"Quicksilver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had caught the enthusiasm of the moment. The day broke beautifully clear, and having crossed a deep valley between the hills, we toiled up the opposite slope. I hurried to the summit. The glory of our prize burst suddenly upon me! There, like a sea of quicksilver, lay far beneath the grand expanse of water,—a boundless sea horizon on the south and southwest, glittering in the noonday sun; and on the west at fifty or sixty miles distance blue mountains rose from the bosom of the lake to a height of about ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... that Miss Monk saw he was in 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 them," added she, laughing, "I don't know ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... himself, so staid and sedate, and drawley as he was a minute before, now all alive, shouting, "Tira, diablitos, tira,"[13] flourishing a small paddle, with which he steered, about his head like a wheel, and dancing and jumping about in his seat, as if his bottom had been a haggis with quicksilver in it. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... something like the ivory key of a pianoforte; it is elastic, and provided on the interior side with a protuberance of about a quarter of an inch long. Immediately beneath this protuberance is a little cup, also of copper, filled with quicksilver. At the instant when the orchestral conductor, desiring to mark any particular beat of a bar, presses the copper key with the forefinger of his left hand (his right being occupied in holding, as usual, the conducting-stick) this key is lowered, the protuberance passes into ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... connexion of its solid parts; of neither of which having any distinct perception at all can I have any idea of its essence: which is the cause that it has that particular shining yellowness; a greater weight than anything I know of the same bulk; and a fitness to have its colour changed by the touch of quicksilver. If any one will say, that the real essence and internal constitution, on which these properties depend, is not the figure, size, and arrangement or connexion of its solid parts, but something else, called its particular FORM, I am further from having any ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... deal a matter of temperament," said the American. "A fellow like Nap, for instance, all hustle and quicksilver, might be expected to kick now and then. One makes allowances for ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... one may discerne Our Lady Church Steeple at Sarum, like a fine Spanish needle. I would have the height of these hills, as also Hackpen, and those toward Lambourn, which are the highest, to he taken with the quicksilver barometer, according to the method of Mr. Edmund Halley in Philosophical Transactions, No. ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... also, 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
... hate inconstancy—I loathe, detest, Abhor, condemn, abjure the mortal made Of such quicksilver clay that in his breast No permanent foundation can be laid; Love, constant love, has been my constant guest, And yet last night, being at a masquerade, I saw the prettiest creature, fresh from Milan, Which gave me some sensations like ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... 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
... to the door, outside of which hung an instrument called a thermometer. I guess you have seen them often enough. A thermometer is a glass tube, fastened to a piece of wood or perhaps tin, and inside is a thin, shiny column. This column is mercury, or quicksilver. Some thermometers have, instead of mercury, alcohol, colored red, so ...
— Daddy Takes Us Skating • Howard R. Garis
... turning from the cradle, arrives. Another, the mirror shows back a sag beneath the eyes. That sag had come now to Mrs. Ross, giving her eye-sockets a look of unconquerable weariness. The streak of quicksilver had come, too, but more successfully combated. The head lying back against the brocade chair was guilty of new gleams. Brass, with a greenish alloy. Sitting there with the look of unshed tears seeming to form a film over her ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... to move on the party until after having previously ascertained where they could be taken to with safety. Upon examining the barometers to-day, I was much concerned to find that they were both out of order and useless; the damp had softened the glue fastening the bags of leather which hold the quicksilver, and the leathers that were glued over the joints of the cisterns, and so much of the mercury had escaped, before I was aware of it, that I found all the previous observations valueless. I emptied the tubes and attempted ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter, was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was; and there it had abided for now some sixty years or more. And this it was, this same .. unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him; this it was, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... one to keep such a piece of quicksilver as you in a state of placid stodge!" she murmured. "I suppose I ought to have forbidden you to talk. But how could I dream that—all this would come of it? You must lie absolutely quiet and see no one for the rest of the evening. I will send at once for Dr ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Oro. It was formerly called Cuenca, and formed part of the department of Azuay, which also included the province of Loja. Azuay is an elevated mountainous district with a great variety of climates and products; among the latter are silver, quicksilver, wheat, Indian corn, barley, cattle, wool, cinchona and straw hats. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... hast thou to bestow? Was ever mortal spirit, in its high endeavor, Fathom'd by Being such as thou? Yet food thou least which satisfieth never; Hast ruddy gold, that still doth flow Like restless quicksilver away; A game thou hast, at which none win who play— A girl who would, with amorous eyen, E'en from my breast a neighbor snare, Lofty ambition's joy divine, That, meteor-like, dissolves in air. Show me the fruit that, ere 'tis pluck'd, doth rot, And trees, whose verdure ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... time I had good muscles and a sort of brute 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 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, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 Propped on a swarthy arm, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... 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 ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... 