"Contraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say, first of all, that for this reason I am now sitting here, because my body is composed of bones and sinews and that the bones are hard, and have joints separate from each other, but that the sinews, being capable of tension and contraction, cover the bones, together with the flesh and skin which contain them. The bones, therefore, being suspended in their sockets, the nerves, relaxing and tightening, enable me to bend my limbs as I now do, and from this cause I sit here bent up. ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... this sort to a woman who has rejected you has a peculiar effect. The coquetry faded from her smile, and there was a perceptible contraction of the brows. Her eyes, which were looking into mine, shifted to the back of the groom. No, I shall never understand a woman. She should have been the most sympathetic woman in the world, yet she appeared to ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... mother's arms. Serge was deeply affected by the young girl's affection for him, when a trembling hand touched his arm. He turned round. Jeanne de Cernay was before him, pale and wan; her eyes sunken into her head like two black nails, and her lips tightened by a violent contraction. The Prince stood thunderstruck at the sight of her. He looked around him. Nobody was observing him. Pierre was beside Marechal, who was whispering those words which only true friends can find in the sad hours of life. Madame Desvarennes was holding Micheline ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the family is founded on the continual contraction of the circle, originally comprising the whole tribe, within which marital intercourse between both sexes was general. By the continual exclusion, first of near, then of ever remoter relatives, including finally even those who were simply related legally, ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... is generally the result of navicular disease or contraction of the feet. In the hind feet it is entirely caused by filthy stables, allowing the feet to stand in ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... the muscles; the more intense the life is, the less does elasticity, for instance, appear as elasticity. It sinks down into the nearest approach to its physical form by a series of degrees from the contraction and elongation of the irritable muscle to the physical hardness of the insensitive nail. The lower powers are assimilated, not merely employed, and assimilation presupposes the homogeneous nature of the thing assimilated; else it is a miracle, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Chief of Staff, with a wrist wound up in the handkerchief which he had borrowed from his neck. There was a burly lad who wore trousers much too large for him, and who was known as Peer Pairson, a contraction presumably for Peter Paterson. After him came a lean tall boy who answered to the name of Napoleon. There was a midget of a child, desperately sooty in the face either from battle or from fire-tending, who was presented as Wee Jaikie. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... lower orders of creation the normal state is preserved. Health is the rule, and sickness the rare exception. Demand and supply are exactly balanced. The contraction of the voluntary muscles, and the expenditure of nervous power consequent on locomotion, the temperate use of the five senses, and the quiet, regular performance of the great organic processes, limit the life and the waste of the creature. But when the brain expands in the dome-like cranium of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... economy, the world's third most powerful, benefited from robust exports, particularly to other members of the EU and the US, as well as strengthening equipment investment. But anemic private consumption and a contraction in the construction industry limited the expansion. Unemployment continued to set post-war monthly records through the end of 1997 and averaged 4.3 million for the year. In preparation for the 1 January 1999 start ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... at him, clinging with both hands to the seat. The skiff creaked and danced upon the river. She could not close her eyes, a frightful contraction kept them wide open riveted on the hideous struggle. She remained rigid ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... articulated animals it is merely a prolonged tube. Now in the mammal foetus, at a certain early stage, the organ has the form of a prolonged tube; and a human being may be said to have then the heart of an insect. Subsequently it is shortened and widened, and becomes divided by a contraction into two parts, a ventricle and an auricle; it is now the heart of a fish. A subdivision of the auricle afterwards makes a triple-chambered form, as in the heart of the reptile tribes; lastly, the ventricle being also subdivided, it becomes a ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... begun, and the woods are full of moulting birds choosing this separateness in preparation for the tension of new flight and its perils. Everything, in short, in wild nature has its corresponding note in our own humanity,—the sweating of the corn, the moulting of the bird, the contraction of the earth by frost, all have a kindred season or experience in ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... power. As Taine has said, at the first they arose in contact with the objects; they imitated them by the grimaces of mouth and nose which accompanied their sound, by the roughness, smoothness, length, or shortness of this sound, by the rattle or whistle of the throat, by the inflation or contraction of the chest. ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... than otherwise; but a soul beamed out through her flashing black eye, and lit up her countenance with a sweetness, a loveliness, which was strange, and sometimes startling, from the brilliancy of its expression. A ruddy glow, like the blush of a summer sunset, dwelt in either cheek, and a slight contraction at both corners of the mouth gave her face a half-mirthful look; but her forehead, full in the upper and lateral portions, seemed almost too severely intellectual for the other features. She possessed a wealth of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... mechanical theory, and he probably did much to popularize the discovery. A fire without light, compared to the heat which gathers in a haystack when the hay has been stored before it was properly dry—heat, in short, as an agitation of the particles—is the motive cause of the contraction and dilatations of the heart. Those finer particles of the blood which become extremely rarefied during this process pass off in two directions—one portion, and the least important in the theory, to the organs of generation, the other portion ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... intelligence. It is impossible, then, to escape the conclusion that general causes restrict the amount which will, under any normal investment, go to the payment of wages. Only within the limits set by these forces can any further expansion or contraction take place. (3.) Within these limits, of course, minor changes may take place, so that the fund can not be said to be "fixed" or "absolutely predetermined"; but these changes must take place within ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... any legal enactments to prevent wholly the evil thus sought to be avoided. It would be better far, if such a degree of physiological knowledge existed and such caution was exercised among the community generally, as would prevent the contraction of any marriages, where, from the structure and endowments of the parties, debility, deformity, insanity or idiocy must inevitably be the portion of their offspring whether they are more nearly related than through their common ancestor, ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... men—Fish-eye? Do you remember him?—do old-clothes men still whine at the corner, and look you up and down in cheap appraisal? Pop Smith is dead, who sold his photograph to Freshmen, but has he no successor? How about the old fellow who sold hot chestnuts at football games—"a nickel a bush"—a rare contraction meant to denote a bushel—in reality fifteen nuts and fifteen worms. Does George Felsburg still play the overture at Poli's, reading his newspaper the while, and do comic actors still jest with him across ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... silence. He mentioned this to me. A silence of the sea, of the sky, merged into one indefinite immensity still as death around these saved, palpitating lives. "You might have heard a pin drop in the boat," he said with a queer contraction of his lips, like a man trying to master his sensibilities while relating some extremely moving fact. A silence! God alone, who had willed him as he was, knows what he made of it in his heart. "I didn't think any spot on earth could be so ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... account contracts on the average to the amount of some inches each thousand years. For the reason that almost all this heat goes from the depths of the earth, the cool outer portion losing no considerable part of it, the contraction that is brought about affects the interior portions of the sphere alone. The inner mass constantly shrinking as it loses heat, the outer, cold part is by its weight forced to settle down, and can only accomplish this result by wrinkling. An analogous action may be seen where ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... the mechanical repetition of the same syllable, e. g., papapa, occurs far more often than the alternation of a distinctly spoken syllable with, another distinctly spoken one, like pata. In the mean time it is certain that the child during his various movements of lips and tongue, along with contraction and expansion of the opening of the mouth, readily starts with surprise when he notices such a change of acoustic effect. It seems as if he were himself taking pleasure in practicing regularly all sorts of symmetrical and asymmetrical positions of the mouth, sometimes in silence, sometimes ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... other bad thing imaginable. Johnstone's discretion, at least, was admirable, now that she thought of it. His bright eyes and frank look would have disarmed any suspicion short of the certainty she possessed. There had not been the least contraction of the lids, the smallest change in the expression of his mouth, not the faintest increase of ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... constituent minerals of the rock. Where the minerals are heterogeneous in this regard, differential stresses are more likely to be set up than where the minerals are homogeneous. Likewise a coarse-textured rock is in general less durable than a fine-textured one. Expansion and contraction of a stone under ordinary temperature changes, and also under fire and freezing, must necessarily be known for many ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... made very wet and stretched a great deal in covering, with the result that on drying it is further strained, almost to breaking point, by contraction, leaving a very small margin of strength to meet ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... before long. We urged him to take some nourishment. He peremptorily refused. He felt the contraction of the stomach which is so common in those parts, and was ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... chest, is charged with a supply of chemicals for the purification of the air after it has been breathed. The two are connected together by a pair of flexible tubes, as you may perceive, and the mere expansion and contraction of the chest, in the act of breathing, sets in motion the simple apparatus which produces the necessary circulation of air between the two chambers. Having secured this haversack in position the diver next dons his body armour, and straps about his waist this belt, with its electric ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of broken carts, and with strings, ropes and clothes lines of various lengths; yet to a new-comer it was always an El Dorado of enjoyment. Into this now sprang, tumbled, the cronies, Dick, Jack, Phil and Shel, which latter name was a contraction for General Sheridan. ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... account. There was no debt to attract foreign investment and arrest the export of specie. Added to this was the withdrawal of the government deposits from the pet banks, which compelled an immediate contraction. The result was inevitable. On May 10, 1837, the New York banks suspended, Mr. Gallatin's institution being of course dragged down with the rest. It is idle to suppose that any single bank can hold out against a general suspension. It may liquidate or become a bank of deposits, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... he suffered, and the agonised contraction of his brows and mouth relaxed. Marietta wiped away the ashes from his forehead and cheeks, and smoothed back his thick hair. No woman's hand had touched him thus since his mother's when he had been a little child. He was too weak to question what was happening to him, but a soft ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... one, when the air is very moist, it lengthens, and forces its companion to form a kind of interior annulus of a circle on the left. When the air is dry, it contracts, draws its companion to the right, and becomes itself the interior annulus. In order to show this dilatation and contraction, an index is fixed on the upper end of two of the slips; a plate of metal or wood is fastened to the front of the plinth, so as to cover the two slips from the eye. A slit, being nearly the portion of a circle, is cut in this plate, so that ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... padlock had been dropped upon the ground. And when he had tried to open the mushroom shed it had first of all yielded to his hand and then it had closed again with great strength—exactly as a living mussel will behave if one takes it unawares. But in addition to this passionate contraction the mushroom shed had sworn in a hoarse whisper and breathed hard, which is more than your ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... passing through a plank, leaves the perforation closed where it enters in, but wide open where it comes out. Thus, in physics, the advance end of a moving body tends to disperse the element through which it is passing, while the rear end tends to its contraction. Analogous to this are the mechanical effects of the different ends of an electrical current in the living tissue. When, therefore, we wish to relax a muscle that is unnaturally contracted, as by rheumatism or otherwise, we must bring it under the forward end—the outward current—the ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... much as possible, to avoid being alarmed, as he will reflect, that as the body is lighter than water, a very little exertion in it will keep his body afloat. Of course his first thoughts will be towards the shore, but he must not forget, that the cramp being only a muscular contraction, may be thrown off by proper muscular exertion. He must strike out the limb violently, and bringing the toes towards the shin-bone, thrust his feet out, which will probably restore the muscles to their proper exercise; but if the cramp still continue, he can easily keep himself afloat with his ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... dexterity displayed by Mr. Sponge, Mr. Buckram stood meditating a further trial of his equestrian ability, as he watched him bucketing 'Ercles' about. Hercules had 'spang-hewed' so many triers, and the hideous contraction of his resolute back had deterred so many from mounting, that Buckram had begun to fear he would have to place him in the only remaining school for incurables, the 'bus. Hack-horse riders are seldom great horsemen. The very fact of their being hack-horse riders shows ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... sleeping-room, and with a hasty glance assured myself that no one could have entered. On advancing towards the bed, I perceived his Majesty extended across it, in a position denoting great agony, the drapery and bed-covering thrown off, and his whole body in a frightful condition of nervous contraction. From his open mouth escaped inarticulate sounds, his breathing appeared greatly oppressed, and one of his hands, tightly clinched, lay on the pit of his stomach. I was terrified at the sight, and called him. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... events narrated in the preceding chapter, King Edward reclined. His couch was softly and luxuriously cushioned, and not a little art had been expended in the endeavor to lighten his sufferings, and enable him to rest at ease. The repeated contraction of his countenance, however, betrayed how impotent was even luxury when brought in contact with disease. The richly-furred and wadded crimson velvet robe could not conceal the attenuation of his once peculiarly fine and noble form; his great length of limb, which had gained him, and handed down to ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... controlled by the volume of money available for use; and if the general level of prices will rise as the volume of money is increased, and fall as the volume of money is diminished, and rise or fall in an exact ratio corresponding with the expansion or contraction of the volume of money, it becomes important to ascertain what money is, and also whether there is anything which can be used as a substitute for money in such a manner as to affect the ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... hand, and all the time his eyes never left Norgate's. Gone the florid and beaming geniality of the man, his easy good-humour, his air of good-living and rollicking gaiety. There were lines in his forehead. The firm contraction of his lips brought lines even across his plump cheeks. It was the face, this, of a strong man and a thinker. He held Norgate's ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bony socket of the eye; yet sufficient room is left for all the force that can be required. In some dogs, either for purposes of offence or defence, or the more effectual grasping of the prey, a sudden violent exertion of muscular power, and a consequent contraction of the temporal muscle, are requisite, but for which the imperfect socket of the orbit does not seem to afford sufficient scope and room. There is an admirable provision for this in the removal of a certain portion of the orbital process of the frontal bone on ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... years after the removal of the little Acadian colony from St. Croix Island to the basin of the Annapolis. The name Quebec is now generally admitted to be an adaptation of an Indian word, meaning a contraction of the river or strait, a distinguishing feature of the St. Lawrence at this important point. The first buildings were constructed by Champlain on a relatively level piece of ground, now occupied by a market-house and close to a famous old church erected in the days of Frontenac, in commemoration ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... conscious of an effort would then be nothing else than to receive all these centripetal sensations; and what proves this is, that the consciousness of effort when most clearly manifested is accompanied by some muscular energy, some strong contraction, or some respiratory trouble, and yields if we render the respiration again regular and put the muscles back ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... wall of water tons in weight comes over her bows and floods her forward deck; she braces herself, every rod and rivet and timber seems to lend its support; you almost expect to see the wooden walls of your room grow rigid with muscular contraction; she trembles from stem to stern, she recovers, she breaks the gripe of her antagonist, and, rising up, shakes the sea from her with a kind of gleeful wrath; I hear the torrents of water rush along the lower decks, and, finding a means of escape, pour back ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... stamps came from the same plates, it was at the same time found impossible to account for such varieties, except on the hypothesis that all the impressions of the plate were not all applied alike or that the hardening of the plates before printing resulted in contraction in parts with a consequent variation in the size of different impressions. The same sorts of varieties have been noticed in many other stamps printed by the line engraved process, notably in such stamps as the "pence" Ceylons, and proper investigation finally proved beyond a shadow ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... by the introduction of the male organ into the vagina. A motor nerve discharge follows which produces ejaculation of the seminal fluid and is for the male the climax of the orgasm. The female is, however, by no means passive; motor nerve discharges take place leading to rhythmic contraction of the vagina, and she experiences, or should experience, a similar orgasm to the male. The climax is followed in both by a feeling of satisfaction and repose which generally issues in refreshing sleep. It is to be noted, ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... And thanks—" His throat closed with a sharp contraction on the words. She slipped into the ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... his haggard face. His unsmiling eyes, so pale and unmeaning, stared stupidly at the children. And suddenly the merry smile died out of the young faces, and an odd contraction of their brows suggested a dawning sympathy which came wholly from ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... very low, and their state that of a perfect gas. These are the "giants." In the slow process of time they contract through constant loss of heat by radiation. But, despite this loss, the heat produced by contraction and from other sources (see p. 82) causes their temperature to rise, while their color changes from red to bluish white. The process of shrinkage and rise of temperature goes on so long as they remain in the state of a perfect gas. But as soon as contraction has increased the density of the ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... hollowness of the lava, formed in great bubbles, that continually broke and let us in up to our knees. This dike has probably been formed by the drainage of the volcano by a lateral vent, as the part of the crater which it confines has sunk lower than that outside it, and the contraction caused by loss of heat may well account for its width, which varies from one to three hundred yards. In support of this opinion, I may mention, that in 1840 a molten river broke out, eight miles to the eastward, and, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... travelled with many acquaintances. With whom is he making the tour now?—Mr. Hirsch is acting as courier to Mr. and Mrs. Horace Milliken. They have not been married many months, and they are travelling, Hirsch says, with a contraction of his bushy eyebrows, with miladi, Mrs. Milliken's mamma. "And who is her ladyship?" Hirsch's brow contracts into deeper furrows. "It is Miladi Gigglebury," he says, "Mr. Didmarsh. Berhabs you know her." He scowls round at her, as ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dialogue thus recommenced, we are enabled to take a farther glance into the history of Forrester's early life. He was, as he phrased it, from "old So. Ca." pronouncing the name of the state in the abridged form of its written contraction. In one of the lower districts he still held, in fee, a small but inefficient patrimony; the profits of which were put to the use of a young sister. Times, however, had grown hard, and with the impatience and restlessness so peculiar to nearly all classes of the people of that state, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... followers of mine who belong to the four classes should observe, in conformity with the Sastras, the rules in regard to the contraction of impurity through births and deaths, according ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... What a passion of tears, till her small flower-like face was bereft of all beauty, of everything except a hideous contraction of grief! ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... With a strange contraction of the heart, Palgrave watched her out of sight. She was his dream come to life. All that he was and hoped to be he had placed forever at her feet. Dignity, individualism, egoism,—all had fallen before this young thing. She was water in the desert, the north star to a man without ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... about 6,000 feet. There were five passageways—two on the outside for carriages, the next two for cable cars, the middle one for foot passengers. The bridge curved upward from each tower, being at the middle 135 feet above the water in summer, and three feet higher in winter, owing to contraction by the cold. All but the very largest ships sailed under without ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... where, excepting in Pietersburg and some other positions held by our troops, the natives are now almost the only inhabitants. Indeed, nothing is more characteristic of the latest stage of the war than the contraction of Boer resistance within certain wide but fairly well-defined districts, separated from one another by considerable spaces. Instead of ranging indifferently over the whole of the two late Republics, the enemy show an increasing ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... to the successful application of her system, she began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a pleasure new and keen. When therefore, as she grew older, her parents in turn announced before her that she had grown shockingly dull, it was not from any real contraction of her little stream of life. She spoiled their fun, but she practically added to her own. She saw more and more; she saw too much. It was Miss Overmore, her first governess, who on a momentous occasion ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... use of line and scale in design, the designer holds a certain power of transformation in his hands, not to speak of the transforming effect of colour of different keys and tones, the apparent contraction or expansion of surfaces by patterns ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... and practically impotent. It cannot be brought to understand that successful politics demands a "machine." Each of its individual members is a boss. They have been derisively termed "goo-goos," which is a contraction of "goody-goods." They are youthful, sanguine, patriotic, impertinent, impractical and self-sufficient. Their idea of conducting a campaign is nebulous. They believe that a number of voluble young men, clad irreproachably ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... termination; the mere thought of Elsie was fatal to anything abstract. For another thing, he could not yet think of that letter of Barrett's, nor of a little scene that had followed it, without a mounting of colour and a quick contraction of the brow. For, wisely or not, he had had that argument out at once. Striding across the square on the following morning, he had bearded Barrett on his own doorstep. Coming back again a few minutes later, he had been strongly of opinion that ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... day, there is a silently working but determined tendency for the sphere of woman's domestic labours to contract itself; and the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex condition which we ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... trails out behind. The macronucleus is spheroidal and placed near the center of the body; a conspicuous micronucleus lies near it. A row of contractile vacuoles extends from the posterior end. I have seen as many as six of nearly equal size and one or two smaller ones. The intervals of contraction are quite long. Length 70 to 75 mu; greatest diameter 10 ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... of structure. Don't lay on paint across a cheek, for instance. Notice the direction of the muscle fibre. It is the line of contraction of the muscle which gives the anatomical structure to a face. If your brush follows those, you will find that it takes the most natural course ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... newer tapestry. Could it be that it moved? It could be only the effect of the wavering shadows. And yet I could not convince myself that it did not move. It did move. It came forward. One side of it did certainly come forward. A kind of universal cramp seized me—a contraction of every fibre of my body. The patch opened like a door—wider and wider; and from behind came a great helmet peeping. I was all one terror, but my nerves held out so far that I lay like a watching dog—watching for what horror would come next. ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... shall provide by general laws for the extension and the contraction, from time to time, of the corporate limits of cities and towns, and no special act for such ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... though queer social resource in her—such as a man, for instance, to his diminution, would never in the world be able to command; and he wouldn't have known whether to see it in an extension or a contraction of "personality," taking it as he did most directly for a confounding extension of surface. Clearly too it was the right thing this evening all round: that came out for him in a word from Kate as she approached him to wreak on him a second introduction. He had ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... exercise should be frequently repeated, as the voice will be strengthened thereby, and the capacity of the chest greatly increased. Do not raise the shoulders or the upper part of the chest alone when you breathe. Breathe as a healthy child breathes, by the expansion and contraction of abdominal and intercostal muscles. Such breathing will improve the health, and be of great assistance in continuous reading or speaking. Great care is necessary in converting the breath into voice. Do not waste breath; use it economically, or hoarseness will follow. Much ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... I am in the case of a man who should have first observed that water ascends in pumps, but should leave others to explain the cause of this effect. The anatomist, who first declared that the motion of the arm is owing to the contraction of the muscles, taught mankind an indisputable truth. But are they less obliged to him because he did not know the reason why the muscles contract? The cause of the elasticity of the air is unknown, but he who first discovered this spring performed ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... replace the prepuce, which was done accordingly, the man making a tolerable good recovery, as far as the grafted prepuce was concerned. It required a secondary operation to overcome some cicatricial contraction, and, on the whole, he had a very serviceable prepuce; but, what was more to the point, it prevented his ever being ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... surface which were exposed to the rudest attacks. For the rest, the blows were never administered except during the torments of convulsion; and at that time the tympany (meteorisme) of the abdomen, the state of spasm of the uterus in women and of the alimentary canal in both sexes, the state of contraction, of orgasm, of turgescence in the fleshy envelopes, in the muscular layers which protect and inclose the abdomen, the thorax, the principal vascular trunks, and the bony surfaces, must essentially contribute to weaken, to deaden, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... hurried from the spot without uttering a word. On entering the principal cabin, the first object that attracted their attention was the dead body of a female, reclining on a bed in an attitude of deep interest and attention. Her countenance retained the freshness of life: but a contraction of the limbs showed that her form was inanimate. Seated on the floor was the corpse of an apparently young man, holding a steel in one hand and a flint in the other, as if in the act of striking fire ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... replied the other. "I am endowed with the acutest hearing, and I can swear that not a mouse has rustled." Yet the pallor and contraction of his features were in total discord with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... joints, thus producing clicks and rattles. To obviate this difficulty is by no means an easy task and will require considerable attention. Permit all the fresh air possible during winter, being careful to keep the piano out of cold drafts, as this will cause a sudden contraction of the varnish and cause it to check or crack. Plants in the room are desirable and vessels of water of any kind will be of assistance. The most potent means of avoiding extreme dryness is to place a single-loaf bread-pan half full of water in the lower part ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... pleasant smile flickered for a moment across his face. He was a singularly well-made man, of medium height, with straight, square shoulders and small limbs. He wore spectacles, and as he looked at one straight in the face there was a singular contraction of the eyes which hardly amounted to a cast—moreover, it was momentary. It was precisely the look of a hawk when its hood is suddenly removed in full daylight. This resemblance was furthered by the fact that the man's profile was ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... assisted by the motion both of the body as a whole and of its parts in order to keep the circulation flowing equably through every tissue. Therefore muscular action and the resulting bodily motion play a very important part in maintaining the general and local blood circulation. During the contraction of a muscle, the blood current flowing through it is, for the time being, retarded, but when relaxation occurs the blood flows into its vessels more freely than if no momentary cessation had taken place. When the body or any of its parts is deprived of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... but in front face, and still more when inclined between the two, all the features took a sharpness that, however regular, had something chilling and severe: the mouth was small, but the lips were thin and pale, and had an expression of effort and contraction which added to the distrust that her sidelong glance was calculated to inspire. The teeth were dazzlingly white, but sharp and thin, and the eye-teeth were much longer than the rest. The complexion was pale, but without much delicacy,—the paleness seemed not natural to it, but rather that ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as he is identified with the place, the character of the god is a general and not a special one. The full form of his name appears to have been Ner-unu-gal, of which Nergal, furnished by the Old Testament passage referred to, would then be a contraction or a somewhat corrupt form. The three elements composing his name signify "the mighty one of the great dwelling-place," but it is, again, an open question whether this is a mere play upon the character of the god, as in the name of Ea (according to one of the interpretations ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... she said quickly, as he started, "not a sham name like yours, but really and truly SMITH—that was her husband's name! I'm not lying, Jim," she went on, evidently mistaking the cause of the sudden contraction of the man's face. "I didn't invent her nor her name; there IS such a woman, and Duffy loves her—and HER only, and he never, NEVER was anything more than a friend to me. I ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... it is the purpose of the injection to soften hardened fecal masses, the water should be comfortably warm and may have a little clean soap in it. If it is the purpose of the injection to stimulate sluggish bowels to contraction, the water ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... from an indeterminateness in the propositions in which it occurs. In such cases we know that the proposition leaves something undetermined. (In fact the notation for generality contains a prototype.) The contraction of a symbol for a complex into a simple symbol can be ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... under the strongest enchantment. Homer not only appears the inventor of poetry, but excels all the inventors of other arts, in this, that he has swallowed up the honour of those who succeeded him. What he has done admitted no increase, it only left room for contraction or regulation. He showed all the stretch of fancy at once; and if he has failed in some of his flights, it was but because he attempted everything. A work of this kind seems like a mighty tree, which rises from ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... music halls, even a Japanese edition of the thimble-and-pea business was not wanting. In one of the theatres we visited, the acting, although considered good from a Japanese point of view, possessed too many muscular contortions, too much contraction and expansion of the facial organs, to please an English audience. Men do all the acting, women never appear on the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... gender. 1st. By words which are different; as boy, girl; uncle, aunt; father, mother. 2d. By a different termination of the same word; as instructor, instructress; lion, lioness; poet, poetess. Ess is a contraction from the hebrew essa, a female. 3d. By prefixing another word; as, a male child, a female child; a man servant, a maid servant; a he-goat, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... complete thermometer. The water in the glass tube is caused to rise and fall by the expansion and contraction of the air in the tin box. A ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... forward and laid a hand on his arm. She had read the meaning of that quick contraction of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... of the heart, the contraction of the blood-vessels, hence the flowing of the blood, the processes of digestion, the functioning of the glands, are all directed by the sympathetic. In other words, the central nervous system normally controls the movements of the voluntary muscles; the sympathetic ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... was Ruth, but the Dale children, having another aunt of that name, had always called this one Aunt Winnie, a sort of contraction from the name of Mrs. White's ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... contraction of the hand that was hooked under Paul Kilbuck's belt. Not another man from Dixon's Entrance to Point Barrow would have dared to hint at the White Chief's domestic arrangements in that gentleman's hearing, but there was something in the soft twinkle of Kayak Bill's hazel eye, something in ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... comes the news that a successor to the Tango has been found in the form of a Chinese dance known as the Tatao. The name, presumably, is a contraction ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... because they are expanded," but Harvey thought that the action of spurting blood from a severed vessel disproved this. For the spurting was remittant, "now with greater, now with less impetus," and its greater force always corresponded to the expansion (diastole), not the contraction (systole) of the vessel. Furthermore, it was evident that contraction of the heart and the arteries was not simultaneous, as was commonly taught, because in that case there would be no marked propulsion of the blood in any direction; and there was no gainsaying the fact ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... fifth share, or nothing, George," said Mr. Sheldon, with a threatening contraction of his ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... there was no quiver on the still, pale lips, no contraction of the polished forehead; but the rigidity of her face broke up suddenly in a smile of indescribable mournfulness,—a smile where self-contempt and pity and hopeless bitterness ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... is the fundamental condition of locomotion, has not only been discovered to exist far more widely among plants than was formerly imagined; but, in plants, the act of contraction has been found to be accompanied, as Dr. Burdon Sanderson's interesting investigations have shown, by a disturbance of the electrical state of the contractile substance, comparable to that which was found by Du Bois Reymond ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... more dejected than I had presumed from his former intrepidity; and the few glances which I could suffer myself to give to a being in his calamitous condition, showed me a frequent writhing of the lip, a clenching of the teeth, and a nervous contraction of the features, which looked like despair. At length the counsel for the defence rose. It was the first instance of my seeing the memorable Curran engaged in his profession. I had met him from time ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Every efferent neuron in his system carried the message full power. Every muscle in his body responded with a contraction of full intensity. ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... the ice move. There have been other forces set in motion as well as that of the ice. The fierce attacks of the storms, the insidious forces of frost, of expansion and contraction, of lightning, etc., have shattered and loosened vast masses of the mountain summits. Some of these have weathered into toppling masses, which required only a heavy wind or slight contractions to send them from their uncertain bases onto ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... expansion, Drawing nearer, or contraction, Falling, rising, Slanting, crossing, Convex, concave, curved ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... sometimes in variety of strange houses, sometimes in the fields in the midst of travel." One particularly notes the frequent "&c." in its sentences, as if much crowded on the writer's mind from moment to moment which he could indicate only by a contraction. But there is dash in the book, the keenest earnestness and evidence of a mind made up, and every now and then a mystic softness and richness of pity, yearning towards a voluptuous imagery like that of the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Caterina felt something like a painful contraction at her heart. 'Yes,' she said, rising, 'I dare say it will. Sir Christopher is very anxious for it. But I must go, uncle Bates; Lady Cheverel will be wanting me, and it ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... knowledge of ornithological anatomy. You must pay close attention to the form and attitude of the bird, and know exactly the proportion each curve, or extension, or contraction, or expansion of any particular part bears to the rest of the body. In a word, you must possess Promethean boldness and bring down fire and animation, as it were, into ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... unpleasing, as might be supposed; but it had no variation whatever. It was one of profound melancholy—of a phaseless and unceasing gloom. His eyes were abnormally large, and round like those of a cat. The pupils, too, upon any accession or diminution of light, underwent contraction or dilation, just such as is observed in the feline tribe. In moments of excitement the orbs grew bright to a degree almost inconceivable; seeming to emit luminous rays, not of a reflected but of an intrinsic lustre, as does a candle or the sun; yet their ordinary condition was so totally ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... particles of water, in moving toward the center, in order to get out of the basin, invariably set up a rotary motion. As the particles of this diffused nebula began to gather together they, too, gave to the mass a rotary movement. This grew more and more rapid, with greater contraction, until the particles on the outer edge of the rotating mass had just so much speed that the least bit more would make them tend to fly off as mud would fly from a revolving wheel. When this point was reached ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... I said, giving him a touch on the arm; but the hammer rose and fell still by the contraction of his right hand, and went ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... caught his hand to her lips. She noticed with a tender contraction of her heart that it was an ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... dying while drinking. Others, though affectionate towards relatives, are still seen to rush towards foes in great battle deserting their dear relatives. Others, again, O best of men, biting their nether lips, and with faces rendered terrible in consequence of the contraction of their brows, are surveying the field all around." While saying these words unto Arjuna, Vasudeva proceeded towards Yudhishthira. Arjuna also, beholding the king in that great battle, repeatedly urged Govinda, saying, "Proceed, Proceed." Having shown the field of battle ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... all her avarice, all her rage of a saving woman against the man of whom she had always been suspicious, and against the girl whom she had always suspected, showed themselves in the contraction of her mouth, and the wrinkles in the cheeks and forehead of her thin, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and the year, which are our divisions of time. But in the Desire World where all is light there is but one long day. The spirit is not there fettered by a heavy physical body, so it does not need sleep and existence is unbroken. Spiritual substances are not subject to contraction and expansion such as arise here from heat and cold, hence summer and winter are also non-existent. Thus there is nothing to differentiate one moment from another in respect of the conditions of light and darkness, summer and winter, which mark time for us. Therefore, while the so-called "dead" ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... by his side, and supported him in the cold shower-bath, which was intended to re-awaken his dormant power of life, at the same time that it destroyed hers. She was ever there, always firm and active, seldom speaking, and never complaining. By the painful contraction of her countenance alone, and by the peculiarity of laying her hand upon her heart, it could be seen that she suffered. Susanna had an opportunity of seeing all this, and admiration and sympathy filled her breast. Before long she was fortunate enough ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... physiognomy escaped me. When you returned, and I saw you more clearly by lamplight, my recollections became more exact; when I raised the lamp-shade the light struck you full in the face, and then your eyes, so characteristic, and at the same time a violent contraction of your features, made me recall the name. This physiognomy, these eyes, this face, belonged to the man whom from this place" she pointed to the window—"I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is swarming with them; the empire is overrun. And mark this. The decline of our empire, which all see and lament; the spread of weakness and insubordination, the contraction of our boundaries, all this increases as the Christians increase. To what else are these evils owing if ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... Glenfernie with a painter of landscape, Deschamps, and an Oriental, member of some mission to the West. Meeting so, they stopped short. Their nostrils dilated, there seemed to come a stirring over their bodies. Inwardly they felt a painful constriction, a contraction to something hard, intent, and fanged. This was the more strongly felt by Alexander, but Ian felt it, too. Did Glenfernie mean to dog him through life—think that he would be let to do so? Alone in a forest, very far back, they might, at this point, have ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... with a slight contraction of his confident brows. "Why, I shall have to make way for some one else, I suppose. That's the ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... there the day before, for, instead of the flaccid immobility in which he was mired all day, he was shaken at that moment by violent tremors, and on his expressionless, dead face there was a wrinkle of suffering life, a contraction as of pain. Jansoulet, profoundly moved, gazed at that thin, wasted, earth-colored face, on which the beard, having appropriated all the vitality of the body, grew with surprising vigor; then he stooped, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... termed their contractility is called into play—that is, the force which was dormant before is roused into activity. This is effected through the nervous system, and it is the will which emanates from the brain and is carried along certain nerves to accomplish definite actions. During the contraction of a muscle its individual fibres change in form, producing an alteration in the shape of the whole muscle; thus it becomes shorter and thicker. At the same time, while it is in action more blood flows through it, hence we see that one of the beneficial effects of exercise is to stimulate ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... day, where one of these ladies kept the bar, I bespoke a dish of rice tea, but Madam was so taken up with her sparks that she quite forgot it. I spoke for it again, and with some temper, but was answered after a most taunting manner, not without a toss of the head, a contraction of the nostrils, and other impertinences, too many to enumerate. Seeing myself thus publickly insulted by such an animal, I could not choose but show my resentment. 'Woman,' said I sternly, 'I want a dish ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... be taken to stand for evil. It is hardly necessary to suspect a Scotch printer; evil is often used as a monosyllable, and eale may have been a pronunciation of it half-way towards ill, which is its contraction.] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... did the squirrel chattering in the tree or the bird singing on the bough just over his head tell him that the hunter was near. Tayoga looked again down the arrow at the chosen place on the gleaming body of the deer, and with a sudden and powerful contraction of the muscles, bending the bow a little ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... down again, he saw that Marie was very pale, and had her eyes closed. By the painful contraction of her features he could tell that she was not asleep. "Are you ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... pulmonary respiration, the contraction and dilation (systole and diastole) of the heart, the ebb and flow of the tides, as also day and night, sleeping and waking, summer and winter, life and death, are all products of that law of contraries ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... without pain; but, in bowel obstructions of any kind, the onward flow of the bowel contents is cut off resulting in great pain where there is much irritability, for irritation of any kind always increases this expulsive movement. Food, taken in health, stimulates this contraction and if taken when there is inflammation—enteritis, colitis or inflammation of any part—the contraction is increased and necessarily painful. Think of the pain that the subject of diarrhea has, then imagine what that pain must be if there should be obstruction so that the fecal matter could ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... were indefinitely delayed by an abnormal contraction of his trachea, the same being induced by the old man's right hand, while his left seized the unhappy Thomas by his waist-belt, and a second later the dead shot of Blugsey's was tossed into the middle of the floor, somewhat as a sheaf of oats is tossed ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... is not a state to be won and kept without much vigorous, conscious effort. The nuts in a machine work loose; the knots in a rope 'come untied,' as the children say. The hand that clasps anything, by slow and imperceptible degrees, loses muscular contraction, and the grip of the fingers becomes slacker. Our minds and affections and wills have that same tendency to slacken their hold of what they grasp. Unless we tighten up the machine it will work loose; and unless we make conscious efforts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the body required sacrificial food which could only be provided by the legitimate male descendants of the deceased. (The same belief was held by the Indians and Eastern Asiatics.) In several Greek States marriage was compulsory and bachelors were fined. At the same time the contraction of a marriage did not interfere with the personal freedom of the man; he was at liberty to go to the hetaerae for intellectual stimulation (unless he happened to prefer the friends of his own sex) and to his ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... is here, I hold, a corruption of "I (or Ayy) h""yes indeed he." [I take "aywah" (as I would read the word) to be a different spelling for "aywa"yes indeed, which according to Spitta Bey, Gr. p. 168 is a contraction of "Ay (I) wa'llhi," yes by Allah. "What? thy lover?" asks the husband, and she emphatically affirms the fact, to frighten ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... over sensitive or scrupulous, law had fifty arguments of safety, and precedent, and high authority to justify her. But, indeed, we may observe, that in a religious attorney these illiberal scruples do not often occur. Mr. M'Slime knew the advantages of religion too well, to feel that contraction of the mind and principles, which in so many ordinary cases occasions religion and common morality to become almost identical. Religion was to him a friend—a patroness in whose graces he stood so high, that she ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... supplying ellipses—and your 'Bos' comes to [Greek: bous epi glosse].[1] I get half bribed to silence by the very pleasure of fancying. But if it could be possible that you should mean to say you would show me.... Can it be? or am I reading this 'Attic contraction' quite the wrong way? You see I am afraid of the difference between flattering myself and being flattered; the fatal difference. And now will you understand that I should be too overjoyed to have revelations ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... singular, dual and plural numbers, the usual persons and tenses, and three principal moods, viz., indicative, imperative and conditional. The verb-stem and a contraction of the pronoun are incorporated, and the word thus formed is used in ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews
... her unfeeling if he liked; she felt as if she had only too much feeling just then, for it was bringing on her a strange contraction of heart. But he was too inherently good himself to put any harsh construction on her speech. Just before he went away, while he was ostensibly holding her hand and wishing her good-by, he said to her in a voice too ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... laws, is that proposed by M. Trekel of Hamburg, and still further developed by M. Hugo, who has extracted it in the Magazine of Civil Law, vol. ii. p. 7. This is the system now almost universally adopted. Res mancipi (by contraction for mancipii) were things of which the absolute property (Jus Quiritium) might be acquired only by the solemnities mentioned above, at least by that of mancipation, which was, without doubt, the most easy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... was passing in the cabin, till summoned to dinner. Then they gathered about the door, and watched the closing scene with solemn reverence. Now—thanks to a merciful God! his pains had left him, not a momentary spasm disturbed his placid face, nor did the contraction of a muscle denote the least degree of suffering; the agony of death was passed, and his wearied spirit was turning to its rest in the bosom of his Saviour. From time to time, he pressed the hand in which his own was resting, his clasp losing ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... details connected with the forms of these shelter dykes, their arrangements so as to present a series of settling basins, etc., a description of which would only complicate the conception. Through the larger part of the river works of contraction will not be required, but nearly all the banks on the concave side of the beds must be held against the wear of the stream, and much of the opposite banks defended at critical points. The works having in view ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... letter was then handed to Barre, who read it. An individual who was present on the occasion described to me the impression which the reading of the letter produced on Napoleon. His countenance exhibited that violent contraction of the features which I have often remarked when his mind was disturbed. However, he did not lose his self-command, which indeed never forsook him when policy or vanity required that he should retain it; and when the reading of Beurnonville's ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... part of this speech was not in itself of a nature calculated to convey much; but the tone of the old trader's voice, the contraction of his eyebrows, and above all the overwhelming flow of cloudlets that followed, imparted to it a significance that induced the belief that Charley's taking his own way would be productive of more terrific consequences ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the image and the rings may be misshapen in some other way. If they are three-cornered, it is probable that the object glass is subjected to undue pressure in its cell. This, if the telescope has been brought out on a cool night from a warm room, may arise from the unequal contraction of the metal work and the glass as they cool off. In fact, no good star image can be got while a telescope is assuming the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. Even the air inclosed in the tube is capable ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... shall explain nothing, at present. Permit me to point out that your position here—like mine—is, to say the least, anomalous." The random stroke told, as he could tell by the instant contraction of her eyes of a cat. "It would be best to defer explanations till a more convenient time—don't you think? Then, if you like, we can chant confidences in an antiphonal chorus. Just now your—er—son is not enjoying himself apparently, and ... the attention of the police ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... channel of her life, upon either of which her happiness might go to shipwreck. Since leaving the house behind the cedars, where she had been brought into the world without her own knowledge or consent, and had first drawn the breath of life by the involuntary contraction of certain muscles, Rena had learned, in a short time, many things; but she was yet to learn that the innocent suffer with the guilty, and feel the punishment the more keenly because unmerited. She had yet to learn that the old Mosaic formula, "The sins of the ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... pillar is stopped half-way in its course by a cross-arch opening into the apse, and the two last groin-ribs are carried from the pillar to the abutments of the cross-arch, being obliged by this contraction of span to form the only pointed arches in the whole vaulting. Such an arrangement—a 'nave' terminating in an apse, and at the same time divided by a row of pillars along the middle—is somewhat unusual. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... corner of the table near the arm-chair; and then, very rapidly, began to affix the discs—it seemed by some process of air-exhaustion—all over the head, breast, and back of the amazed man. No sensation followed this at all, except the very faint feeling of skin-contraction at each point ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... paler and thinner day by day, and there was sometimes a contraction about the brow which told of intense suffering; and sometimes, early in the evening she would leave the parlor, and not appear again for the remainder of the evening. On one of these occasions Agnes followed her, as she had observed the ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely |
