"Equinox" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Year. Beginning with the Vernal Equinox, it must be remembered; and (howsoever the old Solar Year is practically superseded by the clumsy Lunar Year that dates from the Mohammedan Hijra) still commemorated by a Festival that is said to have been appointed by the very Jamshyd whom Omar so often talks of, ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... twenty-four sail of merchant ships and transports, we had no hopes of getting out of the channel with so large a fleet, without the continuance of a fair wind for a considerable time, and this was what we had every day less and less reason to expect, as the time of the equinox drew near; wherefore our golden dreams and ideal possession of the Peruvian treasures grew every day more faint, and the difficulties and dangers of the passage round Cape Horn, in the winter season, filled our imaginations in their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Scilly. It is thought, I find here (whither I came to-day), that the great object is our Jamaica fleet; but that a detachment is gone to Ireland to do what mischief they can on the coast before our ally, the Equinox, will beseech them to retire. Much less force than this Armada would have done more harm two years ago, when they left a card at Plymouth, than this can do; as Plymouth is now very strong, and that there are great disciplined armies now in both islands. Of Gibraltar we have no apprehensions.[1] ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... seasons observed. Taking, indeed, a broad view of festivals throughout the world, we may say that there are four seasons when they are held: the winter solstice, when the days begin to lengthen and primitive man rejoices in the lengthening and seeks to assist it;[130] the vernal equinox, the period of germination and the return of life; the summer solstice, when the sun reaches its height; and autumn, the period of fruition, of thankfulness, and of repose. But it is rarely that we find a people seriously celebrating more than ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ingenious device is resorted to, to attract customers and render them attractive. This custom is probably derived from the East, where the egg is the symbol of the primitive state of the world and of the creation of things. The new year formerly began at the spring equinox, at about Easter; and at that period of the renewal of Nature, a festival was celebrated in the new moon of the month Phamenoth, in honor of Osiris, when painted and gilded eggs were exchanged as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... too became very severe, so that they were enveloped in all kinds of toil and danger to no purpose (forasmuch as it was now past the autumnal equinox, and the snow, which had already fallen in those regions, covered the mountains and the plains), and so, instead of proceeding, Julian undertook a ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the instruction at St. Denis and the consecration at Chartres were followed on the day of the vernal equinox by a third and most ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... great importance of the event a line is drawn across the tablet although no interruption takes place in the official order of the Eponymes. Here then we have notice of a solar eclipse which was visible at Nineveh which occurred within 90 days of the (vernal) equinox (taking that as the normal commencement of the year) and which we may presume to have been total from the prominence given to the record, and these are conditions which during a century before and after the era of ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... human affairs that they determined to have a new chronology. Accordingly a commission of scientists was appointed to formulate a system, which was adopted in October 1793. The "Era of the Republic" was to be counted from the autumnal equinox, 1792. The year was divided into twelve months, as before, but they were renamed (Thermidor hot month, Fructidor fruit month, Nivose snow month, &c.), and ran in periods of thirty days each from the 22d of September. This left five days undistributed, which ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... some apocryphal details, are added. Thus the Clementine writer calls John a 'Hemerobaptist,' i.e., member of a sect which practised daily baptism. He talks about a rumour which became current in the reign of Tiberius, about the 'vernal equinox,' that at the same time a King should arise in Judaea who should work miracles, making the blind to see, the lame to walk, healing every disease, including leprosy, and raising the dead; in the incident of the Canaanite woman (whom, with Mark, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... show thyself to the world." Jesus, suspecting some treachery, at first refused; but when the caravan of pilgrims had set out, he started on the journey, unknown to every one, and almost alone.[4] It was the last farewell which he bade to Galilee. The feast of Tabernacles fell at the autumnal equinox. Six months still had to elapse before the fatal denouement. But during this interval, Jesus saw no more his beloved provinces of the north. The pleasant days had passed away; he must now traverse, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... who regarded Sacsahuaman essentially as a fortress. It may be that Sacsahuaman was once used as a place where the votaries of the sun gathered at the end of the rainy season to celebrate the vernal equinox, and at the summer solstice to pray for the sun's return from his "farthest north." In any case I believe that the enormous cost of its construction shows that it was probably intended for religious rather than military purposes. It is ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... veil which he had hitherto used. An account was brought that the infant sovereign of Persia had died at Ispahan, and consequently that the throne was vacant. It has always been the usage of the kings of Persia to observe the Nuroze, or vernal equinox, as a great festival; and on it all the chief officers, civil and military, of the government appear at court. Nadir issued an order that not only these, but every person of rank and consideration in the kingdom, should meet him on the day of that festival, on the plains of Chowal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... not get beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her—but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. There is here some odd secret of Nature. I cannot speak of politics; we wait and wonder. It seems (this is partly a guess) Ide won't take ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poor, perhaps fortunately, have little time for mourning. As the first hint of the long winter came in on the September's equinox, poor Sara had to rouse herself, and she began to look about her with despairing eyes. Friends, so far, had been most kind, and the little family had never actually suffered; but now that the few summer resources for picking up an occasional ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... It was about the equinox, if I remember rightly—the springtime, when everything is lovely and lovable: the camp flowers all in bloom, the aroma of the trees burdening the air with delicious perfume, the fresh verdure and plenty of grass, the powerful, stout-hearted bounding ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... month later and September was drawing to an end. The weather was beautiful, but the foliage in the park began to show a great deal of read and yellow and since the equinox, which had brought three stormy days, the leaves lay scattered in every direction. In the circular plot a slight change had been made. The sundial was gone and in the place where it had stood there lay since yesterday a white marble slab with ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... social life. Churches were too small to contain the immense throngs of fearful penitents: legacies and donations from conscience-stricken worshippers poured wealth into their treasuries. But once the awe-inspiring night of the vernal equinox that began the year 1000 had passed, and the bright March sun rose again on the fair earth, unconsumed by the wrath of God, the old world "seemed to thrill with new life; the earth cast off her outworn ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... lily, twelve ounces of the pollen of the autumn hibiscus flower, and twelve ounces of the white plum in bloom in the winter. You take the four kinds of pollen, and put them in the sun, on the very day of the vernal equinox of the succeeding year to get dry, and then you mix them with the powder and pound them well together. You again want twelve mace of water, fallen on ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... style will fall on the other divisions, each at its proper time. The divisions must be marked on both sides of the dial, because the sun will shine on opposite sides in the summer and in the winter months, changing at each equinox. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... something had gone wrong with the old party's eyes—amanuensis of the equinox, or something; he couldn't see well, but he was no more ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... hard thunder-storm last night. The last few days have begun the vernal equinox. It rained torrents all night and stopped at dawn. The wind was northeast and cool. Cloudy overhead, with purple horizon all around—a forbidding day. But we decided to go fishing, anyhow. We had new, delicate three-six ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... weeks, during which time we could bear no sail, and were driven into the latitude of 57 deg. S. On the 15th September, the moon was eclipsed, beginning to be darkened immediately after sun-set, about six in the evening, being then the vernal equinox in this southern hemisphere. This eclipse happened in England on the 16th before one in the morning, which is about six hours difference, agreeing to one quarter of the circumference of the globe, from the meridian of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... hundred years before, Freighted deep with its goodly store, In the gales of the equinox ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Christ. One of the learned men of our day, who for fifty years labored to decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancients, found upon a mummy-case in the British Museum a delineation of the signs of the zodiac, and the position of the planets; the date to which they pointed was the autumnal equinox of the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell, to whom the fact was communicated, employed his assistants to ascertain the exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system on the equinox of that year. This ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the ritual is evidence to the truth of these explanations. The rites are performed about the Vernal Equinox, when the fruits of the earth are ceasing to be produced, and day is becoming longer than night, which applies well to Spirits rising higher. (At least, the other equinox is in mythology the time of the Rape of Kore, which is the descent of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... of this sort, as the middle trench is directed considerably to the north of the east point, and not far from the direction in which the sun would rise when about thirty degrees (a favourite angle with the pyramid architects) past the vernal equinox. But I lay no stress on this point. The meridian line obtained from the underground passage would have given the builders so ready a means of determining accurately the east and west lines for the north and south edges of the pyramid's base, that any other observations for this purpose ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... him from blame. The reasons given were avowedly based on the representations of the suppliant himself: first, that Duteil, the inspector, had given him permission to sail for Corsica in time to avoid the equinox, a distorted truth; and, second, that the Corsican authorities had certified to his civism, his good conduct, and his constant presence at home during his irregular absence from the army, a truthful statement, but incomplete, since no mention was made of the disgraceful Easter riots at Ajaccio ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... counted as a leap year. It is fortunate that the difference is one of eleven days, for as that is the number which is added every year to the epact our epacts are almost the same. As to the celebration of Easter, that is a different question. Your equinox is on March the 21st, ours on the 10th, and the astronomers say we are both wrong; sometimes it is we who are wrong and sometimes you, as the equinox varies. You know you are not even in agreement ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... say that Jerusalem is in the midst of the world. And that may men prove, and shew there by a spear, that is pight into the earth, upon the hour of midday, when it is equinox, that sheweth no shadow on no side. And that it should be in the midst of the world, David witnesseth it in the Psalter, where he saith, DEUS OPERATUS EST SALUTEM IN MEDIA TERRAE. Then, they, that ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... as to the beginning of the year. One is, that the year begins at the conjunction of the sun and the moon which occurs nearest to the vernal equinox. Thus this month is called the first by Moses in Exodus. If the flood set in on the seventeenth day of the second month, it must have continued almost to the end of April, the most beautiful season of the year, when the earth seemingly gathers new strength, when the birds sing and the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... spirits into it as possible. And so it happened at length that, having won over one and another, he, in the year 1641, prevailed on me also by great entreaties to go to him. My people having consented to the journey, I came to London on the very day of the autumnal equinox [Sept. 22, 1641], and there at last learnt that I had been invited by the order of the Parliament. But, as the Parliament, the King having then gone to Scotland [Aug. 10], was dismissed for a three months' recess [not quite three months, but from Sept. 9 to Oct. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... point in this system of chronological computation, based upon the ages of the patriarchs, was the great length of life to which those worthies attained. It was generally supposed that before the Flood "there was a perpetual equinox," and no vicissitudes in Nature. After that event the standard of life diminished one-half, and in the time of the Psalmist it had sunk to seventy years, at which it still remains. Austerities of climate were ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the sugar harvest. It is the sequel of the bitter frost; a sap-run is the sweet good-by of winter. It denotes a certain equipoise of the season; the heat of the day fully balances the frost of the night. In New York and New England, the time of the sap hovers about the vernal equinox, beginning a week or ten days before, and continuing a week or ten days after. As the days and nights get equal, the heat and cold get equal, and the sap mounts. A day that brings the bees out of the hive will bring the sap out of the maple-tree. It is the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... signs. Taken in conjunction with the eruption of tops and marbles among the small boys, and the purchase of fishing-tackle and golf-clubs by the old boys, they certify us that the vernal equinox has arrived, not only in the celestial regions, but also ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... Arachosian plateau. In Kabul the snow lies for two or three months; the people seldom leave their houses, and sleep close to stoves. At Ghazni the snow has been known to lie long beyond the vernal equinox; the thermometer sinks to 10 deg. and 15 deg. below zero (Fahr.); and tradition relates the entire destruction of the population of Ghazni by snowstorms more ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the Atlantic The gigantic Storm-wind of the equinox, Landward in his wrath he scourges The toiling surges, Laden with seaweed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... why, any more than Dr. Johnson told what he did with the orange-peel,—but probably with reference to this virtue. He was as much to be depended upon at the appointed time as the solstice or the equinox. There was another point I have heard him speak of as an important rule with him; to come at the hour when he was expected; if he had made his visit for several days successively at ten o'clock, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 1832, we thought nature had granted scarcely a living creature to this sandy and dry country. By digging, however, in the ground, several insects, large spiders, and lizards were found in a half-torpid state. On the 15th, a few animals began to appear, and by the 18th (three days from the equinox), everything announced the commencement of spring. The plains were ornamented by the flowers of a pink wood-sorrel, wild peas, oenotherae, and geraniums; and the birds began to lay their eggs. Numerous Lamellicorn and Heteromerous insects, the latter remarkable for their deeply sculptured ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Christmas-time, which begin and end their lawless commercial life within the week. In Vienna, in Leipsic, and other cities, the same waste-weir of irregular trade is periodically opened. These fairs begin in Madrid with the autumnal equinox, and continue for some weeks in October. They disappear from the Alcala to break out with renewed virulence in the avenue of Atocha, and girdle the city at last with a belt of booths. While they last they give great animation and spirit to the street life of the town. You can scarcely make ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... women seem alike to love to have their counsels taken; and the equinox being now gone by, Mrs. Busk was ready to begin before the tardy sun was up, who begins to give you short measure at once when he finds the weights go against him. Mrs. Busk considered not the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... some of the elements of the motions of the sun and moon, and discovered the Precession of the Equinoxes, from the Alexandrian observations which showed that each year as the sun came to cross the equator at the vernal equinox it did so at a point about fifty seconds of arc earlier on the ecliptic, thus producing in 150 years an unmistakable change of a couple of degrees, or four times the sun's diameter. He also invented ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... 