"Quicksilver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... playfully, upon the image of the dog, which had taken, the evening before, such fantastic liberties with my overwrought fancy. But these drops gathered themselves up nimbly into little shining balls, and fled off to the ground like so much quicksilver. I looked out upon the wan pools and marshes, whence a greenish mist steamed up, and seemed to poison the sunlight streaming through it. It is possible that this semblance of an unwholesome mist was not so much the fault of the marshes as a condition of the atmosphere, premonitory ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... care I must trust in your hands—don't forget that I do so trust it. How would you like to cross Quapaw creek on this piece of quicksilver?" ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... pardon, sir," said Gluck at length, after watching the water spreading in long quicksilver-like streams over the floor for a quarter of an hour; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to pierce the intense darkness that was only dispelled by the phosphorescence caused by our movements. I watched the luminous waves that broke over my hand, whose mirror-like surface was spotted with silvery rings. One might have said that we were in a bath of quicksilver. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... a thermometer does, Dan'l. The little bulb at the bottom contains something that's easily swelled by the heat. In a hot climate, quicksilver is used, because it doesn't boil except at a heat much greater than the air ever gets, though it freezes easily; in a cold climate, they use alcohol because it doesn't freeze except at a degree of cold much colder than the atmosphere ever gets, ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... it was; although the only diggings were quarries worked by public mining companies with an immense mass of machinery that crushed the rock and sent streams of water through the refuse, using quicksilver to make an amalgam with—companies that were satisfied to get a grain of gold for every ton of quartz they excavated and pounded into powder, and realised a handsome dividend at that, where ordinary diggers wouldn't have had a chance of keeping ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... been married just six months, after, as he put it, the hardest courtship a man ever undertook. She was more like a piece of quicksilver than a girl. She was as uncertain as a spring wind, as flighty as a ball of thistledown—"Doesn't know her own mind for ten minutes together," he groaned. "Hasn't any mind at all," he'd think an hour later. While, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... my royal exchequer for those islands are so consuming and reducing that account and fund, to such an extent, and with so injurious effect, that it hardly comes in but it must be paid out. Considering that what is carried in exchange for the quicksilver [35] is revenue derived from the same merchandise that was sent, while the receipts from the bulls for the crusade are (as you know) but moderately successful, you are accordingly informed of this in such detail, so that you may understand how assured is the loss that is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... than if they were so many lanterns without reflectors. Some of them he would dash against and push out of their places; others he would burn up and consume to ashes: and others again he would split into fritters, and their fragments would instantly take a globular form, like spilled quicksilver, and become satellites to whatever other worlds they should happen to meet with in their career. In short, the whole seemed an epitome of the creation, past, present, and future; and all that passes among the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... a little," he said. "I simply want to portray the quicksilver of after-war conditions—England in transition." At this time Delancey seemed to me the least little tiny bit depressed. The income he was sacrificing rose (in his conversation) from 5,000 to 7,000 pounds. He dined out less, avoided his club and Christie's. Also, ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... J.P. said:—"They talk of gold and silver mines, and lead and copper mines, and iron and quicksilver mines, but mining in Ireland cannot, as a rule, be made to pay. Everything exists in Ireland, but in such small quantities. The seams and veins are so small. Mr. Ritchie, of Belfast, spent several fortunes in mining for coal, iron, and other things. There was iron at Ballyshannon, but what ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... she laughed. This dragon didn't spout flame but gentle ridicule, which was elusive as quicksilver slipping through ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... body as the expression of the face. What was fantastic and weird fascinated him. At Windsor are designs he made for the construction of an imaginary beast with gigantic claws. He once owned a lizard, and made wings for it with quicksilver inside them, so that they quivered when the lizard crawled. He put a dragon's mask over its head, and the result was ghastly. The tale gives us a side light on this extraordinary personage. When you are led to read more about him you will feel the ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... Already he was able to foresee the small school-boy, whom only a father could properly help and advise in regard to many aspects of the life ahead; already he was looking forward to the time when he could take a hand in the training of Robin. It would be very hard to go away from that little bit of quicksilver, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... quicksilver, gold, and lead, came into common use in the early stages of civilization, all of which added greatly to the arts and industries. Nearly all of the metals were used for money at various times. The aids to trade and commerce which these metals gave on account of their ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... in quest of water. After I had washed my face and hands I filled the kettle from a stream bright and lively as quicksilver (a stream presenting, as the autumn leaves tossed in the eddies which went leaping and singing over the stones, a truly enchanting spectacle), and, returning, and peeping through the bushes, perceived the woman to be crawling on hands and knees over the stones, and anxiously ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... oil, figs, wine, corn, honey, beer, flax, linen, beside mines of copper, silver, gold, quicksilver, tin, lead, and steel. Gaul was so cultivated that there was little waste land, and produced the same fruits and vegetables as at the present day. Its hams and sausages were much prized. Sicily was famous for wheat, Sardinia ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... for the manifold products of the East, Europe had only rough woolen cloth, arsenic, antimony, quicksilver, tin, copper, lead, and coral to give; and a balance, therefore, always existed for the European merchant to pay in gold and silver, with the result that gold and silver coins grew scarce in the West. It is hard to say what would have happened had not a new supply of the precious ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Park, and we will go there. But let us walk near the edge, not too far away from this marvellous city. Never was there a city like New York for life. I'm sure of that. It's as if every living creature had quicksilver in his veins—or her veins. For I never saw such vital women as one sees here anywhere else! Oh, Claude! When you conquer ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... could be felt swarming around, as closely packed as the wheat in the barn or the sand on the seashore. And, although not seen, they spoke all kinds of phantom-words, which were heard right and left, before and behind, above and below, and which penetrated through the pores of the skin like quicksilver passing ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... estimation, to be one of the richest gems in the British diadem. That good payable gold-bearing rock exists there I know beyond question. I also know beyond all doubt that diamonds are to be easily won from the soil, and I am thoroughly cognisant of the fact that at least one, and I believe many, quicksilver mines can be located there. Others who know the country well have told me of coal and tin and silver mines, and samples have been shown to me which made my mouth water. Yet, all this wealth, which nature's generous ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... weather-glass, made the experiment of a long tube which held thirty-two foot of water; and that a more modern virtuoso finding such a machine altogether unwieldly and useless, and considering that thirty-two inches of quicksilver weighed as much as so many foot of water in a tube of the same circumference, invented that sizeable instrument which is now in use. After this manner, that I might adapt the thermometer I am now speaking of to the present constitution of our Church, as divided into High and Low, I ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... rising, but the Tuileries still stands charred and ruined against the sky, an object lesson for Belleville. I walked up to the Arc de l'Etoile, and coming back I strolled into a little leafy open-air restaurant for a cup of coffee. Suddenly I recognised the place—the fountain—a largo quicksilver ball—a little wooden pavilion festooned with coloured lamps. It was as though eight ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... object-glass, the frame of the micrometer being firmly connected with the object-glass cell, and a reflecting eye-piece being used with no material tube passing over the object-glass: and let a basin of quicksilver be placed below the object-glass, but in no mechanical connection with it, at a distance equal to half the focal length of the object-glass. Such an instrument would at least be free from all uncertainties ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... returns. The uncertainty of mining, as shown by the results of ventures in Colorado, has naturally deterred them. Under the old process of crushing the quartz to powder by stamps, and then separating the gold by amalgamation with quicksilver, but twenty-five per cent of the gold is saved. After the amalgamation a practical chemist could take the "tailings" of the Dacotah ore, and produce almost the full assay of the original rock. Very much depends in the mountain territories upon the success of experiments, now in operation, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... see? There is a great deal of quicksilver in this glass ball, and we can play with it. I'll show you how." And away they went downstairs to find ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... a Balmacaan coat and plush hat that were quite tenantless; or—at most—they were supported by the very haziest suggestion of a personality. The harder she struggled to make a flesh-and-blood man therefrom the more persistently did it elude her—slipping through her mental grasp like so much quicksilver. She tried her best to picture him doing something, feeling something—the simplest human emotion—and the result was ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... blood of an ardent lover throbbing through his veins like quicksilver, are they not? Yet they excited not one atom of jubilation in me, for they were uttered in a tone of such coldness and indifference that I felt as certain as I could be of anything that it was wholly of herself, and not at all of me, that ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... Arts of men, under the type of a Master who builds labyrinths, and makes images of living creatures, for evil purposes, or for none; and pleases himself and the people with idle jointing of toys, and filling of them with quicksilver motion; and brings his child to foolish, remediless catastrophe, in fancying his father's work as good, and strong, and fit to bear sunlight, as if it had been God's work. So, again, they represent the foresight and kindly ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... "seeing people," quite as a matter of course. It used to give me a sharp pain at my heart; but I begin to take his way for granted now. "There's something about O'Farrell that eludes me—slips away like quicksilver. One is charmed with his voice and his ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... two different forms of specula. The one represented by Fig. 15 consists of a tube of glass coated with quicksilver and covered with India rubber, which is thoroughly varnished. That represented by Fig. 18 is made of metal and plated. By using one of these instruments, the condition of the mouth of the womb ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... from It and from one another, and neverthelesse be afterward reduc'd to the self-same Numerical, Yellow, Fixt, Ponderous and Malleable Gold it was before its commixture. Nor is it only the fixedst of Metals, but the most fugitive, that I may employ in favour of our Proposition: for Quicksilver will with divers Metals compose an Amalgam, with divers Menstruums it seems to be turn'd into a Liquor, with Aqua fortis will be brought into either a red or white Powder or precipitate, with Oyl of Vitriol into a pale Yellow one, with Sulphur ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... in the art of working metals, especially gold and silver. Besides these precious metals, they had copper, tin, lead, and quicksilver. Figures 65 and 66 show some of the implements used by the Peruvians. Iron was unknown to them in the time of the Incas, although some maintain that they had it in the previous ages, to which belong the ruins at Lake Titicaca. Iron ore was and still is very abundant in ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... burst upon their sight. They beheld a great belching pit of fire and flames. The sky from the earth to the zenith was a vast expanse of illuminated smoke, and the black landscape round about was cut by rivulets of molten lava rolling on and on like restless streams of quicksilver. ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... went into the house, and there, with many a laugh and jest, the spectacled school-teacher was transformed into my own bright and happy Estella. The two girls flowed into one another, by natural affinity, like a couple of drops of quicksilver; each recognized the transparent soul in the other, and in a moment ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... facilitate the separation of the air, which is mechanically mixed or chemically dissolved in water by their points or edges; this appears on immersing a dry hairy leaf in water fresh from a pump; innumerable globules like quicksilver appear on almost every point; for the extremities of these points attract the particles of water less forcibly than those particles attract each other; hence the contained air, whose elasticity was but just balanced by the attractive power of the surrounding ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... I subdivide into Decimals; then stopping the end F with soft Cement, or soft Wax, I invert the Frame, placing the head downwards, and the Orifice E upwards; and by it, with a small Funnel, I fill the whole Glass with Quicksilver; then by stopping the small Orifice E with my finger, I oftentimes erect and invert the whole Glass and Frame, and thereby free the Quicksilver and Glass from all the bubbles or parcels of lurking Air; then inverting it as before, I fill it top full with ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... powder compressed hard down by the wad. Next a little cylindrical shovel full of shot was extracted from the belt, whose spring closed as the measure was drawn out, and the shot trickled gently into the barrel, glistening in the moonlight like globules of quicksilver. Another wad was rammed down; the pan opened and found full of the black grains, and the ramrod replaced in its loops behind the barrel, the gun being stood in the corner beside the bed ready for emergencies ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... Albert. He came out of the encounter with a swollen lip and a feeling that one of his ribs was broken, and he had not had the pleasure of landing a single blow upon his slippery antagonist, who flowed about the room like quicksilver. But he had not flinched, and the statement of Francis, as they shook hands, that he had "done varry well," was as balm. Boxing is one of the few sports where the loser can feel the same thrill of triumph as the winner. There is no ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... always carried a small thermometer in her trunk, which she consulted a dozen times an hour, in order to regulate the temperature of the room. Alas for me if the quicksilver rose above 60! I devoutly hoped she would leave it behind in some of our numerous stopping-places, and with an eye to that possibility, I must confess, I hung it in the most out-of-the-way corners I could find; but it seemed to be on her mind continually. She never forgot it, and always ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... step, continually looking at the sky. He hoped the sun would not be up before he reached the marsh. But the sun did not delay. The moon, which had been bright when he went out, by now shone only like a crescent of quicksilver. The pink flush of dawn, which one could not help seeing before, now had to be sought to be discerned at all. What were before undefined, vague blurs in the distant countryside could now be distinctly seen. They were sheaves of rye. The dew, not visible till the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... us do in the presence of that mystery? At any rate the legend of the "phlegmatic" Englishman has been scattered to the four winds of heaven by the guns of the western front. The men are cool in action, it is true; but for the rest they are, by the French standards, quicksilver. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... without trying to get a whole philosophy into the work," anchored him to the heaviest tasks as if he were a true- born plodder, while the "wild Irishman" with dreams and desires lighted the way with gleams of Will-o'-the-Wisp. The quicksilver in the veins of the patient Mercutio of railroad rates and demurrage charges lightened his work for himself and others. Just as in the five years when he served San Francisco, as City and County Attorney, he labored to such effect ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... the actual weight of the principal solid substances composing the outer crust is as two and a half times the weight of water; and this, we know, if the globe were solid and cold, should increase vastly towards the centre, water acquiring the density of quicksilver at 362 miles below the surface, and other things in proportion, and these densities becoming much greater at greater depths; so that the entire mass of a cool globe should be of a gravity infinitely exceeding four and a half times the weight of water. The only alternative supposition is, that the ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... would bring half the chivalry in England round us, to break lances, vow vows, display love-liveries, and I know not what follies besides.—Think you such gallants, with the blood flying through their veins like quicksilver, would much mind my bidding ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... love with the subject of their discourse. While they were talking, the merry hostess entered; and the last words the captain uttered fell upon her ear, and then followed a reply from Growling, saying that Irishmen were as hard to catch as quicksilver. "Ay, and as hard to keep as any other silver," said the widow; "don't believe what these wild Irish fellows tell you of themselves, they are all mad divils alike—you steady Englishmen are the safe men—and the girls know it. And 'faith, if you try ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... a device this was Jack learned to his great surprise. The arms he seized were whipped out of his clutch as if he was trying to lay hold of quicksilver. He grabbed something which proved to be a leg. A swift jerk, and his fingers slipped off the greasy limb. Finally he settled the matter by throwing both arms round the slim, bare waist, and closing upon the rogue with a bear's hug which drove the ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... O Emir, verily this damsel is dead and there is no life in her; so how shall she return thy salam?" adding, ' Indeed, she is but a corpse embalmed with exceeding art; her eyes were taken out after her death and quicksilver set under them, after which they were restored to their sockets. Wherefore they glisten and when the air moveth the lashes, she seemeth to wink and it appeareth to the beholder as though she looked at him, for all she is dead." At this the Emir marvelled beyond measure ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... cxu? Quest sercxo. Quest informigxo. Question demando. Question demandi. Question (doubt) dubi. Questionable duba. Quibble cxikani. Quick (adj.) rapida. Quick (adv.) rapide. Quick (living) viva. Quicken vivigi. Quicken rapidigi. Quicksilver hidrargo. Quiescence ripozo, kvieteco. Quiet kvieta. Quiet kvietigi. Quietude trankvileco. Quill plumo. Quilt litkovrilo. Quintal centfunto. Quip sarkasmo. Quit lasi. Quit kvita. Quite tute. Quittance kvitanco. Quiver sagujo. Quoin kojno. Quoit ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... is no excuse—none. And I am astonished how a boy of thy sense could think of such nonsense. Birth, Morton, what the devil does that signify so long as it is birth in another country? A foreign damsel, and a Spanish girl, too, above all others! 'Sdeath, man, as if there was not quicksilver enough in the English women for you, you must make a mercurial exportation from Spain, must you! Why, Morton, Morton, the ladies in that country are proverbial. I tremble at the very thought of it. But as for my consent, I never will give it,—never; and though I threaten thee not with disinheritance ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Mr. Merryweather. "You all have quicksilver in your heels, I believe. Seven and ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... and die out, a dead, limb to a live trunk, as the mad devotee's arm held up motionless for years? Or shall we employ it but for a paw, to help us to our bodily needs, as the brutes use their instinct? Is not reason subtile as quicksilver—live as lightning—a neighing charger to advance, but a snail to recede? Can we starve that noble instinct in us, and hope that it will survive? Better slay the body than the soul; and if it be the direst of sins to be the murderers of our own bodies, how much more to be a soul-suicide. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... to dig deeper than the chin, for fear of the earth 'caving in;' and, quartz-crushing and the use of quicksilver being unknown, they will not wash unless the gold 'show ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... art then, being tired before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think Thou call'st for more, And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink; And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie A verier ghost than I. What I will say, I will not tell thee now, Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent, I'd rather thou should'st painfully repent, Than by ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... put on the sealskin, which very nearly covered him. Meanwhile, Hatteras loaded the gun with the last charge of powder, and dropped in it the quicksilver bullet, which was as hard as steel and as heavy as lead. Then he handed Hatteras the gun, which he hid beneath the sealskin. Then he ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... unwieldy past, That like a feasted Mammoth, leisured and slow, Turned its back on their warped bones. Even thus, Momentous with reproach, her grave regard Made me feel mean, cashiered of rank and right, My limbs that twelve good years had nursed were numbed And all their fidgety quicksilver grew stiff, Novel and fevering hallucinations Invaded my attention. So daylight When shutters are thrown back spreads through a house; As then the dreams and terrors of the night Decamp, so from my mind were driven All its own thoughts and feelings. Close she leant ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... Magdalena and Atrato rivers in what is now the Republic of Colombia, and undertook the conquest of this enormously rich district, the fire-eating Juan, whom the chroniclers of that romantic period quaintly described as "causing the same effects as lightning and quicksilver," was his most dependable support. Together they landed at the Indian village of Calamari, and, after putting the pacific inhabitants to the sword—a manner of disposal most satisfactory to the practical Juan—laid the foundations of the present city of Cartagena, later ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... courage—I assure you that the father did me some mischief. But you should have seen how I fought it out with him. Ah, Athos, such encounters never take place in these times! I had a hand which could never remain at rest, a hand like quicksilver,—you knew its quality, for you have seen me at work. My sword was no longer than a piece of steel; it was a serpent that assumed every form and every length, seeking where it might thrust its head; in other words, where it might fix its bite. I advanced half a dozen paces, then three, and then, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... disintegrated like quicksilver. Two stumbled over; the others leaped out, and all yelled in pain and terror. Then the fallen ones scrambled up and began to hobble and limp and jerk along after ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... flung a long arm outward. "Do you think there is a sight like that in heaven? And yonder—" He turned to the harbor far below, with its fleet of sailing-ships resting like a flock of gulls upon a sea of quicksilver. Beyond the bay, twenty miles distant, a range of hazy mountains hid the horizon. Facing to the south, Esteban looked up the full length of the valley of the San Juan, clear to the majestic Pan de Matanzas, a wonderful ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... now been out for two months when we bore up for the Gulf of Florida. In making the Havannah for a departure, we fell in with four Spanish brigs laden with quicksilver, which we captured. When near Cape Florida we experienced a white squall which carried away the foretop-gallant mast and split the foresail. The ninety-eight gun-ship, which led the squadron, heeled so much ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the shaft of light looked like quicksilver. The smoke from the funnel mixed in the heavy air with the mist and the light, and formed a fantastic beam of vapor from the ship to the shore. Up this stream of quivering, scintillating irradiation, as brilliant ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... frescoed and carpeted; they were warmed in winter by furnaces, and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by underground pipes from flower-beds. They had baths, and libraries, and dining-halls, fountains of quicksilver and water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Instead of the drunken and gluttonous wassail orgies of their Northern neighbors, the feasts of the Saracens ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... stink of tallow to remind you that it was once clothed and mitred with flame. That is past by. I was once a volume of gold leaf, rising and riding on every breath of Fancy, but I have beaten myself back into weight and density, and now I sink in quicksilver and remain squat and square on the earth amid the hurricane that makes oaks and straws join in one dance, fifty yards high ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... his companions were at Tobolsk, on the 12th of September, whence they travelled on sledges, the cold being at 40 degrees Reamur, so that frozen quicksilver could ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... storm troops for a frontal attack on the position in which the shy General lay entrenched. This is not the case. There was no question of attack or siege or any military operation whatever on either side. The blessed pair just came together like two drops of quicksilver. Each recognized in the other a generous and somewhat lonely soul; an appreciation of the major experiences of life and, with that, a craving for something bigger even than the war, which would give life its greater meaning. She, born on heights that looked contemptuously down upon a throne, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... out of her stall he went into the harness-room and hunted about on a shelf until, behind a rusty currycomb and two empty oil-bottles, he found a small mirror. It was misty and flecked with clear spots where the quicksilver had dropped away, but when he propped it against the cobwebbed window he could see himself fairly well. Staring into its dim depths he retied his necktie; then he backed the buggy out of the carriage-house. But after he had put his ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... through the Rothschilds of London. In addition British capital controls some smaller mines in northern Spain. England thus largely controls the European commercial situation in this commodity, and London is the world's great quicksilver market, where prices are fixed and whence supplies go to all corners of the globe. Reserves of the Almaden ore bodies are very large. Sufficient ore is reported to have been developed to insure a future production of at ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... difficult; to desert his lordship impossible. Silence is the part of the inferior." At this exercise of authority the horse grumbled loudly—"Away from the stinking stable one feels gay and at ease. Quicksilver runs in the veins. At Yoshiwara the hatsudochu[u] will be in progress. Following the processions of the honoured oiran, liberal will be the sake offered at the tea houses. Deign, Kakunai San, to reconsider your purpose ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... "Quicksilver!" said Don Quixote, "aye and what is more, a legion of devils, folk that can travel and make others travel without being weary, exactly as the whim seizes them. But putting this aside, what thinkest thou I ought to do ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... stood, then began swiftly to change, melting with quicksilver quickness from one outline into another as square and triangle and spheres changed places. Their shiftings were like the transformations one sees within a kaleidoscope. And in each vanishing form was the suggestion of unfamiliar harmonies, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... we came to Bahrol,[1] where I had encamped with Lord William Bentinck on the last day of December, 1832, when the quicksilver in the thermometer at sunrise, outside our tents, was down to twenty-six degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. The village stands upon a gentle swelling hill of decomposed basalt, and is surrounded by hills of the same formation. The Dasan river flows ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... landscape I turned to look at the army. Never had I seen them so joyous. It would be impossible to convey any idea of the afflatus which buoyed them up. Every man's veins seemed to run with quicksilver, instead of blood. Every cheek was glowing. Every eye flashed with superb joy and defiance. You would have supposed, indeed, that the troops were under the effect of champagne or laughing gas. "I never even imagined such courage," ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... water to good account when there are no fires to put out. It is said that the proportions of the mixture can be so varied that, with one kind, the pump may be used for the clarification of beer, oils, treacle, quicksilver, and such like, and for the preservation of fruit, meat, milk, etcetera, and with another mixture they propose to ventilate mines and tunnels; water gardens; kill insects on trees and flowers; soften water for domestic uses, and breweries, and manufacture soda-water, ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... a touch of vexation in his voice, but Theos heeded it not. His heart gave a great bound against his ribs as though pricked by a fire-tipped arrow,—something swift and ardent stirred in his blood like the flowing of quicksilver, . . the picture of the dusky-eyed, witchingly beautiful woman he had seen that morning in her gold-adorned ship, seemed to float between him and the light,—her face shone out like a growing glory-flower in the tangled wilderness ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... contrivance which I did not well understand. The powder which is used last seemed to me to be iron dissolved in aqua fortis: they called it, as Baretti said, marc de beau forte, which he thought was dregs. They mentioned vitriol and salt-petre. The cannon ball swam in the quicksilver. To silver them, a leaf of beaten tin is laid, and rubbed with quicksilver, to which it unites. Then more quicksilver is poured upon it, which, by its mutual [attraction] rises very high. Then a paper ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... were not,' said he, 'for the Chassediane—you are aware, Richie, poor Jorian is lost to her?—he has fallen at her quicksilver feet. She is now in London. Half the poor fellow's income expended in bouquets! Her portrait, in the character of the widow Lefourbe, has become a part of his dressing apparatus; he shaves fronting her playbill. His first real ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... especially the heavy export duty on coin and bullion, so as to cheapen and facilitate the purchase of imports and permit the precious metals, untaxed, to flow out freely from Mexico into general circulation. Quicksilver and machinery for working the mines of precious metals in Mexico, for the same reasons, should also be admitted duty free, which, with the measures above indicated, would largely increase the production and circulation of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... of Things," defines gold and silver in an original way, according to the beliefs of this writer's day. He says of gold, that "in the composition there is more sadness of brimstone than of air and moisture of quicksilver, and therefore gold is more sad and heavy than silver." Of silver he remarks, "Though silver be white yet it maketh black lines and strakes in the body that is ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... moment of the fight, one of the young painters observed distinctly how one of the fellows, taking Marianna in his arms (for she had fainted), made off to the gate, whilst Signor Pasquale ran after him with incredible swiftness, as if he had got quicksilver in his legs. At the same time, by the light of the torches, he caught a glimpse of something gleaming, clinging to his mantle and whimpering; ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... his chance had slipped away, after wounding, and, as he supposed, blinding his opponent, Mauville, throwing prudence to the winds, recklessly attempted to repeat his rash expedient, and this time the steel of his antagonist gleamed like quicksilver, passing beneath his arm and inflicting a slight flesh wound. Something resembling a look of apprehension crossed the land baron's face. "I have underestimated him!" he thought. "The next stroke will ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... viewing it. In the old coaching days, indeed, when the Shrewsbury "Wonder" drove into the inn yard while the clock was striking, week after week and mouth after month, with unerring regularity, twenty-seven hours to a hundred and sixty-two miles; when the "Quicksilver" mail was timed to eleven miles an hour between London and Plymouth, with a fine of L5 to the driver if behind time; when the Brighton "Age," "tool'd" and horsed by the late Mr. Stevenson, used to dash round the square ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... of his complexion all the more strikingly, lent him a false aspect of patriarchal bonhomie, counteracted, however, by the scintillation of two little yellow eyes which trembled in their orbits like two louis-d'or upon quicksilver. The curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, slender, full of nerves which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... a question of beauty, no scullion-wench will acknowledge herself surpassed; every one piques herself on being the handsomest; and if the looking-glass tells her the truth she blames the glass for being untrue, and the quicksilver for being ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... Jake's bet, so that it was evident he uttered the general sentiment of the mining camp of Quicksilver Bar. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... to locate her, she shifts about so much. She is a shining drop of quicksilver which you put your finger on and it isn't there. There is a paragraph in the Autobiography (page 96) which places in seemingly darkly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... like contrition, but was willing to submit the points to the decision of colleagues; that Lord John would submit no point to colleagues 'affecting his personal honour'—to such degrees of heat can the quicksilver mount even in a cabinet thermometer. If such quarrels of the great are painful, there is some compensation in the firmness, patience, and benignity with which a man like Lord Aberdeen strove to appease ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... of the bay was blazing like quicksilver. Some white clouds cooled the sky a little, but everything around was sweltering with hotness. On we went, fleet and cheerful, sending up the water in sparkles, and flying toward the ocean, with green banks on each side of us, and that ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... Leonardo again, at Rome in 1514, surrounded by his mirrors and vials and furnaces, making strange toys that seemed alive of wax and quicksilver. The hesitation which had haunted him all through life, and made him like one under a spell, was upon him now with double force. No one had ever carried political indifferentism farther; it had always ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... woman for some cause is bitter with hate against him.—Juan Gonzalvo is eager to listen—he is restless as quicksilver already with suspicion of strange things. In the far south he and his comrades made little odds of riding rough shod over the natives—here he would do the same at a word from ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... swore under his breath. For the half-dispersed thousands were flowing together again like quicksilver. The whole Hira Mundi region was packed with a seething dangerous mob, completely out of hand, amenable to nothing ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... water's side, as if they had been used to a keeper's call. On an excursion off the route they were following they overtook two canoes laden with bread. Among the bushes they found a refiner's basket. In it were quicksilver and saltpetre, prepared for assay, and the dust of ore which had been refined. It belonged to some Spaniards who escaped; but the natives, their companions, were caught. One of them, called Martino, proved a better pilot than Ferdinando and the old man. Naturally the refining ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... never saw such rich diggings. The average result per day to the man was fully 20 dollars, some much more. The gold is very fine; so much so, that it was impossible to save more than two-thirds of what went through the rockers. This defect in the rocker must be remedied by the use of quicksilver to 'amalgamate' the finer particles of gold. This remedy is at hand, for California produces quicksilver sufficient for the consumption of the 'whole' world in her mountains of Cinnabar. Supplies are going on by every vessel. At Sailor Diggings, ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... one of the boat-pullers said. "They put you into the salt-mines and work you till you die. Never see daylight again. Why, I've heard tell of one fellow that was chained to his mate, and that mate died. And they were both chained together! And if they send you to the quicksilver mines you get salivated. I'd rather ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... articles of gold. Besides these products (which are peculiar to the country), others are brought to Manila from Great China, Xapon, and numberless other kingdoms and islands of this archipelago—wheat, iron, copper, some quicksilver, tin, and lead; cinnamon (from Zeilan), pepper, cloves, nutmeg, musk, and incense; silks (both raw and woven), and linens; Chinese earthenware, ivory, and ebony; diamonds, rubies, and other precious stones; valuable woods; and many uncommon and delicious fruits. In Manila, gunpowder is manufactured, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... one game with one hand, he drew back with his other hand at another game. His winnings from the Comstock he sank into the various holes of the bottomless Daffodil Group in Eldorado County. The wreckage from the Benicia Line he turned into the Napa Consolidated, which was a quicksilver venture, and it earned him five thousand per cent. What he lost in the collapse of the Stockton boom was more than balanced by the realty appreciation of his key- ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... of lower ether. The heavens were emptied of sound, and each dip of the oars was re-echoed in space by a succession of subtle harmonies. As the blades struck the dark water, it flashed fire, and the tracks of the boats resembled two sea-snakes writhing with silent undulations through a lake of quicksilver. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... else. And again I tell you that these Chughi who live such a long time as I have told you, do also eat what I am going to tell you, and you will think it a great matter. For I tell you that they take quicksilver and sulphur, and mix them together, and make a drink of them, and then they drink this, and they say that it adds to their life; and in fact they do live much longer for it; and I tell you that they do this twice every month. And let me tell you that these people use this ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... them all so; he said that he preferred to forget the whole episode. Sir Charles had an idea that I was a "sensitive," so, after getting my leave to try his experiment, he poured into the palm of my hand a little pool of quicksilver, and placing me under a powerful shaded lamp, so that a ray of light caught the mercury pool, he told me to look at the bright spot for a quarter of an hour, remaining motionless meanwhile. Any one who has shared this experience ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... spitting sounds like the laughter of animals with steel throats. Never was ill work better done than when, on that radiant veld, the sky one vast turquoise vault, beneath which quivered a shimmer of quicksilver light, the pom-poms, the maulers, and the shrapnel of Kruger's men mowed down Stafford and his battery, showered them, drowned them in a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ring of lawn, then marble steps going down to a round pool, where there were no water-lilies, only gold and silver fish that darted here and there like flashes of quicksilver and dark flames. And the enclosed space of water and marble and grass was lighted with a clear, white, radiant light, seven times stronger than the whitest moonlight, and in the still waters of the pool seven moons lay reflected. One could see that they ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... QUICKSILVER, who had received what may be called a muffling retainer. What a contrast was he to Mr. Subtle! Reckless, rhetorical, eloquent, ready, witty—possessing a vast extent of general knowledge, but rather slenderly furnished ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of a quicksilver mine, whose remarks shed a flood of light upon the matter. The mine yields a lean ore, and did not pay when worked by white labor costing $2 to $2.50 per day. He contracted with a Chinaman to furnish 170 men at one-half these rates. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... one chance more, and only one. It's quicksilver, kill or cure, and a stiff dose at that. I've just been talking with Spurling and his two friends. They're to spend the summer fishing from an island off the Maine coast, to earn money to start their college course. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... his client's case; infinitely more anxious to make a splendid figure in public, than to secure, by watchful activity, the interests of his clients. Why, then, was such a man retained in the cause? 'Twas a fancy of Quirk's, a vast political admirer of Quicksilver's, who had made one or two most splendid speeches for him in libel cases brought against the Sunday Flash. Gammon most earnestly expostulated, but Quirk was inexorable; and himself carried his retainer to Mr. Quicksilver. Gammon, however, was somewhat consoled ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... England, and raised, as if by magic, the enthusiasm of the English; how one fortune after another has been swallowed up in the dark, deep gulf of speculation; how expectations have been disappointed; and how the great cause of this is the scarcity of quicksilver, which has been paid at the rate of one hundred and fifty dollars per quintal in real cash, when the same quantity was given at credit by the Spanish government for fifty dollars; how heaps of silver lie abandoned, because the expense of acquiring quicksilver renders it wholly ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... I ever remember was in the winter of 1833. It was called the "Cold Sunday." The quicksilver in Fahrenheit's thermometer was frozen in the ball, which marks 39 degrees below zero. It was, however, stated in the papers, both in Canada and the State of New York, that the real cold was 40 degrees below zero, or 72 degrees below ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... him; a gilder that hath his brains perished with quicksilver is not more cold in the liver. The great barriers moulted not more feathers, than he hath shed hairs, by the confession of his doctor. An Irish gamester that will play himself naked, and then wage all downward, at hazard, is not more venturous. So unable to please a woman, that, like a Dutch ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... of scale-work, it is of course necessary to determine, first, who are poor and who are rich; nor this only, but also how poor and how rich they are. Which will prove a curious thermometrical investigation; for we shall have to do for gold and for silver, what we have done for quicksilver;—determine, namely, their freezing-point, their zero, their temperate and fever-heat points; finally, their vaporescent point, at which riches, sometimes explosively, as lately in America, "make to themselves ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... magnificence, 'I have a burgess at Augsburg who can do better than that.' These merchants were commonly believed to have discovered the philosopher's stone: they were in fact enriched by their trade with the East, and had found another fortune in the quicksilver of Almaden, by which the gold was extracted from the ores of Peru. Raimond Fugger amassed a noble library before the end of the fifteenth century. Ulric his successor was the friend of Henri Estienne, who proudly announced himself as printer to the Fuggers on many ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... hast thou to give, poor devil? Was e'er a human mind, upon its lofty level, Conceived of by the like of thee? Yet hast thou food that brings satiety, Not satisfaction; gold that reftlessly, Like quicksilver, melts down within The hands; a game in which men never win; A maid that, hanging on my breast, Ogles a neighbor with her wanton glances; Of fame the glorious godlike zest, That like a short-lived meteor dances— Show ...
— Faust • Goethe
... solution of corrosive sublimate. I washed the brown-red precipitate obtained, and dried it; then I placed it, for reduction, upon the open fire in a small retort, which was provided with a bladder empty of air. As soon as the calx began to glow, the bladder became expanded, and quicksilver rose into the neck. The fire-air obtained had some ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele |
