"Ballast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we shall be long after our neighbour," the other remarked, a little drily. Then, as if he might have said too much, he added hastily, "We slavers carry little else, you know, than our shackles and a few extra tierces of rice; the rest of our ballast is made up of these guns, and the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... was my last in this beautiful isle, as I was obliged to embark on the next day, the 17th of May. The cargo was cleared, and the ballast taken on board. All articles to which the French troops are accustomed, such as flour, salted meat, potatoes, pulse, wine, and a variety of others, have to be ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... London. The iron railing which surrounds this enclosure is as high and as handsome as that of the Tuilleries, and it will give some idea of the care bestowed on its decoration, to know that the gravel for the walks was conveyed by barges from Boston, not as ballast, but as freight. ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... water. Boarding her with the intention of pressing her men, he found her deserted save for the master, and thinking that some of the hands might be in hiding below—where the master assured him he would find nothing but ballast—he "did order one of his Boat's crew to goe down in the Hold and see what was therein"; who presently returned and reported "a quantity of wool conceal'd under some Coales a foot thik." The exportation of wool ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... so light from scant feeding that he cannot fly against the wind. If he would go back to his starting point while the March winds are out, he must needs come down close to the ground and yewyaw towards his objective, making leeway like an old boat without ballast or centerboard. ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... the Saucy Sally shipped some shingle ballast, got under weigh on the first of the ebb tide, and safely threading her way past the shallows and through the narrow channels of the harbor, emerged into the open sea, and turned her bluff-bowed ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... enemies' vessels in the Road, consisting of the Confiance, French ship privateer, pierced for 26 twelves and nines, none of which, however, were on board; the Belier, French privateer brig, pierced for 20 eighteen-pounder carronades; and a Spanish merchant brig in ballast. I then hoisted a flag of truce, and sent to inform the inhabitants of the town, that if they would deliver up such stores of the ship as were on shore, there would be no further molestation. The proposal was thankfully agreed to. I did ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... put me on a thrain—put me, palanquin an' all, an' six black assassins av his own coolies that was in his nefarious confidence, on the flat av a ballast-thruck, and we were rowlin' an' bowlin' along to Benares. Glory be that I did not wake up thin an' introjuce mysilf to the coolies. As I was sayin', I slept for the betther part av a day an' a night. But remimber you, that that man Dearsley had packed me off on wan av his material-thrains ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... he wrote to Colbert that a coal-mine had been discovered at the foot of the Quebec rock. 'This coal,' he said, 'is good enough for the forge. If the test is satisfactory, I shall see that our vessels take loads of it to serve as ballast. It would be a great help in our naval construction; we could then do without the English coal.' Next year the intendant wrote again: 'The coal-mine opened at Quebec, which originated in the cellar of a lower-town resident and is continued through ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... ready for him, and anxious to deliver up the vessel to the owner, who resided at Overton, he returned in ballast, and communicated the intelligence of Thompson's death; which, in so small a town, was long the theme of conversation, and the food ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... balloon Kentucky, and drifting toward the gulf. Our valve refuses to work, and we dare not attempt to land in the dark. Ballast nearly gone. We fear we may be swept out to sea. Please notify station at Pensacola to send assistance—a tug, if possible. We may keep afloat a short time if we fall into ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... to forgive when there is magnanimity, vainglory and probably folly in forgiveness, but will not overlook the most trivial affront when there is every reason for so doing. They have brain, but not ballast, and their whole life is usually a lopsided effort ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... was just leaving the port. The vessel, rather a large one for those days, seems but poorly manned, and rocks so greatly among the short white waves, that it is plainly to be seen that she is short of ballast and lading. She is a Venetian trading vessel, bound first to the Isle of Candia, where she will complete her cargo and add to the number of her crew. This Candia or Crete (the very Crete by which St. Paul passed on his voyage to Italy) was at that time under the ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... Adams were industrious and savin'—the little farm prospered, for Boston supplied a goodly market, and weekly trips were made there in a one-horse cart, often piloted by young John, with the minister's boy for ballast. The Adams family had ambitions for their son John—he was to go to Harvard and be educated, and be a minister and preach at Braintree, or Weymouth, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... not had enough To make Religion sad, and sour, and snubbish, But Saints Zoological must cant their stuff, As vessels cant their ballast-rattling rubbish! Once let the sect, triumphant to their text, Shut Nero up from Saturday till Monday, And sure as fate they will deny us next To see the Dandelions on a Sunday— But what ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... balloon or airship is called the "gross lift." The term "disposable," or "nett" lift, is obtained by deducting the weight of the structure, cars, machinery and other fixed weights from the gross lift. The resultant weight obtained by this calculation determines the crew, ballast, fuel and other necessities which can be carried by the balloon ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... has conquered like a Roman and settled colonies." We may ask ourselves, almost with dismay, whether such works exist at all but in the imagination of the student. For the bulk of the best of books is apt to be made up with ballast; and those in which energy of thought is combined with any stateliness of utterance may be almost counted on the fingers. Looking round in English for a book that should answer Thoreau's two demands of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its freight of nations and their rulers;—and now, Sir, there is and has been for this long time a fleet of "heretic" lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, "Pump out your bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's hope float on the ocean, instead of sticking in the dock-mud where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... had wrought in the world; to think about what they had done and the qualities that enabled them to do it. From Panaetius they were to learn a philosophical creed which might direct and save them in the future, which might serve as ballast in public and private life, just when the ship was beginning to drift in moral helplessness. He was the founder of a school of practical wisdom, singularly well adapted to the Roman character and intellect, which were always practical rather than speculative; and far better suited to ordinary ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... career. Writing to his friend Moore (5th August) he says: "I hope your eldest son will do well in the distant land to which he has gone. My son is in the Federal army in America, and no comfort. The secret ballast is often applied by a kind hand above, when to outsiders we appear to be sailing gloriously with ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... for Fritz's happiness," said Wilhelm. "Does that face look as if it belonged to a happy man? I am afraid of Paris; I should like to see him do as I am doing. The old tempter may awake again. Of our two heads, his carries the less ballast. His dress, and the opera-glass and the rest of it make me anxious. He keeps looking at the lorettes in the house. Oh! if you only knew how hard it is to marry Fritz. He has a horror of 'going a-courting,' ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... beyond the confines of the coral-stone walls. Fires blazed on the beach, lanterns were lighted on board, and, amid a great feasting, the Arangi was gutted and stripped. Everything portable was taken ashore, from her pigs of iron ballast to her running gear and sails. No one in Somo slept that night. Even the tiniest of children toddled about the feasting fires or sprawled surfeited on the sands. At two in the morning, at Bashti's command, the shell of the boat was fired. And Jerry, thirsting for water, having whimpered ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... with five ships of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven; But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land Very carefully and slow, Men of Bideford in Devon, And we laid them on the ballast down below; For we brought them all aboard, And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain, To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... part of the night, in rubbing my feet and legs to keep them from freezing. * * * In consequence of these chills I have been obliged to wear a laced stocking upon my left leg for nearly thirty years past. My bunk was directly against the ballast-port; and the port not being caulked, when there came a snow-storm the snow would blow through the seams in my bed, but in those cases there was one advantage to me, when I could not otherwise procure water to quench my thirst. The provision allowed the sick was a gill ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... descent and at the rising. For a strong current of air is generated in an aqueduct which bursts its way even through stones unless the water is let in slowly and sparingly from the source at first, and checked at the elbows or turns by bands, or by the weight of sand ballast. All the other arrangements should be made as in the case of lead pipes. And ashes are to be put in beforehand when the water is let in from the source for the first time, so that if any of the joints have not been sufficiently coated, they may be ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... sloped suddenly, from the signal station, on every side. On the north and east it terminated abruptly in artificial cliffs of a dizzy height. The rocks had been blasted from their bases to make room for a steadily increasing commerce, and the debris was shipped away as ballast in the vessels that were chartered to bring passengers and provision to the coast, and found nothing in the line of freight to carry ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... vessels, but it never does so. At one time, I believe, it would have cured a ton of fish, but there is a fearful extravagance and waste of salt going on in these vessels now. There are tons of salt which are wasted among ballast, and in other ways, so that we never turn out a ton of dry fish for a ton ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... hat. As the rowers passed under his bows he looked critically at the streaming black bodies and spat meditatively into the water. His own father could have had them between decks as cargo. Now for the petroleum and lumber he brings from Massachusetts to Sierra Leone he returns in ballast. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and had had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed there is, and I don't see why people that can afford it don't have it more. And it's terrible good ballast, too; I never see ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... make sawdust pap for your children. Give me the mast and sails." He fitted in the little mast, hoisted and examined the sails, then took them down again, and laid them at the bottom of the boat, threw in a few iron bars as ballast, told Anton where to sit, and, seizing the two oars, struck out from shore. The pumpkin danced gayly on the water, to the great delight of the builder and his friends, who ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... way very straight, and surprisingly slued round and came back again. And then others were so chock-full of trucks of coal, others were so blocked with trucks of casks, others were so gorged with trucks of ballast, others were so set apart for wheeled objects like immense iron cotton-reels: while others were so bright and clear, and others were so delivered over to rust and ashes and idle wheelbarrows out of work, with their legs in the air (looking much like their masters on strike), that there was ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... work them, and from forty to fifty Indians, called Busos, to dive for the oyster. A stock of provisions and spirits, a small sum of money to advance the people during the cruise, a limited supply of calaboose furniture, a sufficient number of hammocks to sleep in, and a quantity of ballast, constitute nearly all ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... gradient of 1 in 30, and the bogies enable it to take the incline better; they also distribute the weight more evenly on the wheels. The gauge of the rails is 15 ft, the wheels are 2 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and have heavy steel tires. The weight on each of the front wheels when running with the ballast, but no load, is about 16 tons. A powerful brake is applied to the wheels when descending ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... swing back; the individual conscience which is our guarantee for democracy and friendship will come into its own again, and shape our destinies in common towards freedom and humanity. The English-speaking democracies, in firm union, can and ought to be the unshifting ballast of a better world. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... man who was carrying a flour-bag turned his head and then went on again until he hove his load into a two-horse wagon, while Miss Deringham noticed that although the bag was stamped 140 lbs. the man trotted lightly across the metals and ballast with it upon his shoulders. Then he came in their direction, and she glanced at him with some curiosity as he stood a trifle breathless before them. He wore a blue shirt burst open at the neck which showed his full red throat, and ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... he insults and abuses Antony, whom he was wont to say he loved, and cooeperates with Caesar, whose father he killed? And if chance so favor, he will ere long attack Caesar also. For the fellow is naturally distrustful and turbulent and has no ballast in his soul, and he is always stirring things up and twisting about, turning more ways than the sea-passage to which he fled and got the title of deserter for it, asking all of you to take that man for friend or foe ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... wished myself anywhere rather than where I was. The scene around me was a strange one. The captain, pilot, and one or two native passengers were taking up the boards of the cabin floor, and putting their money and other valuables out of sight, among the ballast. The common sailors, too, had their copper cash, or "tsien," to hide; and the whole place was in a state of bustle and confusion. When all their more valuable property was hidden, they began to make some preparations for defense. Baskets of small stones ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... energetic lady's visits. Her indignation against him had quite swallowed up her old cherished resentment against myself. She soon went so far as to insinuate a regret that Susan had not married a man of solid sense and some mental ballast, (meaning me,) instead of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... proud of my descent from families which, if not noble themselves, are allied to nobility,—and as to my "rise in the world"—if I had risen, it would have been rather for balloon-like qualities than for mother-wit, to being unencumbered with heavy ballast either in my head or my pockets. However, it was my cue to agree: ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... according to the scale which has already been given on an earlier page in this volume. At the end of the year 1813 it was further decided that when vessels and boats of above four tons measurement were seized in ballast and afterwards broken up, not owing to their build, their construction, or their denomination, but simply because they had been engaged in smuggling, the seizing officers should become ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... son the other night. It would have delighted you to see the old man's pride in him. As he was going away, he patted him on the head, and said, "Take care of him, Lady Blessington, for my sake. He is a clever lad, but wants ballast. I am glad he has the honour to know you, for you will check him sometimes when I am away...." D'Israeli the younger is quite his own character of Vivian Grey, crowded with talent, but very soigne of his curls, and a bit of a coxcomb. There is no reverse about him, however, and he is the only ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... again discouraging because they have such facilities for travel. Talk about flying machines—weeds are centuries ahead of men along these lines. Look at a milkweed seed; it is a complete flying apparatus. With its perfect ballast it flies beautifully along over field and river ready to alight in ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... was a mere nothing: the wonder was the balloon had risen at all with one-half of the total folly of Edinburgh clinging to the car. I passed the possible inaccuracy and certain ill-temper of this calculation. He had (he explained) made jettison of at least a hundred-weight of sand ballast. I could only hope it had fallen on my cousin. To me, six hundred feet appeared a very respectable eminence. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... firm on my feet. I have at the present moment a hundred and fifty thousand francs a year in the Three per Cents, and a reserve of two hundred thousand francs to repair damages. Even this does not seem to me very much ballast in the pocket of a man starting left foot foremost to ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... humble entry into the village, unknown, and almost unseen. But when those of the inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection became acquainted with him, they were rather pleased with the substitute than otherwise, though he had scarcely as yet acquired ballast of character sufficient to steady the consciences of the hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure blood who, at this time, lived in Nether-Moynton, and to give in addition supplementary support to the mixed race which went to church ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... of private cotton we put no restrictions; and such were the freight rates that it was possible to purchase a steamboat at Mobile, go up the river in ballast, bring down a cargo of cotton and make a handsome profit, after deducting the cost of the boat and all expenses of the venture, including the wage of the pilot. With no great knowledge of "business" I venture to think that in Alabama in the latter part of the year of grace 1865 commercial ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... which are six or eight sets of rooms, inhabited by us undergraduates, and here and there a tutor or fellow dropped down amongst us (in the first-floor rooms, of course), not exactly to keep order, but to act as a sort of ballast. This quadrangle is the show part of the college, and is generally respectable and quiet, which is a good deal more than can be said for the inner quadrangle, which you get at through a passage ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... mate aboard a five masted schooner engaged in the lumber business," went on Jack Jepson. "We were going down to South America, in ballast t' bring back a cargo of hard woods, an' off the Hole in the Wall ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... should no longer fear the pirates; I should return with the cranes, loaded with a supply of lawsuits by way of ballast. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... a little at me and demanded, "Prithee, how comes it your peewit-brain bears such a ballast of ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... had taken on a political character. The Movement had in the meantime let the demand of the poorest of the people for bread drop, and thrown them over as one would throw over ballast in order to rise more quickly. The institutions themselves would be won, and then they would of course come back to the starting-point and begin again quite differently. It might be rather convenient to turn out those who most hindered the advance, but would it lead ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... found to be absolutely worthless, the golden dreams which had roused England to exultation had faded away, and the new ship-loads they brought were esteemed to be hardly worth their weight as ballast. For this disappointment the unlucky Frobisher, who had been appointed High Admiral of all lands and waters which he might discover, could not be held to blame. It was not he that had pronounced the worthless ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... that liberty, that fantasy, that disorder which were characteristic of the times of Ronsard. So far as poets were concerned, that generation must be regarded as entering on a first romanticism. Theophilus de Vian, a fine but over-prodigal poet, without ballast, did not live long enough to grow wise and acquire self-mastery: Cyrano de Bergerac was a brilliant madman, sometimes sparkling with wit and imagination, but often dirty and ridiculous. Saint-Amant possessed plenty ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... especially as regards his oratory, which was really of a very high class, and would have commanded attention in our own House of Commons. He possessed, however, a mind of that peculiarly volatile order, that is sometimes met with in conjunction with great talents, and which seems to be entirely without ballast. His intellect was of a balloon-like nature, and as incapable of being steered. He was always soaring in the clouds, and, as is natural to one in that elevated position, taking a very different and more sanguine view of affairs to that which ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... the sun, by increasing the amount of material there for the sun to attract, and to lighten the pole approaching or turning towards the sun, by removing some heavy substance from it, and putting it preferably at the opposite pole. This shifting of ballast is most easily accomplished, as you will readily perceive, by confining and removing water, which is easily moved and has a considerable weight. How we purpose to apply these aqueous brakes to check the wabbling ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... interest in their opinions. It struck him that they were the exact counterpart of the new clique of humanity which has sprung up recently on this side of the Irish Sea; advanced thinkers without thought—the products of a little education without the ballast of a brain. Wild, enthusiastic in their desire for change, they know not what they want as the result of the change. Destructive without being constructive, they bemuse themselves with long words, and scorn simplicity. No scheme is too wild ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... over. We had a dull, rainy night, a heavy, broadside swell, and as the steamer had not enough ballast, she rolled frightfully. In this nasty sea we were afraid she might turn turtle, as another steamer had done some months ago. The storm became such that we had to lie at anchor for five days, sheltered by the coast of Gaua. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... when I was very young and have been desperately tidy about my morals ever since, but for fear of stumbling just because I'm so bored I have entrenched myself behind a maddening routine. Six months here ought to put ballast into the brain ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... said Crump carefully. "Looked as if he was going out in ballast—except his pockets; there was something in his pockets, I ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... was now, "Come on, McCarthy, or McCarthy, come on!" I didn't care which, I had one right on my side, and I kept that always in view; namely, the right to discharge the cargo where I had first received it; but where the money to buy ballast and pay other charges was to come from ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... the contents is humorous, there are inserted many quotations of a serious nature which may serve as appropriate literary ballast. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... nothing, but we busied ourselves driving the chill from our bodies with hot coffee. Also we had to devote ourselves to the miserable task of bailing, for in some incomprehensible way the Reindeer had sprung a generous leak. Half the night had been spent in overhauling the ballast and exploring the seams, but the labor had been without avail. The water still poured in, and perforce we doubled up in the cockpit and ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... November, 1802; and the young couple proceeded at once to their new home. Here George laboured harder than ever, as became the head of a family. He was no more ashamed of odd jobs than he had been of learning the alphabet. He worked overtime at emptying ballast from ships; he continued to cobble, to cut lasts, and even to try his hand at regular shoemaking; furthermore, he actually acquired the art of mending clocks, a matter which lay strictly in his own line, ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... Hall had been a versifier, a writer of tales in prose, a Know-nothing, a friend of Seward, and an anti-Tammany Democrat. As a clubman, ambitious for social distinction, he was known as "elegant Oakey." Although "without ballast," as Tweed admitted, he was indispensable as an interesting speaker of considerable force, who yielded readily to the demands of a boss. Connolly, suave and courtly, was at heart so mean and crafty that Tweed himself held him in the utmost contempt as a "Slippery ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... bad taste from very superfluity. Yet she never entered the painter's study but with trembling heart, uncertain foot, and fluttering breath, as of one stepping within the gates of an enchanted paradise, whose joy is too much for the material weight of humanity to ballast even to the steadying of the bodily step, and the outward calm of the bodily carriage. How far things had gone between them we shall be able to judge by and by; it will be enough at present to add that it was this relation and the inward strife arising ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... balloon. Thus there was a valve at the top by means of which the gas could be let out as desired; a cord net covered the whole fabric, and from the loop which it formed below the neck of the balloon a car was suspended; and in the car there was a quantity of ballast which could be ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... discharging from the Smeaton of her cargo of the cast-iron rails and timber. It must not here be omitted to notice that the Smeaton took in ballast from the Bell Rock, consisting of the shivers or chips of stone produced by the workmen in preparing the site of the building, which were now accumulating in great quantities on the rock. These the boats loaded, after discharging the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carrying passengers or cargo, $1.20 per net vessel ton-each 100 cubic feet-of actual earning capacity. 2. On vessels in ballast without passengers or cargo, 40 per cent less than the rate of tolls for vessels with passengers or cargo. 3. Upon naval vessels, other than transports, colliers, hospital ships, and supply ships, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... during the past hundred years very vividly by the progress of aerial navigation. Balloons are objects too familiar even to our children to cause them any surprise, and every one knows how instantly a balloon, when in the air, rises up higher if a few pounds of ballast are thrown out, or sinks if a little of the gas is allowed to escape. We know of no balancing more delicate than this, of a body ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... to remind you of it, Jack, but there was a time when we took a grading contract on the line and you got into trouble close in front of the ballast train." ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... relished the company of the hard-headed Lanark-weaver, whose energy and common sense had won him the position of a comfortable landholder in Canada West. Added to which qualifications for the best society, Davidson was totally devoid of vulgar assumption, but had sufficient ballast to retain just ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... though the sun was now fiercely hot and the distance long, George enjoyed the walk. Once they met a ballast train, with a steam plow mounted at one end of it, and a crowd of men riding on the open cars; but when it had passed there was nothing to break the deep silence of the woods. The dark firs shut in the narrow track except when here and there a winding lake or frothing ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... in his hand three darts— Such slings, clubs, ballast-stones, that yield you must: You know that giants have much stouter hearts Than us, with reason, in proportion just: If go you will, guard well against their arts, For these are very barbarous and robust." Orlando answered," This I'll see, be sure, And walk the wild ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the world like a bird or a balloon," said Ted, as his companion hurried him along; "if I don't git some ballast soon in the shape o' grub, I'll float ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... Think not that I am opposed to a constitutional monarchy, so long as it works well for the majority. But when England had with such terrible convulsions shaken off all those shackles and trappings of royalty, and when the ship, so lightened, had sailed so steadily with no ballast but common sense, does it not seem almost a pity to undo what has been done—to begin again the long procession of good kings and bad kings, foolish or wise—for the sake of such a man as yonder saunterer?" with a glance towards the British Sultan ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... rise and then descend. Every few minutes Lieutenant Mallet, suspended in his cobweb of netting, says to Captain Jovis: "We are descending; throw down half a handful." And the captain, who is talking and laughing with us, with a bag of ballast between his legs, takes a handful of sand out of the bag and throws ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... another air. They are not so Rhadamanthine as we thought. Something that we can only call a dignified panic presides over their deliberations. They have one idea to lighten the ship. "Overboard with the ballast, the main-mast, and the chronometer!" is the cry. In the last war they got rid (first) of the honour of their respective countries, and (second) of all idea that Samoa was to be governed in a manner consistent ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on New Year's Day in 1681 on the Most Holy Trinity, they clapped their captain in irons and put him down below on the ballast, and elected an old pirate and a "stout seaman," John Watling, in his place. One of the reasons for the revolt was said to be the ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... suppose that, had any noticed that Grim was taking these sacred things with him, there would have been a talk; but as we sailed light, none thought them aught but needed ballast; and we brought other stones to the ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... included in the main those small farmers and semi-peasants who under the old regime were released from the burden of taxation and at the same time excluded from the benefits of education. Among these people the illusions of the higher classes were reflected without the ballast of mentality. Ready to fight on any provocation, yet circumscribed by their own natures, not understanding life, unable to picture to themselves different types and conditions, these people were as prone as children ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the egg, and place the shell to one side until the interior is perfectly dry. Having cut a slender stick of pine for the mast, put some little chips of bees-wax into the egg-shell; then put in about as much shot as you think your boat will require for ballast—probably the third of a tea-spoonful will be sufficient. This done, hold the shell in boiling water (end down) till the wax is melted; then put in your mast through the small hole in the top of the shell; remove the shell ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... height you occupy, and toward which you would fain lead me, there dwells eternal peace. But it seems so cold and lonely up there. I am oppressed with a sense of fear, just as if I were in a balloon ascending into a rarer atmosphere, while more and more ballast was ever being thrown out. I don't know how to make my meaning clear to you. I don't understand how to keep up affectionate relations with those about me, and yet regard them from a distance, as it were,—looking upon their deeds as the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... happiness, an' she's doin' it all alone. She's pretty as a picture, an' nothin' but a child when he married her four months ago, an' we've took away her natural pervider an' entertainer, an' left her nothin' but her freedom for a ballast wheel. An' I say I wish some of the patriotic people who are jest showerin' every Charlie Turner with attentions would please sprinkle jest a few on Charlie's wife, to help keep her straight an' sweet an' honest for ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... boat to me were intending now to turn a dishonest penny by shipping somebody else's goods into the bargain. In company with the rest of my kind, I much dislike to be imposed upon; so I told them they might instantly take the so-called ballast out again. When I had seen the process of disembarkation fairly begun I relented, deciding, so long as the bales were already aboard, to take them on to the first stopping place, and there ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... the reply. "I have a swat of work. There is ballast for you, though, over there by the shed." Bob Haines was the ballast indicated. He was putting the final touches on an aeroplane propellor to which he had administered a ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... where you are, lady,' the Guard was saying. 'You're good ballast. You can keep the train down. That's something. Steady thinking's always best, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... I am afraid, is all top-hamper, and no ballast; wont the enemy give chase? I am sure that Don—Don—what's his name, that young officer, more than suspects your good standing in the young lady's affections: wont he alarm the coast, and put the old folks up to rowing ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... my toppin'-off layer. That's a rice puddin', poor man's puddin', some folks call it. I cal'late your ma'd call it a man's poor puddin', but it makes good enough ballast for a craft like me." He began ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a very valuable prize, being merely a small brigantine, called the Joseph Park, of Boston, six days out from Pernambuco, in ballast. But she was the first fruits of a fresh cruise, and right joyously did the boat's crew pull on board her to haul down the enemy's flag, and replace it with the saucy ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... in a wild, fitful manner, that could not have been beheld without trepidation by any of the thirty gentlemen who had so judiciously booked seats in advance. The wickerwork car now secured to the balloon was half filled with ballast and crowded with men, whilst others hung on to the ropes and to each other in ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Von Underduk. His Excellency stooped to take it up. But the aeronaut, still greatly discomposed, and having apparently no farther business to detain him in Rotterdam, began at this moment to make busy preparations for departure; and it being necessary to discharge a portion of ballast to enable him to reascend, the half dozen bags which he threw out, one after another, without taking the trouble to empty their contents, tumbled, every one of them, most unfortunately upon the back ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Monday night he died...What a mountainous mass of admirable and accurate information dies with our dear old friend! I shall miss him greatly, not only personally, but as a scientific man of unflinching and uncompromising integrity—and of great weight in Murchisonian and other counsels where ballast is sadly needed." -article in "Natural History Review." -Darwin's Copley medal and. -Darwin's criticism of his elephant work. -Darwin's regard for. -Forbes attacked by. -his opinion of Forbes. -goes to India. -Hooker's regard ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... displayed little of that spirit of improvement which has converted Chicago, in thirty years, from a quagmire into a beautiful city, and made it accessible to all the people of the prairies. There was too much ballast, as it were, for so little sail. People were intent on their own affairs, and were satisfied if their own business prospered. Such a thing even as a popular lecture was rare, and a well-sustained ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... ring which lies midway between the belts. This you will catch into the hook at the end of the lowered rope. When all is secure, and I have pulled you both up by the windlass so as to clear the top, I shall throw out ballast which we shall carry on purpose, and away we go! I am sorry it must be so uncomfortable for you both, but there is no other way. When we get well clear of the Tower, I shall take you both up on the platform. If necessary, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... the heavy shocks it was constantly receiving, like a ship staggering on in a storm, its safety depending on the nice equilibrium between the shocks of the seas, the pressure of the wind upon the sails, and the weight and steadiness of the ballast below. ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and came to earth a few miles from the point of the first descent. His discomfort over the rapid ascent was mainly due to the fact that, when Robert landed, he forgot to compensate for the reduction of weight by taking in further ballast, but the ascent proved the value of the tube at the bottom of the balloon envelope, for the gas escaped very rapidly in that second ascent, and, but for the tube, the balloon must inevitably have burst in the air, with ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... the distance grow between them; higher and higher would swell the waves as they sped on their separate courses; the one light and buoyant with her freight of noble hopes and dauntless steersman at the helm, the other without sail or ballast, drifted about at the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... island was merely the home of farmers and fishermen, a shipowner in need of easily handled ballast found that the subsoil contained just the thing he wanted. By turning up the thin surface he came upon a stratum of small, square slabs of rock rather like cakes of soap. These were easily lifted and easily carted to ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... to work to inspect the bridge; and ordered the men—who were provided with the necessary implements—to set to, and dig a hole down to the crown of the principal arch. It was harder work than they had expected. The roadway was solid, the ballast pressed down very tightly, and the crown of the arch covered, to a considerable depth, with concrete. Only a few men could work at once and, after a half-hour's desperate labor, the hole was nothing like far enough advanced to ensure the total destruction of the bridge, ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... early knowledge. Saturday followed—no sailing! and he found the people waited on and on, in hopes of more passengers, though never avowing their purpose, His patience was now nearly exhausted, and he went and made such vifs remonstrances that he almost startled the managers. They pretended the ballast was all they stayed for : he offered to aid that himself; and actually went to work, and never rested till the vessel was absolutely ready: orders, enfin, were given for sailing next morning, though he fears, with all his skill, and all his eloquence, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... foreign parts, to be upon his guard against the fair weather of the French politesse, which was no more to be trusted than a whirlpool at sea. He observed that many young men had gone to Paris with good cargoes of sense, and returned with a great deal of canvas, and no ballast at all, whereby they became crank all the days of their lives, and sometimes carried their keels above water. He desired Mr. Jolter to keep his pupil out of the clutches of those sharking priests who lie in wait to make converts of all young strangers, and in a particular manner ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... all kept running or when it all runs only a part of the time. Increasing the output is then a particularly cheap operation. When a carrier's facilities are partially unused—when a ship carries a cargo in one direction and returns in ballast, or when it sails on both trips with its hold only half full—it is ready to carry additional goods at a low rate provided that this policy will not demoralize its existing business. In our illustration we have assumed that some merchandise is made at A and consumed ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... profitable ships and unprofitable ships. The profitable ship will carry a large load through all the hazards of the weather, and, when at rest, will stand up in dock and shift from berth to berth without ballast. There is a point of perfection in a ship as a worker when she is spoken of as being able to SAIL without ballast. I have never met that sort of paragon myself, but I have seen these paragons advertised amongst ships for sale. Such excess of virtue and good-nature on the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... effected by means of specially constructed windlasses. In the case of petroleum vessels the "folding up" operation is facilitated by the circumstance that the petroleum may be made to serve the purposes of water ballast. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various |