25th December. (1) He was born of a Virgin. (2) He traveled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. He slew the Bull (symbol of the gross Earth which the sunlight fructifies). His great festivals were the winter solstice and the Spring equinox (Christmas and Easter). He had twelve companions or disciples (the twelve months). He was buried in a tomb, from which however he rose again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings. He was called Savior and Mediator, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... field-clubs—out in pursuit of weeds, of stone-cracking, and the desecration of those old heathen burying barrows on Stone Horse Head quieted off for the time being. Deadham, meanwhile, in act of repossessing its soul in peace and hibernating according to time-honoured habit until the vernal equinox. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... said, looking from one to the other and putting on his cap. "See you later, Miss Jane. Morgan's back ag'in to work, thanks to you, doctor. That was a pretty bad sprain he had—he's all right now, though; went on practice yesterday. I'm glad of it—equinox is comin' on and we can't spare a man, or half a one, these days. May be blowin' a livin' gale 'fore the week's out. Good-by, Miss Jane; good-by, doctor." And he shut the door ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and north to a vast extent of ocean, and is cooled in the summer by perpetual ventilation, but by the same blasts is kept warm in winter. Their weather is not pleasing. Half the year is deluged with rain. From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, a dry day is hardly known, except when the showers are suspended by a tempest. Under such skies can be expected no great exuberance of vegetation. Their winter overtakes their summer, and their harvest lies upon the ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... Stars upon every day. And when by the Sun's Meridional Altitudes they had found the Solstices and Equinoxes according to the Sun's mean motion, his Equation being not yet known, they fixed the beginning of this year to the Vernal Equinox, and in memory thereof erected this monument. Now this year being carried into Chaldaea, the Chaldaeans began their year of Nabonassar on the same Thoth with the Egyptians, and made it of the same length. And the Thoth of the first year of Nabonassar fell upon the ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... certain Euthalius, at about the spring equinox, came to Taracina from Byzantium with the money which the emperor owed the soldiers. And fearing lest the enemy should come upon him on the road and both rob him of the money and kill him, he wrote to Belisarius requesting him to make the journey to Rome safe for him. Belisarius ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... The wind is "a cordial of incredible virtue" (Emerson)—sharp and chill, but with a milder tincture. To-day, though brisk and snell on the streets, the sunshine had a lively vigour, a generous quality, a promissory note of the equinox. I felt it from first rising this morning—the old demiurge at work! As I sat in the bathtub (when a man is fifty he may be pardoned for taking a warm bath on winter mornings) my mind fell upon the desire of wandering: it occurred ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... Words:: heliography, heliometry, solar, solstice, solarize, anthelion, parhelion, halo, heliocentric, actinometer, actinometry, heliacal, heliograph, equinox, astronomy, astronomer, photosphere, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... explanation from science. It could not have been due to a solar eclipse, as has been suggested in ignorance, for the time was that of full moon; indeed the Passover season was determined by the first occurrence of full moon after the spring equinox. The darkness was brought about by miraculous operation of natural laws directed by divine power. It was a fitting sign of the earth's deep mourning over the impending death of her Creator.[1322] Of the mortal agony through which ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... ports—Foochow, Amoy, and Ningpo. I have a line from Oliphant, who took up my letter to Shanghae, and made a quick though rough passage. We shall be a good deal longer on the way, and my captain advises me to be off, to anticipate the equinox. I have just written a despatch to Lord Clarendon, to tell him that perhaps I may go direct from Shanghae to Japan, and so home. It is almost too good a prospect ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... the treatise De Astrologia, attributed to Lucian, which says that the Golden Lamb is the constellation Aries, "The Ram." Hugo Winckler (Weltanschauung des alten Orients, pp. 30, 31) suggests that the story is a piece of Babylonian astronomy misunderstood. It seems that the vernal equinox, which is now moving from the Ram into the Fish, was in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. moving from the Bull into the Ram. Now the Bull, Marduk, was the special god of Babylon, and the time when he yielded his place to the Ram was also, as a matter ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... attracted attention. In 1829 the process was much the same: I had an assistant, Mr Baldrey. In 1830 still the same, with the additions:—that I formally gave the corrections of relative right-ascension of fundamental stars (without alteration of equinox, which I had not the means of obtaining) to be used in the year 1831; and that I reduced completely the observed occultations (with a small error, subsequently corrected). In 1831 the system of correction of broken transits was improved: the errors of assumed ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... astronomically, by a process in which sun-worship and moon-worship are both conciliated. The starting point is the vernal equinox, which was the time of a common Pagan festival. The very name of Easter is of heathen origin. All its customs are bequeathed to us from far-off Pagan ancestors. Easter eggs, symbolising the life of the universe, have been traced back ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Roman Republic. The Persians hold that this tint was introduced by Kay Kawus (B. C. 600) when mourning for his son Siyawush. It was continued till the death of Husayn on the 10th of Muharram (the first month, then representing the vernal equinox) when it was changed for black. As a rule Moslems do not adopt this symbol of sorrow (called "Hidad") looking upon the practice as somewhat idolatrous and foreign to Arab manners. In Egypt and especially on the Upper Nile women ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the Griffin, "I never eat between the equinoxes. At the vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a good meal, and that lasts me for half a year. I am extremely regular in my habits, and do not think it healthful to eat at odd times. But if you need food, go and get it, and I will return to the soft grass where I slept last night and take ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... COUSINE," "PRINCESSE ET SOEUR:"—but Bernis, I suppose, looks into the practical difficulties; which are probably very considerable, to the Official French eye, in the present state of Europe and of the public mind. From September 22d, or autumnal equinox, 1755, onward to this Britannic-Prussian phenomenon of January, 1756, the Pompadour Conclave has been sitting,—difficulties, no doubt, considerable. I will give only the dates, having myself no interest in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... Wiggin could not keep the shadow of the vernal equinox off the simple heart of the junior Tutt. She had seen it coming for several weeks, had scented danger in the way Tutt's childish eye had lingered upon Miss Sondheim's tumultous black hair and in the rather rakish, familiar way he had guided the ladies who came to get divorces out to ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... calculations the six hours were taken as six complete hours, and not six hours wanting some minutes. And the aggregate miscalculation continued until the minutes added yearly, amounted to ten days and changed the date of the spring equinox. Pope Gregory XIII. (1572-1585) sought to remedy the error. He re-established the spring equinox to the place fixed by the Council of Nice (787). The year had fallen ten days in arrear from the holding ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... of this terrible wind, which blows in the Mexican Gulf, from the autumnal to the vernal equinox, are known not only to the sailors, but to all those who have lived some time in this city. The variation in the barometer is the surest sign. A land breeze from the north-west first blows gently, then varies to the north-east, then changes to the south. The heat is then suffocating ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... autumnal equinox verges on, the mornings and evenings get cooler in relation to the mid-day heat; and about the equinox, the difference in the temperature of mid-day and midnight is at its maximum. We have therefore a powerful sedative effect in the morning, which braces ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... degree of the ram, the balance, or of sagitarius, is no longer the first sign, which gives fruitfulness to the flocks, inspires men with a love of justice, or forms the hero. It has been found that all the celestial signs have, by degrees, receded from the vernal equinox, and drawn back to the East: notwithstanding this, the point of the zodiac that cuts the equator is still called the first degree of the ram, though the first star of the ram be thirty degrees beyond ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... execution of the chief conspirators, a general muster of the army was held; and it was observed that the ranks of the English battalions looked thin. From the first day of the campaign, there had been much sickness among the recruits: but it was not till the time of the equinox that the mortality became alarming. The autumnal rains of Ireland are usually heavy; and this year they were heavier than usual. The whole country was deluged; and the Duke's camp became a marsh. The Enniskillen men were seasoned to the climate. The Dutch ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Autumnal Equinox, one of the two great festival days (the other being the New Year) of the Persians. See my "Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night," Vol. IV. ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... art thou about to rush away over the mountains? At the autumnal equinox a wild boar wounded thee! Thou art dead, and the fountains weep and the trees droop, and the winter wind is ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... September; and at that time a quiet passage is likely, unless you are so unlucky as to encounter one of the cyclones which frequently attend the break-up of the season at this transition period. There is a tendency nowadays to discredit the equinox as a storm-breeder. As regards the particular day, doubtless recognition of a general fact may have lapsed into superstition as to a date; but in considering the phenomena of the monsoons, the great fixed currents of air blowing alternately to or from the heated or cooled continent of Asia, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... vegetable cellar; oats cradled; corn husked; the buckwheat ready for the mill; even Tom's crooked furrows for the spring sowings made. Somehow, Maw helping like a man and Tom obeying like a docile child, they took toll of their summer. And suddenly September was at their heels—and then the equinox. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... voice. May 9th usually is cold and rainy. The latter part of May and nearly all June, rose cold or June cold is prevalent. About August 1st come the dog days and hay fever. In fact, from August 1st until the autumnal equinox is an anxious time for the singer. From November 11th-25th there is apt to be alternate cold and warm weather conducive ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... attached; but the preferment was so clearly to his advantage, that I could take no other course. The vessel being ready, she sailed the day after Talcott joined her; and, sorry am I to be compelled to add, that she was never heard of, after clearing the Cattegat. The equinox of that season was tremendously severe, and it caused the loss of many vessels; that of the Hyperion ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... becoming the consort of a nature myth connected with the Moon Jurgen had of course exposed himself to the danger of being converted into a solar legend by the Philologists, and in that event would be compelled to leave Cocaigne with the Equinox, to enter into autumnal exploits elsewhere. And Anaitis was quite heart-broken over the ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... clouds that have passed yesterday to the south of us, I think a shower of rain may have fallen there; I ought not to allow the chance of it to escape, as it is likely to be my only one until the equinox, and I have not provisions sufficient to remain until that time, so I must push the horses as far as they will go, and then we must walk the rest, which is a very black prospect, considering the weak state we all are in. Proceeded ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... practices perpetuated themselves in the adoration of local saints. On the other hand as soon as Christianity became a moral power in {xviii} the world, it imposed itself even on its enemies. The Phrygian priests of the Great Mother openly opposed their celebration of the vernal equinox to the Christian Easter, and attributed to the blood shed in the taurobolium the redemptive power of the blood of the ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... cause, the tendency to suicide should be as great at the time of the fall equinox as it is at the time of the spring equinox; but this is not the case. Two hundred and seventy-two suicides out of every thousand occur in the vernal equinoctial period and only two hundred and fifteen in the autumnal equinoctial period, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... suddenness of these, utterly surpassing all my experience. One day I have a large fire, and the next, windows and doors open in search of cool air: in the course of the afternoon a change of twenty degrees is a common occurrence. The Indian summer has not yet set in, but when the influence of the equinox is over, we shall have, I hope, a few of those divine days that made last fall ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... out regularly at the winter equinox. But of fifteen hundred men directing their course towards the extreme boundaries of Ethiopia with excellent camels, new leathern bottles, and supplies of painted cloth, but one had reappeared at Carthage—the rest having ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... and proud of it and its condition, may join in congratulating you, gentlemen, on the establishment of this "Southern Society of New York." After the long season of strife and discontent this is one of the many signs which mark the vernal equinox, and foretell the coming summer. I believe, notwithstanding the infinite disasters of the war, the overthrow of slavery, and with it all the industrial system of the South, and the needless loss and the humiliations of reconstruction—I ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the equinox, sagaciously observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of imagination is cramped by attention to established rules, and how this same imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born in throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then. No fairy fingers can ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 10th of March, about the time of the equinox, when we crossed the equator, having had all along from the latitude of 4 degrees 40 minutes north, where the true tradewind left us, a great swell out of the south-east and but small uncertain gales, mostly southerly, so that we ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... is not all. Having arrived at Cadiz, Villeneuve spent a great deal of time repairing his ships; time during which the enemy fleet also returned to Europe, and established a patrolling force off Cadiz. In the end, the coming of the equinox gales having made sailing from this port difficult, Villeneuve found himself blockaded; so the ingenious plans of the Emperor came to nothing, and he, realising that the English would not be taken in a second time, gave up the idea of invading Britain, or at least postponed it indefinitely, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... points at which the Ecliptic and Equinoctial intersect, and when the sun occupies either of these two positions, the days and nights are of equal length. The Vernal Equinox is that one which the sun passes through or intersects in going from S to N declination, and the Autumnal Equinox that which it passes through or intersects in going from N to S declination. The Vernal Equinox (V in the illustration) is also designated ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... month Paoni (March-April), on the day of the vernal equinox, about nine in the evening, when the star Sirius inclined toward its setting, two wayfaring priests and one penitent stopped in the gateway. The penitent, who was barefoot, had ashes on his head, and was covered with a coarse cloth which concealed ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... not the best time for seeing some of the attractions of Belvoir; but Lady Bloomfield has written of her Majesty's proverbial good fortune in these excursions: "The Queen yachts during the equinox, and has the sea a dead calm; visits about in the dead of winter, and has summer weather." There were other respects in which Belvoir was in its glory in midwinter—it belonged to a hunting neighbourhood and a hunting society. Whereas at Drayton and Chatsworth the royal ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... umbrella, but which, after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me next to my gun. As for my face, the color of it was really not so mulatto-like as one might expect from a man not at all careful of it, and living within nine or ten degrees of the equinox. My beard I had once suffered to grow till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but, as I had both scissors and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my upper lip, which I had trimmed into a ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... that the year at the Flood began about the autumnal equinox. As to what day of the month the Flood began, our Hebrew and Samaritan, and perhaps Josephus's own copy, more rightly placed it on the 17th day, instead of the 27th, as here; for Josephus agrees with them, as to the distance ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... by a powerful and healthy population. The results of these events in the moral and political world may be compared to those produced in the vegetable kingdom by the storms and heavy gales so usual at the vernal equinox, the time of the formation of the seed; the pollen or farina of one flower is thrown upon the pistil of another, and the crossing of varieties of plants so essential to the perfection of the vegetable world ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... yet the following observations may be worth attending to, when we endeavour to prevent the returns of maniacal or epileptic diseases; whose periods (at the beginning of them especially) frequently observe the syzygies of the moon and sun, and particularly about the equinox. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... only seven nautical leagues from Cumanacoa. It scarcely ever rains in the first-mentioned place, while in the latter there are seven months of wintry weather. At Cumanacoa, the dry season begins at the winter solstice, and lasts till the vernal equinox. Light showers are frequent in the months of April, May, and June. The dry weather then returns again, and lasts from the summer solstice to the end of August. Then come the real winter rains, which cease only in the month of November, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... there has been no particular storm about the time of the Spring Equinox (March 21st); if a storm arises from the east on or before that day, or if a storm from any point of the compass arise near a week after the Equinox, then in either of these cases the succeeding Summer is generally dry four times in five, but if the storm arises from the S.W. or W.S.W. ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... October At the equinox, Stirred up in his hollow bed Broad ocean rocks; Plunge the ships on his bosom, Leaps and plunges the foam, It's oh! for mothers' sons at sea, That ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... 1816, two days before the vernal equinox, I sailed from Liverpool for Pernambuco, in the southern hemisphere, on the coast of Brazil. There is little at this time of the year, in the European part of the Atlantic, to engage the attention of the naturalist. As you go down the Channel you see ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... Februarii. || Laudes Christo cantentur abunde." Historia, tom. i. p. 225. Now since Bartholomew Columbus was a fairly educated man, writing this note in England on a map made for the eyes of the king of England, I suppose he used the old English style which made the year begin at the vernal equinox instead of Christmas, so that his February, 1488, means the next month but one after December, 1488, i. e. what in our new style becomes February, 1489. Bartholomew returned to Lisbon from Africa in the last ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... and Moon and the planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Venus) were points which restrained the motion of the sky in its revolution. (See Book VI., 576.) (11) Mercury. (See Book IX., 777.) (12) That is, at the autumnal equinox. The priest states that the planet Mercury causes the rise of the Nile. The passage is difficult to follow; but the idea would seem to be that this god, who controlled the rise and fall of the waves of the sea, also when he was placed directly over the Nile caused the rise ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... the blustering winds were again celebrating the return of the equinox, Michael, who had been sleeping heavily all day, suddenly started up and astonished his wife by an eager request that she would send at once for George Hendrick and ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... knowing how to assimilate the ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which was intelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy knack of being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the precession of the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a highly humorous process as ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... countries; thus in Greece it was celebrated in the Spring, the moment of the birth of Vegetation; according to Saint Jerome, in Palestine the celebration fell in June, when plant life was in its first full luxuriance. In Cyprus, at the autumnal equinox, i.e., the beginning of the year in the Syro-Macedonian calendar, the death of Adonis falling on the 23rd of September, his resurrection on the 1st of October, the beginning of a New Year. This would seem ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... the whole diameter of the earth (7900 miles); this is accomplished by taking from the Equator two simultaneous observations of the Sun, at its rising and setting; for when the Sun is setting, at say the Equinox, it is at that moment rising at exactly the other side of the earth; the inclination of the two telescopes, directed to a certain point on the Sun, will now give the distance approximately, though even this base line is ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... first-rate strategic importance, all the other anchorages on the coast being mere open roadsteads. From this circumstance the trade-winds, or monsoons, in this region also had strategic bearing. From the autumnal to the spring equinox the wind blows regularly from the northeast, at times with much violence, throwing a heavy surf upon the beach and making landing difficult; but during the summer months the prevailing wind is southwest, giving comparatively smooth seas and good ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... of the astrologers is that the sky has changed since the rules of the art were established. The sun, which at the equinox was in Aries in the time of the Argonauts, is to-day in Taurus; and the astrologers, to the great ill-fortune of their art, to-day attribute to one house of the sun what belongs visibly to another. However, that is not a demonstrative reason against astrology. The masters of the ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... string of a plumb-line. The sun was bisected by the line of the horizon, and appeared to be moving about them in a circle, with only its upper half visible. As Jupiter's northern hemisphere was passing through its autumnal equinox, they concluded they had ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... on which I was walking, still only approaches its completion; and the desiccated soil has not yet fully defined the boundaries of the river. At spring-tides, particularly when the line of the moon's apsides coincides with the syzygies, or when the ascending node is in the vernal equinox, or after heavy rains, the river still overflows its banks, and indicates its originally extended scite ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... that she would not go to drive with him that morning, though he apologized and humbled himself in every way. He pleaded that it was such a beautiful day, it must be the last they were going to have; it was getting near the equinox, and this must be a weather-breeder. She let him go off alone, for he would not lose the drive, and she watched him out of sight from her upper window with a heavy heart. As soon as he was fairly gone, she wanted to go after him, and she was wild all the forenoon. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... Philippines, whence their course is westward, with a slight divergence to the north or south, the average direction appearing to be west by north. They occur in all months of the year, but the greater number take place about the time of the equinoxes. The most violent ones occur at the autumnal equinox, and on an average, two or three occur every year, and sometimes one follows another at a very short interval. It is believed that when one of these typhoons passes a high latitude in September there will be another in October of that year, and one may be looked ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... winds against our rocks Hurl breakers in a fleecy mass, Like wolves that chase stampeding flocks Over the brink of a crevasse, While thunders down the Alpine pass The deluge of the equinox. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... maiden bosoms to dedicate their sweet young lives to the service of what Esther called "horrible dirty people." At these periods the hospitals are flooded with applications from young girls whom the vernal equinox urges first to be mothers, and, failing motherhood, nurses. Just before she met Henry, Angel had done her best to miss him by frantic endeavours to nurse people whom the hospital doctors decided she was far too slight a thing to lift,—for unless you ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... the ancient Astrologers consecrated the six divisions of the 12,000 year cycle, corresponding to the reproductive months of Spring and Summer, to him as Lord of Good, and symbolizing him by the constellation of the Zodiac in which the Vernal Equinox successively occurred, as explained hereafter, they dedicated the six divisions of that cycle, corresponding to the destructive months of Autumn and Winter, to him as Lord of Evil, and as such, symbolizing him by the serpent, marked the beginning of his reign ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... the brides, were celebrated after the Persian fashion, and during the vernal equinox. For at no other period, by the ancient laws of Persia, could nuptials be legally celebrated. Such an institution is redolent of the poetry and freshness of the new world, and of an attention to the voice of nature, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... to Hannah, even while they were on their knees, that the gale blew with less fury than before. It was, indeed, one of those storms which occasionally, during the equinox, sweep along the coast, and, though brief, cause much damage to vessels caught near the shore, especially to such as are ill-found and ill-manned. So do the trials of life wreck those persons destitute of sound faith and religious principle, while those who are resting on Jesus are carried ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... March 20. Tomorrow, the 21st, was the day of the equinox; the sun would disappear below the horizon for six months not counting refraction, and after its disappearance the long polar night would begin. Following the September equinox, the sun had emerged above the northerly horizon, rising in long spirals until ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... all the fruit, that I have seen, is small. They attempt to sow nothing but oats and barley. Oats constitute the bread-corn of the place. Their harvest is about the beginning of October; and, being so late, is very much subject to disappointments from the rains that follow the equinox. This year has been particularly disastrous. Their rainy season lasts from autumn to spring. They have seldom very hard frosts; nor was it ever known that a lake was covered with ice strong enough to bear a skater. The sea round them is always open. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... bewitching way, as did a pretty but slightly passe French actress under similar embarrassing circumstances. She pleads: "What has a woman to do with dates—cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates—new style, old style, precession of the equinox, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of reference in woman's autobiography. Plutarch sets the example ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... south, thence to descend obliquely towards the west. During the summer months the obliquity of his course diminished, and he came closer to Egypt; during the winter it increased, and he went farther away. This double movement recurred with such regularity from equinox to solstice, and from solstice to equinox, that the day of the god's departure and the day of his return could be confidently predicted. The Egyptians explained this phenomenon according to their conceptions of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... their civil year from the autumnal Equinox, and their sacred year from the vernal: and the first day of the first month was on the visible new moon, which ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... degrees high of bright blue sky, above which the whole firmament was mottled with cirrus. It continued cloudy, with light winds, throughout the day, but clear on the horizon. From this tinge such storms became frequent, ushering in the equinox; and the less hazy sky and rising hygrometer predicted an accession ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... must content me this year, let me conclude with a decent letter of thanks to the friend who sent me, from Devonshire, a box of violet roots that await the spring in a corner which even the waves of the equinox cannot reach:— ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a nod towards the ruin—"nine year an' goin' on for the tenth, when, on a Monday mornin', about this time o' year, I gets out o' bed at five o'clock an' down to the quay to have a look at my boat; for 'twas the fag-end of the Equinox, and ther'd been a 'nation gale blowin' all Sunday and all Sunday night, an' I thought she might have broke loose from ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The equinox has brought with it darkness and Northern storms, and night will quickly close the short and dismal polar day. The sky of a dull and leaden blue is faintly lighted by a sun without warmth, whose white disk, scarcely seen above the horizon, pales before ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... one fine morning, just as the vernal equinox had blown a few ships into harbor, a stranger was announced, and immediately recognized by the master of the house as a 'Don' something—a Spanish merchant, whose kindness to a young member of the family ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Atticum, xi. 6). As to his age, Drumann observes, "He was born B.C. 106, and was consequently 58 years old when he was killed, on the 29th of September, or on the day before his birthday, about the time of the autumnal equinox according to the unreformed calendar." (Lucanus, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Mrs. October, "I think Sister August lets her children romp too much. I always like improving games for mine, although I have great trouble to make Equinox toe ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... epitafo. Epithet epiteto. Epitome resumo. Epitomise mallongigi. Epoch epoko. Equable egala. Equal egala. Equality egaleco. Equalise egaligi. Equally egale. Equation ekvacio. Equator ekvatoro. Equilibrium ekvilibro. Equinox tagnoktegaleco. Equipment (milit.) armilaro. Equitable justa. Equity justeco. Equivalent ekvivalenta. Equivocal dusenca. Era tempokalkulo. Eradicate elradikigi. Erase surstreki. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... The equinox of outraged earth shall blaze And flash its levin on your infamous might. Man cries to fellow-man; light leaps to light, Till foundered, naked, spent, you vanish from ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... measure supplied by each. Their year accordingly was lunisolar, consisting of twelve lunar months, with an intercalation to make the whole agree with the annual course of the sun. The year was further distinguished as being either common or ecclesiastical. The former began at the autumnal equinox, the season at which they imagined the world was created; while the latter, by Divine appointment, commenced about six months earlier, the period when their fathers were delivered from the thraldom of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... the equinox brought no storm with it, and the lighted fires have continued to burn with such fierceness that not only the swamp, but the surrounding country, is in danger ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 51, October 28, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... and the plants, mainly of the Early Paris variety, were set out about the last of June, usually four feet apart each way. They were given good care, and generally began to head in September, at the time of the autumnal equinox, when there is usually a week or two of cool, rainy weather. Following this, early in October, there are generally a few hard frosts which injure some of the heads if they are not kept well covered and closely cut. The main cauliflower ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... him are also sacred priests of the oracle, and high tragedies, and the wailing of music, and streaming processions of virgins and young boys. He too agonised and arose stronger and more shining than before, dying, indeed, and rising at the very vernal equinox we have mentioned. He too is worshipped in certain Mysteries whereat the confession of iniquity and the cleansing of hearts come first: and the sacrifice is just that wheaten cake and fruit of the ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... have forgotten the terrible storm from the northeast, in the middle of the equinox of that year. The tempest raged without intermission from the 18th to the 26th of March. Its ravages were terrible in America, Europe, and Asia, covering a distance of eighteen hundred miles, and extending obliquely to the equator from the thirty-fifth north parallel to the fortieth ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... the date of 25th December, which certainly began in the Roman Church, was fixed upon to avoid the multiplication of festivals about the vernal equinox, and to appropriate to a Christian use the existing festival of the winter solstice—the returning sun being made symbolical of the visit of Christ to our earth; and to withdraw Christian converts from those pagan observances with ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... valley-nurtured— Came to the tideway The jetties, the anchorage, The salt wind piping, Snoring in Equinox, By ships at anchor, By quays tormented, Storm-bitten streets; Came to the Haven Crying, "Ah, shelter us, The strayed ambassadors, Love's lost ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... and Egyptian years appears in the fact that the Babylonian new year dates from about the period of the vernal equinox and not from the solstice. Lockyer associates this with the fact that the periodical inundation of the Tigris and Euphrates occurs about the equinoctial period, whereas, as we have seen, the Nile flood comes at ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... dotted line running upwards to the Spring Equinox of the Earth shows the course taken on the ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... unfortunate, for you must remember that I used to go to your house, with the sacred unscrupulousness of friendship, when you were in prosperity, and when I was struggling against all the winds of heaven, and overtaken by the high tides of the equinox, drowned in debts. I have it now in my power to make the sweet and tender reprisals of gratitude . . . You will have some days' happiness every three months: come more frequently if you will; but you are to come, ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... began gathering their Indian corn about the latter end of this month. The weather during the former and latter part of it was wet. About the time of the equinox, the tides in the cove were observed to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... father all the winter; and when the spring equinox drew near, all the Athenians grew sad and silent, and Theseus saw it, and asked the reason; but no one would answer ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... is true—and the fact seems well attested—that Milton's poetical vein flowed only from the autumnal equinox to the vernal[5], he cannot well have commenced "Paradise Lost" before the death of Cromwell, or have made very great progress with it ere his conception of his duty called him away to questions of ecclesiastical policy. The one point on which he had irreconcilably differed ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... contain a single suggestion for the equality of woman with man. Yet it is claimed that women owe their advancement to the Bible. It would be quite as true to say that they owe their improved condition to the almanac or to the vernal equinox. Under Bible influence woman has been burned as a witch, sold in the shambles, reduced to a drudge and a pauper, and silenced and subjected before her ecclesiastical and marital law-givers. "She was first in the transgression, therefore keep her in subjection." These words of Paul have ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of the religious feasts among the Indians, is a good historical proof that they counted time by and observed a weekly Sabbath, long after their arrival in America. They began the year at the appearance of the first new moon of the vernal equinox, according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses. 'Till the seventy years captivity [19] commenced, the Israelites had only numeral names for their months, except Abib and Ethanim; the former signifying a green ear of corn, the latter robust or ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... in drawing up contracts the interests of both employer and contractor may be wisely safe-guarded. For if a contract is skilfully drawn, each may obtain a release from the other without disadvantage. From astronomy we find the east, west, south, and north, as well as the theory of the heavens, the equinox, solstice, and courses of the stars. If one has no knowledge of these matters, he will not be able to have any comprehension of the ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... yesterday,—as we are used to do at least once or twice every year, for the sake of our ever-mellowing friendship, and those good old times in which it began. Like all who are ripe enough to have memories, we delight to recall the period of our vernal equinox, and to moralize, with gentle sadness and many wise wags of our frosty polls, upon the events in which that period was prolific; and so, when the cloth was removed yesterday, and we sat toying with our cigars and our Sherry, our talk insensibly drifted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... get far to-day,' said Davies, with philosophy. 'And this sort of thing may go on for any time. It's a regular autumn anti-cyclone—glass thirty point five and steady. That gale was the last of a stormy equinox.' ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Ned, and Things on Earth, and Things under the Earth. The old Story, whereof you have alreadie seen many Parcels; but, you know, my Vein ne'er flows so happily as from the autumnal to the vernal Equinox. Howbeit, there is Something in the Quality of this Air would arouse the old Man ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Trust me to do the fine work in a case like this. Sow the right kind of seeds and you'll get results every time. I merely dropped a few hints, that's all,—and in the right direction, believe me. Count Equinox will do the rest. I'll bet my head we'll have this ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... this same state we won't describe: we would Perhaps from hearsay, or from recollection: But getting nigh grim Dante's "obscure wood,"[539] That horrid equinox, that hateful section Of human years—that half-way house—that rude Hut, whence wise travellers drive with circumspection[jz] Life's sad post-horses o'er the dreary frontier Of Age, and looking back to Youth, give ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... were similar, Adonis being killed, but revived to point to life through death. In the Cabirie Mysteries on the island of Samothrace, Atys the Sun was killed by his brothers the Seasons, and at the vernal equinox was restored to life. So, also, the Druids, as far north as England, taught of one God the tragedy of winter and summer, and conducted the initiate through the valley of ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... was good feed for the horses, and, as it was still raining, they could not be very greatly in want of water. We fixed up our tent and retired for the night, the wind blowing furiously, as might reasonably be expected, for it was the eve of the vernal equinox, and this I supposed was our share of the equinoctial gales. We were compelled in the morning to remove the camp, as we had not a drop of water, and unless it descended in sheets the country could not hold it, being all pure red sand. The hill near us had no rocky ledges ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... his plate a portion of the monstrous turbot, the light odor of the sea evoked in his mind, prone to unexpected suggestions, that corner of Breton, that poor village of sailors, where he had been belated the other autumn until the equinox, and where he had rendered assistance in some dreadful storms. He suddenly called to mind that terrible night when the fishing-boats could not come back to port, the night that he had passed on the mole amid a group of frightened women, standing where the sea-spray streamed down his face, ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... the inhabitants of Crikswich, within and without, the likeness to its most perfect image, together, it must be confessed, with a degree of nervousness that invested common events with some of the terrors of the Last Trump, when one night, just upon the passing of the vernal equinox, something happened. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... glad that you will sail in February. You will thereby escape the winds of March and the tempests of the spring equinox," said ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... embarcation, but at the last moment their inexperience of the sea nearly compromised the success of the expedition. Even if they were not absolutely ignorant of the ebb and flow of the tide, they certainly did not know how dangerous the spring tide could prove at the equinox under the influence of a south wind. The rising tide then comes into conflict with the volume of water brought down by the stream, and in the encounter the banks are broken down, and sometimes large districts are inundated: this is what happened that year, to the terror of the Assyrians. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... reason — better than the Teufelsdrockh of 1830, in his liveliest Scotch imagination, ever dreamed, or mortal man had ever told. At best, a week in these dim Northern seas, without means of speech, within the Arctic circle, at the equinox, lent itself to gravity if not to gloom; but only a week before, breakfasting in the restaurant at Stockholm, his eye had caught, across, the neighboring table, a headline in a Swedish newspaper, announcing an attempt on the life of President McKinley, and from Stockholm to Trondhjem, and so up ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... doubt intended to indicate the vernal equinox as the birthday of Rama. For the month Chaitra is the first of the two months assigned to the spring; it corresponds with the latter half of March and the former half of April in our division of the year. Aditi, the mother of the Gods, is lady ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... set for their attempt was the fourteenth day before the Kalends of April, a few days before the Vernal Equinox. My gorge rose at the idea of the burning and sacking of Nuceria, even at the slaughter of our cruel guards, overseers and superintendent. The more I thought the matter over the less I liked the prospect. I had every reason to hate the dictator ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... more at heart than myself. He told me, with a rueful and prognosticating countenance, that we were fast drawing near to the autumnal equinox, when we should reach the commencement of a natural night of six months' duration; and although the benevolent substitute of steam might certainly in some degree lessen the evil, that it was a furious evil, after all, to exist for a period so weary ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... from which the distance of the sun could be measured at the beginning of the year, the moon being used as a mere pointer for the purpose. At a later date, however, this mode of determining time was abandoned, and the new year was made directly dependent on the vernal equinox. The month was subdivided into weeks of seven days, each of which was consecrated to ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... that's better!" and rising from the open fireplace where she had relighted the candle from the carefully covered embers. It had been so mild until now that only a fragment of fire had been kept upon the hearth, where, however, it was never permitted to wholly die "from equinox to equinox." Fortunately for the comfort of the household, there was woodland sufficient still belonging to the estate to supply all necessary fuel, and in cold weather this impoverished gentlewoman enjoyed her blazing wood fires—a luxury which even wealthy ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... certainly were very unlucky. Another week, only one other week, would have been enough for us. I think if we had had the disposal of events—if Mansfield Park had had the government of the winds just for a week or two, about the equinox, there would have been a difference. Not that we would have endangered his safety by any tremendous weather—but only by a steady contrary wind, or a calm. I think, Miss Price, we would have indulged ourselves with a week's calm in the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... necessary thing I had about me, next to my gun. As for my face, the color of it was really not so mulatto-like as one might expect from a man not at all careful of it, and living within nineteen degrees of the equinox. My beard I had once suffered to grow till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but as I had both scissors and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my upper lip, which I had trimmed ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... It must be remembered that June 22 in the year 303 A.D. would be, as now, close to the longest day, as the alteration of the calendar known as the new style simply made the equinox occur on the same day of the month as in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... Nicomedia, which they wantonly burnt. [117] Some obscure hints are mentioned of a doubtful combat that secured their retreat. [118] But even a complete victory would have been of little moment, as the approach of the autumnal equinox summoned them to hasten their return. To navigate the Euxine before the month of May, or after that of September, is esteemed by the modern Turks the most unquestionable instance of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... cabins. So cold was the wind that it is noted in my diary with surprise, on the 12th of April, that I had worn fur cap, parkee, and muffler all day, as though it had been the dead of winter instead of three weeks past the vernal equinox. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... but they are held to be inferior to their own book. They abstain from garlic, beans, and several kinds of pulse, and likewise most carefully from every description of food between sunrise and sunset during a whole moon before the vernal equinox; in addition to which, an annual festival is kept, called the feast of five days. Much respect is entertained for the city of Mecca, and a still greater reverence for the Pyramids of Egypt, in one of which they believe that their great ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... equator, at which point he arrives on December 21, we have the winter solstice and the shortest days. Intermediate between those two seasons are spring and autumn. When the Sun, on his journey northward, reaches the equator, we have the vernal equinox, and at this period of the year the days and nights are of equal length all over the globe. In a similar manner, when, on his return journey, the Sun is again on the equator, the autumnal equinox occurs. In summer the North Pole is inclined towards the Sun, consequently his rays ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... and mates to discuss what was to be done. They agreed that the contrary winds forbade further exploration. The season was already late; the coast of France was far away; within a few weeks the great gales of the equinox would be upon them. Accordingly the company decided to turn back. Soon the ships were heading along the northern shore of the Gulf, and with the boisterous wind behind them were running rapidly towards the east. They sailed towards the Newfoundland ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... sayings and some apocryphal details are added. Thus the Clementine writer calls John a 'Hemerobaptist,' i.e. member of a sect which practised daily baptism [Endnote 167:1]. He talks about a rumour which became current in the reign of Tiberius about the 'vernal equinox,' that at the same season a king should arise in Judaea who should work miracles, making the blind to see, the lame to walk, healing every disease, including leprosy, and raising the dead; in the incident of the Canaanite woman (whom, with ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... of Thebes; the other of a hawk, the symbol of Horus, holding in its claws a symbol of the universe.[75] It may symbolize by this form, the rising sun and the coming of the Spring sun of the vernal equinox in the zodiacal sign of the ram, but more likely has a much deeper religious meaning.[76] Represented with the head and legs of a man the scarab was an ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... taste of spring was in the air: one of the dentists was having his sign regilded, a huge four-pronged grinder as big as McTeague's in Frank Norris's story. Oysters going out, the new brew of Bock beer coming in: so do the saloons mark the vernal equinox. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... stretched upon the lockers, in that state of despondency which overwhelming sickness induces;—and they have a picture of the Good Intent's cabin and state-room during the voyage to which I refer. Nor was this all. The weather was boisterous, being the vernal equinox; the winds cross and tempestuous; and the waves of the sea so tremendous that the little vessel sunk, and rose, and rolled, as if each succeeding shock were the last ere she sank for ever into the roaring ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various |
