"Precipitate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the frost-bound river, with here and there patches of open water showing darkly against the snow-covered ice; the scattered groups of soldiers treading carefully, and with the possibility before them that at the next step the treacherous floor might precipitate them ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the Spartan guards at the Pass of Thermopylae, pushed on into Attica, and laid Athens in ruins. But there fortune forsook him. At the naval battle of Salamis, his fleet was cut to pieces by the Grecian ships; and the king, making a precipitate retreat into Asia, hastened to his capital, Susa. Here, in the pleasures of the harem, he sought solace for his wounded pride and broken hopes. He at last fell a victim to palace intrigue, being slain in his own chamber ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... restrained the civilians from entertaining the proposal; and, even so, the alcalde was in a perfect agony of fear lest, despite all the efforts of his friends ashore, some rash act on the part of the soldiery and the rougher element among the civilians, should yet precipitate a catastrophe. Therefore, no sooner was the last gold brick transferred than the alcalde and his fellow prisoners overwhelmed George with most urgent solicitations that, having now accomplished all he had planned, he would proceed to sea forthwith; ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... the boy, as I remember him, showed some rare combinations and counterpoises. With an exuberance of animal spirits he had, also, a natural balance of caution. He was ardent, but not hasty; he was self reliant and fearless, but never precipitate; frank and affable, though not easily won by a stranger; fond of experiment, but also intensely practical. He was prompt to decide, but always took time for detail, and pursued perseveringly to the end whatever engaged his attention ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... That seemed to implicate us! We have done Less gallantly by Strafford. Well, the future Must recompense the past. She tarries long. I understand you, Strafford, now! The scheme— Carlisle's mad scheme—he'll sanction it, I fear, For love of me. 'Twas too precipitate: Before the army's fairly on its march, He'll be at large: no matter. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... man's hand fell on my shoulder. "I miss you," he said, simply. "I miss you all the time. You see, I love you." Then, with precipitate selfconsciousness, he closed the door of his New England heart, and from some remote corner of it sent out his cautious after-thought. "I love you," he repeated, primly, "as ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... demure gardens have flirted with the Isle of Flowers (Elephantina), five hundred miles away; and those very pyramids have floated down the waves of Nile. In short, to speak chemically, that river is a solution of Ethiopia's richest regions, and that vast country is merely a precipitate. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... frequently, ignorance, neglect and vice come to this. The young, the weak and the proud have to guard themselves against these dangers, hey work slowly, imperceptibly, but surely. Two things increase the peril and tend to precipitate matters; reading and companionship. The ignorant are often anxious to know the other side, when they do not know their own. The consequence is that they will not understand fully the question; and if they ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... brandish it over our heads in wrath, in vain do we seek to ward off with it a blow which threatens us; an invisible power turns aside the point, and all the impetus of effort, deflected into space, serves only to precipitate ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... new franchise the street railway is so nearly concluding," he answered. "O, we'll be enough for them yet. When are you going to appoint a new street commissioner? Perhaps that might precipitate ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... solution directly into the bottle containing the maceration of lime. Stir well and let the solution stand in order to allow the precipitate of Carbonate ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... own precipitate adoption of a contrary belief, Brown yet heard with delight that the suspicions of Julia's fidelity, upon which he had so rashly acted, were probably void of foundation. How must he in the meantime be suffering in her opinion? or what could she suppose ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... interest in religion was held by the whole Protestantism of that day to be the one gate for the individual into 'God's truth.' Had his Queen shown anything of this spirit of earnest enquiry, our rough Reformer might have been precipitate to help her steps, though they should be as yet on the wrong side of the dividing line. But Mary made no pretences on the subject, and it was her misfortune, and that of all around, that her opinion on religion—a ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... accumulations, so that they always present fresh surfaces for the action of the solvent. Again, the short time the ore is in contact with the chlorine does not allow of the formation of hydrochloric acid, which has a tendency to precipitate the gold from its soluble form in the water before ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... by reverently, and read with sober care How a great people, riding with defiant shouts The centaur of Revolution, Spurred and whipped to frenzy, Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea Over the precipice they were nearing, And fell from his back in precipitate awe To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being. Moved by the same sense of vast reality Of life and death, and burdened as they were With the fate of a race, How was I, a little blasphemer, Caught in the drift of a nation's unloosened flood, To remain a blasphemer, And a captain ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... possible to discover hitherto either the reason, or the origin of these two species, which thus in their turns, at the end of every seventh year, pour out all of a sudden in amazing numbers, and having committed their ravages on all the fruits of the earth, precipitate themselves into the sea. Neither has any preventive remedy for this evil been yet discovered. It is well known how they perish, but, once more, how they are produced no one, that I could learn, has as yet been ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... the escaped prisoner and he stretched out his strong muscles, which had been so long cramped in the cage, and shuffled up the side of the mountain at his best pace. Through thickets and brambles he crashed with a wild exultation; up precipitate crags he labored with feverish excitement and frenzy that grew with each moment. He sniffed at the rustling fronds and mosses as he passed, with wild delight. How fresh, how new, how satisfying the ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... upon modes of locomotion on the coast was cut off by the precipitate arrival of John who, coming up the drive in his best manner, narrowly escaped a triple ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... per cent., with the quantity of water added to the iodide of silver before adding the iodide of potassium; the minimum required being when the two salts act on each other in as dry a form as possible. Take the precipitate of iodide of silver, got by decomposing 100 grains of nitrate of silver with 97.66 grains of iodide of potassium; drain off the last water completely, so that the precipitate occupies not more than five or six drachms by measure; throw on it 640 grains ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... except the plate, which had been stowed away in a hole made in one of the walls, so that, as he was very rich and had good taste, the large drawing-room, which opened into the dining-room, had looked like the gallery in a museum, before his precipitate flight. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... contrary, M. E. de Beaumont has judiciously observed that we ought to find in veins those substances which, being least soluble, are not discharged by hot springs— or that class of simple and compound bodies which the thermal waters ascending from below would first precipitate on the walls of a fissure, as soon as their temperature began slightly to diminish. The higher they mount towards the surface, the more will they cool, till they acquire the average temperature of springs, being in that case chiefly charged with the most soluble substances, such as the alkalies, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... many hours," replied Luke Hatton; "but it will be well not to be too precipitate. Neither must they die at the same time. All precaution shall be taken. The names are placed in a particular order. Is it so the Countess would have them taken? In that case I ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... neglect of you, beloved object of my first and only affection, console my heart under the cries of conscience, or stifle the grief which returned for you, when that ambition was gratified? Ah, that false and precipitate step! How much misery has it not occasioned me since I awoke from my dream! Your gentle spirit seemed to haunt me through life, but ever with that melancholy smile of tender and affectionate reproach ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... in presuming publicly that the new law was intended against himself, and in taking upon himself the outward signs of a man under affliction. "The resolution," says Middleton, "of changing his gown was too hasty and inconsiderate, and helped to precipitate his ruin." He was sensible of his error when too late, and oft reproaches Atticus that, being a stander-by, and less heated with the game than himself, he would suffer him to make such blunders. And he quotes the words written ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... the city, with a confused noise of fighting, and cries of terror. This happened while the fight was going on at the gate. When, on riding up nearer, he saw his own men on the walls, and so much progress already made in the business, pleased at having gained, through the precipitate conduct of a few, an opportunity of striking an important blow, he ordered the troops, whom he had sent back to the camp, to be called out, and to march to the attack of the city: these, having made good their entrance on the nearest side, proceeded no farther, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... determined charge of the police, and in one place by the equally gallant, and certainly unique defence, which came from turning the boiling water from the engines upon the howling wretches, who, unprepared for any such warm reception as this, beat a precipitate and general retreat. Before night fell it was no longer one vast crowd collected in a single section, but great numbers of gatherings, scattered over the whole length and breadth of the city,—some of them engaged in actual work of demolition and ruin; others with clubs and weapons ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... been an interminable calvary to the gallant Henri de Navarre. The body was received by Marie de Medici in tears, and the Ducs de Guise and d'Epernon clattered out the courtyard on horseback to spread the false news that the king had suffered no harm. Fearing the results of too precipitate publishing of the disaster ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... souls a common strait Wakes latencies unknown, Whose impulse may precipitate A life-long leap. The hour was late, And there was the Jersey boat with its ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... He leant against the gate of the wood-path, struggling sternly with himself. This was no simple matter of his own intellectual consistency or happiness. Another's whole life was concerned. Any precipitate speech, or hasty action, would be a crime. A man is bound above all things to protect those who depend on him from his own immature or revocable impulses. Not a word yet, till this sense of convulsion and upheaval had passed away, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thee once—once only—years ago: I must not say how many—but not many. It was a July midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, Upon the upturned faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... noble personage began to look A little black upon this new flirtation; But such small licences must lovers brook, Mere freedoms of the female corporation. Woe to the man who ventures a rebuke! 'T will but precipitate a situation Extremely disagreeable, but common To calculators when ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... of the murder having been carried from point to point. The Commissioner was uncertain what to do, as the Crees were restless through want of food and the absence of game, and a force sent to capture Arrowhead, the chief who had committed the murder, might precipitate trouble. Jim solved the problem by offering to go alone and bring the chief into the post. It was two hundred miles to the Cree encampment, and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pardon, lady. Ere I had begun, My thoughts moved toward thee with a gentle flow That bore a depth of waters: when I took My pen to write, they rushed into a gulf, Precipitate and foamy. Can it be That Death who humbles all hath ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Browning's friends, Alfred Domett, the author of Ranolf and Amohia, then or afterwards Prime Minister in New Zealand.[18] The poem is written in a free and familiar style, which rises from time to time into a kind of precipitate brilliance; it is more personal in detail than Browning often allows himself to be; and its humour is blithe and friendly. In another poem, now known as Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, the humour is grotesque, bitter and pungent, the humour ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... state things will be suffered to proceed, lest measures of vigour should precipitate a crisis. The timid will act thus from character; the wise from necessity. Our laws had done all that the old condition of things dictated to render our judges erect and independent; but they will naturally fail on the side upon which they had taken no precautions. The judicial magistrates ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... kind of inconsistency in one who had taken for his philosophic ideal the monochronos hedone of Aristippus—the pleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now—there would come, together with that precipitate sinking of things into the past, a desire, after all, [155] to retain "what was so transitive." Could he but arrest, for others also, certain clauses of experience, as the imaginative memory presented them to himself! In those grand, hot summers, he would have imprisoned the very perfume ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... picturesque estuary which lay north and south; the native path ran along its shores, which were of great richness and beauty, and the estuary itself lay to our west and was about two miles across; on the east a series of rich undercliff limestone hills gradually rose into lofty and precipitate ranges, between which and the estuary was the fertile valley along which we wound our weary way; while groups of graceful acacias with their airy and delicate foliage gave a great charm to this beautiful spot. We moved slowly along, and ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... may be sure, to listen to Rousseau when he affirmed that they were naturally good." Not that Professor Babbitt looks on us as utterly evil and worthy of damnation. He objects to the gloomy Jonathan-Edwards view, because it helps to precipitate by reaction the opposite extreme—"the boundless sycophancy of human nature from which we are now suffering." It was, perhaps, in reaction against the priests that Rousseau made the most boastful announcements of his righteousness. "Rousseau feels himself so good that he ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... that could be called nothing less than precipitate, he made a turn and fairly shot out of the door by which ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... am not anxious about the fate of my remarks, which I have quite forgot, and which, I dare say, were very foolish. To me it is of little importance whether the King's conduct were right or wrong; but it is of great importance that those whom I love should not think me a precipitate, silly, shallow sciolist in politics, and suppose that every frivolous word that falls from my pen is a dogma which I mean to advance as indisputable; and all this only because I write to them without reserve; ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... reality of the Jewish problem is very vital for everybody and especially vital for Jews. To pretend that there is no problem is to precipitate the expression of a rational impatience, which unfortunately can only express itself in the rather irrational form of Anti-Semitism. In the controversies of Palestine and Syria, for instance, it is very common to hear the answer ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... it becomes precipitate and haggard. We are swept along by an impetuosity that we submit to without knowing whence it comes. We begin the ascent of the second hill which appears in the ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... was happy to have found a shorter path to her dear Ourson. When she had passed over about half the distance she heard the noise of a heavy and precipitate step but too far off for her to imagine what it could be. After some moments of expectation she saw an enormous wild boar coming towards her. He seemed greatly enraged, ploughed the ground with his tusks and rubbed the bark from the trees as he passed along. His heavy snorting ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... has been reached there come difficulties and dangers, which, if we put Shakespeare for the moment out of mind, are easily seen. An immediate and crushing counter-action would, no doubt, sustain the interest, but it would precipitate the catastrophe, and leave a feeling that there has been too long a preparation for a final effect so brief. What seems necessary is a momentary pause, followed by a counter-action which mounts at first slowly, and afterwards, as it gathers force, with quickening ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... whispered a word of this to Margaret; nor shall I whisper it. I should like to put Mr. Pike on his guard; and yet I know that the revealing of Mr. Mellaire's identity would precipitate another killing. And still we drive south, close-hauled on the wind, toward the inhospitable tip of the continent. To-day we are south of a line drawn between the Straits of Magellan and the Falklands, and to-morrow, if the breeze holds, we shall pick up the coast ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... that we should be together it would surely have been but a foolish ceremony between us to have abstained from telling each other that it would be so because my aunt had died last week. But it may be, and I think it is the case, that the feelings arising from her death have made us both too precipitate.' ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... women seized their children, flung them over the precipice, and then cast themselves headlong also, followed by the men. Almost every soul thus perished, very few surviving to become prisoners. An Arcadian captain named AEneas, seeing one of them in a fine dress about to precipitate himself with the rest, seized him with a view to prevent it. But the man in return grasped him firmly, dragged him to the edge of the rock, and leaped down to the destruction of both. Though scarcely any prisoners were taken, however, the Greeks obtained abundance ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... worth, it suggests a Titan in commotion. It is Titanic; the torso of some Faust-like dream, it is Chopin's Faust. A macabre march, containing some dangerous dissonances, gravely ushers us to ascending staircases of triplets, only to precipitate us to the very abysses of the piano. That first subject, is it not almost as ethically puissant and passionate as Beethoven in his F minor Sonata? Chopin's lack of tenaciousness is visible here. Beethoven would have built a cathedral on such a foundational scheme, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... sorry we have been so precipitate in this affair, Walter," said Mrs. Jerrold, fuming. "After all, this eccentric old person may change his mind, and it will be so awkward to break off the match, for you cannot afford to marry a ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... by turns impetuous and restrained, was expressed in some degree by the pace he imparted to his horse—now bold and precipitate, like the flight of unbridled imagination—now calm and measured, like the reflection which succeeds an idle dream. But, in all this fantastic course, his least movements were distinguished by a proud, independent and somewhat ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... The savages' doleful cry of retreat vibrated upon the air. Moving towards the stream, redskins and white men crossed it together in headlong flight. It was an Indian custom to carry the dead from the field of battle, but on this occasion so precipitate was their retreat that eleven corpses were left to lie where they had fallen in the struggle. Sullivan and his army had undisputed possession of the field. To Brant and to the men of the Six Nations this was a day of grief and disaster. The ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... in the room was lit, his money, the nickel and the two dimes, was shut in one of his fists. He was dressing himself with one hand, dressing with feverish, precipitate haste. What had happened? He marvelled at himself, but did not check his preparations an instant. He could not stop, whether he would or no; there was something in him stronger than himself, something that urged him on his feet, that drove him ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... to a rival church. She therefore roused a hate which has made her immortal; but it was not until the reign of her son Jehoram that Elisha apparently felt strong enough to execute a plot he had made with one of the generals to precipitate a revolution, in which the whole of the house of Ahab should be murdered and the heretics exterminated. The awful story is told with ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... latest method, and that now in use. To a solution of sulphate of copper, add a solution of ferrocyanide of pottasium, so long as a precipitate continues to be formed. This is allowed to settle, and the clear liquor being decanted the vessel is filled with water, and when the precipitate settles the liquor is again decanted, and continue to repeat these washings until the sulphate of potash is washed quite out; this is known by adding ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... In this lies the liberty man has; and from the not using of it right comes all that variety of mistakes, errors, and faults which we run into in the conduct of our lives, and our endeavours after happiness; whilst we precipitate the determination of our wills, and engage too soon, before due examination. To prevent this, we have a power to suspend the prosecution of this or that desire; as every one daily may experiment in himself. This seems to me the source of all liberty; in this seems to consist ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... arm a camp-stool. It must have been evident to Miss Earle that he had intended to sit down and have a cup of coffee with her, and continue the acquaintance begun so auspiciously that morning. He wondered if she had noticed that his precipitate retreat had taken place the moment there appeared on the deck a very handsome and stylishly dressed young lady. He began to fear that Miss Earle must have thought him suddenly taken with insanity, or, worse still, sea-sickness. The more Morris thought ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... Agency may rise. We can take care of our own situation, for we have four troops of cavalry here, but we cannot permit you to go to Sitting Bull's camp. Not only would you be killed before you got halfway there, but your presence in the country would precipitate hostilities for which we are not in the least prepared. I'm sorry, Cody, ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... the month the Teutons had almost reached the Arges River, the last large stream that ran between them and the outer fortifications of Bucharest. Behind this river the Rumanians finally came to a stand, and now Berlin, instead of describing the precipitate flight of the enemy, spoke only of the hard fighting which was going on. At this time the German War Office also announced the capture of Campulung, which opened the road through ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... now at the word of command from Lieutenant-Colonel De Salaberry, opened so unexpected and effectual a fire upon the enemy, as to throw him into the utmost disorder, and to occasion a tumultuous and precipitate retreat. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... help it. Think you, Senor mio, I would have agreed to such an extortion had it been in my power to avoid it? But your precipitate flight gave me to understand that you had killed your adversary. Any delay in the town might have been attended with danger, backed as his reverence was by all the rabble of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... stood there growling and roaring and the lions did likewise. It was purely an exhibition of jungle bluff. Each was trying to frighten off the other. Neither wished to turn back and give way, nor did either at first desire to precipitate an encounter. The lions were fed sufficiently so as not to be goaded by pangs of hunger and as for Tarzan he seldom ate the meat of the carnivores; but a point of ethics was at stake and neither side wished to back down. So they stood there facing one another, making all sorts of ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... meantime assembled the lieutenants and military tribunes, he told them both what he had learnt from Volusenus, and what he wished to be done; and enjoined them (as the principle of military matters, and especially as maritime affairs, which have a precipitate and uncertain action, required) that all things should be performed by them at a nod and at the instant. Having dismissed them, meeting both with wind and tide favourable at the same time, the signal being given and the anchor weighed, he advanced about seven ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... some are more, and others less sensitive. If Chloride of silver, which is a white precipitate formed by adding chloride of sodium (common salt) to a solution of nitrate of silver, be exposed to diffused light, it speedily assumes a violet tint, and ultimately becomes nearly black. With iodide of silver, bromide of silver, ammonio-nitrate of silver, and other salts of ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... so gray and gentle, searched the distance. The hills, snow-capped and serrated. The vast incline of ancient glacier, rolling backwards and upwards in discolored waves from the precipitate opposite bank of Snake River. The woods, so darkly overpowering as the year progressed towards its old age. The shaking tundra, treacherous and hideous with rank growths of the summer. The river facets of broken crags awaiting the cloak of winter to conceal their crude nakedness. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger upon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at once into the dim, grey unknown. And so the orderly-sergeant, while sheathing the ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... threatened to secede in the time of General Jackson. The want of firmness and decision on the part of the President has been severely criticised, but it seems to me to have been not without excuse in the perplexing conditions of the time, while it was certainly fortunate that he did not precipitate the crisis by sending troops to reinforce Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, which was invested and threatened by South Carolina troops. The contest was inevitable anyway, and the management of the war was better in the hands of Lincoln than it could have been in those of Buchanan, with traitors ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... staring after him, I felt like a murderer of the deepest dye. It is one thing to hand over to the police their natural prey, a thief taken red-handed, but quite another, and a much more harrowing one, to have him slip through your fingers, precipitate himself into mid-air, and drop four stories to the pavement, scattering his brains far and wide. There was not a vestige of hope ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... sensibility were yet falling from the eyes of the good old man upon the miserable daughter who was clasping his knees. He smiled once more, played with her dishevelled locks, and smiled yet again. Suddenly his son rushed in, and was about to precipitate himself into his embrace. The father gave him a ghastly look; a wild shriek of madness, which thrilled through the nerves of every one present, burst from his heaving breast; and the poor sufferer became for ever an object of horror ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... end in my extinction. Not for an instant had my enemy loosened his deadly clutch, and now he had me penned against the banisters, and my one hope was that they would give way before our united weight, and precipitate us both into the room below. That would be better than being slowly throttled, even if it were only a better death. Other chance there was none, and I was actually trying to fling myself over, beating the air with both hands wildly, when one of them closed upon the butt of the revolver ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... was a close friend of Roscoe Conkling, the head of the state machine; and A.B. Cornell, the naval officer, was chairman of the state and national Republican committees; It was evident that an attempt to change conditions in New York would precipitate a test of strength between the administration ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... severely scanned. You cannot stand chaffering at a bargain as to the cheapest mode of extinguishing a fire kindled by a red-hot cannon-ball at the door of the magazine. But the crisis and the necessity for precipitate action are past. The rebellion, dragged to the light of day, has assumed definite proportions. The means for its suppression are ample, and nothing is requisite but the firmness and sagacity to apply them. In other words, the one thing needful for the successful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... eighteen, he paid a brief visit to Russia. But it was not until several years later that he became acquainted with the score of "Boris Godounow," which was destined to have so great an influence on his life, and precipitate his revolt from Wagnerism. In 1884 he gained the Prix de Rome with his cantata "L'Enfant prodigue." During his three-year stay at the Villa Medici he composed "Printemps" and "La Damoiselle elue." "Ariettes oubliees" were published in 1888, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... but as soon as his broadside was ready, he gave his ship the starboard helm, bringing as many of his guns to bear as possible, and at the same time kept me from the wind. We returned his fire as briskly as we could; but, in our precipitate retreat from the town, most of our small arms were wetted, so that it was long before they were of any use. During this action, there was a strange contusion on shore, where the people had flocked down from the hills to extinguish the fire in Payta, in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... a Mameluke, was always with Napoleon from the time of the return from Egypt till 1814, when he abandoned his master. He slept at or near the door of Napoleon. See Remusat, tome i, p. 209, for an amusing description of the alarm of Josephine, and the precipitate flight of Madame de Remusat, at the idea of being met and killed by this man in one of Josephine's nocturnal attacks on the privacy of her husband when closeted ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... powers of positive vice I can in some degree calculate, and against direct malevolence I can be on my guard; but who can estimate the fatuity of giddy caprice, or ward off the unthinking mischief of precipitate folly? ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... was marched out of the conservatory at the point of the walking-stick, and made to hop down into the river, into whose waters he splashed; and we saw him no more. We regret to say that the popular indignation was so precipitate in its results; otherwise the special artist who sketched Hum, the son of Buz, intended to have made a sketch of the old villain, as he sat with his luckless victim's hind legs projecting from his solemn mouth. With all his moral faults, he was a ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... strange story, and, I truly believe, without precedent. Two years and a half ago John Hinckman was dangerously ill in this very room. At one time he was so far gone that he was really believed to be dead. It was in consequence of too precipitate a report in regard to this matter that I was, at that time, appointed to be his ghost. Imagine my surprise and horror, sir, when, after I had accepted the position and assumed its responsibilities, that old man revived, ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... trouble, and a few days later Prince William abandoned his kingdom and took refuge on a foreign warship. Repenting of that precipitate step, he returned to his capital again, and at the time of writing (June 1914) he is still there under the protection of his foreign soldiers; but an insurgent force holds the field, demanding "restoration of ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... year after this marriage that Will was awakened late one night by the sound of a horse galloping on the road, followed by precipitate knocking at the inn-door. He opened his window and saw a farm servant, mounted and holding a led horse by the bridle, who told him to make what haste he could and go along with him; for Marjory was dying, and had sent urgently to fetch him to her bedside. Will was ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... demanded that I handle the arrest of Montani's agent in such manner as to shield them. I was thinking hard and in my perplexity even considered sending a messenger for Torrence; but he was already suspicious and would be very likely to summon Raynor immediately and precipitate a crisis I was not prepared to face. To invite the attention of the American State Department to the increasingly complex situation would not be giving my aunt the chance I meant she should have ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... seemed tranquil, the soldiers stood quietly awhile; and on being asked what was the cause of their sudden and precipitate movement, they at first hesitated, and then avowing their alarm for the safety of the emperor, declared they would not retire till they had been admitted into the council-chamber, and had seen him ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... famine in that country? It was no wonder, I continued, that an English officer in the Mysore service had been heard to say that he supposed Mysore would not be allowed to plant a tree, in case it might precipitate some moisture that might otherwise pass over ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... Lemberg was an exceedingly important railway centre (seven lines converge there), and it contained an immense amount of war munitions. When, therefore, the retreat was tardily undertaken, the fact that the more precipitate retirement had begun in front of the city and not behind it was of considerable effect in ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... ten minutes neither could tell afterward. The same idea was in both their minds—that unless the attention of the Indians could be held until the train arrived, its approach would only precipitate their own fate by impelling the savages to carry out whatever designs of murder, insult or capture they might have. Under the influence of the intense excitement of this critical interval it is to be feared that the performance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... distance by an attendant, galloped into the open space fronting Newgate, and directed his course towards a house in the Old Bailey. Before he could draw in the rein, his steed—startled apparently by some object undistinguishable by the rider,—swerved with such suddenness as to unseat him, and precipitate him on the ground. The next moment, however, he was picked up, and set upon his feet by a person who, having witnessed the accident, flew across the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with a cold-blooded reader of history I expressed my appreciation of the noble proportions of their struggles and my sympathy for their present unfortunate plight, to which she replied: "Yes, but it is so entirely their own fault. They are so fiery, so precipitate, so romantic. They got themselves into it! Their poesy and romance and folly make them charming as individuals, but ridiculous as a nation. I like the Poles, but I have no patience with Poland." How exactly the world's verdict on the artistic ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... Buzz than any other living soul. And just as suddenly he had decided that it would be time wasted to talk with his aunt Loraine—time that could be well spent elsewhere. And so his departure had been precipitate. And now as he hurried along the plank walk, beneath the arching branches, with the world so fresh and green and hopeful about him, he felt how incongruous everything was. Over beyond the hedge the blackbirds were hopping about on the grass looking for worms, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... covering her face and back as far down as her knees. No she-bear of Lapland ever looked more fierce and hairy than did that woman, as, standing in the open part of the tent, with her head bent down, and her shoulders drawn up, seemingly about to precipitate herself upon me, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... such as that near the equator or over the centres of the whirling storms. It is when the air strikes the slopes of the land that we find it brought into a condition which most decidedly tends to precipitate its moisture. Lifted upward, the air as it ascends the slopes is brought into cooler and more rarefied conditions. Losing temperature and expanding, it parts with its water for the same reason that it does in the ascending current in the equatorial belt or ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... the colonists were beheld in full flight, leaving their artillery in the hands of our foe! It was subsequently reported that the commander of the party had been panic struck by the perilous aspect of affairs, and ordered the precipitate and fatal retreat, which that very night emboldened the negroes to revenge the loss of their towns by the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... less. Air which has expanded without any heat being given to it from outside, that is in a heat-proof vessel, is said to expand by adiabatic expansion. Such air tends first to become saturated, and then to precipitate its moisture. These conditions were approximately fulfilled on the plateau, where the air expanded as it rose, but could get little or no heat from outside. The air therefore precipitated its moisture ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... outpouring he wondered at the intensity of the forester's passion. He marveled, too, at Berrie's choice, for there was something fine and high in Landon's worship. A college man with a mining engineer's training, he should go high in the service. "He made the mistake of being too precipitate as a lover," concluded Wayland. "His ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... particular animal or other object selected in order to give a name to the Tribe, this would no doubt be largely accidental. Any unusual incident might superstitiously precipitate a name. We can hardly imagine the Tribe scratching its congregated head in the deliberate effort to think out a suitable emblem for itself. That is not the way in which nicknames are invented in a school or anywhere else to-day. At the same time the heraldic appeal of a certain object of nature, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... increase and replace the fugitives and the injured, it would be best, I think, to leave the heap alone this year and not to resume my investigations until the next. After the thorough confusion due to the removal, I should jeopardize success by being too precipitate. Let us wait one year more. I decide accordingly, curb my impatience and resign myself. We will simply confine ourselves to enlarging the heap, when the leaves begin to fall, by accumulating the refuse that strews the paddock, so that ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... marvelled now at Blood's restraint where Bishop was concerned. The Deputy-Governor looked round and met the lowering hostile glances of those fierce eyes. Instinct warned him that his life at that moment was held precariously, that an injudicious word might precipitate an explosion of hatred from which no human power could save him. Therefore he said nothing. He inclined his head in silence to the Captain, and went blundering and stumbling in his haste down that ladder to the sloop ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... interposed Miss Maggie, in a haste so precipitate that it looked almost like alarm, "run into the pantry and see what you can find in the cooky jar." The last of her sentence was addressed to Benny's flying heels as they disappeared ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... La Madelena from its having repulsed the attack of Napoleon, and driven him to a precipitate retreat from his first field of arms. The young soldier, after being for some months in garrison at Bonifacio, was attached, by order of Paschal Paoli, to the expedition which sailed from thence in February, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... very notable example of the dangers that would attend woman suffrage is suggested by them. If women had the power to create a numerical majority when there was a majority of the law's natural and only defenders against them, they might soon precipitate a crisis that would lead to bloodshed, which they would be powerless either to prevent or to allay. Would the majority of men submit to the minority of men associated with non-combatants? American history furnishes no reason for supposing that they ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... of these houses are made of split bamboo, which offers but a precarious footing to the unsuspecting traveller, as holes are numerous, and a slip through would precipitate one forty feet below. In front of the house runs a bamboo verandah about twenty feet broad, where domestic operations, such as cooking, padi grinding, &c., are carried on. The roof of dried palm-leaves is a high sloping one, and comes down to within about foot and a half of ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... look disconcerted. Evidently he had a clever man to deal with, and he began to wonder if his present step had not been too precipitate. He felt sure that it was going to be difficult to fasten anything on this man. He decided, however, that he had gone too far to draw back now, and he went on with ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... multitude, think himself under an obligation to gratify and submit to all the wishes of those who, from a fugitive and an exile, had created him general of so great an army and given him the command of such a fleet. But, as became a great captain, he opposed himself to the precipitate resolutions which their rage led them to, and, by restraining them from the great error they were about to commit, unequivocally saved the commonwealth. For if they had then sailed to Athens, all Ionia and the islands and the Hellespont would have fallen into the ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... would have been called a prig by those who did not know him well. He had a trick of starting subjects suddenly, and he very often made his friends very uncomfortable by the precipitate introduction, without any warning, of remarks upon serious matters. Once even, shocking to say, he quite unexpectedly at a tea-party made an observation about God. Really, however, he was not a prig. He was very sincere. ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... weaken it in such a way that, though it would bear the weight of one, it would collapse when the main body of our foemen were upon it, and so precipitate them into the ice-cold stream. The water was but a couple of feet deep at the place, so that there was nothing for them but a fright and a ducking. So cool a reception ought to deter them from ever invading us again, and confirm my reputation ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to him before they started on this journey. For now he was staring at the mountains in an absorbed excited fashion, and she would have to check his flow of spirits, spoil their companionable gaiety, and precipitate such heavy thoughts upon him as might, she guessed, spread to herself. Between his disappearance from the window and the opening of the street door she had a second in which ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... presence of an Englishman, at Dunbar, would not be so readily explained. His messenger especially enjoined on me not to send any communication in writing, even by the most trustworthy hand; since an accident might precipitate matters, and drive him to take up arms, before we were in a position to give him aid. Therefore, in the first place, I wish you to journey to Dunbar, to see the earl, and deliver to him the message I shall give you, and endeavour to inform ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... this time, Walpole says, to be the ablest man in the Gallican Church, and was pronounced by Hume to be the only man in France capable of restoring the greatness of the kingdom. When he obtained the opportunity he signally falsified Hume's prognostication, and did much to precipitate the Revolution by his incapacity. Smith must no doubt have met him occasionally during his protracted sojourn at Toulouse, though we have no evidence that he did, and the Archbishop was rather notorious ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... instance, the fact of the existence of things at all. But the intense concentration of the mind on mechanical effects appears often to render it incapable of perceiving anything that is not mechanical. Some compounds are observed to precipitate crystals, all of which contain known angles. Thence it is argued that all is mechanical, and that action occurs in set ways only. There is a tendency to lay it down as an infallible law that because ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... important part is what I have told you. The whole tragedy was due to the fact that this man came into our house at a time when an immense abyss had already been dug between us, that frightful tension of mutual hatred, in which the slightest motive sufficed to precipitate the crisis. Our quarrels in the last days were something terrible, and the more astonishing because they were followed by a brutal passion extremely strained. If it had not been he, some other would have come. If the pretext had not been jealousy, I should ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... algarobilla, dividivi, oak bark, pomegranate, myrabolarms, and valonea. The acid is obtained by precipitating it with water from a hot alcoholic extraction of the plants referred to, and recrystallising the precipitate from hot alcohol. Another method of preparation consists in boiling the disintegrated plants with dilute hydrochloric acid, washing the residue, and extracting with hot alcohol, from which the acid will then crystallise. According to Lowe, [Footnote: Zeits. f. analyt. Chem., ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser
... troubled me a little. Had Lucy's impulse to precipitate frankness already started any machinery of opposition into action? Had she told her husband? Knowing her so intimately, I could not make up my mind, but would have been inclined to take either end of ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... do now was to shoot the whole party. He dismissed the thought at once. All his preparations were governed by the hope that the pirates might abandon their quest after hours of fruitless search. It would be most unwise, he told himself, to precipitate hostilities. Far better avoid a conflict altogether, if that were possible, than risk the immediate ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... draw his sword, but the cowardly scoundrel did not even think of his weapon, and I left him, on the ground, covered with blood. The crowd formed a line for me to pass, and I went to the coffee-house, where I drank a glass of lemonade, without sugar to precipitate the bitter saliva which rage had brought up from my stomach. In a few minutes, I found myself surrounded by all the young officers of the garrison, who joined in the general opinion that I ought to have killed him, and they at last annoyed me, for it was not my fault ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... irrigation is necessary to ensure a return for the labor of husbandry, and this involves an original expenditure which it will usually require large capital to bear. In this climate the sun, like a mighty pump, is daily raising the water which the currents of cold air from the mountains, or from the sea, precipitate in the form of genial showers during the period of your growing crops; and the granite of the mountains slowly, but steadily disintegrating, gives up its fertilizing property to be scattered by unseen hands over plain and over valley. With care and with skill in its use I can see ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... "You were precipitate and prone to condemn. Instead of rushing on the impostors, and comparing the evidence of sight with that of hearing, you stood aloof, or you fled. My innocence would not now have stood in need of vindication, if this conduct had been pursued. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... through from date of signature, and they all made any rain to-morrow entirely impossible. "And I tell you," Jode concluded, in his high, egg-shell voice, "there's no chance of precipitation now, sir. I tell you, sir,"—he was shrieking jubilantly—"there's not a damn' thing to precipitate!" ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... Shirley as he took his hat preparing to leave. "My visit might precipitate an incident. Anyhow, I'm ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... meet after a long separation, the first effusive greetings at an end, they remain silent as if they had nothing to tell each other, whereas it is the very abundance of things, their precipitate struggle for utterance that prevents their coming forth. The two former partners had reached that stage; but Jansoulet held the banker's arm very tight, fearing that he might escape him, might resist the kindly impulses that he had aroused ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Britain. In Britain as in Canada, opinion, so far as it found open expression, was at first not unfriendly to the North. Then came the anger of the North at Great Britain's legitimate and necessary, though perhaps precipitate, action in acknowledging the South as a belligerent. This action ran counter to the official Northern theory that the revolt of the Southern States was a local riot, of merely domestic concern, and was held ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton |
