longus knew very well that nothing is so tempting to libertines as purity and ignorant innocence; hence he made purity and ignorant innocence the pivot of his prurient story. Professor Rohde (516) has rudely torn the veil ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... that there was a story from your face; then I think that I can guess what it is about. Young ladies' stories generally turn upon the same pivot," and he laughed a little softly, and sat down in a corner well out of the light. "Now, my dear, I am ready to ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... on the Suvla front, or old Achi Baba at Helles—and the trick's done. From the top of either of 'em we shall look down upon the Narrows, and blow their forts to glory. Up'll go the Navy, and there y'are!" It would be over by Christmas, they believed; for Christmas was always the pivot of Tommy's time. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... not know, nor the Nuncius, nor even the friendly Aerssens, was the vast amount of supplies which had been prepared for the coming conflict by the finance minister. Henry did not know it himself. "The war will turn on France as on a pivot," said Sully; "it remains to be seen if we have supplies and money enough. I will engage if the war is not to last more than three years and you require no more than 40,000 men at a time that I will show you munitions and ammunition and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lower step—as Smith, bringing all his weight to bear upon the ring, turned the huge stone slab upon its hidden pivot, so that it fell back upon the stair with ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... claims, and claims rightly, to be a question of fundamental importance at the present time. I do not know how far one is justified in calling it the pivot or the corner-stone of a progressive civilization. These terms involve a criticism of metaphors that may take us far away from the question in hand. Birth Control is no new thing in human experience, and it has been practised in societies of the most various ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... discourse with Parson Dewhurst, who, indeed, accompanied him to the church, and was now placed between the Vicar and the Rector of Middleton. From this gentle elevation the gay company on the green could be fully discerned, the tall May-pole, with its garlands and ribands, forming a pivot, about which the throng ever revolved, while stationary amidst the moving masses, the rush-cart reared on high its broad green back, as if to resist the living waves constantly dashed against it. By-and-by a new kind of movement ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... expressed in the phrase imputed to the empress who, pointing to the prince imperial, said, "This child will never reign unless we repair the misfortunes of Sadowa." Such was the ceaseless refrain. The word haunted French imaginations incessantly, and it was the pivot on which the imperial policy revolved; it exercised a spell scarcely less powerful and disastrous upon monarchists like Thiers and republicans like Gambetta. Long foreseen, the dread shock, like all grave calamities, came nevertheless as a surprise, even ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... on Shooters' Hill Sunset the time, the place the same declivity Which looks along that vale of good and ill Where London streets ferment in full activity; While everything around was calm and still Except the creak of wheels which on their pivot he Heard—and that bee-like, babbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil over with ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... much satisfaction to Mrs. Bayford in knowing that, as far as Diane was concerned, the coast was comparatively clear, that she gathered up her skirts and departed. After she had gone, Miss Lucilla's sense of being the pivot of a romantic plot was heightened by the appearance of Diane. She came in with her usual air of confidence in her ability to meet the world, and if her pale face showed traces of tears and sleeplessness, its expression was, if anything, more courageous. Had it not been for ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... to the right, he followed them, stepping lightly in his white shoes, down one side of Merrion Square. As he walked on slowly, timing his pace to theirs, he watched Corley's head which turned at every moment towards the young woman's face like a big ball revolving on a pivot. He kept the pair in view until he had seen them climbing the stairs of the Donnybrook tram; then he turned about and went back the ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... be turned forward or back as the load requires. The three points of lead, or admission and exhaust and compression, are fixed and independent of the changes and cut off. The motion of the main eccentric is given to a rocker arm, the pivot of which is at the bottom, and from the upper end the valve rod transfers the motion to the valve without reversing the motion, as is done sometimes in the slide valve to overcome the effects of the angularity of the connecting rod. The action of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... cause why men visit each other and converse, abstracting all considerations of business, seems to be simply the love of pleasure. This is the passion truly universal; this is the pivot upon which the world intellectual, as well as the world of sense, turns. Philosophers and saints feel it in their speculations and devotions, and yield to it too, in their way, as completely as the Sybaritish gourmand, whose stomach is his Baal and Ashtaroth. Nor is this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... heels of forces we cannot resist, but will do so consciously, anticipating events. In other words, we shall take advantage of such measure of detachment as we do possess, to take the lead in a saner organization of western civilization; we shall become the pivot and centre of a new ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that the passage was clear, and that we should shoot down it without interruption; but in this I was disappointed. The boat struck with the fore-part of her keel on a sunken rock, and, swinging round as it were on a pivot, presented her bow to the rapid, while the skiff floated away into the strength of it. We had every reason to anticipate the loss of our whale-boat, whose build was so light, that had her side struck the rock, instead of her keel, she would have been laid ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... the old man, as he leveled the long pivot gun, and seized a lighted match, "I'll give you just five minutes to make your minds up in, and, if you don't surrender, I'll blow every one of you into ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... remonstrances of the captain and the owner of the Mary came with a force I was unable to resist; with a strong effort I gulped down my disappointment, and gave up my darling project of making a cruise in the Paul Jones. Our fortunes in this life our destinies seem sometimes balanced on a pivot which a breath will turn. Had I accomplished my intention and embarked on a cruise, how different my fate, in all likelihood, would ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... defending himself with his antlers; while one of the dogs lay sprawling on the ground and howling with pain. The other still kept up the fight, endeavouring to seize the elk from behind; but the latter spun round, as though his knees were upon a pivot, and always presented his horny spikes in the direction of ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... afterwards measured, lay a clear eight feet above the sand. But he never hesitated nor broke his splendid stride. He would rush at a tree; rise light and swift till above it, where he turned as if on a pivot, with head thrown back to the wind, actually resting an instant in air at the very top of his jump; then shoot downward, not falling but driven still by the impulse of his great muscles. When he struck, ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... of the island, including places where no white man had hitherto been seen.[2] In these journeys the Mokoia pa, which stood on the site of the present village of Panmure, near Auckland, became a kind of pivot of his operations. Its chief, Hinaki, was particularly friendly, and in him Marsden hoped to find a second Ruatara, and in his village a basis for mission work further south. In fact, all the people of this district seemed more accessible to the appeal of religion than ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... gentleman swung round as if on a pivot, as Audrey moved gracefully by.) "You don't mean ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... of his private life; he mentions his wife once, and almost apologizes for doing so; really, could a gentleman—a duke—dwell upon such matters, and preserve his self-respect? But, to us, it is precisely such matters that form the pivot of a personality—the index of a soul. A man's feelings are his very self, and it is around them that all that is noblest and profoundest in our literature seems naturally to centre. A great novelist is one who can penetrate and describe ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... bluff, and ascending gradually to the summit. It served the double purpose of a road, and also a protection for riflemen; as a bank was thrown up on the outer edge of it breast high. Where the road reached the summit of the bluff, was placed a six-inch mortar, mounted on a pivot carriage; and a little further on was a battery, mounting three eight-inch mortars, which were cast in 1804, and looked as if they had seen much service. A great extent of ground was cleared on the summit, and extensive ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... however, the nest was at last discovered, the poor birds were dispersed, and our hero took his ill-fledged flight to perch upon distant sprays, and to pick his meat from the hand that caters for the sparrow. This was the pivot upon which the whole life of Hodgkinson turned. The irresistible impulse of a vigorous genius would, most probably, under any other circumstances, have sent him ultimately to the goal of his destination; but this event hastened ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... little remaining ice took place: we made gentle and very cautious moves towards Barrow's Strait; and, at last, on August 11th, the ice, as if heartily tired of us, shot us out into Barrow's Strait, by turning itself fairly round on a pivot. We were at sea because we could not help it, and the navigable season ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... knowing it, Miss Beekman was an essential witness and, in fact, the pivot upon which the entire ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... gnu stopped as utterly instantly as if he had run into a brick wall, pawed, stamped, snorted, and went off once more into furiously insane caperings—a new set—all the time circling, with the little, black-and-gray, erect figure of the surprised ratel as a pivot. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Guard, the Carignan road by the Bavarians, the Mezieres road by the Wurtemburgers. The French have not thought of barricading the railway viaduct; three German battalions have occupied it during the night. Two isolated houses on the Balan road could be made the pivot of a long resistance, but the Germans are there. The wood from Monvilliers to Bazeilles, but the French have been forestalled; they find the Bavarians cutting the underwood with their billhooks. The German army moves in one piece, in one absolute unity; the Crown Prince of Saxony is on the height ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... crisis. Something told him that resistance now would be useless. True, Rosendo might have opposed arrest with violence, and perhaps have escaped. But that would have accomplished nothing for Carmen, the pivot upon which events were turning. Jose had reasoned that it were better to let the Alcalde play his hand first, in the small hope that as the cards fell he might more than match his ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the upper corner and swing it on that as a pivot, you will lop off the lower end of California, cut through Idaho, overlap South Dakota, touch Michigan, bisect Ohio, reach West Virginia, cut through North Carolina and South Carolina, lop off all the western side of Florida, and blanket ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... instrument may be constructed as shown in Figs 8, 9, and 10. The three pieces, A. B, and C, united by a pivot, O, in which there is a small hole, are of brass or other metal. Rulers may be easily procured of any length whatever. The instrument is Y-shaped. In the particular case in which [alpha] 180 it becomes T-shaped, and serves ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... Roland seized the ring, braced his feet and pulled. The square turned on its pivot with an ease which proved that it was frequently subjected to the same manipulation. As it turned, it disclosed ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... upwards one fundamental institution whereupon the whole of society reposes; that fundamental institution is Slavery.... Our European ancestry, those men from whom we are descended and whose blood runs with little admixture in our veins, took slavery for granted, made of it the economic pivot upon which the production of wealth should turn, and never doubted but that it was normal to ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... instance, ascend the stem of a fruiting plant, of shepherd's-purse, let us say, and select a well-filled but green pod, mid-way up the stem, those below being ready to shed their seeds at a touch. Then seizing it in its jaws, and fixing its hind legs firmly as a pivot, it contrives to turn round and round, and so to strain the fibres of the fruit-stalk until they snap; it then patiently backs down the stem. Sometimes two ants combine their efforts; one, at the base of the peduncle, gnaws at the point ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... as he termed it; then, grasping the eaves with both hands, he pulled himself along, the slip-noose over the cupola turning about on its pivot ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... discouraged us in no little degree. The steel rod connecting the spring with the propeller was suddenly jerked out of place, at the car end, (by a swaying of the car through some movement of one of the two seamen we had taken up,) and in an instant hung dangling out of reach, from the pivot of the axis of the screw. While we were endeavoring to regain it, our attention being completely absorbed, we became involved in a strong current of wind from the East, which bore us, with rapidly increasing force, towards the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... there, you'll find a place where there is a bowlder sort of set into the rocks. You won't notice it unless you look for it, but it is there. Under it you'll find a small stone wedged fast. If you pull out that small stone, and then push on the big rock, it'll swing around like it was on a pivot, and you kin step inside the hole it leaves, and close up the door after you. You'll find an interestin' place in there, too, if you ever have occasion to use it, mister; and nobody will find ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... mixed with those of apprehension. How would the affair proceed after Clark had taken with him his unrivaled and intimate knowledge of the works; for, and in spite of all the dictates of prudence, it seemed impossible to think of the vast enterprise at St. Marys without its central pivot. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... Naida," he admitted. "Prince Shan, though, is the pivot upon which the whole thing turns. You have ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she?" repeated the chief. "She's a secret agent of Italy, one of the most brilliant, perhaps, that has ever operated in this or any other country. She is the pivot around which the intrigue moved. We know her by a dozen names; any one ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... and likes another house in Devonshire Place, and that he may take it, and we may be settled in it, before the year closes. I myself think of the whole business indifferently. My thoughts have turned so long on the subject of houses, that the pivot is broken—and now they won't turn any more. All that remains is, a sort of consciousness, that we should be more comfortable in a house with cleaner carpets, and taken for rather longer than a week at a time. Perhaps, after all, we are quite as well sur le tapis as ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... possibilities which it revealed, made everything new to him. Never had he realised the meaning of history until now. Never had the greatness of his country so impressed him. Hitherto he had not realised what his ambitions meant. Now they became clear. The House of Commons became the pivot of the world, and it seemed to him as though he had his hand upon the pulse of humanity. London was the great heart of the Empire, sending out its streams of life-blood through the length and breadth of the world. And the heart of London was the great pile of ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... was permanently compromised by the abominable sale of Venice, with her two thousand years of freedom, to the empire which, as no one knew better than he did, was the pivot of European despotism. After that transaction he could never again come before the Italians with clean hands; they might for a season make him their idol, carried away by the intoxication of his fame; they could never trust him in their inmost conscience. The ruinous ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... useless, it is far otherwise. It is only carrying that which is daily necessary into perfection. When a bullock is checked and caught by the lazo, it will sometimes gallop round and round in a circle, and the horse being alarmed at the great strain, if not well broken, will not readily turn like the pivot of a wheel. In consequence many men have been killed; for if the lazo once takes a twist round a man's body, it will instantly, from the power of the two opposed animals, almost cut him in twain. On the same principle the races are managed; the course is only two or three hundred yards ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... skill against the wary old Marshal's, he was offering incentives to conspiracy. Distrusting the revolution, which was a force behind him, he placed such reliance on its efforts in his front as to make it the pivot of his actions. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... certainly up with the danger, and the vessel was slowly drawing ahead; but every moment its broadside was set nearer to the rock, which was now within fifty feet of them. The fore-chains were past the point, though little hope remained of clearing it abaft. A ship turns on her centre of gravity as on a pivot, the two ends inclining in opposite directions; and Captain Truck hoped that as the bows were past the danger, it might be possible to throw the after-part of the vessel up to the wind, by keeping away, and thus ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... rules: on the left, was the town to which the palace, temple, or whatever occupied the middle, belonged; on the right, the open country, landscape, mountains, sea-coast, &c. The side-scenes were composed of triangles which turned on a pivot beneath; and in this manner the change of scene was effected. According to an observation on Virgil, by Servius, the change of scene was partly produced by revolving, and partly by withdrawing. The former applies to the lateral decorations, and the latter ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... certain broad distinction of method in the web. Tight as the versifier may draw the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. In prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, and fits into itself with an obtrusive neatness like a puzzle. The ear remarks and is singly gratified by this return and balance; while in verse it is all diverted to the measure. To find comparable passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the superior ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his powerful shoulder to the long six-pounder that worked on a pivot, and together, with joint exertions, they trained the gun upon the stern windows of the corvette. Dick Stone had just beforehand lighted his pipe when standing at the helm, and as the long gun bore upon its object he suddenly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... space of an hour the dreadful chase went on, Graf Hermann rooted to the spot with horror, overcome by a sense of helplessness. There in the centre he stood, the pivot round which circled the infernal hunt, unable to stay the relentless riders as with bony hands rattling against their skeleton steeds they encouraged them to charge, gore, and trample the hapless stranger, whose cries of agony were drowned by shrieks of fiendish glee ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... in military engineering and fortification to walk round these wonderful defences. The wiring too was most ingenious and often carefully concealed in the hedges or ditches. Inside the gun shelters, you found that the gun was fixed on a central pivot and worked round a wooden platform with every degree carefully marked. Whilst on the walls stood a painted board with every barrage line and target carefully worked out, and the range and code call set out as well. The O.P. was sometimes in a high ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... is silent—rocks and woods, All still and silent—far and near! Only the Ass, with motion dull, Upon the pivot of his skull Turns round ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... baked white clay, and is something like a grindstone, only not half as thick. The grindstone stands up, but this lays flat, with its round side turned up, like the head of a barrel. And it's set on a pivot, like the needle of ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... into its constituent colours, and these various colours will be seen quite readily. Or the thing may be realised in another way. If the seven colours are painted on a wheel as shown opposite page 280 (in the proportion shown), and the wheel rapidly revolved on a pivot, the wheel will appear a dull white, the several colours will not be seen. But omit one of the colours, then the wheel, when revolved, will not appear white, but will give the impression of one colour, corresponding ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... carved wood, bone or ivory, which latter method was practised until the introduction of swaged metallic plates. Where the crown only of a tooth or those of several teeth were lost, the restoration was effected by engrafting upon the prepared root a suitable crown by means of a wooden or metallic pivot. When possible, the new crown was that of a corresponding sound tooth taken from the mouth of another individual; otherwise an artificial crown carved from bone or ivory, or sometimes from the tooth of an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... liberty which it proclaimed never greatly seduced the peoples, but equality became their gospel: the pivot of socialism and of the entire evolution of modern democratic ideas. We may therefore say that the Revolution did not end with the advent of the Empire, nor with the successive restorations which followed it. Secretly or in the light of day it has slowly unrolled itself ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... occasions by their dress of ceremony. The civilians have a bird, and the military a tyger, embroidered on the breast and back of their upper robe; and their several ranks are pointed out by different coloured globes, mounted on a pivot on the top of the cap or bonnet. The Emperor has also two orders of distinction, which are conferred by him alone, as marks of particular favour; the order of the yellow vest ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... of the guns was incessant. Suddenly, close at hand, Chloe heard a quick, wicked spat, and the Indian reeled from the doorway, whirled as on a pivot, and crashed, face downward, across the table. There was a loud rattle of porcelain dishes, a rifle rang sharply upon the floor boards, and Chloe gazed in horrid fascination as the limp form of the Indian slipped slowly ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... Perris sway drunkenly at every shock; his head seemed to swing on a pivot from side to side under that fearful jolting—his mouth was ajar, his eyes staring, a fearful mask of a face; yet he clung in place. When he was stunned, instinct still kept his feet in the stirrups and taught him to give lightly to every jar. He ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... the ball around the corners, do not stand still and pivot. Go after it, again with a series of short steps with your racquet head up and cocked, and your body in proper position so that you are ready to make a quick and ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... He discovered his astounding clumsiness. To walk in magnetic-soled shoes in weightlessness requires a knack. When Joe lifted one foot and tried to swing the other forward, his body tried to pivot. When he lifted his right foot, he had to turn his left slightly inward. His arms tried to float absurdly upward. When he was in motion and essayed to pause, his whole body tended to continue forward with a sedate toppling ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... with a firm and bold hand, the greater part of the antique and venerable scaffolding with which the illusions of the senses and the pride of successive generations had filled the universe. The earth ceased to be the centre, the pivot of the celestial movements; it henceforward modestly ranged itself among the planets; its material importance, amid the totality of the bodies of which our solar system is composed, found itself reduced almost to that ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... which are usually laid down in clay. The pavement of the improved arastra is made of hewn stone, cut very accurately and laid down in cement. In the centre of the bed of the arastra is an upright post which turns on a pivot, and running through the post is a horizontal bar, projecting on each side to the outer edge of the pavement. On each arm of this bar is attached by a chain a large flat stone or muller, weighing from three hundred to five hundred pounds. It is so hung that the forward ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... your orders, Count Eglamore, my playmate Tebaldeo was fastened to a cross, like that (pointing to the shrine). I know that his arms and legs were each broken in two places with an iron bar. I know that this cross was then set upon a pivot, so that it turned slowly. I know that my dear Tebaldeo died very slowly in the sunlit marketplace, while the cross turned, and turned, and turned. I know this was a public holiday; the shopkeepers took holiday to watch him die, the boy who fetched me a wren's nest from yonder maple. And I know ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... is all turning round on a new pivot," said Sin to Frank, after they were seated again up-stairs. "Don't take up the 'Skelligs' yet; I want to tell you. If I thought the pivot would really stay, there are two or three more things I should do. And one of them is,—I'd have the nursery—a ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... met with a fresh mishap, and came near ending his sufferings in a watery grave, only the water did not happen to be quite deep enough. Arising from the sharp-pointed rock that had served him for a pivot on which to eat his dinner, he stumbled, fell and rolled over and over down the bank, and into the river, with ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... wind: the only difference in the two cases being this—namely, that in the sails of the ship, the axis of inclination, represented by the mast, is vertical, creating horizontal movement; while, in the wings of the air-ship, the axis of inclination—the pivot on which they turn—is horizontal, creating vertical movement. Were there but one pair of screws, acting upon one set of inclined wings, a slight retrograde horizontal movement would be produced in addition to the vertical movement, as the current ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... human nature which permeates all this historical exhibition, comes in here, however; and it is one which must be mastered before any of these plays can be really read. The radical point in the new philosophy, as it applies to the human nature in particular, is the pivot on which all turns here,—here as elsewhere in the writings of this school,—the distinction of 'the double self,' the distinction between the particular and private nature, with its unenlightened instincts ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... ferocious jaws, opening like shears; on the contrary, a fine pointed muzzle which seems to be made for billing and cooing. Thanks to a flexible neck, set freely upon the thorax, the head can turn to right or left as on a pivot, bow, or raise itself high in the air. Alone among insects, the Mantis is able to direct its gaze; it inspects and examines; it ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Think of it! And I saw there at the same time another instrument, called "the scavenger's daughter," which resembles a pair of shears, with handles where handles ought to be, but at the points as well. And just above the pivot that fastens the blades, a circle of iron through which the hands would be placed, into the lower circles the feet, and into the center circle the head would be pushed, and in that position he would be thrown prone upon the earth, and kept there until ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... is a long eighteen down in the hold, which will be mounted as a pivot as soon as she gets among the islands. The others are well enough when you come to close quarters, but the long gun generally keeps the pirates from getting there; they don't like being peppered before ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... Battle was constituted by the ships "of the line" ranging themselves one behind the other in a prescribed succession; the position of each and the intervals between being taken from the ship next ahead. This made the leading vessel the pivot of the order and of manoeuvring, unless specially otherwise directed; which in an emergency could not always be easily done. Strictly, if circumstances favoured, the line on which the ships thus formed was one of the two close-hauled lines; "close-hauled" meaning to bring the vessel's head as ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... unnecessary work, and incur the odium of summoning all his friends from their rest? In the midst of the doubts as to the new and old Ministry, when the political needle was vacillating so tremulously on its pivot, pointing now to one set of men as the coming Government and then to another, vague suggestions as to an autumn session might be useful. And they were thrown out in all good faith. Mr. Mildmay, when he spoke on the ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope |
