"Boomerang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long enough to effect the most radical alteration in what happens afterwards. In that short space of time a spinning motion is put upon the ball, and a curious impulse which appears to have something in common with that given to a boomerang is imparted, which sooner or later take effect. In other respects, when a distant slice is wanted, the same principles of striking the ball and finishing the swing as governed the ordinary drive are to be observed. What I mean ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... they may be. They are bigger than I, and unless I get even with them by punishment, I would cut a sorry figure. But in the attempt to get even, if I resort to ordinary means, they are sure to make it a boomerang. If I tell them, "You're wrong," they will start an eloquent defence, because they are never short of the means of sidestepping. Having defended themselves, and made themselves appear suffering ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... have been a potent force for evil has been so strangely overruled as to become a reinforcement of the garrison defending the citadel its author desires so ardently to overthrow. From the point of view of the fervent apostle of Free Love, this is a Boomerang of a Book." ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... took with him the first specimen of gold and the first diamond found in Australia. He was for a short time one of the members for the Port Phillip electorate, but resigned, as he found faithful discharge of the duties to be incompatible with his office. He patented the boomerang screw propeller, and was the author of many educational and other works, including a translation of the Lusiad of Camoens. Although a strict martinet in his official duties, and subject to a choleric temper, he was strenuous in his devotion ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... track is shaped like a rounded cone, or, more often, like a boomerang, with a short arm running north-westwards to its place of turning and a long arm running northeastwards until its force is spent. The point of turning is always in the West Indies zone. As the storm is at its worst at the point of turning, it is always in the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... self-protection. Let us hope, then, that something will ore long be done to prevent disasters pregnant with so many evils to the community, and reflecting so strongly on the United States as a nation.[S] Having gone off at a tangent, like a boomerang, I had better, like the same weapon, return whence I started—in military language, "as ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the one man of the whole Bar T outfit who had suffered from the boomerang of his evil plans. It had been through him that Larkin was forced to accompany Bissell home after the stampede; and now he passed days and nights of misery, watching the progress of Bud's very evident suit. Chained down by his daily round of duties, his time ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... boomerang, is a thin curved missile, which can be thrown by a skilful hand so as to rise upon the air, and its crooked course may be, nevertheless, under control. It is about two feet four inches in length, and ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... man has a right to control his bodily health, though in a state of siege he may give his body to be starved. Thus, though the patriotic defence was a sincere defence, it is a defence that comes back on the defenders like a boomerang. For it proves only that Prohibition ought to be ephemeral, unless war ought ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... the young fellow, walking into the house with his mother clinging to his arm. "Carder is going to have ample leisure to think over the game he has played. Isn't it a strange satire of fate that should make insignificant little Pete the boomerang to turn back and floor him? Pete's an ideal witness. He sees what he sees and he knows what he knows, and nothing can shake him because he doesn't know anything else. Great Scott! when I located the facts at that hospital and linked them together and brought an accusation ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... standin' three hands higher than the tallest of our ponies. Also, it has a ewe neck an' lib'ral legs. It's name is 'Henry of Navarre,' but we sees at once that sech'll never do, an' re-christens him 'Boomerang Bob.' ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the next half-minute that his cousin's fists were never out of his face. He looked on the world through a brown haze of boxing-glove. Occasionally his hand met something solid which he took to be Allen, but this was seldom, and, whenever it happened, it only seemed to bring him back again like a boomerang. Just at the most ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... for Maggie's entertainment, tried to get up the blacks to engage in a corroboree, and give an exhibition of boomerang and spear-throwing; but the inner man had been too largely satisfied, and they declined violent exertion, so the toys were distributed and our ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... which some of them throw pebbles would lead us to believe they have already reached the degree of civilisation that many tribes of savages had reached only a few years ago, when they learned to use the boomerang and lasso. Some naturalists claim that monkeys actually set pitfalls for their enemies and lie in wait for them to be caught, just ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... secondly apologetic, and thirdly sincerely contrite. In the present instance, waiving the purely academic question whether the awakening of George at a little before five was due to natural instinct on his part, or to the accidental passing of a home-made boomerang through his bedroom window, the dear children frankly admitted that the blame for his uprising was their own. As the eldest ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... for the sake of the game, not to gain the plaudits of an idle crowd or in expectation of reward. Rivalry there undoubtedly is among them, but the rivalry is disinterested. No chaplet of olive-leaves or parsley decorates the brow of him who so throws the boomerang that it accomplishes the farthest and most complicated flight. As the archers of old England practised their sport, so do the blacks exhibit their strength and skill, not as the modern lover of football, who pays others to play for his amusement, and who, possibly, knows not the game ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... these latter are original native words. The blacks had a way of picking up white men's slang and adding it to their very limited vocabulary; thus the evil spirit is known among them as the "debbil-debbil.") Another weapon the aboriginal had, the boomerang, a curiously curved missile stick which, if it missed the object at which it was aimed, would curve back in the air and return to the feet of the thrower; thus the black did not lose his weapon. The boomerang ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... points of flame on the white candles. "I suppose it would be so with you; for you fit into the age. You are a part of this variable uncertain quantity called democracy, which some of us old-fashioned folk look upon as a boomerang." ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the return of the eye over its course, as in circular observation, is practically eliminated. While the circle and ellipse offer a succession of items and events, one the sequence of the other, so that the vision concludes like a boomerang, angular composition sends a ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... from one of the sentries. The men stooping round the fire leaped to their feet, just in time to see one of the constables struck from his horse by a boomerang, while a dozen spears whizzed through the air at the other. He fell forward on his horse, which carried him up to the fire; as he fell from the saddle, as it stopped, he was caught by two of the others. Three ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... a season violate these laws with impunity; but, even in their cases, every serious indiscretion, if not immediately felt, is as a draft on them, bearing some future date, sure of presentation, while the payment is absolute. It may be five, fifteen, or fifty years ere the boomerang of indiscretion returns, but come it will. Invalids will need to watch and guard against all pernicious habits, and to forego doing many things which they were accustomed to do while in health, but which under the altered circumstances ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... business proved a boomerang," was Tom's comment. "It's a pity we didn't dig out for the shore, signal to the steam yacht, and tell father and the others about ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... Mr. Minturn. "Get the idea and work on it. Every rough, heartless thing they attempt, if at all possible, make it a boomerang to strike them their own blow; but you reserve blows as a last resort. There is the bell." Mr. Minturn called: "Boys! The breakfast bell is ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... very much with a boomerang; but I could throw a spear to a hair's breadth, as many a chicken had occasion to discover. When you go home for Christmas I hope you will remember that all this was very wrong, and that you will consider we are civilized ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... orators, the Bantu. A New Zealander is said to speak from his diaphragm, hands clenched at the sides, as the old Maoris used. What we know of first-class Australian oratory shows us the same alertness, swift flight, and clean delivery as a thrown boomerang. I had half expected in Canadian speeches some survival of the Redskin's elaborate appeal to Suns, Moons, and Mountains—touches of grandiosity and ceremonial invocations. But nothing that I heard was referable to any primitive stock. There was a dignity, a restraint, and, above ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... declared that we are all careering through space, clinging to a cannon-ball, and the poets ignore the matter as if it were a remark about the weather. They say that an invisible force holds us in our own armchairs while the earth hurtles like a boomerang; and men still go back to dusty records to prove the mercy of God. They tell us that Mr. Scott's monstrous vision of a mountain of sea-water rising in a solid dome, like the glass mountain in the fairy-tale, is actually a fact, and men still go back to the fairy-tale. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... was the fowling among the marshes. The spears were laid aside on this kind of expedition, and instead, Tahuti and his father were armed with curved throw-sticks, shaped something like an Australian boomerang. But, besides the throw-sticks, they had with them a rather unusual helper. When people go shooting nowadays, they take dogs with them to retrieve the game. Well, the Egyptians had different kinds of dogs, too, which they used for hunting; but when they ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... heart. She saw everything and everybody. She wondered how many of them carried happy secrets, like hers, in their thoughts—how many of them were going toward thrilling experiences. She shot her imagination, like a boomerang, at every passing face, in the hope of getting back secrets that lay behind the masks. She was unaware how her direct gaze riveted attention to her own eager face. She thought the people who smiled at her were friendly, and she tossed them back as good ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... how shall you in the midst of your poisoned page hurl with impunity the boomerang rebuke? "Paradox is discoloured by personality, and merriment ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... now, Boomerang! Keep to' feet a-movin' an' we sho' will make a record. 'Tain't laik we was a autermobiler, er a electricity car, but we sho' hab been goin' sence we started. Yo' sho' done yo'se'f proud t'day, Boomerang, ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... the weight of their burden on their shoulders, carrying it as we do a knapsack, not in the ordinary Chinese way, with a pliant carrying pole. They are all provided with a short staff, which has a transverse handle curved like a boomerang, and with this they ease the weight off the ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... gestures, descended from the reef, and gradually came a little nearer. I made signs of encouragement for him to come on, at the same time moving towards him. At last we arrived on the banks of the creek, he on one side, and I on the other. He had a long spear, a womera, and two instruments like the boomerang, but more the shape of a scimitar, with a very sharp edge, having a thick place at the end, roughly carved, for the hand. The gestures he was making were now signs of hostility, and he came fully prepared for ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... BOOMERANG.—This sign means news from Australia, or that some unexpected development will lead to your having a great interest in that country; with signs of travel, that you ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... to Patricia Scott. She had not looked for this result, and though she had not made the complaint in person, her criticism of Harriet had been a boomerang that had returned and hit Patricia. This made the girl even more bitter against Harriet ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... Draper that he does not write in the spirit of science, but in the spirit of dogmatism. We complain of him, that, when he ostensibly attempts a piece of pure scientific exposition, his thought always has a squint, a boomerang obliquity; it is afflicted with strabismus, and never looks where it seems to look. He approaches history only to subject it to the service of certain pet opinions already formed before his inspection of history began. He seeks only to make it an instrument for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... the case of Angelo. No one could demonstrate it, no one could with safety even hint at it; any charge that the court was anything but impartial would prove a boomerang to the defense; and yet the facts remained that the whole proceeding from start to finish had been conducted unfairly and with illegality, that the jury had been duped and deceived, and that the pretense that the guilty Angelo had been given an impartial trial was a farce. Every word of ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... and considered the outcome in horrified dismay, regretting his rash flurry of sympathy. It had become a boomerang. What if Brian's protege in a fit of remorse saw fit to keep his sister posted? Kenny would indeed find clues. The possibility filled him ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Australians called this constellation "The Boomerang." To the Hebrews it was "Ataroth" and by this name it is known in the East to-day. No two of the seven stars composing the Crown are moving in the same direction or at the ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... hundreds of misguided individuals act as though they think so. Nor is a good introduction the one that begins with a comic incident supposedly with a point pat to the occasion or topic, yet so often miles wide of both. The funny story which misses its mark is a boomerang. Even the apparently "sure-fire" one may deliver a disturbing kick to its perpetrator. The grave danger is the "o'er done or come tardy off" of Hamlet's advice to the players. Humor must be distinctly marked off from the merely comic or witty, and clearly ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... scale never before dreamed of. Some of them proved themselves great horses, the equals of the best the English could bring against them: all were good. And it was only by an act of God, as the enemy English declared, that Boomerang, the king of them, had failed to win the National and consummate ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... of a poor woman, whom he was using as a walking-stick. The other women were all heavily-laden, some with wood, and others with burdens of various sorts, their lords and masters condescending to carry nothing but a couple of light wooden spears, a waddy, or native club, and a boomerang. ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... and the good people with an hour to throw away on the second evening of her arrival came down to the School of Arts to talk about the voyage, it being the latest event. It was duly advertised in the two little papers, "Boomerang" and "Nully Nully," in the one the day before the affair came off, and in the other the day after, which was all the same to the editor, and, for that matter, it was ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... BOOMERANG, a missile of hard curved wood used by the Australian aborigines of 21/2 ft. long; a deadly weapon, so constructed that, though thrown forward, it takes a whirling course upwards till it stops, when it returns with a swoop and falls in the rear ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to' feet a-movin' an' we sho' will make a record. 'Tain't laik we was a autermobiler, er a electricity car, but we sho' hab been goin' sence we started. Yo' sho' done yo'se'f proud t'day, Boomerang, an' I'se gwine t' keep mah promise an' gib yo' de bestest oats I kin find. Ah reckon Massa Tom Swift will done say we brought dis yeah message t' him ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... of a discreet player of sound judgment is, indeed, a powerful weapon greatly feared by the adversaries; when used by the unskilled, it becomes a boomerang of ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... processes gone through by people who know nothing about them, and never had any practice therein. What IS to know how to do a thing? Surely to do it. What is proof that we know how to do a thing? Surely the fact that we can do it. A man shows that he knows how to throw the boomerang by throwing the boomerang. No amount of talking or writing can get over this; ipso facto, that a baby breathes and makes its blood circulate, it knows how to do so and the fact that it does not know its own knowledge is only proof of the perfection of that ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... to the publishers in two enormous quarto volumes. I had been working at it for more than a year every evening after the hellish torture of the day's teaching, and all day every holiday, but now I had a good rest while it was playing its boomerang prank of returning to me once a month. The only gleam of hope came from Bentleys, who wrote to say that they could not make up their minds to reject it; but they prevailed upon themselves to part with it at last, though not without asking to see Mr. Bell's next book. At last ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... was altogether different from what they had anticipated. That's why I say submarine activities off the American coast will prove a boomerang to ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... 597. I hate to say it, but it seems to me that you go too minutely into particulars in describing the feats of the aboriginals. I felt it in the boomerang-throwing. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter Rolls did ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... emitting an inharmonious grunt, gesticulating violently all the time, and brandishing and striking together their weapons. The peculiar feature in this corrobory, was the throwing of the kiley, or boomerang, lighted at one end; the remarkable flight and extraordinary convolutions of this weapon marked by a bright line of fire, had ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... I gave woke Jimmy, who sprang to his feet, dragged a boomerang from his waistband, and dashed to the door to throw it at somebody, and ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... allow them. But as the grass-tree is not found westward of the mountains, they make a light spear of a reed, similar to that of which the natives of the southern islands form their arrows. These they use for distant combat, and not only carry in numbers, but throw with the boomerang to a great distance and with unerring precision, making them to all intents and purposes as efficient as the bow and arrow. They have a ponderous spear for close fight, and others of different sizes for the chase. ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... Anstruther was now quite sure that the graceful head of the beautiful neighbor swayed in an unconscious recognition of his witty sallies. A true son of Mars—ardent, headlong, and gallant as regarded le beau sexe—he talked brilliantly and well, aiming his boomerang remarks at a woman whom he knew to be young and graceful, and whose beauty he was gayly taking upon trust; an old, old interlude, played ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... no time on reading any fiction except that in the news columns of the evening paper, which a boy threw on the porch in a twisted boomerang every afternoon, and which Eddie untwisted and read after he had wiped the dishes ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... inventive genius had been a machine for making ten—dollar bills, at which the New York capitalist had exclaimed that the state right for Iowa alone would bring one hundred thousand dollars. Even more remunerative, it would seem, had been his other patent—the folding boomerang. The manager of the largest boomerang factory in Australia stood ready to purchase this device for ten million dollars. And there was a final view of the little home after prosperity had come to its inmates so long threatened with ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... make great friends. Robinson showed him one or two sleight-of-hand tricks that stamped him at once a superior being in Jacky's eyes, and Jacky showed Robinson a thing or two He threw his boomerang and made it travel a couple of hundred yards, and return and hover over his head like a bird and settle at his feet; but he was shy of throwing his spear. "Keep spear for when um angry, not throw him ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... reindeer experiment and its lack of any bearing upon the number or the usefulness of the dog, the writer would pause to take strong exception to the description of the husky dog as the "scourge" of Labrador, and would insist that any such wholesale condemnation is a boomerang that returns upon the head of the Labradorian who uses it. For, as the dog is one of the most adaptable of all domestic animals, and is, to an amazing extent, what his master makes him, to bring a railing accusation against the whole ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... in which the black joined, showing his white teeth with childish delight as he came close up, holding out something hung on the end of his spear, and carrying what appeared to be a bag made of bark in his left hand, in company with his boomerang, his war-club being stuck in the skin loin-cloth which was the only ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... of this nature taught Mary, that, in dealing with infants of changeable and rudimentary mind, honesty was an impossible policy and candor a very boomerang, which returned and smote one with savage force. So she stooped to guile and detested the flannel all the more deeply because of the state to which it was debasing an upright conscience and ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... gorgeous shells from the southern seas, delicate sprays of coral sprouting from barnacled pi-pi shells and cased in glass, assegais from South Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskan tobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerang from Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal kai-kai bowl from the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and the Indies and inlaid with ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... itself to one endeavouring to trace the proximate origin of the Australians—and that is, to search the records of voyagers and others for any traces of such customs, the use of certain implements, etc., as are supposed to be most characteristic of these people. Yet, taking, for example, the boomerang* and throwing-stick,** we find nothing approaching to either of these instruments in any part of New Guinea yet visited by Europeans: in the absence of any evidence to the contrary from Timor, they may be considered as true Australian inventions; and assuming ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... oilskin jacket, and curls flowed from under his sou'wester, he made up for it by a mass of oakum beard and whisker that was truly awe-inspiring. Also, he had the truncheon which used to be a curling stick, and a deadly weapon of singular appearance which was understood to be a boomerang. ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... Boomerang, Massa Tom, dat's all. Po' Boomerang he's gittin' old jest same laik I be. He's gittin' old, an' he needs lots ob 'tention. He has t' hab mo' oats dan usual, Massa Tom, an' he doan't feel 'em laik he uster, dat's ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... life from the savage state, the new demand for labour of an intellectual kind is enormous. The invention, construction, and working of one Krupp gun, though its mere discharge hardly demands more crude muscular exertion than a savage expends in throwing his boomerang, yet represents an infinitude of intellectual care and thought, far greater than that which went to the shaping of all the weapons of a primitive army. Above all, in the domain of politics and government, where once a king or queen, aided by a handful of councillors, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... joins the Hooghly I have bowled the wily googly, I have heard the howdah's howl at Hyderabad; On a rickshaw I've gone sailing, with my boomerang impaling Hooded cobras ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... investment for an ounce of brains! Hard is the job to launch the desperate pun, A pun-job dangerous as the Indian one. Turned by the current of some stronger wit Back from the object that you mean to hit, Like the strange missile which the Australian throws, Your verbal boomerang slaps you on the nose. One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt, One trivial letter ruins all, left out; A knot can choke a felon into clay, A not will save him, spelt without the k; The smallest word has some unguarded spot, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... notable eastern realm, plucked a javelin-type of weapon from his cumberband and hurled it full into the face of the preacher. It never reached its mark, but, boomerang like, it returned to the thrower and shattered and ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... did not realize when you offered me poison that my life is one with your own. Except for my knowledge that God is present in my stomach, as in every atom of creation, the lime would have killed me. Now that you know the divine meaning of boomerang, never again play ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... makes no profession of absolute, verbal literalness. One can not transfer a metaphor bodily, head and horns, from one speech to another. The European had to invent a new name for the boomerang or accept the name by which the Australian called it. The Frenchman, struggling with the English language, told a lady he was gangrened, he meant he was mortified. The cry for literalism is the cry for an impossibility; to put the chicken back into its shell, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the paths leading to them, cut out in a defile in the vertical cliffs, we passed with difficulty coolies carrying on their backs the enormous loads, which are the wonder of all who have seen them, their backs straining under the boomerang-shaped frames to which the merchandise was lashed. Hundreds passed us on their toilsome journey with tea, lamp-oil, skins, hides, copper, lead, coal and white wax from Yuen-nan, and with salt, English cotton, Chinese porcelain, fans and so on from Szech'wan. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... degree. He wrote a letter on the subject to the Chanticleer, a newspaper in Troy, Ill., of which he was a correspondent, and it was copied, with zinco-type illustrations, into all the journals of the habitable globe, and came back to England like the fabled boomerang. Meanwhile SWEZEY was cruising about, in town and country, looking out for persons wearing silver gridirons. He never found any, and the more he inquired, the more puzzled he became. He was informed that a treatise on the subject existed, but neither at the British Museum, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... consequence is that Congressmen do not wish the Senate to lose the power of confirmation. They believe this personal patronage to be a means of perpetuating their own tenure. As a matter of fact, this is not the case. Few men help themselves politically in the long run through the use of patronage. It is a boomerang. Some few manage to make it useful, but generally when a man secures an appointment for a henchman, as the saying is in Washington—and it is a very true one—he makes one ingrate and twenty enemies. The result is that after he has served a term or two, he begins to find those aspiring ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... then turned away to bawl orders. The gate slid aside, and, after the caravan had passed through, naked slaves pushed the massive thing shut again. Although they were familiar with the interior of the town, from photographs taken with boomerang-balls—automatic-return transposition spheres like message-balls—they looked around curiously. The central square was thronged—Caleras in striped robes, people from the south and east in baggy trousers and embroidered ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... and gradually proceeding to greater, and still greater. At this point I should warn you that all the best occult teachings warn students against using this power for base ends, improper purposes, etc. Such practices tend to react and rebound against the person using them, like a boomerang. Beware against using psychic or occult forces for improper purposes—the psychic laws punish the offender, just as do the ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... umbrella. Her flat hat had a single wreath of coarse daisies around the crown, and her mitts were darned in many places, nevertheless you could not entirely spoil her; God had used a liberal hand in making her, and her father's parsimony was a sort of boomerang that flew ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is subject to a popular vote, is a boomerang. The appointment of a citizen in a town arouses the anger of many others who think they are more deserving. I appealed to the farmers with the simple question whether old Westchester should be controlled by federal authority in a ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... feet high supplied coigns of vantage for the look-out. Thence, too, darts and stones could be hurled at the besiegers. With the help of a throwing-stick, or rather whip, wooden spears could be thrown in the sieges more than a hundred yards. Ignorant of the bow-and-arrow and the boomerang, the Maoris knew and used the sling. With it red-hot stones would be hurled over the palisades, among the rush-thatched huts of an assaulted village, a stratagem all the more difficult to cope with as Maori pas seldom contained wells ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... to one side of her, and she turned at right angles out of the furrow; but as she got to the top of the bed, Milker-Tim, flinging back his arm, with the precision of a bushman, sent his stick whirling like a boomerang skimming along the ground ...
— The Long Hillside - A Christmas Hare-Hunt In Old Virginia - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... sundry fabrics out of materials and by processes not found among other nations, such as the bark cloth of the Polynesians; and in the development of weapons peculiar to sundry localities, but known in no others, such as the boomerang in Australia. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... retroaction; revulsion; bounce, rebound, ricochet; repercussion, recalcitration^; kick, contrecoup [Fr.]; springing back &c v.; elasticity &c 325; reflection, reflexion [Brit.], reflex, reflux; reverberation &c (resonance) 408; rebuff, repulse; return. ducks and drakes; boomerang; spring, reactionist^. elastic collision, coefficient of restitution. V. recoil, react; spring back, fly back, bounce back, bound back; rebound, reverberate, repercuss^, recalcitrate^; echo, ricochet. Adj. recoiling &c v.; refluent^, repercussive, recalcitrant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... apart from being unprecedented in warfare, proved an exceedingly short-sighted one, and acted almost immediately after the manner of a boomerang. The able-bodied men of each family who had remained loyal or at least neutral, so long as they were permitted to live undisturbed on their few acres, were not content to exist on the charity of a city, ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... manifests much skill. Some of the tribes of Southern Africa prowling about in search of roots, and living concealed on the wild and arid plains, are sufficiently wretched. The Australian, in the simplicity of the arts of life, comes nearest the Fuegian: he can, however, boast of his boomerang, his spear and throwing-stick, his method of climbing trees, of tracking animals, and of hunting. Although the Australian may be superior in acquirements, it by no means follows that he is likewise superior in mental capacity: indeed, from what ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... as this method of trapping is only to be performed by a person trained from childhood to ride and throw the lasso. The same remark applies to the use of the blowpipe (see Bates's "Amazons"), and the Australian "boomerang" and "throwstick." ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... a sort of boomerang just then, returning inevitably to this point of departure; but I could make no suggestion that satisfied her. And I was uneasy myself. Ideala refused to come to us, and had made some excuse to prevent it when Claudia offered to go to her. This puzzled me; but ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... goods; he made his offer; whereat the wild man swung his boomerang disagreeably, and indicated that he must have "more, more." Tears of self-pity flooded Sinkum's eyes. He had no choice but to obey, and at last the black-fellow left with a sack containing ten times the value of the goods ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... the sort of a weapon you suspect," thought Mitchell. "This is a boomerang." Aloud, he answered, lightly: "Oh, that's all right. I know ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... shaken off the Puritan religion, and adopted "a religion of indifference and unbelief." Thus, though attacking them as Puritans and Socialists (this phrase was aimed at Brook Farm), he denied that they were Puritans at all. Clear understanding of anything from a writer with so much of the boomerang in his mind was not to be expected. But neither would one easily guess the revolting vulgarity with which he was about to view "The Scarlet Letter." He could discover in it nothing but a deliberate ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... outright, not only at the boomerang effect of her grandiloquent description of the professor's industry, but at the absurdity of her position. Above all else, Helen was candid, and there was no reason why she should not enlighten a comparative stranger who seemed to take a ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy |
