"Contrivance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where the right of making laws resides in the people at large, public virtue, or goodness of intention, is more likely to be found, than either of the other qualities of government. Popular assemblies are frequently foolish in their contrivance, and weak in their execution; but generally mean to do the thing that is right and just, and have always a degree of patriotism or public spirit. In aristocracies there is more wisdom to be found, than in the other frames of government; being composed, ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... and ladies, have been in existence for hundreds of years. Apparently the first variety of this contrivance was the capped stirrup-iron, either simple (Fig. 18) or in the form of a slipper (Fig. 19), which was provided with an arrangement on its sole that prevented the toe of the slipper from yielding to downward pressure, but allowed it to revolve upwards, and ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... think with myself that David shed blood to cover his adultery, and that by the sword of the children of Ammon; a work that could not be done but by continuance and deliberate contrivance, which was a great aggravation to his sin. But then this would turn upon me: Ah! but these were but sins against the law, from which there was a Jesus sent to save them; but yours is a sin against the Saviour, and who shall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "that great compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy and newspaper paragraphs which is called public opinion." Others have concluded that since out of drift and incoherence, settled aims do appear, there must be a mysterious contrivance at work somewhere over and above the inhabitants of a nation. They invoke a collective soul, a national mind, a spirit of the age which imposes order upon random opinion. An oversoul seems to be needed, for the emotions and ideas in the members ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... would be hard to say; but it is certain that his disappointment deepened when, after three strokes from the engineer's bell, the hoisting engine suddenly started into life, and, out from the darkness of the shaft, there slowly emerged into view an ungainly contrivance of four great timbers, arranged in a hollow square and hung on a cable, which passed freely through openings in the upper and lower timbers, to carry a huge bucket fastened to its end, while a black-faced miner stood in the ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... it proves her beauty and her disinterestedness. The fairest maid might have chosen, nay, commanded, even a city dignitary. Does the so? No; Giles Scroggins, famous only in name, loves her, and—beautiful poetic contrivance!—we are left to imagine he does "not love unloved." Why should she reciprocate? inquires the reader. Are not truth and generosity the princely paragons of manly virtue, greater, because unostentatious? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... lamp, she produced from the contrivance the tiniest little mirror ever seen. As she raised it to let it perform its dainty function, her glance fell on Queed, sitting darkly in his rocking-chair. A look of mild surprise came into her eye: not that it was of any consequence, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... with religion, a due attendance on which he apprehended to be the surest method of attaining all desirable success in every other interest and concern in life. He therefore abhorred every thing that looked like a contrivance to keep his soldiers employed with their horses and their arms at the seasons of public worship—an indecency which I wish there were no room to mention. Far from that, he used to have them drawn up just before it began, and from the ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... it over, examining it in such a way that others might examine it too. Then, having concluded his investigation of this very simple contrivance, he slapped it down upon the table with a gesture ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... by debts, was the most refined system of tyranny. It seemed to be a contrivance devised by politicians to succeed the old system of feudal tenures. Both were tyrannical, but the objects of their tyranny were different. The one operated on the person, the other operates on the pockets of the individual. The feudal lord was satisfied with ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... valuable work, and in many respects to be presented to the greatest prince upon earth: for the matter it contains is the richest of all treasures. The laborious composure of it into this excellent form of an Harmony, the judicious contrivance of the method, the curious workmanship in so neatly cutting out and disposing the text, the nice laying of these costly pictures, and the exquisite art expressed in the binding, are, I really think, not to be equalled. I must acknowledge ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... eyes all the horrors and cruelties of a severe slavery; on the other side, dame Honour, with a majestic mein, forbade him, sounding loudly in his ears how it would read in future story, that the ingenious Mr. Carew had no contrivance left to regain his lost liberty, but meanly to purchase it at his friends' expense. For some time did these passions remain in equipoise; as thou hast often seen the scales of some honest tradesman, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... introduction of the patent air brake on passenger trains, by which brakemen have been dispensed with, a number of patent right men have been studying up some contrivance to do away with conductors. All have failed except one, and that fortunate inventor is Col. Johnson, of the Railroad Eating House, Milwaukee. He has been engaged for two years on this patent, and has got it so near completed that he has filed a caveat at the Patent Office, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... relations between author and publisher. Who knows better than I that your representative author face to face with your representative publisher was, is, and ever will be, at a ludicrous disadvantage? And there is no reason in the nature and the decency of things why this wrong should not by some contrivance be remedied. A big, blusterous, genial brute of a Trollope could very fairly hold his own, and exact at all events an acceptable share in the profits of his work. A shrewd and vigorous man of business such as Dickens, aided by a lawyer who was his devoted friend, could do even better, and, in reaping ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... creditors; the man of leisure to his cronies and companions, the professional man to his clients; even the ladies to their bosom friends at tea or euchre—suppose, I say, that every word you had uttered had been taken down by some marvelous mechanical contrivance, and should be published verbatim tomorrow morning with your names attached showing just what each of you had said. What do you think would happen? I can tell you from observation. You would likely spend next year explaining, ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... irresponsible looking contrivance. I cannot think of anything to liken it to but a boy's sled runner hollowed out, and that does not quite convey the correct idea. It is about fifteen feet long, high and pointed at both ends, is a foot and a half or two feet ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not, and that is just the detail which supplied me with the key to the riddle. If the letters—and this was an indispensable precaution, which we are now able to understand—were delivered only under cover of the darkness, it must be because a contrivance of some kind prevented them from appearing when the electric light was on, and because that contrivance was controlled by a switch inside the room. There is no other ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... post. I am well pleased with the manner in which your House have testified their sense of the treaty: while their refusal to pass the original clause of the reported answer proved their condemnation of it, the contrivance to let it disappear silently respected appearances in favor of the President, who errs as other men do, but errs with integrity. Randolph seems to have hit upon the true theory of our constitution; that when a treaty is made, involving ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to a seat at the next table. He found himself staring in a face, a face that still had some of the chubbiness of boyhood. Between the pale-brown frightened eyes, where the nose should have been, was a triangular black patch that ended in some mechanical contrivance with shiny little black metal rods that took the place of the jaw. He could not take his eyes from the soldier's eyes, that were like those of a hurt animal, full of meek dismay. Someone plucked at Martin's arm, and ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... all bowmen is incapable of being ever vanquished by force in battle, by the very gods with Vasava at their head. When, however, he lays aside his weapons, he becomes capable of being slain on the field even by human beings. Casting aside virtue, ye sons of Pandu, adopt now some contrivance for gaining the victory, so that Drona of the golden car may not slay us all in battle. Upon the fall of (his son) Aswatthaman he will cease to fight, I think. Let some man, therefore, tell him that Aswatthaman hath been slain in battle." This ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... first magnitude." Cries Jorian, "Retract that, scum! you see nothing large but what you dare to think neighbours you," and quarrels the inebriate dog. And this is the maker and destroyer of reputations in his day! I study Hickson as a miraculous engine of the very simplest contrivance; he is himself the epitome of a verdict on his period. Next day he disclaimed in his opposition penny sheet the report of the entrechats, and "the spectators laughing consumedly," and sent me (as I had requested him to do) the names of his daughters, to whom I transmit little comforting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a graphic Description of a Martian Home and Surroundings, then shows how the Food is manipulated. It is brought from a Central Depot in a Mechanical Contrivance which is run underground, thence up into the Dining room. The Soiled Dishes are run down and off the same way. No Drudgery for ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... shifting from thou to ye in addressing them. The thymele was situated in the very centre of the building; all the measurements were made from it, and the semicircle of the amphitheatre was described round it as the centre. It was, therefore, an excellent contrivance to place the chorus, who were the ideal representatives of the spectators, in the very spot where all the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of life, and encouraged by the manifest power of the contrivance, the Khalifa immediately ordered the second of the two boilers to be sunk in the stream. As the old Egyptian officer had been killed by the explosion, the Emir in charge of the arsenal was entrusted with the perilous business. He rose, however, to the occasion, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... man? Anaxagoras Chaumette we saw mounted on bourne-stones, while Tallien worked sedentary at the subeditorial desk. In any corner of the civilised world, a tub can be inverted, and an articulate-speaking biped mount thereon. Nay, with contrivance, a portable trestle, or folding-stool, can be procured, for love or money; this the peripatetic Orator can take in his hand, and, driven out here, set it up again there; saying mildly, with a Sage Bias, Omnia mea ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... body can or cannot do, or what would naturally follow from the structure of it; that we experience in the feats of somnambulists something which antecedently to that experience would have seemed incredible. This fabric of the human body exceeds infinitely any contrivance of human skill, and an infinity of things, as I have already proved, ought ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... temptation, or Lead us not into no temptation. Probably she used the latter form first, and, finding she had blundered, corrected herself by leaving out both the negatives. The old English double negation seems never to have been heard of by the court. Janet Douglass, a pretended dumb girl, by whose contrivance five persons had been burned at Paisley, in 1677, for having caused the sickness of Sir George Maxwell by means of waxen and other images, having recovered her speech shortly after, declared that she "had ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... in its direct and indirect effects on slavery, was the cotton gin of Eli Whitney, which formed the other half—the other hand, so to speak—of the spinning frame. The new power loom in England created a growing demand for raw cotton, which the American contrivance enabled the Southern planter to meet with an increased supply of the same. Together these inventions operated naturally to enhance the value of slave labor and slave land, and therein conduced powerfully to the slave ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... seized it, and wrenched the animal's head as if he would snap it off. The wrench was in reality so violent that the thick neck seemed to have lost its stiffness and to become half-paralyzed, whilst the nose dropped blood. The premeditated human contrivance of the nose-ring was too cunning for impulsive brute force, and the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... it was ordered that "no stows be carried into our new meeting-house with fire in them." The Hardwicke women may have found comfort in a contrivance which is thus described in by an ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... was a contrivance which he had invented for the more convenient desiccation of such flowers as he might gather in his travels and wish to carry home with him and preserve, either for botanical specimens or as souvenirs for his friends. It was made by taking out ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... never known what it was to see the shapes that God has builded on the face of the earth, or the colours with which He has painted them. Mind, I have never whined for the sight that was taken away from me. I have accepted my Kismet, and have made it as bright as thought and contrivance could manage. I believe, without egotism, that there are few blind men who have trained themselves to be as conscious of their surroundings as I am. But my powers have great limitations. However preternaturally sensitive ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... dramatists advance with the times, people begin to go to the theatre to see plays, and not merely an actor in a part. The "well-made play," which was a piece of mechanical contrivance into which the puppets were ingeniously fitted, may some day develop into a work of art—a thing born rather than made—growing up like a flower in the imagination of ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... all pressures, with or without the presence of other substances, is prohibited by an Order in Council dated July 1900; to which prohibition the mixture of acetylene and air that takes place in a burner or contrivance in which the mixture is intended to be burnt, and the admixture of air with acetylene that may unavoidably occur in the first use or recharging of an apparatus (usually a water-to-carbide generator), properly designed and ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... few words hereafter. Sometimes, as one walks or drives through the country, he may see the peasants gossiping at the well, which is a hole dug in the ground and fenced in with planks, the bucket being raised and lowered by means of a very primitive contrivance. This consists of a horizontal tree-trunk swinging upon another tall vertical one forked at the top; a chain depends from one end of the horizontal beam or bar, to which the bucket is attached, whilst the other end is counterpoised by means of stones. Some of the wells ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... in the heavens, and not the very image of the things; but, as was said afore, if God was so circumspect and exact in these, as not to leave any thing to the dictates of the godly and wisest of men, what! can we suppose he will now admit of the wit and contrivance of men in those things that are, in comparison to them, the heavenly things ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the door opening into the adjoining room. There was a thing to be said about the reckless bunching of trains out of reach of the wires, and it might as well be said now as later, he determined. But at the moment of door-opening he was made to realize that a tall, box-like contrivance in one corner of the office was a desk, and that it ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... Tokaido looked very pretty lighted up, the shadows of the inmates being plainly visible on the paper walls, reminding one of a scene in a pantomime. On our way down a very steep hill we met the men carrying a cango. It is a most uncomfortable-looking basket-work contrivance, in which it is impossible to sit or lie with ease. These cangoes used formerly to be the ordinary conveyance of Japan, but they are now replaced by the jinrikishas, and they are seldom met with, except in the ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... first, among those that are reckon'd the constituent Parts of a Tragick or Heroick Poem; not, perhaps, as it is the most Difficult or Beautiful, but as it is the first properly to be thought of in the Contrivance and Course of the whole; and with the Fable ought to be consider'd, the fit Disposition, Order and Conduct of its several Parts. As it is not in this Province of the Drama that the Strength and Mastery of Shakespear lay, so I shall not undertake the tedious and ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... you have no grievance. This man Chittenden, the alleged cause of your striking, takes no food or pay from your mouths or your pockets; he interferes with you in no manner whatever. The contrivance he is trying to complete will not limit the output, but will triple it, necessitating the employment of more men. But your leader says that the present output is wholly sufficient, and you are taking his ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... on account of added mass and friction; and some altogether new solution had therefore to be sought. Material contact having proved unworkable the ideal weightless and frictionless linking was obtained by introducing a new magnetic contrivance, and this with the surprising potency of magnification from 5 to 100 million times. The mind cannot grasp the meaning of this stupendous magnification; how then could we translate it in terms which may be understood? Let us take once more our slow-footed snail, a magnification of ten million ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... two Shepherds whom Silenus had often promis'd a Song, and as often deceived, seize upon him being drunk and asleep, and bind him with wreath'd Flowers; AEgle comes in and incourages the timorous youths, and stains his jolly red Face with Blackberries, Silenus laughs at their innocent contrivance, and desires to be unbound, and then with a premeditated Song satisfies the Nymph's and Boys Curiosity; The incomparable Poet sings wonders, the Rocks rejoyce, the Vales eccho, and happy Eurotas as if Phoebus himself sang, hears all, and bids the Laurels that grow ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... threatened her. No matter how artfully the wire noose was set above the level of the ground in her "run," she brushed it by and never blundered into the treacherous loop. A net failed even to alarm her: it might almost be imagined that she became an experienced judge of any such contrivance, and knew every individual poacher by the method with which his toils were ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... island. It is covered with skins and is in four leaves, like the swing doors of fashionable restaurants, which allow you to enter without allowing the hot air to escape. During the winter season our castaways have found the contrivance useful, but Crichton's brain was perhaps a little lordly when he conceived it. Another door leads by a passage to the sleeping-rooms of the house, which are all on the ground-floor, and to Crichton's work-room, where he is at this moment, and whither we should like ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... the work of the organized expedition would consist largely in surmounting physical difficulties; but to organize it and get it fairly started demanded considerable delicacy of diplomatic contrivance. The life of the nation, as it sought to expand and take form, was beset and harassed, north, south, and west, by international complications growing out of direct contact with unfriendly neighbors. In that day the United States did not sustain cordial relations with any of the strong nations ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... terra-cotta colour, like a piece of pottery. He was sickly, thin, and short, with wrists like a boy of ten. But from that debile body there issued a bullying voice, tremendously loud, harsh and resonant, as if produced by some powerful mechanical contrivance in the nature of a fog-horn. I do not know what he did with it in the private life of his home, but in the larger sphere of business it presented the advantage of overcoming arguments without the slightest mental effort, by the mere volume ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... improvements in the title of new editions of books, has been too generally, though sometimes justly, understood as little else than a contrivance of the bookseller, to animate a languishing sale; but this is far from being the case in respect to the works of our author, whose maturer sentiments on many of the subjects, he had before treated ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... are amiably disposed, enabling each pair to rest their feet on the opposite seat, and if the opposite seat is empty, the repose across from seat to seat can be still more complete; but it is an odious contrivance, and neither repose nor rest can be thought of in these most uncomfortable carriages. Our seats faced the front door, and were close to it, which was very desirable as the air is clearer at that end, and not so loaded with the impurities of so large ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... Another contrivance, used in keeping small birds from the fields, is a bird-like form cut from the bark of a banana or palm tree. Many of these are suspended by lines from bamboo poles, and, as the wind blows them to and fro, they appear like giant ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... answered Cunningham; "I dare say I could rig up some sort of an arrangement, if it were worth while. But it would be rather a cumbersome contrivance to ship and unship, and I would not recommend it unless there is likely to be much of this sort of thing between ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... seize her; and Brilliard appeared a very husband lover in comparison of this new brisker man of quality; so that after some pros and cons the whole matter was thus concluded on between these two young persons, who neither wanted wit nor beauty; and both crowed over the little contrivance, as a most diverting piece of little malice, that should serve their present turn, and make them sport for the future. The next thing that was considered was a letter which was to be sent in answer, and that Sylvia being to write with her own hand begot a ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... were warmed in winter by immense stoves, which greatly injured the effect of the interior architecture. Between the study and the Emperor's room was a very curious machine, called the flying chariot, a kind of mechanical contrivance, which had been made for the Empress Maria Theresa, and was used in conveying her from one story to the other, so that she might not be obliged to ascend and descend staircases like the rest of the world. This machine ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... would recognize this as a vehicle as soon as he saw the six large wheels below. They were cut with deep treads and made from some resilient looking substance. No motive power was visible, but Jason almost hooted with joy at the prominent stink of burnt fuel. This crude looking contrivance had some artificial source of power, which might be the product of a local industrial revolution or have been purchased from off-world traders. Either possibility offered the chance of eventual escape from ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... these vases could scarcely stand upright unsupported; and we find that the ancient inhabitants of Switzerland had circles or rings of baked earth in which they placed them when in use, as in the annexed figure. The Mound Builders used the same contrivance. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... this apparatus, our hero saw that by an ingenious contrivance, a person standing on the platform could, by turning a crank, raise or lower himself at will. He cautiously approached the edge of the chasm, and holding down the light, endeavored to penetrate through ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... the House was divided into many parties, or rather no party, because the country was divided into many parties or no party, and that the division into two parties would never be restored again. It is amusing, in view of after events, to find Mr. Hare asking what would be the result of any contrivance to re-establish party. Assuming that party representation was dead, Mr. Hare proposed to substitute personal representation. It is positively ludicrous at this interval of time to note how the electors were expected to group themselves. They were to take personal merit as the basis of representation; ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... side-saddle, with the preparations for our luncheon. First some mutton chops had to be trimmed and prepared, all ready to be cooked when we got there. These were neatly folded up in clean paper; and a little packet of tea, a few lumps of white sugar, a tiny wooden contrivance for holding salt and pepper, and a couple of knives and forks, were added to ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Osiris, Atys, Adonis, Hiram, was a profound but consolatory mystery: the healing charms of Orpheus were connected with his destruction; and his bones, those valued pledges of fertility and victory, were, by a beautiful contrivance, often buried within the sacred precincts ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... unceasing vigilance of armed guards. "The prison at Halifax," writes Waterhouse, "erected solely for the safe-keeping of prisoners of war, resembles an horse-stable, with stalls, or stanchions, for keeping the cattle from each other. It is to a contrivance of this sort that they attach the cords that support those canvas bags or cradles, called hammocks. Four tier of these hanging nests were made to hang, one above the other, between these stalls, or stanchions.... The general ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... pictures and wringers, and nearly every contrivance imaginable, I became discouraged and thought there was no chance for a poor man to earn a living. There was nothing to do on the farm, and I could not get a job in town, when I happened to see how a teacher made money selling platers, and thought I would try my luck. I bought a $5 Lightning Plater ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... had been advised, took a noddy. A minibus is only a small omnibus. A noddy is a contrivance that holds four, and has a door at the end, and only one horse,—very like a ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... that thus, with an appearance of art, I address myself to my father and mother, to whom I am forbidden to approach, or to write. Hard it is to be reduced to such a contrivance! Forgive likewise the plain dealing I have used in the above, with the nobleness of a gentleman, and the gentleness due from a brother to a sister. Although of late you have given me but little room to hope either for your favour or compassion; yet, having not deserved to forfeit ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... doubt that the hitherto wasted and unrecognised substance will be turned to good account. The other is the 'Platometer,' invented by Mr Sang of Kirkcaldy, described as a 'self-acting calculator of surface;' in other words, by using this contrivance, you may get the 'square measure included within any boundary-line around which a pen attached to the instrument may be carried'—in the plan of an estate, or a map, for example, where the plots of ground are often extremely irregular in form, and difficult ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... skill I boast, Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain, 10 Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip Back and rejoin its source before the term— And aptest in contrivance (under God) To baffle it by deftly stopping such— The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace) Three samples of true snakestone—rarer still, One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, (But fitter, pounded fine, for ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... next day was a memorable one. By the kind contrivance of Phlipote herself, Claude gains the much-desired access to the object of his affections, but to his immense disillusion. If he could but speak to her, he fancies he should find the courage, the skill, to bend her. Breathless, Phlipote comes ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... hermitage." Then he sent at once for the Chief Chamberlain whom they brought into the presence; and he summoned likewise the leaders of the Turks and Daylamites and said, "As soon as it is dawn, do ye set forth for Constantinople; and thou, O Chamberlain, shalt take my place in council and contrivance, while thou, O Rustam, shalt be my brother's deputy in battle. But let none know that we are not with you and after three days we will rejoin you." Then he chose out an hundred of the doughtiest riders, and he and Sharrkan and the Minister Dandan set out for the hermitage, and the hundred ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... For years the subject remained an alluring one which led many a scientist into experiments without number. In various parts of the world men played with the idea and wrote about it; but no one actually produced any practical steam contrivance until 1650, when the second Marquis of Worcester constructed a steam fountain that could force the water from the moat around his castle as high as the top of one of the towers. The feat was looked upon as a marvel and afterward a larger fountain, similar in principle, was constructed at ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... suggested another project, worthy of such a disposition. She endeavoured to rid herself from the danger of being at any time made known to him, by sending him secretly to the American Plantations; but in this contrivance ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... vehicle. The vehicle was a cart twenty feet long, covered over by a tilt, and resting on four large wheels without spokes or felloes, or iron tires— in a word, plain wooden discs. The front and hinder part were connected by means of a rude mechanical contrivance, which did not allow of the vehicle turning quickly. There was a pole in front thirty-five feet long, to which the bullocks were to be yoked in couples. These animals were able to draw both with ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... have supposed the tools of my craft harder to manipulate than those of others. The use of words, particularly, seemed readier, handier for the contrivance of effects than pigments. I thought the language of words less elusive than that of colour, leaving smaller margin for unintended effects; and, believing in complacent good faith that words conveyed exact meanings exactly, it was my innocent conception that almost ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... fretted at the fever-fit which had preserved my life by keeping me awake! How recklessly I had confided myself to the two wretches who had led me into this room, determined, for the sake of my winnings, to kill me in my sleep by the surest and most horrible contrivance for secretly accomplishing my destruction! How many men, winners like me, had slept, as I had proposed to sleep, in that bed, and had never been seen or heard of more! I shuddered at the bare idea ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... "my feathered clock goes too fast: it cannot possibly be today yet!" So saying, he leaped precipitately out of a piece of furniture of his own ingenious contrivance, which, sustaining the part of bed by night, (sustaining it badly enough too,) did duty by day for all the rest of the furniture which was absent by reason of the severe cold for which the past ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... is gone by; Lord of the secret birth of things is he Within the lap of earth, and in the depths Of the imagination dominates; And his are all things that eschew the light. The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance, For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now, And the dark work, complete of preparation, He draws by force into the realm of light. Now must we hasten on to action, ere The scheme and most auspicious positure Parts o'er my head, and takes once ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... quantity of arms and other war material. In another sector they captured 30,000 rounds of rifle ammunition, 300 boxes of machine-gun ammunition, 200 boxes of hand grenades, 1,000 rifles in good condition, four machine guns, two optical range finders, and even a brand-new Norton well, a portable contrivance for ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Roundheads should enter the Castle through a great breach which had been made in the course of the siege, and across which there had been made a sort of by-path to drive the cattle down to their pasture in the wood. By this contrivance the Lady Peveril imagined she had altogether avoided the various risks which might occur from two such parties encountering each other, and disputing for precedence. Several other circumstances of less importance were adjusted ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... to make two more devices for our winter sports—a toboggan and a peculiar looking contrivance called a "rennwolf," a picture of which Dutchy happened to unearth in one of his father's books. Unfortunately Bill and I had to return to school before either of these was completed. However, the work was entrusted to Reddy, who was quite handy with tools, and Jack, who was made secretary pro tempore, ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... the darkened chamber I softly tried the door-latch. It yielded at the touch, but not the door. I pulled and braced myself and pulled again. 'Twas but a waste of strength. The door was fast with that contrivance wherewith my father used to bar me in what time I was a boy and would go raccooning with our negro hunters. My enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in against the chance ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... was burdened with all she could conveniently carry. He filled his pockets and thrust others into every receptacle at command. The partially emptied cartridge-belt was made to do duty as a casket, and it is safe to say that no similar contrivance was ever laden with a tithe of the riches that ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... money to stand out and receive interest—I don't like that. It has to suck the interest somewhere or other, and of course it's from the poor. Interest is blood-money, Andres —and it's a new-fangled contrivance, too. When I was young we knew nothing about getting interest ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of my involuntary social shortcomings, and enables me to thank collectively all those kind members of the profession who trained all the artillery of the pharmacopoeia upon my troublesome enemy, from bicarbonate of soda and Vichy water to arsenic and dynamite. One costly contrivance, sent me by the Reverend Mr. Haweis, whom I have never duly thanked for it, looked more like an angelic trump for me to blow in a better world than what I believe it is, an inhaling tube intended to prolong my mortal respiration. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... self-denying words. Mankind has been demoralised since by its own mastery of mechanical appliances. Its spirit is apparently so weak now, and its flesh has grown so strong, that it will face any deadly horror of destruction and cannot resist the temptation to use any stealthy, murderous contrivance. It has become the intoxicated slave of its own detestable ingenuity. It is true, too, that since the Napoleonic time another sort of war-doctrine has been inculcated in a nation, and held out ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... and consisted of a cosy little "A" tent, a hammock hung between two young chestnuts, and a fire-place made of a circle of stones on the ground, with a crane hanging above it. The crane was quite an elaborate contrivance, for which Joseph the gardener was to ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... plan upon which our fabric is built. If he is chagrined to find that his imperium in imperio is not practicable, and that nothing can make here a power stronger than the source of power, he must solace his hurt feelings with the reflection that the system was never adapted to his contrivance, and that our fathers, when in the beginning they resolved to establish a government by the people, gave consent thereby to all the apparent risks and inconveniences of having the people ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... have not considered those attributes of man which may serve indifferently for good or for ill, as he may happen to be or not to be the subject of those fiercer excitements, that will oft times corrupt the most ingenuous nature, and have a tendency to inspire into us subtle schemes and a deep contrivance. I have confined myself to the consideration of man, as yet untamed to the modes of civilised community, and unbroken to the steps which are not only prescribed by the interests of our social existence, but which are ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... our getting a patent laying-box, furnished with (what he apologised to my aunt for calling) a false front. My aunt did not at first grasp the idea, but what Nibletts did in fact refer to was a contrivance that would admit one sitter only at a time, subsequent unauthorised entrance being cut off by an ingenious drop slide. Further elaborate construction also prevented the sitter herself from turning round to peck. She had to remain sitting till some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... who watched in his chamber, was found in a neighbouring garden, without having suffered any material change,—the which caused the greater marvelling; for it thereby appeared that they were the only sufferers in that dark treason, making the truth plain before the people, that the contrivance and firing thereof was concerted and brought to maturity by some in authority with the Queen,—and who that was the people answered by crying as the royal corpse was carried to the palace, "Bothwell, Lord Bothwell, he ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... probable that he would have given himself wholly to the career of a successful pianist, but for an accident. After a year of painstaking practice, he invented a contrivance by which the weaker fingers were allowed to gain strength by usage, while the third finger was held back. This mechanism was altogether too successful, for, after using it some time, he found his third ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... of tongued and grooved boards, and one of these in the front could be slipped out, thus forming a door. Into this box all the food and silverware were put. No little ingenuity was needed in making this contrivance. The nails that were drawn out to let this board slip back and forth left tell-tale nail-holes, but these were filled up with heads of nails, so that all the boards looked just alike. I remember once a soldier was sitting ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... the entrance of the characters determined where each scene lay. If they came in from Colchester, then Colchester was for the time the scene of action. When that scene was shifted to Maldon, it was intimated by the approach of the actors from the side where it was painted—a clumsy contrivance, doubtless, compared to changeable scenery; yet sufficient to impress the audience with a sense of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... trouble is that very few people fit the average saddle; and as the saddle cannot be adjusted, perfect comfort is not obtainable. With this new saddle the case is different, for it can be adjusted to fit a large or small person exactly. It also has a contrivance which permits the parts to move up and down so that there is no friction whatever. Our attention was called to it by one of the officers of the navy, who has proved himself an expert in wheel contrivances, and a careful test bears out ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 58, December 16, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... proved before a designer can be inferred—the matter in controversy, is the existence of design in the universe, and it is not permitted to assume the contested premises and thence infer the matter in dispute. Insidiously to employ the words contrivance, design and adaptation, before these circumstances are apparent in the universe, thence justly inferring a contriver, is a popular sophism against which it behoves us ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... the table, lay the knife, a heavy, clumsy contrivance I had bought to use in my carpentry, and I now, mechanically, picked it up. As I did so the light gleamed evilly upon ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... distinguished manner; making victorious and handsome battle for himself, in entering Maelare Lake; and in getting out of it again, after being frozen there all winter, showing still more surprising, almost miraculous contrivance and dexterity. This was the first of his glorious victories, of which the Skalds reckon up some fourteen or thirteen very glorious indeed, mostly in the Western and Southern countries, most of all in England; till the name of Olaf Haraldson became quite ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... she had played. Jimmie had committed an extravagance, treating her to a new dress out of his increased earnings: a gorgeous contrivance of several colours, looking like silk, even if it wasn't. Lizzie had stated that the cost was fifteen dollars, and he, the dupe, had believed it! The truth was she had bought the dress in a second-hand shop for three dollars, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... rooms, each provided with a gem of a teapot and egg-shell cups and saucers for three or four, so that Mr. Wooster's feminine visitors might themselves have the delight of dispensing that most feminine of all beverages. This contrivance gave scope for flirtation, and was loudly praised by ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... it must be observed (1) that the accents and the dotted e's in the first are Mr. Pollard's own contrivances for helping the scansion; (2) in the second, l. 10, "ye" is a special contrivance of Professor Skeat. "The scribes," he says (Introd. Vol. IV. p. xix.), "usually write eye in the middle of a line, but when they come to it at the end of one, they are fairly puzzled. In l. 10, the scribe ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not a single penal institution or reformatory in the United States where men are not tortured "to be made good," by means of the blackjack, the club, the straightjacket, the water-cure, the "humming bird" (an electrical contrivance run along the human body), the solitary, the bullring, and starvation diet. In these institutions his will is broken, his soul degraded, his spirit subdued by the deadly monotony and routine of prison life. In Ohio, Illinois, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... family that actually dwells at no great distance 5 from this part of the desert during nine months of the year. The man carried a matchlock, and of this he was inordinately proud, on account of the supposed novelty and ingenuity of the contrivance. We stopped, and sat down and rested awhile, for the sake of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... holes in the opposite end. Inside, Frank arranged metal plates which were somewhat shorter than the depth of the box. Every other one was attached to the bottom of the box; the intermediate plates were fastened to the top. This contrivance muffled the sound considerably, but, as might be expected, soon began to smoke. There can be little doubt that it was replaced before any of the outdoor trials began. Another type consisted of a cylindrical metal shell, ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... ingenious contrivance for melting snow. This was a flat stone, supported by two other stones, and inclined slightly at one end. Upon this flat stone a lump of snow was placed, and below it was kindled a small fire of moss and blubber. When the stone became heated, the snow melted and flowed down the incline into a ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Dawes, "and we shall not be able to row far with such oars as we have got. If we get a breeze it may save our lives." It was impossible to "step" a mast in the frail basket structure, but this difficulty was overcome by a simple contrivance. From thwart to thwart two poles were bound, and the mast, lashed between these poles with thongs of raw hide, was secured by shrouds of twisted fishing line running fore and aft. Sheets of bark were placed at the bottom of the craft, and made ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... situations was continually being designed with the same unwearied search after perfection, the same nice ingenuity of means; and though the holophotal revolving light perhaps still remains his most elegant contrivance, it is difficult to give it the palm over the much later condensing system, with its thousand possible modifications. The number and the value of these improvements entitle their author to the name of one of mankind's benefactors. In all parts of the world a safer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... paddles, to get across; and we had floated some way down the stream before we again could find the bottom. At last we landed, and drew up our canoe. I proposed leaving it, to make the natives wonder at the strange contrivance. ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... (for which I cared little), but also to the ruin of all with whom I had ever come in contact. In the month of July several thunder-storms occurred. To me the thunder was "stage" thunder, the lightning man-made, and the accompanying rain due to some clever contrivance of my persecutors. There was a chapel connected with the hospital—or at least a room where religious services were held every Sunday. To me the hymns were funeral dirges; and the mumbled prayers, faintly audible, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... can be applied to an aeroplane, surface is of no consequence; shape need not be considered, and any sort of contrivance will move through the ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... common kind. They are swifter, and go in larger packs. They bring forth their young in burrows on the open plain, and not among the woods, like the other species. They are the most cunning of American animals, not excepting their kindred the foxes. They cannot be trapped by any contrivance, but by singular manoeuvres often themselves decoy the over-curious antelope to approach too near them. When a gun is fired upon the prairies they may be seen starting up on all sides, and running for the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... disproportionate scale, the magnitude of the establishment to which once it had ministered. Attached to this splendid kitchen were tributary offices, etc. On the upper story were exactly five rooms: namely, a servants' dormitory, meant in Sir Robert's day for two beds [Footnote: The contrivance amongst our ancestors, even at haughty Cambridge and haughtier Oxford, was, that one bed rising six inches from the floor ran (in the day- time) under a loftier bed; it ran upon castors or little wheels. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... whatever, and in the End subjects his own darling Schemes to the same Uncertainty; for if we cannot judge of the Fitness, of plain moral Truth and Duty, neither can we of any Scheme of Religion; especially such as hang together more by Art and human Contrivance, than by Reason ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... not empress?" Nor did he ever vouchsafe to speak to her again. Upon her refusing once at supper to taste some fruit which he presented to her, he declined inviting her to his table, pretending that she in effect charged him with a design to poison her; whereas the whole was a contrivance of his own. He was to offer the fruit, and she to be privately cautioned against eating what would infallibly cause her death. At last, having her accused of intending to flee for refuge to the statue of Augustus, or to the army, he banished her ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... its cause; if, notwithstanding all these things, it gradually sickened and died, then the conclusion seems a fair one, that it did not deserve to live. Contrasting its failure with its high pretensions, it is fair to call it an imposition; whether an expressly fraudulent contrivance or not, some might be ready to question. Everything historically shown to have happened concerning the mode of promulgation, the wide diffusion, the apparent success of this delusion, the respectability and enthusiasm of its advocates, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... helped than to help. It was not easy for them to bring forth their breadths and their linings, and their braids that were to be pieced, and their trimmings that were to be turned, and to lay bare to other eyes all their little economies of contrivance; but Miss Craydocke managed it by simple straightforwardness,—by not behaving as if there were anything to be glossed over or ignored. Instead of hushing up about economies, she brought them forward, and gave them a most cheery and comfortable, not to ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... mechanical contrivance the present air was forced, by compressed air draught, into compartments from which the bad air was expelled through sea-valves. An instant change for the better in ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... admire the ingenuity of this contrivance for shifting the burden of the proof from those to whom it properly belongs, and who would, we suspect, find it rather cumbersome. Surely no Christian can deny that every human being has a right to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
