"Current" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impressed upon Lin Chih-hsiao to insert the two hundred taels in the accounts for the current year, by making such additions to various items here and there as would suffice to clear them off, and presented Pao Erh with money out of his own pocket as a crumb of comfort, adding, "By and bye, I'll choose a nice wife for you." When Pao Erh, therefore, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... you look at it in one way, it had been only a summer in the country. But, considered in a profounder relation, it was part of another age, a different state of society, a segment of an existence peculiar in its aims and methods, a leaf of some mysterious volume interpolated into the current history which time was writing off. At one moment, the very circumstances now surrounding me—my coal fire and the dingy room in the bustling hotel—appeared far off and intangible; the next instant Blithedale looked vague, as if it were at a distance both in time and space, and so shadowy ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to the right on the crest of a particularly aggressive wave formed by the determined shoulders of a huge fat woman who wished to go in that direction; so it was some time before he could stem the current and make an effort to reach the elevator on the other side of the store. It was then that he suddenly decided to grasp this opportunity for "looking about a little to find something for Uncle Harold"—and it was then that he was lost, for no longer had he compass, captain, or a port ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... does it all matter? What is laughter but an old-fashioned aid to digestion, more or less discredited by current medical authority? It is time we learned that laughter has a social significance: it is the first stage in the process of understanding one's fellow man. Professor Bergson to the contrary notwithstanding, you can not ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... was made free; many good, earnest, and enthusiastic men laboured to create a ladder of standards and examinations, which would connect the cleverest of the poor with the culture of the English universities and the current teaching in history or philosophy. But it cannot be said that the connection was very complete, or the achievement so thorough as the German achievement. For whatever reason, the poor Englishman remained in many things much as his fathers had ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... something even to be permitted to stagger under the disadvantages of liberty, and I was determined to hold on to the newly gained footing, by all proper industry. I was ready to work by night as well as by day; and being in the enjoyment of excellent health, I was able not only to meet my current expenses, but also to lay by a small sum at the end of each week. All went on thus, from the month of May till August; then—for reasons which will become apparent as I proceed—my much valued ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... my way to Canada. My excuse, the reason I gave to myself for the journey, was the necessity of looking into the affairs of certain Canadian companies in which I had invested money. There were rumours current in England at that time which led me to suspect that the boom in Canadian securities had reached its height and was about to subside. I did not really believe that I was likely to find out anything of value by stopping in an hotel at Montreal or travelling in ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... Dissenters, on "Sacramental Occasions" as they are yet called, the services lasted altogether (not unfrequently) continuously from ten o'clock on Sabbath forenoon, to three and {83} four o'clock the following morning. A traditional anecdote is current of an old Presbyterian clergyman, unusually full of matter, who, having preached out his hour-glass, was accustomed to pause, and addressing the precentor, "Another glass and then," recommenced ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... application to the study of medicine, is that physiology which a man knows of his own knowledge; just as the only anatomy which would be of any good to the surgeon is the anatomy which he knows of his own knowledge. Another peculiarity I have found in the physiology which has been current, and that is, that in the minds of a great many gentlemen it has been supplanted by histology. They have learnt a great deal of histology, and they have fancied that histology and physiology are the same ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... within the valley fair Of hollow Lacedaemon, but were brought To Rhadamanthus of the golden hair, Beyond the wide world's end; ah never there Comes storm nor snow; all grief is left behind, And men immortal, in enchanted air, Breathe the cool current of the Western wind. ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... of itself, besides the nature and inbred bitterness and tartness of particulars, both hard of conceit and harsh of style, and therefore cannot but be unpleasing both to the unskilful and over-musical ear; the one being affected with only a shallow and easy, the other with a smooth and current, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... himself to some extent. We are not mere straws thrown upon the current to mark its course; but possessed of freedom of action, endowed with power to stem the waves and rise above them, each marking out a course for himself. We can each elevate ourselves in the scale of moral being. We can cherish pure thoughts. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... possible to devise means of freeing ourselves from it, we ought at once to set about the employing of those means. It would be the most wretched and imbecile fatuity, to shut our eyes to the impending dangers and horrors, and "drive darkling down the current of our fate," till we are overwhelmed in the final destruction. If we are tyrants, cruel, unjust, oppressive, let us humble ourselves and repent in the sight of heaven, that the foul stain may be cleansed, and we enabled to ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... "genus" if it be regarded as made up of two or more different kinds of objects or of two or more species. "Motors" is a genus when the class "Motors" is considered as divided into electric motors and nonelectric motors, or electric motors, spring motors, weight motors, current motors fluid pressure motors, etc. A genus is more extensive than any of its species ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... As far as we were able, we gazed around when we reached the summit of a sea. There were the breakers; we could see the white foam flying up like a vast waterspout against the leaden sky. We were passing it though, not driving against it. A current was sweeping us on. The dawn broke. As the light increased our eyes fell on a grove of cocoa-nut trees, rising it seemed directly out of the water. The current was driving us near them. We sat up and eagerly watched ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... frequent secret visits to Paris. Of course there is not a word of truth in these contemptible stories, and the prince's reputation as a perfect husband and a healthy-minded gentleman, stands high, even in Berlin, where people are overfond of scandalous gossip. Certainly there are plenty of stories current about the pranks that he has played, but these are all of an innocent and boyish character. The prince creates the impression of the most complete wholesomeness; his six feet of well set up manhood, his bright eyes and clear, tanned skin, seem the outward and visible sign ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... start a debate on any subject under the sun. This and other outrages were doubtless recalled by the House of Commons when revising its Rules. It then ordered that no member might, during the progress of questions, interpose with a motion on which to found debate. If, in this current month of March, Mr. O'Donnell, being a member of the House of Commons, had wanted to attack M. Challemel-Lacour, he must needs have waited till the last question on the paper was disposed of, and could then have moved the adjournment only if his description of the question—as one of urgent public ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... life had been one thought of joy, A vision time was destined to destroy— As dies the dewy network on the thorn, Before the sunbeams, with the mists of morn. Thus far their lives in one smooth current ran— They loved, yet knew not when that love began, And hardly knew they loved; though it had grown A portion of their being, and had thrown Its spirit o'er them; for its shoots had sprung Up in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... from beneath their iron-shod heels, they toppled and fell; there was a thunderous splash in the water below, and as the men-at-arms came hurrying up and peered with awe-struck faces over the parapet of the bridge, they saw the whirling eddies sweep down with the current of the stream, a few bubbles rise to the surface of the water, and then—nothing; for the smooth river flowed onward ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... limitations are not to be overpassed by a visionary self-introspection, unless this, too, is subjected to rational criticism. Mysticism does its true part when it applies this criticism also to the current forms, conventions, and institutions. Conventions, forms, and institutions, after all, represent the corporate wisdom, the accumulated experiences of men throughout the ages. Mysticism is the experience of one. Each does right to test the corporate experience by his ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... all of which, as well as the greatest proportion of the banks, are covered with osiers. Still, there is a great beauty in the Rhine even there; the waving of the osiers to the strong breeze, the rapidity of the current, the windings of the river, the picturesque spires of the village churches, or the change of scenery when the river pours through forests, lining each bank as the vessel slowly claws against the rapid stream, are by no means uninteresting; ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... who had continued it before him. It was also said in the village, as touching this matter of "no right", that nobody could understand how the forge ever came to be there and that it certainly would be turned off one day; and with this also the current members of the tribe of Wirk cordially agreed. They understood less than anybody how they ever came to be there, and they knew perfectly well they would be turned off one day; saying which—and it was a common subject of debate among village ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... of steam navigation occurs in a work written by the Marquis of Worcester in 1665, in which allusion is made to the application of engines to boats and ships, which would "draw them up rivers against the stream, and, if need be, pass London Bridge against the current, at low-water." ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... The current of my outer life was quiet to apparent dulness. After breakfast Mary 'Liza and I had our lessons with my mother in "the chamber." In another year we would have a governess, but the mothers of that time always taught their ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... longer, and he showed her the finest of his books and a number of old engravings and etchings; and these really impressed her because she knew something of their current value, which was her only standard in judging works of art. At last she showed that she was thinking of going. Women of the world generally give warning of their approaching departure, as an ocean steamer blows its ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... tide of the popular will below him as a good boatman feels a strong and deep current, issued an appeal for 75,000 militia from the still loyal States to defend the flag and the Union which it symbolized. The North responded with unbounded enthusiasm, and the number of volunteers easily exceeded that for which the President had ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... open question is "what stories shall they read?" That many children read too many stories is beyond question; their excessive devotion to fiction wastes time and seriously impairs vigour of mind. In these respects they follow the current which carries a multitude of their elders to mental inefficiency and waste of power. That they read too many weak, untruthful, characterless stories is also beyond question; and in this respect also they are like ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... for instance, gloried in the erection of the most magnificent tombs that their genius could produce, and, ruined as they are, we find that it is in their sepulchral monuments—the rock-wrought mausoleum, and the stupendous pyramid—that their art-current found its readiest flow. Compare these with the light and graceful structures of the Moors, the cool, arcaded courts, and the tesselated pavements, the orange trees, and the fountains. 'But no comparison,' ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... It passes down the current of life from one generation to another. Its continuity is preserved from first to last. The homes of our forefathers rule us even now, and will pass from us to our children's children. Hence it has been called the "fixed capital" of home. It keeps ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... against the keel as the boat rocks gently in the current; the river flows past, strong and quiet. There are side eddies, of course, and little disturbing whirlpools near the big stones, but they are all gathered into the broad sweep of the stream, carried down to the great catholic sea. ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... between Seventh and Ninth Avenues and the work below sub-grade as well as that on the Terminal Station-West. Four straight-line compressors and one cross-compound Corliss compressor were installed, the steam being supplied by three Stirling boilers. Three electrically-driven air compressors, using current at 6,600 volts, were also installed, and the total capacity of the power-house was about 19,000 cu. ft. of free air per minute compressed to 90 lb. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • B.F. Cresson, Jr
... step after another. Then he was sent for something, and the head nurse, her chief duties performed, drew herself upright for a breath, and her keen, little black eyes noticed an involuntary tremble, a pause, an uncertainty at a critical moment in the doctor's tense arm. A wilful current of thought had disturbed his action. The sharp head nurse wondered if Dr. Sommers had had any wine that evening, but she dismissed this suspicion scornfully, as slander against the ornament of the Surgical Ward of St. Isidore's. He was tired: the languid ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... narrow space, and at length terminates at two rocks (called the Rocks of Brandir), which form a strait channel, something resembling the lock of a canal. From this outlet there is a continual descent towards Loch Eitive, and from hence the river Awe pours out its current in a furious stream, foaming over a bed broken with holes, and cumbered with masses of ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... to represent in himself the change that is going on, and to be an efficient cause in bringing it about. Unless, like Goethe, he is of a singularly uncontemporaneous nature, capable of being tutta in se romita, and of running parallel with his time rather than being sucked into its current, he will be thwarted in that harmonious development of native force which has so much to do with its steady and successful application. Dryden suffered, no doubt, in this way. Though in creed he seems to have drifted backward in an eddy of the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... which has been made the night before is cut in cubes an inch square, dipped in eggs and cracker dust, then dropped in deep fat, the only way to fry mush a delicate brown and preserve its softness. A spoonful of current ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... thus bluntly, because the current of thought in academic circles runs against me, and I feel like a man who must set his back against an open door quickly if he does not wish to see it closed and locked. In spite of its being so shocking to the reigning intellectual tastes, I believe that a candid consideration of piecemeal supernaturalism ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... fine to march in a column of men and know the current of energy that flows along it. However many miles you have marched, however tired your feet and back and arms may be, in the knowledge that you are one of a disciplined regiment there is something that strengthens you and keeps you going. For in one sense Route Step, when you may ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... they were indebted to the Bible; and yet these good gifts were so perverted as to exert an influence against the word of God. By association with these men, Miller was led to adopt their sentiments. The current interpretations of Scripture presented difficulties which seemed to him insurmountable; yet his new belief, while setting aside the Bible, offered nothing better to take its place, and he remained ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the boat nearest the shore to a big stake that had been driven deeply into the earth. Thus the boats lay close beside a short dock that was called a landing stage. As the current of the Bushkill was always pretty strong there must be more or less of a strain on that hawser; but since it was comparatively new, the boys felt that there could not be the slightest danger of its breaking, unless some outside influence were brought to bear on it, such ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... a Current lately stayd, rush mainly forth his long-imprisoned flood) So brake out words; and thus Dyego sayd, what my Gyneura? O my harts chiefe good, Ist possible that thou thy selfe should'st daigne In seeing me to ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... farther to the east than I like," the captain replied. "We have been blown a long way into the bay. There is a great set of current, in here. We have drifted nearly fifty miles in, since noon yesterday. We are in 4 degrees 50 minutes west longitude, and 45 ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... preserved, but it was without a superfluous fold or gather, and in those days, when, even in country places, crinoline was beginning to assert itself, she did look ludicrously straight and stiff. Miss Elizabeth's dress was neither in material nor make of the fashion that had its origin in the current year, and city people, wise in such matters, might have set them both down as old-fashioned. But in appearance, as they drew near one another, there was a great contrast between them, though in feature there ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... extinguishing more than $18 millions of the principal, within the present year, it is estimated that a balance of more than $6 millions will remain in the Treasury on the first day of January applicable to the current service of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... with fruit and wines of all kinds; and as he ate and drank, the Groac'h talked to him and told him how the treasures he saw came from shipwrecked vessels, and were brought to her palace by a magic current ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... mind, full of the figurative sacred writings then current, must have overflowed with visions, ecstasies and miracles! And what tremors of awe must he have felt, in putting these visions into colour! His Madonnas, their features suffused with candour and humility, bend with maternal grace hitherto unwitnessed, in loving ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... through the valves; it encompassed him with a feeling of lightness, a feeling of floating, as he swung at the end of the long metal-sheathed tentacles. A moment later a soft bluish glow burst on his vision, and he saw that he was outside. There was a long wait, and when the current next swung him around he was dismayed to see that every one of the monstrous creatures near him was dangling on high two or three men of his helpless crew. The whole outfit was in the power ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... see how fast you gain. It may be some time before Nature gets her own way with you entirely, because when one has been off the track for long it must take time to readjust; but when we begin to go with the laws of health, instead of against them, we get into a healthy current and gain faster than would have seemed possible when we were outside of it, habitually trying to ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... Reflective history is the Critical. This deserves mention as preeminently the mode, now current in Germany, of treating history. It is not history itself that is here presented. We might more properly designate it as a History of History—a criticism of historical narratives and an investigation of their truth and credibility. Its peculiarity, in point of fact as well as intention, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... breath of wind, the fish soon became quite bold. They did not move beyond the small spot in which they had appeared, but they all had their tails in slight movement, and their heads in one direction, thus showing that although the water appeared to be perfectly motionless, there must be a current of some sort, fish always lying with their heads up the stream, so as to allow the water to enter their mouths and ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... her. She expected a sudden intervention, even though at the altar. She argued to herself that misery, which follows sin, cannot surely afflict us further when we are penitent, and seek to do right: her thought being, that perchance if she refrained from striving against the current, and if she suffered her body to be borne along, God would be the more merciful. With the small cunning of an enfeebled spirit, she put on a mute submissiveness, and deceived herself by it sufficiently to let the minutes pass with a lessened horror ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... circumstance had been forgotten, which was first called to the remembrance of Tressilian by Master Mumblazen. "You are going to court, Master Tressilian," said he; "you will please remember that your blazonry must be ARGENT and OR—no other tinctures will pass current." The remark was equally just and embarrassing. To prosecute a suit at court, ready money was as indispensable even in the golden days of Elizabeth as at any succeeding period; and it was a commodity little at the command of the inhabitants of Lidcote Hall. Tressilian was himself ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... I'm coming, O hearken, sad-hearted, My sweet singing voices Shall teach you by day; And in the night's darkness The stars gently mirrored, All borne on my current, Shall mark you the way. Dark mountains may tower, Dark valleys may lower, But follow, sad-hearted, Come smiling, light-hearted, Come fare to the river; His Hand in the forest Has marked the ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... fisherman is outlined on the grassy slope. Below it, crowding reeds rustle in the current; and where they are more sparse they fashion concentric orbs upon the gleaming, fleeing water. The landscape has something exotic or antique about it. You are no matter where in the world or among the centuries. You are on some corner of the eternal earth, where men and women are drawing near ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... never failed; yet behind it he was conscious of a steely withdrawal of her real self from any contact with his. He talked of Oxford, of the great college where he had learnt from, the same men who had been Elsmere's teachers; of current books, of the wild flowers and birds of the Chase; he did his best; but never once was there any living response in her quiet replies, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Indiana and Illinois; any tavern-keeper preferring losing the price of a bed, or of a meal, sooner than run the risk of returning good change for bad money. The note was finally changed in St. Louis for a three-dollar, bank of Springfield, which being yet current, at a discount of four cents to the dollar, enabled the fortunate owner to take his last tumbler of port-wine sangaree before his departure ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... a docile act of faith regarding the witchery, the thaumaturgic powers, of Virgil, or may we say of Shakespeare? Yet how faint and dim, after all, the sorrows of Dido, of Juliet, the travail of Aeneas, beside quite recent things felt or done—stories which, floating to us on the light current of to-day's conversation, leave the soul in a flutter! At best, poetry of the past could move one with no more directness than the beautiful faces of antiquity which are not here for us to see and ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... carefully, he let the light of the byre lantern rest on the missive. It was written in a delicate but strong handwriting—the hand of one accustomed to forming the smaller letters of ancient tongues into a current script. "To Mistress Winifred Charteris," it ran. "Dear Lady: That I have offended you by the hastiness of my words and the unforgivable wilfulness of my actions, I know, but cannot forgive myself. Yet, knowing the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... sandy plains, scantily clothed here and there with short tufts of grass, parched by the summer sun, stretched far away to the north and south. The river was occasionally obstructed with rocks and rapids, but often there were smooth, placid intervals, where the current was gentle, and the boatmen were enabled to lighten their labors with the assistance of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the Ganges has gone out of fashion. Native boats laden with produce and wood continue to ply, but the budgerows and pinnaces, which Europeans could hire, have almost entirely disappeared. There are various reasons for this change. The current of the river is very rapid in some places, which makes the work of dragging against it very slow and tiresome; there is sometimes the danger of collision with other boats. The high banks of the river here and there prevent the country from being seen, and ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... be seen. Charlie, nearly drawn into the revolving paddles, was taken into the boat. Presently the watchers saw Winifred's little red dress caught on an uprooted sapling. Tree and child were in the center of the current. While so much debris stayed near the shore or drifted on the shallow sand-bars, this one tree with its human freight ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... his rescue, but the tree being now swung by the current, he also was pitched into the water. It was only after a terrible moment of suspense that our men had the common sense to draw the tree back towards the shore. One and all joined in a supreme effort, and the ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... believed that our little Mary had fallen from the river-bank and had been drowned, and the body carried away by the swift current. Some lads, who were out on the water that day in a sail-boat, said that they saw a child on the bank a little below our house, running about quite alone, apparently chasing butterflies. But it was several months ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... add still another, not exactly like any already on the list, it may well be asked of me to show why one or other of those already current is not as good or better than my own. This requires me to pass in brief review the theories of historic methods, or, as it is properly termed, of the Philosophy of History, which are most ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... instance, on a gusty March day, has not watched the wind blowing lustily across a marsh or the reedy margin of a lake, compelling all the reeds to stoop in the same direction? Has one resisted the current or stood stoutly forth in protesting non-compliance? Has one dared to adopt an unbending posture? Not one. They have been as obsequious as were all the king's servants that were in the king's gate to the imperious Haman when he happened ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... which it in part concealed. She was a well-grown girl of three and twenty, with the complexion and the mould of form which indicate, whatever else, habitual nourishment on good and plenteous food. In her ripe lips and softly-rounded cheeks the current of life ran warm. She had hair of a fine auburn, and her mode of wearing it, in a plaited diadem, answered the purpose of completing a figure which, without being tall, had some stateliness and promised more. Her gown, trimmed with a collar ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... stare it out of countenance. There was neither declaration, nor vow, nor any other form of Cupid's canting school. Their hearts mingled together, and understood each other without the aid of language. They lapsed into the full current of affection, unconscious of its depth, and thoughtless of the rocks that might lurk beneath its surface. Happy lovers! who wanted nothing to make their felicity complete, but the discovery of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... away. How timid and scared she looks! She pauses a moment amid the weeds, then hops a yard or two and pauses again, then passes under the bars and hesitates on the edge of a more open and exposed place immediately in front of me. Here she works her nose, feeling of every current of air, analyzing every scent to see if danger is near. Apparently detecting something suspicious in the currents that drift from my direction, she turns back, pauses again, works her nose as before, then ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... swim like a duck. Nothing grows near this body of water. Everything about it is dead. Like some people, it is always receiving but never giving. At the mouth of the Jordan one can see dead fish floating on the water. When carried by the swift current into this salty water ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... sleeping quarters it is interesting to observe divers stopping at boutiques and tea saloons for refreshments, paying their score with oysters, extremely acceptable to the shopkeeper itching to test his luck. In a small way, oysters pass current in the Cadjan City as the equivalent of coins. Probably the variations in value lead to fluctuations in exchange, but these are so keenly understood that the quotations are apparently adjusted automatically, like exchange ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... courage and her self-possession returned. She put her hand on the top of Michael's, the one which held his rifle. Her touch thrilled the soldier home from the Front; it travelled through his veins like an electric current. Margaret's eyes had dropped; now they met ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... those which could possibly be traced back to real primitive times and mental conditions, like the "Cupid and Psyche" formula, but others of more recent date and composition, provided they have spread throughout Europe, which is my criterion. For instance "Beauty and the Beast" in its current shape was composed in the eighteenth century, but has found its place in the story-store of European children. A couple, like "Androcles and the Lion" and "Day Dreaming," owe a similar spread to literary communication even though in the latter case it ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... are current all over France, every town has its own assignats, of and under, but not above five livres; these are only current in such town ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... together with his readiness to accept all the ill spoken of her, is at once shown in his reference to Claire, who was the daughter of the second Mrs. Godwin by her first husband, and hence no relation whatever to Mrs. Shelley. This mistake proves that he relied overmuch upon current gossip. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of the voyage all went well, but next day the lead of open water was found to trend off the land, and run out into the pack, where numerous great glaciers were seen—some aground, others surging slowly southward with the Polar current. ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... gone rotten since my day. Will you be surprised to learn that it is about Buccaneers, that it begins in the ADMIRAL BENBOW public-house on Devon coast, that it's all about a map, and a treasure, and a mutiny, and a derelict ship, and a current, and a fine old Squire Trelawney (the real Tre, purged of literature and sin, to suit the infant mind), and a doctor, and another doctor, and a sea-cook with one leg, and a sea-song with the chorus 'Yo-ho-ho-and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... undeniable, and whose accession to it, at the death of his sister, by far the greater part of the English people would have preferred, to the having a petty German prince for a sovereign, about whose cruelty, rapacity, boorish manners, and odious foreign ways, a thousand stories were current. It wounded our English pride to think, that a shabby High-Dutch duke, whose revenues were not a tithe as great as those of many of the princes of our ancient English nobility, who could not speak a word of our language, and whom we chose to represent as a sort ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was young, the Flemings were the great merchants of Western Europe; but these worthies were notorious, when furnishing their accounts current, for always having the balance at the right side (for themselves), and hence arose the term. I am not at this moment able to say where this information is to be had, but have ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... Calcutta she was thrown on her beam ends and Peter, perhaps dumping garbage over the rail, took a header. Among the things tossed to him as he floated away was a sail-boom on which he was swiftly carried out of sight by the turbid current. All on board concluded that Peter Jackson had been eaten by sharks or crocodiles and it was so reported when they arrived home. An administrator was appointed for his goods and chattels and he was officially deceased in the eyes of the ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... particular occasion; and this partly perhaps from being desirous [pardon me, my dear!] to be thought mistress of a sagacity that is aforehand with events. But who would wish to drain off or dry up a refreshing current, because it now-and-then puts us to some little inconvenience by its over-flowings? In other words, who would not allow for the liveliness of a spirit which for one painful sensibility gives an hundred pleasurable ones; and the one in ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... minutes between the movement of the equatorial stream, and that of the northern and southern currents. But what is more curious still is that the velocity of one and the same stream is subject to certain fluctuations; thus, in the last quarter of a century, the speed of the equatorial current has progressively diminished. In 1879, the velocity was 9 hours, 49 minutes, 59 seconds, and now it is, as we have already seen, 9 hours, 50 minutes, 29 seconds, which represents a substantial reduction. The rotation ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... proceeding of Joash did not well suit the ideas of an autonomous hierocracy. According to the Law the current money dues fell to the priests; no king had the right to take them away and dispose of them at his pleasure. How was it possible that Jehoiada should waive his divine right and suffer such a sacrilegious invasion ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... taking the master's hand in a firm grip. "I wonder if you know what a black-snake whip is, or a cattle-adder? Well, they're both painful and convincing. As director of morals in the camp I have just left behind me, it was my official duty on frequent occasions to see to it that current offenders had from fifteen to fifty applications of the black-snake in a public sort of way. The black-snake, I may explain, could be wielded by a strong but unskilled arm. It was different, however, with the cattle-adder. That had ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... nine of the clock when Patsy and Stair stood on the shore of the Isle Rathan of many famous exploits, and watched the lugger with its cargo of three go dancing out on the full current of the Solway ebb. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... seen, as I daresay have others, that when a small object is thrown on the ground beyond the reach of one of the elephants in the Zoological Gardens, he blows through his trunk on the ground beyond the object, so that the current reflected on all sides may drive the object within his reach. Again a well-known ethnologist, Mr. Westropp, informs me that he observed in Vienna a bear deliberately making with his paw a current in some water, which was close to ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... an account current with the agents of the Hawk. Indeed, take it altogether, it is but a poor adventure. I shall endeavour the settlement of your account with Friend ——-, and remit you. In the meantime, it will not be amiss to send me an account of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... unbounded dominion." And now having extracted, to the best of our ability, the plums from the pudding of Mr Paton's gastronomic circuit of Servia, in which, (as he cordially admits,) "by inter-larding my discourse with sundry apophthegms of Bacon, and stale paradoxes of Rochefaucault, I passed current considerably above my real value," we shall here leave him to find his way by the beaten track through Semendria, Belgrade, and Vienna, to England. But before proceeding to the consideration of the "Servian Question," a point scarcely touched on in the volume before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... have some of the bright blue blossoms "to braid in her bonny brown hair," the gallant knight at once dashed in the stream to gratify her wishes. He secured a bunch of the flowers; but, on turning to regain the shore, the current overcame him; and, as the ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... this innate pith and power are just the very thing we most admire in men, for it is the one gift which the gods have dealt out to us with a less liberal hand than to men. Life indeed generally dams its overflowing current, but I doubt whether this will be the case with the stormy torrent of his energy; at any rate men such as he is rush swiftly onwards, and are strong to the end, which sooner or later is sure to overtake them; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... their behalf? Where the eye so perfectly theologic, so sharp, piercing, and free of that film called prejudice, as to see which of our religions is the genuine article? All are agreed as to the genuineness of current money. All are at 'daggers drawn' as to the genuineness of any one religion. That Christianity is true no Christian denies, but which is the true Christianity has not and we think cannot ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... not why it is not as much the duty of your sex as of mine to establish newspapers, write books and hold public meetings for the promotion of the cause of temperance. The current idea that modesty should hold women back from such services is nonsense and wickedness. Female modesty! female delicacy! I would that I might never again hear such phrases. There is but one standard of modesty and delicacy for both ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of experiments introduced the factor of variation in intensity of stimulation. By the introduction of a loop in the circuit, containing a rheostat, two strengths of current and consequently of stimulus intensity were obtained, either of which could be employed as desired. One intensity, designated as W, was just strong enough to be perceived distinctly. The other intensity, designated as S, was ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... According to Dr. Wallich, they may flourish in those spaces where they derive nutriment from organic and other matter, brought from the south by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, and they may be absent where the effects of that great current are not felt. Now, in several of the spaces where the calcareous Rhizopods are wanting, certain microscopic plants, called Diatomaceae, above-mentioned (Figures 233-235), the solid parts of which are siliceous, monopolise ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... gives a meal to a hungry beggar, or cheers him by a kindly word, will receive the result of his good action as part of a kind of general fund of Nature's benefits; but one who by some good action changes the whole current of another man's life will assuredly have to meet that same man again in a future life, in order that he who has been benefited may have the opportunity of repaying the kindness that has been done to him. ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... on which the ships had been wrecked was a snare of sorts—first by the whim of nature when wind and current piled up the trading ships there. Then, Ross was startled when Loketh elaborated on a ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... first-born, the blooming, ringlet-covered girl described, still rang in his ears, when his gondolier landed him beneath the bridge of the Rialto. Here he masked, and drawing his cloak about him, he moved with the current towards the square of St. Mark, by means of the narrow streets. Once in the crowd there was little danger of impertinent observation. Disguise was as often useful to the oligarchy of Venice as it was absolutely necessary to elude its ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... glad of anything which could interest her a little. For the moment she had not yet the courage to begin to write again after Reanda's message. Anything which had power to turn the current of her thoughts was a relief. She was sitting in the same chair beside the cradle in which she had sat in the morning, for she had called Nanna to move the box at a time when the child had been taken out ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... great-grandson, and announces in a kind of preamble that the testator was a native of Donegal; his Christian name was William ("Notes and Queries," Fourth Series, vol. vii. p. 219, and Fifth Series, August, 1874). This, of course, quite settles the question; but the legend is still current among American descendants of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "Art thou a thief?" "No," replied Ali; "Then what dost thou in the well?" asked the Emir; and Ali answered, "I was asleep and dreamt a wet dream;[FN233] so I went down to the Tigris to wash myself and dived, whereupon the current carried me under the earth and I came up in this well." Quoth the other, "Tell the truth."[FN234] So Ali told him all that had befallen him, and the Emir gave him an old gown and let him go. He returned to Calamity Ahmad's lodging and related to him ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... the time we bore up, and parted company with the Firebrand, until day—dawn next morning, we had run I30 miles or thereby to the northward and westward, and were then on the edge of the Great Bahama Bank. The breeze now failed us, and we lay roasting in the sun until mid—day, the current sweeping us to the northward, and still farther on to the bank, until the water shoaled to three fathoms. At this time the sun was blazing fiercely right overhead; and from the shallowness of the water, there was not the smallest swell, or undulation of the surface. The ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... are the colossal limestone figures of the fertility-god Min found at Koptos, dating to the first dynasty, perhaps B.C. 5500.[692] But similar figures are found at every period of Egyptian history, and a legend was current at the time of Plutarch to account for this usage as well as for the festival of the Phallephoria.[693] Unless the phallus itself were the object of adoration there would be no reason to carry it in procession as a religious ceremony, and it is easily understandable that ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... fatigue: the scene, the nature of my employment; the rugged speech and faces of my fellow-toilers, the glare of the day on deck, the stinking twilight in the bilge, the shrill myriads of the ocean-fowl: above all, the sense of our immitigable isolation from the world and from the current epoch;—keeping another time, some eras old; the new day heralded by no daily paper, only by the rising sun; and the State, the churches, the peopled empires, war, and the rumours of war, and the voices of the arts, all gone silent as in ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... sufficient resting-place for his curiosity. The myths of Paganism are as dead as Osiris or Zeus, and the man who should revive them, in opposition to the knowledge of our time, would be justly laughed to scorn; but the coeval imaginations current among the rude inhabitants of Palestine, recorded by writers whose very name and age are admitted by every scholar to be unknown, have unfortunately not yet shared their fate, but, even at this day, are regarded by ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... inward wound, life, energy, and vigor slowly bleed away, and the persons, never owning even to themselves the weight of the pressure,—standing, to all appearance, fair and cheerful, are still undermined with a secret wear of this inner current, and ready to fall with the ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... utterly certain, and passive. The immediate fruit of it was that she regarded all human creatures with a lively interest, an interest too absorbing to allow of hatred or even active dislike. Her love for Martin was now like a strong current in her soul washing away all sense of irritation and anger. She regarded people from a new angle. What were they all about? What were they thinking? Had they too had some experience as marvellous as her meeting with and ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole |
