"Balloon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not going to interfere in the love affairs of any of the freaks, and just then the bearded woman came in, and when she saw the living skeleton holding the hand of the fat woman, who sat on the floor like a balloon blowed up, the bearded woman gave a kick at the living skeleton which sounded like clothes bars falling down in the laundry, and she grabbed the fat woman's blonde wig and pulled it off, and then the bearded woman began to cry and she ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... you," cried Tom, frantically, thrusting his hat in her face, in a wild delusion that he was offering his hand, for he was so upset by the sight of Elsie that he felt as if rapidly going up in an unmanageable balloon. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... youths emerged from the house and started across the big lawn toward the aeroplane sheds, for Tom Swift owned several speedy aircrafts, from a big combined aeroplane and dirigible balloon, to a little monoplane not much larger than a big bird, but which was the most rapid flier that ever breathed the fumes ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... be dangerous, and he carried his prize to the bank in triumph. No honey; of course, that was a disappointment, but there were lots of fat white grubs—almost as good—and Jack ate till his paunch looked like a little rubber balloon. ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... spectrum of the corona. The eclipse of December 22, 1870, though lasting only two minutes and ten seconds, drew observers from the New, as well as from the Old World to the shores of the Mediterranean. Janssen issued from beleaguered Paris in a balloon, carrying with him the vital parts of a reflector specially constructed to collect evidence about the corona. But he reached Oran only to find himself shut behind a cloud-curtain more impervious than the Prussian lines. Everywhere ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... garden, a shaggy, lean figure leapt up in it, almost black against the bronze and scarlet of the west, and, flinging out a kind of hook or anchor, caught on to the green apple-tree just under the wall; and from that fixed holding ground the ship swung in the red tempest like a captive balloon. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... it? A Jove's Balance, O ye Austrian spyglasses? One saucer-hole of a Jove's Balance; your poor Austrian scale having kicked itself quite aloft, out of sight? By Heaven, answer the spyglasses, it is a Montgolfier, a Balloon, and they are making signals! Austrian cannon-battery barks at this Montgolfier; harmless as dog at the Moon: the Montgolfier makes its signals; detects what Austrian ambuscade there may be, and descends at its ease. (26th June, 1794, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... I know of," said he, "than to see one on 'em when he first lands in one of our great cities. He swells out as big as a balloon; his skin is ready to burst with wind—a regular walking bag of gas; and he prances over the pavement like a bear over hot iron; a great awkward hulk of a feller—for they ain't to be compared to ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... five-and-twenty years, generous-hearted, frank, and kind, but with never an idea of the serious side of life in his handsome head. Great, therefore, were the wrath and dismay of the enamored thistle-down, when the father of his love mildly objected to seeing her begin the world in a balloon with a very tender but very inexperienced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... begin to act a romance who has not well considered the denouement. It is a charming thing to mount with a friend in a balloon, amid crowds of spectators, who admire the fine spectacle, and applaud the courage of the aerostats: the losing sight of this earth, and the being in or above the clouds, must also be delightful: but the moment will come when ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... what she imagined, but for what she saw, though she saw it only in the germ. But as the Greeks beheld a Persephone and Athene in the passing stranger, and ennobled humanity into ideal beauty, Margaret saw all her friends thus idealized. She was a balloon of sufficient power to take us all up with her into the serene depth of heaven, where she loved to float, far above the low details of earthly life. Earth lay beneath us as a lovely picture,—its sounds came up mellowed ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... hollow globe of copper to be filled with "ethereal air or liquid fire," but he never tried to put his suggestion into practice. Father Vasson, a missionary at Canton, in a letter dated September 5, 1694, mentions a balloon that ascended on the occasion of the coronation of the Empress Fo-Kien in 1306, but he does not state where he got ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... the cushions, bit my lip, and had to force myself not to catch at the arm of the seat in those giddy seconds when it felt as if we were dropping from sky to earth in a leaky balloon; but if the blood in your veins has been put there by decent ancestors who trail gloriously in a long line behind you, I suppose it's easier for you not to be a coward than it is for people like the Turnours, who have to be their own ancestors, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... A balloon is a hollow globe, made of silk, rendered air-tight by a coating of gum and resin, and enclosed within a strong network. When filled with gas it is so much lighter than the air which surrounds us, that it ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... slight, cool breeze blowing, rippling the water just enough to make fishing favorable. I saw a big loggerhead turtle, weighing about three hundred pounds, coming around on the surface among these Portuguese men-of-war, and as we ran up I saw that he was feeding on these queer balloon-like little creatures. Sometimes he would come up under one and it would stick on his back, and he would turn laboriously around from under it, and submerge his back so he had it floating again. Then he would open his cavernous mouth and take it in. Considering ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... elbow-chair at the fireside, and above them, presiding with dignity, a cap more awful than a crown. That cap had never come to the cottage under a bonnet; no, it had been brought in a vast bag, or rather a middle-sized balloon of black silk, held wide with whalebone. The screed, or frill of the cap, stood a quarter of a yard broad round the face of the wearer. The ribbon, flourishing in puffs and bows about the head, was of the sort called love-ribbon. There was a good deal of it, I may say, a very great deal. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... most beautiful annual climbers: Crimson, and White, Cypress Vine; White, and Buff, Thunbergia; Scarlet Flowering Bean; Hyacinth Bean Loasa; Morning Glory; Crimson, and Spotted, Nasturtium; Balloon Vine; Sweet Pea; Tangier Pea; Lord Anson's Pea; Climbing Cobaea; Pink, and ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... of the greenest specimens I ever saw in this country. He had on a pair of balloon pants and a Norfolk jacket, and was surrounded by a half-dozen baby trunks. His face was red-cheeked and aggressively clean, and his eye limpid as a child's. Most of those present thought that indicated childishness; but I could see that ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... and yet spiritually I have had his welcome company a good part of that time, and have staged him in books under his own name and as "Jim," and carted him all around—to Hannibal, down the Mississippi on a raft, and even across the Desert of Sahara in a balloon—and he has endured it all with the patience and friendliness and loyalty which were his birthright. It was on the farm that I got my strong liking for his race and my appreciation of certain of its fine qualities. This feeling ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... sky; but there was to be seen no balloon from which she could have fallen on that spot. When he brought his distracted gaze down, it rested on a child holding on with a brown little paw to the pink satin gown. He had run out of the grass after her. Had Davidson seen a real hobgoblin his eyes could not have bulged more than at this ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... that "his temperament was so morbid, that he never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs: when he walked, it was the struggling gait of one in fetters; when he rode, he had no command or direction of his horse, but was carried as if in a balloon." His daily habits were exceedingly irregular; he took his meals at unusual hours; and either ate voraciously, or abstained rigorously. He studied by fits and starts; but when he did read, it was with such ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... the first few weeks I played at whist with bad luck, and since then so many old friends have borrowed of me that I doubt if I have 200 francs left. I have despatched four letters to Duplessis by pigeon and balloon, entreating him to send me 25,000 francs by some trusty fellow who will pierce the Prussian lines. I have had two answers: 1st, that he will find a man; 2nd, that the man is found and on his way. Trust to that man, my dear friend, and ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the gouverneur, as he chose to understand we wished to have "un maitre de la langue Francaise," who could act as interpreter when required. The poor man, who appeared as if he had fallen from a balloon, apologised for the intrusion, which he said did not lie with him, he had been sent for and came, but that when the turnkey unlocked the door he would withdraw. "No," said I, "as you are here and you speak good English," which he did, "I will, if you have ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... most room who stay below. I can assure you, however, upon my own experience, that this way of travelling is very delightful. I dreamt a night or two since that I drove myself through the upper regions in a balloon and pair, with the greatest ease and security. Having finished the tour I intended, I made a short turn, and, with one flourish of my whip, descended; my horses prancing and curvetting with an infinite share of spirit, but without ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... one moment. The 'live thing' in the tree was a captive balloon. The box on the ground was a battery. The wire from the battery was connected with a firework bomb, which, when Tuxall pressed the switch, exploded, releasing a flaming 'dropper.' About the time the 'dropper' reached the earth Tuxall lighted up his well-oiled barn. All Harwick, having ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ready for the start in the morning. Following is a summary of the outfit taken from an inventory made at Indian Harbour: Our canoe was 18 feet long, canvas covered, and weighed about 80 pounds. The tent was of the type known as miner's, 6 1/2 x 7 feet, made of balloon silk and waterproofed. We had three pairs of blankets and one single blanket; two tarpaulins; five duck waterproof bags; one dozen small waterproof bags of balloon silk for note books; two .45-70 Winchester rifles; two 10-inch barrel .22-calibre ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... happiness before him; and now condemned, in one moment, to a cruel and revolting death by dynamite! The square, he said, went round him like a thaumatrope; he saw the Alhambra leap into the air like a balloon; and reeled against the railing. It ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thousand places with the affairs of the Roman Empire, of which we have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, and we may paint it over with the figures of the various animals ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... stupid): "Harmonious throng" that I have kept in petto Now to produce in a "divine sestetto"!! "While Poesy," with these delightful doxies, "Sustains her part" in all the "upper" boxes! "Thus lifted gloriously, you'll sweep along," Borne in the vast balloon of Busby's song; 40 "Shine in your farce, masque, scenery, and play" (For this last line George had a holiday). "Old Drury never, never soar'd so high," So says the Manager, and so say I. "But hold," you say, "this self-complacent ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the weight of the whole mass of air forms the basis of the modern science of Pneumatics. In order to prove that the mass of air presses by its weight on all the bodies which it surrounds, and also that it is elastic and compressible, a balloon half filled with air was carried to the top of the Puy de Dôme. It gradually inflated itself as it ascended, and when it reached the summit it was quite full and swollen, as if fresh air had been blown into it; or what is the same thing, it swelled ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... paper, though it did not mention him by name, but variously, according to the temperaments of its correspondents, as a condor, an ichthyosaurus, the moon, an aeroplane, a Japanese fleet, a myth, a cloud, a hallucination, a balloon, and a goose. As she read, she alternately frowned and laughed. Her brows would draw together very seriously, and then suddenly her red lips would part to let through a sparkling rocket of laughter, and then her brows would again knit in concern. The laughter was of triumph at ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... Charles's Wain? Or pray Medea for a single dragon?[220] Or if, too classic for his vulgar brain, He feared his neck to venture such a nag on, And he must needs mount nearer to the moon, Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... it came about that tapestry fell from the walls, shrunk like a pricked balloon and landed in miniature on ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... may grow calm; he may learn to enjoy the pleasures and the exquisite beauties of the lower regions—though they, too, are most fully enjoyed when they have a contrast with beauties of a different, and pleasures of a keener excitement. When first debarred, at any rate, one feels like a balloon full of gas, and fixed by immovable ropes to the prosaic ground. It is pleasant to lie on one's back in a bed of rhododendrons, and look up to a mountain top peering at one from above a bank of cloud; but it is pleasantest when one has qualified oneself ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... can be a trained seal," said Danny. "He can have a ball of carpet rags for a balloon to balance ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... came the leathern tones of one unseen announcer, "one hour before the big show begins in the main tent we will give a grand free balloon ascension!" ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... notable hit was made by an English ship. I could see eight vessels, apparently all battleships, lying in line from the entrance up the strait. The ship furthest up appeared to be the Queen Elizabeth, and I think it was she that fired the shot which exploded the powder magazine at Chanak. A great balloon of white smoke sprang up in the midst of the magazine which leaped out from a fierce, red flame, and reached a great height. When the flame had disappeared the dense smoke continued to grow till it must have been a column hundreds of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... weak he could not stand. He had swallowed so much salt water that he was swollen like a balloon. However, Pinocchio, not wishing to trust him too much, threw himself once again into the sea. As he ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... like to wash dishes, but we use far more than we really need to use, and anyway I had rather decided that I wouldn't wash them. As to the bed-spring, I could have an air mattress, for while it's a little like sleeping on a captive balloon, it doesn't irritate your bones like a ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Panatella had chosen for the start of his balloon ascension was a field upon the crest of the ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... toy balloon partly full of air by blowing into it, and close the neck with a rubber band so that no air can escape. Lay a saucer over the hole in the plate of the air pump, so that the rubber of the balloon ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... cribber, and a cribber is a hoss that sucks itself full of wind like a balloon. I knew the minute I see him drop his head and swallow that way that cribbin' was what ailed him. That explained his bein' such a bad race hoss. Jimmy Miles probably never done a thing to correct that habit—didn't know ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... thus doubled in size, and made a blaze which, on the hill, would be seen for many a mile. We had a whole holiday to give us time to pile up the heap; and in the evening parents and many other friends crowded to the field as spectators. Sometimes a lighted balloon or two, of varied colours, would be sent up, which were watched by the bright eyes of sisters and cousins, until they were lost in ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... a fine run, scouring the country on our fleet horses, and came into town soon after sundown. Here we found our companions, who had refused to go to ride with us, thinking that a sailor has no more business with a horse than a fish has with a balloon. They were moored, stem and stern, in a grog-shop, making a great noise, with a crowd of Indians and hungry half-breeds about them, and with a fair prospect of being stripped and dirked, or left to pass the night in the calabozo. With a great deal of trouble we managed ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Jack, "and I am rather afraid to swim under there. The balloon may sink and carry me under. But if I were certain in exactly what spot the man is imprisoned, I'd have a ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... Russia says that on the night of September 14th the inhabitants of a little village saw a balloon which was believed ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 48, October 7, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... on the beam, two hydroplanes circling and paralleling above, and a solitary observing balloon hovering over the Long Island shore, our ship and convoys stood boldly ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... mower with the log as a roller. Butterwick at last put it on top of his house, and that night fourteen ladders were seen against the wall. They did say that Ramsey, the lawyer, made one effort with a hot-air balloon, and failed only because he fell out and hurt his leg; but this was never ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... the son before me, just an ordinary man of millions, after all—and my little toy balloon of romance that I'd been floating so gaily on a string of sentiment was pricked to nothing in an instant. I felt my nostrils expand with the excitement of the chase, and thereafter I was my coldly professional self. If that young man ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... precaution, I myself flew the biplane over to Westchester on the morrow, and explained the controls to Monsieur Power in an extended passenger flight. He was, it appeared, an amateur of the balloon, and accustomed to great heights. When I handed the machine over to him, with the engine throttled down so that he might try rolling practice on the ground, he waited until he was out of our reach, whipped the motor into its full power, heaved himself into ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... strong, built of the best steel, and propelled by the explosive power of gun cotton, or some similar explosive, would overcome the difficulty. If I were to construct such an engine I would substitute for the lifting power of a balloon that of a sail ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... only joking" rejoined the former soldier. "The cake is so light, Norah, that I'll have to tie strings to it to keep it from goin' up to the sky like a balloon!" ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... very considerably, but the advantages in the matter of organisation were illimitable. Rations came up in the middle of the day, and the limbers and water carts, in singles of course on account of balloon observation, trundled up the road in the afternoon to a point within four hundred yards of the front line! As the men put it "We were laughing"—especially when the enemy once or twice attempted a relief ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... authority. The ex-duke has, since this period, wandered over England, France, and Spain, sometimes engaged in intrigues with Carlists, at others with republicans. In 1836, he accompanied a celebrated female aeronaut in one of her excursions from London. The balloon accidentally upset and the duke and his companion fell to the ground. He was, however, as in his other adventures, more frightened ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... a Moela or "gizzard." Of its three peaks the lowest is the eastern; and the central is the highest, reaching seven hundred, not a thousand, feet. Viewed from within the Gulf, it is a slope of sand which has been blown in sheets up the backing hills. The ground plan, as seen from a balloon, would represent a round head to the north, a thin neck, and a body rudely triangular, the whole measuring a maximum of five miles in length: the sandy northern circlet, connected by the narrowest of isthmuses, sweeping eastward, forms the noted port. The material is the normal Secondary formation, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... a palm leaf fan must be provided for each team. Four players constitute a team. A balloon is placed on the starting line before each team and a fan handed to the first competitor. At the signal to go the balloon is blown forward by means of the fan across the distance line, blown back by the second player, forward again by the third ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... a chair, and sat down to his desk. Then he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. He placed his elbows on the desk and his enormous folded chin in his two hands. So he sat, a monstrous figure, with his great paunch filling his white shirt like a concealed balloon, with his hideously hairy arms naked halfway, and his thick hands purple beneath the weight of his amorphously fat face, his little reptilian eyes staring at the ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... the line, among the Americans, there was a little stir, and then a pistol barked with that loud crash which black powder makes. Jack, on the instant when the smoke curled up in a little, balloon-like puff, turned and leaped into the saddle. The duel of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... as usual with all his balloon topsails set, his sea-room limited only by the skein, while his aunt wound her yarn silently, and listened with a face expressive at once of deep interest and hope, mingled with a ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he free from credulity? A German by the name of Leppich constructed, secretly, in one of the gardens of Moscow, a balloon by means of which the French army should be covered with fire, and some historians say that Rostopchine was one of the most enthusiastic admirers ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... farmer's wife sat flattened between the two men, who bulged over each end of the seat to give her room, till they almost sat upon their respective wheels; and they looked too at the farmer's wife's silk mantle, inflating itself between her shoulders like a balloon and sinking flat again, at each jog of the horse. The farmer's wife, feeling their eyes sticking into her back, looked over her shoulder. Dick dropped ten ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... he seemed to think it a joke that all these children should belong to him. As the younger ones slipped up to him in his retreat, he kept taking things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a wooden clown, a balloon pig that was inflated by a whistle. He beckoned to the little boy they called Jan, whispered to him, and presented him with a paper snake, gently, so as not to startle him. Looking over the boy's head he said to me, 'This one is bashful. He ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... path of dalliance"—it shrinks back from it as from a precipice, and keeps in the iron rail-way of the understanding. Irish oratory, on the contrary, is a sort of aeronaut: it is always going up in a balloon, and breaking its neck, or coming down in the parachute. It is filled full with gaseous matter, with whim and fancy, with alliteration and antithesis, with heated passion and bloated metaphors, that burst the slender, silken covering of sense; and the airy pageant, that glittered in empty ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... brass I will bring gold; and for iron, silver.' The brass and the iron may be worth something, but if we barter them away and get instead gold and silver, we are gainers by the transaction. Fling out the ballast if you wish the balloon to rise. Let the hundred talents go if you wish to get 'the more than this.' And listen to the New Testament variation of this man of God's promise, 'If thou wilt have treasure in heaven, go and sell all that thou hast, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Mr. Dooley. "But I tell ye he's gone back. D'ye mind th' time we wint down to th' Coleesyum an' he come out in a black alapaca coat an' pushed into th' air th' finest wurruds ye iver heerd spoke in all ye'er bor-rn days? 'Twas a balloon ascinsion an' th' las' days iv Pompey an' a blast on th' canal all in wan. I had to hold on to me chair to keep fr'm goin' up in th' air, an' I mind that if it hadn't been f'r a crack on th' head ye got fr'm a dillygate fr'm Westconsin ye'd 've been in th' hair iv Gin'ral ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... been good originally, and age had improved it. Used as he was to the appalling balloon juice sold in the drinking dens of the "Barbary coast" at San Francisco, or the public-houses of the docks, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... it becomes very interesting for us to learn what the sun is, and how he sends us his beams. How far away from us do you think he is? On a fine summer's day when we can see him clearly, it looks as if we had only to get into a balloon and reach him as he sits in the sky, and yet we know roughly that he is more than ninety-one millions of miles ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... "A balloon your granny!" exclaimed Walter, tying the legs of the antelope to his saddle pommel. "Go ahead, girls. I'll ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... fine mountaineering exercise. Our bedroom was lighted by a dormer window. One night I opened it in search of good scootchers and hung myself out over the slates, holding on to the sill, while the wind was making a balloon of my nightgown. I then dared David to try the adventure, and he did. Then I went out again and hung by one hand, and David did the same. Then I hung by one finger, being careful not to slip, and ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... not make a balloon—I mean a fire-balloon— because we have no paper to make it with. If we could, and could let it up at night, with some red and blue fires to go off when it got up high, I should think ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... call it, in the swallow, who, after making a recognizance of the season, determines that it would be rash to venture so far north: all this is in the single word. For dares write does, and the effect would be like that of cutting a gash in a rising balloon: you would let the line suddenly down, because you take the life out of ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... labors complete, His hands and his head press the last written sheet. Sleep comes not alone; for the goddess of dreams Is accustomed to visit this blacker of reams. Like the man that sits under a monster balloon, And soars o'er the earth halfway up to the moon, Now stepping at once into Fancy's fair car, He sails from the dusky old garret afar; And, leaving the world with its practical crowds, Such visions as these meet his gaze ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... AEROPLANE IN THE GREAT WAR Balloon Observations. Changed Conditions in Warfare. The Effort to Conceal Combatants. Smokeless Powder. Inventions to Attack Aerial Craft. Functions of the Aeroplane in War. Bomb-throwing Tests. Method for Determining the Movement of a Bomb. The ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... about in these parts, over in Bohemia, endeavoring to bring Army matters to a footing; and is no doubt shocked to find them still in such backwardness, with a Friedrich at hand. The Kaiser's Letter, we perceive, is pilot-balloon to the Kaunitz episcopal Document, and to an actual meeting of Prussian and Austrian Ministers on the Bavarian point; and had been seen to be a salutary measure by an Austria in alarm. It asks, as the Kaunitz ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... which concealed the sword, he snatched it up and smashed it across his knee. "See, then, how I treat the symbol of my monarchy," he cried with a terrible laugh. "I shall soon demonstrate to you what a pricked balloon is this Kingship of which you prate. I believe that you, my own father, are ready to supplant me, I know that Julius, my cousin, is straining every nerve to procure my downfall; but you shall learn how a man who despises the pinchbeck honors of a throne can ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... Jack, but if you were to go up in a balloon a few hundred yards above the spot where it stands, you might see 'em all on a very clear day, if your eyes were good. The fact is, that I regard this picture as a triumph of art, exhibiting powerfully what is by artists termed 'bringing together' and great 'breadth,' united ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... to give the reader some definite idea of this extraordinary machine, as exhibited in the drawings. Its buoyant power was, of course, on the principle of the balloon. But the gas-chamber, or part to be inflated, instead of being globular in form, consisted of two horizontal cones joined at the base; or more accurately still, it resembled an immense barrel extended at both ends to a point, and resting on its side. This shape was given it, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... difficulties encountered in its construction are few and easily overcome. In the first place, the cork must be air-tight, and it is best made so by pouring a little melted paraffin over it, care being taken not to close the tube. The rubber bags were taken from toy balloon-whistles. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... chin-chins in front of the altar, and then depositing on it what cash they could afford; after which they proceeded to rub one cheek after the other on the Tooth-stone, just as "puss" rubs herself against your legs when you stroke her head. The bandages had, of course, to be removed before the balloon-like cheek could be rubbed on the frozen stone, and to watch the different expressions of relief or increased pain upon their ill-balanced, inflamed faces, gave me as much amusement as any show that I have ever witnessed. Should the pain have temporarily disappeared, the man in charge of the ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... fly that takes the big fish and the little one. It's no more trouble to make up to a duchess than a dairymaid. I'll pick a real white-handed one, you see if I don't. A wife that can move, uncle, cool, and calm, and lofty, like an air balloon; wearing her dresses as if she was made for them, and her jewels as if she didn't know she'd got them on; looking as much at home in the Queen's drawing-room as she does in her own. That's my sort, and that's the sort I'll choose! Why, there's ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... mouse doesn't go to sleep in the cat's cradle and scare poor pussy so her tail swells up like a balloon, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... completing his education, and brought out his first comedy in 1850. This was followed by several comic operas. However, he is chiefly known by his "scientific romances," of which the first, "Five Weeks in a Balloon," appeared in 1863. "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" is perhaps the best example of Verne's tales of the marvels of invention, and we have to remember that when it was written, in 1873, nobody had yet succeeded in making ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... best ways of finding the true course of all the hot and cold currents in a room is to make use of a small balloon, such as used to be employed for ascertaining the specific gravity of gases; and, having filled it with ordinary coal gas, balance it by weights tied on to the car till it will rest without going up or down in a part of the room where the air can be felt to be at about the mean temperature, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... muttered. "How could a metal ship weighing tons be suspended in the air like a balloon? It is stationary, but it is not buoyant. We seem in all respects ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... dart-throwing and ring-throwing stalls, each displaying a marvellous array of crockery, clocks, metal ornaments, and suchlike rewards. There was a race of gas balloons, each with a postcard attached to it begging the finder to say where it descended, and you could get a balloon for a shilling and have a chance of winning various impressive and embarrassing prizes if your balloon went far enough—fish carvers, a silver-handled walking-stick, a bog-oak gramophone-record cabinet, and things like that. And by a special gate ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... we wish to correspond at a short distance, say two miles, and make signals visible from the entire horizon, the mirror, A, is put in place, so that it shall reflect the luminous fascicle vertically. The fascicle, at a distance of about fifty feet, meets a white balloon which it renders visible from every point in the horizon. The maneuver of the occultator brings the balloon out of darkness or plunges it thereinto again, and thus produces the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... beechwoods, and it was rather to satisfy that desire than as any legitimate development of my proper work that presently I turned a part of my energies and the bulk of my private income to the problem of the navigable balloon. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... of these with a smile of contempt, such as an artillery officer might bestow on the bows and arrows of the Chinese. In another department there were models of vehicles and vessels worked by steam, and of an air-balloon which might have been constructed by Montgolfier. "Such," said Zee, with an air of meditative wisdom—"such were the feeble triflings with nature of our savage forefathers, ere they had even a glimmering perception of the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... appear above the surface. The six redskins were lounging in as many different lazy attitudes. One seemed sound asleep, with his face turned to the ground, and looking like a warrior that had fallen from some balloon, and, striking on his stomach, lay just as he was flattened out. Another was half-sitting and half-reclining, smoking a pipe with a very long stem. His face was directly toward Fred, who noticed that his eyes were cast downward, as though he were gazing ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... feet. After a certain distance the difficulty increases progressively. It is so with the horse-power required to drive great ships across the ocean; it is so with the lifting power required to raise balloons in the air. A balloon goes up quite easily for a certain distance, but after a certain distance it refuses to go up any farther, because the air is too rarefied to float it and sustain it. And, therefore, I would say let us examine ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... bloomed in a garden. A small boy forgot to pull it up. His twin sister saw it, but said that thistle-pulling was not her work, so it went to seed. One seed was caught up by a wind and went drifting, drifting, a little balloon of thistledown, until it reached the clouds and travelled westward with them for thousands of miles. Then the cloud struck a mountain and burst into rain. The seed went down among the drops. Months ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... may ride a bicycle, Or go in a balloon; Or one may travel on his feet And get there 'most ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... friar. Linkan, tripping. Linket, tripped. Linn, waterfall. Lint, flax. Loan, loaning, lane, path. Loo'ed, loved. Loof, palm. Loot, let. Loun, clown, rascal. Loup, leap. Loverds, lords. Lowe, flame. Lowin, flaming. Lowings, flashes. Lowp, leap. Lug, ear. Lunardi, balloon, bonnet. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... hold for him another startling anticlimax. It came one snowy morning when he had slept even later than usual, dreaming of an iridescent balloon that climbed higher and higher with Joan peeping radiantly over the edge until at the peal of the telephone bell it ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... beautiful forms of jelly-fish are balloon-shaped. These are Beroe, fitly named after the daughter of the old god Oceanus. They, like others of their family, pulsate through the water, sweeping gracefully along, borne on ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... be the age of Wonders and Improvements in the Arts. The idea of Man's flying in the Air, twenty years ago, before the discovery of the use of the balloon, would have been laughed at by the most credulous! Nor does the History of Nature afford so extraordinary a relation as that of the man's eating and subsisting on pebbles, flints, tobacco pipes and mineral excrescences; ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... blood-red sun sank like a fire-balloon into the west, flushing with its last fierce beams the higher clouds of the eastern sky, and lighting the white and black plume of the soaring fish-eagle. This Gypohierax (Angolensis) is a very wild bird, flushed at 200 yards: I heard of, but I never saw, the Gwanyoni, which M. du ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of Newton rather than as a man commanding attention by his conduct before other men. There certainly was a difference to-day, and it was of that kind which wine produces on some who are not habitual drinkers. The gases of his life were in exuberance, and he was as a balloon insufficiently freighted with ballast. His buoyancy, unless checked, might carry him too high among the clouds. All this Ralph saw, and kept himself a little aloof. If there were aught amiss, there was no help for it on his part; and, after ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... kilometers round about. All the departments of the Army Corps will first set off, and the E.N.E.—elements non endivisionnes," Cocon obligingly explains, "that is, attached directly to the A.C. Among the E.N.E. you won't see the Balloon Department nor the Squadron—they're too big goods, and they navigate on their own, with their staff and officers and hospitals. The chasseurs regiment ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... (Handwerpen) into the river gave the name to the city, is stated beforehand to have lived in the castle of Antwerp. They are not destitute of wit, the Belgians, if I may judge by some specimens I heard. It is a local joke to refer to the famous "dirigeable" balloon, which burst in the latter days of the Exhibition, as the "dechirable" balloon. "They pooh-pooh the past nowadays," said a tram-conductor to me, "but when I look at the Cathedral and Rubens' 'Descent from the Cross' I think our forefathers ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... new spires of Sainte-Clotilde, the bluish Pantheon, erect on a height, its fine colonnade showing against the sky, overlooked the city, poised in the air, as it were, motionless, with the silken hues of a captive balloon. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... I have got the hang of her," said Hildebrand Anne with some pride, looking up at the great cigar-shaped balloon which hung ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... side of Gueldersdorp, swelled by innumerable thready water-courses, dry in the blistering winter heat, that the wet season disperses among the foothills that bristle with Brounckers' artillery. Seen from the altitude of a balloon or a war-kite, the course of the beer-coloured stream, flowing lazily between its high banks sparsely wooded with oak and blue gum, and lavishly clothed with cactus, mimosa, and tree-fern, tall grasses, and thorny creepers, would have looked like a verdant ribbon meandering over the dun-and-ochre-coloured ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... all sorts of tricks, and the balloon observers grew to be very cautious in their assertions. In the early days of the campaign, at the battle of Shaiba Bund, a friendly mirage saved the British forces from what would have proved a very serious defeat. Suleiman Askari ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... framework of the ship is hollow. Every single thing you see—even the chairs and tables—they're all made of the metal aerolite (as it's generally called). It's almost as thin as paper, and it's far stronger than any steel. Now it's the framework of the ship that takes the place of the old balloon. It's infinitely safer, too, for it's divided by automatically closing stops into tens of thousands of compartments, so a leak here and there makes practically no difference. Well, when the ship's at rest, as it is now, there's simply air in all these tubes; but when ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... just mentioned are characteristic of riverside Nevers. Craning our necks as we strolled to and fro, we remarked how much life in such altitudes must resemble that of a balloon, folks being thus lifted above the hubbub, malodours, and microbes of the human bee-hive below. For my own part I prefer a turnpike level, despite the engaging aspect of those rose-girt verandahs, bowers, and lawns on a level with the ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... time she had taken three tacks to cross the common, and was ready to come about at the corner, there was a balloon jibe, that sent the sails all flapping against the mast, and left her in such a flurry of indignation, that she failed to see a string that stretched its insidious length, two inches above the pavement, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... taken off its axletree and wheels, and plumped down on the clayey soil among a ragged growth of vegetables. It was a post-chaise not even set straight upon the ground, but tilted over, as if it had fallen out of a balloon. It was a post-chaise that had been a long time in those decayed circumstances, and against which scarlet beans were trained. It was a post-chaise patched and mended with old tea-trays, or with scraps of iron that looked like them, and boarded up as to the windows, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... balloons in my window. I had some left over from last year, so I blew them up and put them in my window to make it look pretty. Now and then one of them bursts." And just then, surely enough, "Pop! Bang!" went another toy balloon, ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... started work, and by sundown had the well in order. Tying the others down we proceeded to water each camel in turn. Picture our surprise and joy when each turned from the bucket without drinking more than two gallons. Billy rolled up like a great balloon, and one would have sworn that he had just had a long drink. What was this miracle? Here were camels, after an eight days' drought, travelling eight to ten hours daily in hot weather, over rough stones and gravel, actually ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... equal to that employed by an Attorney-General, who at a certain time in the history of the Home Rule agitation, addressing his constituents, told them that Mr. Gladstone had sent up a balloon to see which way the cat jumped with regard to Ireland! He was soon appointed a Judge of ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... engrossed that he lost track of them for a time; then a turn of the path brought him close upon them. Mrs. Congdon was sitting on a bench under a big elm and the children were joyously romping on the lawn in front of her, playing with a toy balloon to which a bit of bark had been fastened. They would toss it in the air and jump and catch it while the weight prevented its escape. A gust of wind caught it as Archie passed and drove it across his path, while the children with screams of glee ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... winding reaches where every earth-scar and mound had a history. Here the Turk had blown up the ammunition barges, and for hundreds of yards inland the ground was still strewn with twisted scrap-iron; here he had set his 5.9's on the balloon, and the evening fishing had been interrupted; here used to be the advanced dressing-station in the times of trench warfare; here was Left Bank Group, where our guns had been, the tamarisk thickets and ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... away seaward and leave them all behind. What such means would be, it is only fair to add, I could not imagine; at least, I could not imagine anything at all reasonable—for the only thing I could think of that would carry me out across that weed-covered ocean to open water was a balloon. ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... Imperial fact; Vulnant she felt What pin-stab should have stained Another's pelt Puncture her own Colonial lung-balloon, Volant to nigh meridian. Whence rebuffed, The perjured Scythian she lacked At need's pinch, sick with spleen of the rudely cuffed Below her breath she cursed; she cursed the hour When on her spring ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... bumpkin's queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a lot teaching others. The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on golden strand. World's biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... reported that the balloons recently received from Paris will be sent forward with the first expedition to Cuba; arrangements for equipping the balloon train are under charge of Lieut. Joseph E. Maxfield of the Signal Service. It is reported that one of the French balloons will be first given a careful test from the deck of one of the war-ships off Cuba. The necessary plant for generating the gas is already in Tampa; the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... physician to a somnambulist, and took from his pocket—with his tobacco and cigarette papers—a series of bottles labelled: cholera, yellow fever, typhus fever, smallpox, etc., and proposed as a very simple thing to go and spread these epidemics in all the German camps, by the aid of a navigable balloon, which he had just invented the night before upon going to bed. Amedee soon became tired of these braggarts and lunatics, and no longer went to the Cafe de Seville. He lived alone and shut himself up in his discouragement, and he had never perhaps had it weigh ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the foresail, swelled out like a balloon, interposed like a curtain betwixt the after-glow of the setting sun and ourselves, the shadows of the upper sails, too, making it darker than on the after part of the deck whence we had started; but it was still quite light enough for me to see the expression on Weeks' mottled face ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... that he was going up in a Balloon to hemstitch a couple of Clouds, it would have sounded just as plausible to Mr. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... at that. They were called log-houses. Now it is the fashion to use two by four inch studs standing in rows at such distances that the whole substance of the frame in a single sheet would be about half an inch thick. These are suggestively called balloon frames. The former would be huge and inconvenient, the latter are often fair and frail. That the frame of the outer wall of a wooden building should be mainly vertical is evident, the outer studs, if possible, extending from the sill ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... realism; the serpent hissing between the lips of Envy is so huge, and so completely fills her wide-opened mouth that the muscles of her face are strained and contorted, like a child's who is filling a balloon with his breath, and that Envy, and we ourselves for that matter, when we look at her, since all her attention and ours are concentrated on the action of her lips, have no time, almost, to spare ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... a while there came no suggestion worthy of notice, until at last there occurred to me a notable idea, and I called out suddenly that we should make a small fire balloon, and float off the line to them by such means. At that, the men about the fire were silent a moment; for the idea was new to them, and moreover they needed to comprehend just what I meant. Then, when they ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... was examined in detail from the 'Aurora' in January 1913 and found to be an island, which was named Drygalski Island, for it is evidently the ice-covered "high-land" observed by Professor Drygalski (German Expedition, 1902) from his balloon.—ED. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... please you, ma'am, a great many good things here. There is a balloon hanging up, and another going to be put on the stocks: there is soap made, and making from a receipt in Nicholson's Chemistry: there is excellent ink made, and to be made by the same book: there is a cake of roses just squeezed in a vice, by my father, according to the advice ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... chap that's defending Australia. But there's Union men and Union men. They're mainly good, but some are bad. That's one of the bad ones there. His name is Neverwork, and he never worked in his life. He's a blowhard, a gasbagger, a balloon full of curses and twaddle. This bloke thinks we're fools. He's kidded his Union on that he's a smart fellow—a sort of High Priest of Salvation. He's talked himself into a job, and he's drawing about five hundred a year out of another fellow's pockets. He's called a Socialist ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... and quivering, we heard, like groans, from beneath the handkerchief, "Oh ur-rh-ha—ar—uh! Bless me!" When he took down his handkerchief and happened to see Juno rising from her knees, he swelled up again like a balloon, and then eased off gradually in splutterings and moans as a dying porpoise. After which, he went and pacified Juno, and tried to explain to her what a wicked trick we had been guilty of, and that the band of smugglers, after all, were only the boys she knew so well, and he proceeded to ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... him, to hug in his arms, lest his grasp should be eluded, while he displayed some picture or some prospect.' In that humourous piece, Probationary Odes for the Laureateship (p. xliii), Dr. Joseph is made to hug his brother in his arms, when he sees him descend safely from the balloon in which he had composed his Ode. Thomas Warton is described in the same piece (p. 116) as 'a little, thick, squat, red-faced man.' There was for some time a coolness between Johnson and Dr. Warton. Warton, writing ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... to nibble cheese, The Dog bites anything he sees— But how could they bite off the Moon Unless they went in a balloon? ...
— The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford
... they have no word for balloon or flying machine, and I found it difficult to describe the shape and explain the philosophy of these things. I did the best I could in her language, and after I had finished my description she for the first ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... which you shew by having me in your thoughts upon all occasions, will, I hope, always fill my heart with gratitude. Be pleased to return my thanks to Sir George Baker[1103], for the consideration which he has bestowed upon me. Is this the balloon that has been so long expected, this balloon to which I subscribed, but without payment[1104]? It is pity that philosophers have been disappointed, and shame that they have been cheated; but I know not well how to prevent either. Of this experiment I have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... trail permitted, and thus hurried his arrival at the San Juan, and the formation beyond that stream. A few hundred yards before reaching the San Juan, the road forks, a fact that was discovered by Lieutenant-Colonel Derby of my staff, who had approached well to the front in a war balloon. This information he furnished to the troops, resulting in Sumner moving on the right-hand road while Kent was enabled to utilise the road to the left. General Wheeler, the permanent commander of the cavalry division, who had been ill, came forward during ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... path is conceived to be the dark half of the moon, and so back to man. Both roads lead first to the moon, then one goes on to brahma, the other returns to earth. It will be seen that good works are regarded as buoying a man up for a time, till, like gas in a balloon, they lose their force, and he sinks down again. What then becomes of the virtue of a man who enters the absolute brahma, and descends no more? He himself goes to the world where there is "no sorrow and no snow," where he lives forever (Brihad [A]ran. 5. 10); but "his beloved relations get his ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... man's knowledge of the Spanish language would be to put him in a balloon and set him down in dark night in the middle of Spain and leave him there with his Spanish words. The best test of a man's knowledge of books is to see what he can do without them on a desert island ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... that the unknown is always, in such cases, the wonderful. The night had cleared off and the stars were out. The Confederate position was eastward from us, and as a bright star rose above the ridge on which the enemy was, we could hear soldiers saying in a low tone to each other, "There goes a fire balloon—it must be a signal—they must have discovered what we are doing!" The exaggerated parallax at the horizon made the rising star seem to move rapidly for the first few minutes, and men, ignorant of this, naturally mistook its character. In a similar way an occasional shot on the picket line would ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... larva collapses and shrivels, retaining just enough life, however, to resist decomposition. All that remains of the decanted corpse is the skin, which, when softened in water and blown out, swells into a balloon without the least escape of gas, thus proving the continuity of the integument. All the same, the apparently unpunctured bladder has lost its contents. It is a repetition of what the Anthrax has shown us, with this difference, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... her eyes saw were the figures in the fountain of the sunken room. She was one of them again—the story was coming true! It was no longer a golden balloon she was touching, fondling, reaching for, tossing—it was sparkling water, and birds seemed singing in the ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... air-ship of some sort, there's no doubt about that," said the Captain, "so I guess the great problem has got solved at last. And yet it ain't a balloon, because it's coming against the wind, and it's nothing of the aeroplane sort neither, because it hasn't planes or kites or any fixings of that kind. Still it's made of something like metal and glass, and it must take a lot of keeping ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... a few of the peculiarities of the London multitude, when no riot, no execution, no murder, no balloon, disturbs the even current of their thoughts. These are the whimsies of the mass—the harmless follies by which they unconsciously endeavour to lighten the load of care which presses upon their existence. The wise man, even though he smile ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... more than the females, and they glory in exercising this power. If a bird will not, to use the technical expression, "play," the fancier, as I have witnessed, by taking the beak into his mouth, blows him up like a balloon; and the bird, then puffed up with wind and pride, struts about, retaining his magnificent size as long as he can. Pouters often take flight with their crops inflated. After one of my birds had swallowed a good meal ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... would bring fine weather, Scientists might be in fine feather, As 'tis, I sing, to the schoolboy tune, "Yah-bah! (oxyhydrogen) balloon!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... go, helpless and destitute, with gout for the cheering companion of your old age. Whatever you once knew, you have unlearnt in all these years: on the other hand, you have developed a paunch like a balloon; a monster insatiable, inexorable, which has acquired a habit of asking for more, and likes not at all the unlearning process. It is not to be supposed that any one else will give you employment, at ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... as to almost completely confine and cut off the column of smoke. Waiting a few moments, until the smoke was beginning to escape from beneath, the blanket was suddenly thrown aside, when a beautiful balloon-shaped column puffed up ward like the white cloud of smoke which attends the discharge of a field-piece. Again casting the blanket on the pile of grass, the column was interrupted as before, and again in due time released, so that a ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... not reason as I do in regard to this gravel," he went on, "I should have to assume a balloon!—My dear fellow, the science of the aerostation of dirigible balloons is not yet developed enough for me to consider it and suppose that a murderer would drop from the clouds! So don't say a thing is possible, when it could not be otherwise. ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux |