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 ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... Take of quicksilver one ounce, one ounce nitric acid, one ten cent piece, rain water 1/2 pint to a pint, put the three first articles into a tumbler together; let them stand until dissolved, occasionally stirring, then add the water, and it is ready for use. This ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... generous youth. Is there any young fellow of the present time, who aspires to take the place of a stoker? One sees occasionally in the country a dismal old drag with a lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling Quicksilver, O swift Defiance? You are passed by racers stronger and swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... in the receiver by alkohol only supports the attached barometer about one inch in winter, and about four or five inches in summer; that formed by water, in the same situation, raises the mercury only a few lines, and that by quicksilver but a few fractions of a line. There is therefore less fluid evaporated from alkohol than from ether, less from water than from alkohol, and still less from mercury than from either; consequently there is less caloric employed, and less cold produced, which quadrates ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... much sulphur, which can be either obtained pure from them, or be recognised by its smell when burning. This gave rise to the sulphur theory, while the presence of mercury was inferred doubtless from the resemblance of the more commonly molten metals, silver, tin, and lead, to quicksilver. The properties of each metal were then put down to the presence of these substances. The list of seven metals is that of the most ancient times—gold, electrum, silver, copper, tin, lead, iron; but it is clearly recognised that electrum ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... that can,' answered the provost; 'they are ower the march by this time, or by the point of Cairn.—Lord help ye! they are a kind of amphibious deevils, neither land nor water beasts neither English nor Scots—neither county nor stewartry, as we say—they are dispersed like so much quicksilver. You may as well try to whistle a sealgh out of the Solway, as to get hold of one of them till all ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... "Allah preserve thee, 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... liver is primarily affected, small doses of quicksilver act in a wonderful and a prodigious manner. How the stomach, when wrong, disturbs the head, is apparent to every one. How a faulty action of the liver disturbs the head is also well known; but the liver, in an especial manner, disturbs ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... composure with which he said that, began to set me against him once more. The perpetual shifts and contradictions in him, bewildered and irritated me. Quicksilver itself seemed to be less slippery to lay hold ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... physical torture beyond the frequent omissions of food and water; the body would have crumbled. To have planned this for months, and then to be balked by something as visible yet as elusive as quicksilver! Born in the same mudhole, and still Boris Karlov the avenger could not understand Stefani Gregor the fiddler. Perhaps what baffled him was that so valiant a spirit should be housed in so weak a body. It was natural ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... 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 ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... 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 with law—he presented to the jury, himself—not ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... be met with any day in the week," except on board the Ruby. How he could shuffle and spring, and whirl, and whisk, and snap his fingers! He looked as if he was made of India-rubber, filled with quicksilver. And then he had a very good voice and a fair notion of singing, and right merrily he could troll forth some of those stirring sea-songs which have animated the gallant tars of Old England to perform deeds of the greatest heroism, and have served to beguile and soothe many an hour ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... handkerchief while their horse is upon full stretch; and I have seen them jump upon the back of the wildest bull, and all the efforts of the beast could not throw them. This country produces all sorts of metals; it is famous for gold, silver, iron, tin, lead, and quicksilver; but some of these they do not understand working, especially quicksilver. With copper they supply all Peru, and send likewise a great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... can't say how it is," Peter nodded. "But folks can't be blamed for their likes and dislikes. Maybe Will will get over it. Y'see he's just a wild sort of Irish boy. He's just quicksilver. Yes, yes, he'll maybe grow to be as fond of the lad as you, Eve. But any time you find you'd like me to have him for a bit—I mean—sort of—two's company, you know—you'll just be making me ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... employed as a commodity, it is productive. (View of the Progress of Political Economy, since the sixteenth Century, 1847.) Besides it is not a peculiarity of money alone, that, after it has served the purposes of production, it comes out of the product unaltered. The same is true of quicksilver employed in amalgamation. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... of the ancient inferior planets, and the nearest to the sun, as far as we yet know. (See TRANSIT OF.) Also, a name for quicksilver; the fluid metal so useful in the construction of the marine ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... law, and not an isolated fact. If bismuth turned into mercury, what would mercury turn into? There would be no rest for me until I had solved the question. I renewed the exhausted batteries and passed the current through the bowl of quicksilver. For sixteen hours I sat watching the metal, marking how it slowly seemed to curdle, to grow firmer, to lose its silvery glitter and to take a dull yellow hue. When I at last picked it up in a forceps, and threw it upon the table, it had lost every characteristic of mercury, and had obviously become ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to separate so soon, though a great part of the evening was already spent: and stood a while, looking back upon the water; which the moonbeams played upon, and made it appear like floating quicksilver. ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... came to me one day, and showed me a little gold ring which had been discoloured by quicksilver, saying at the same time: "Polish up this ring for me, and be quick about it." I was engaged at the moment upon jewel-work of gold and gems of great importance: besides, I did not care to be ordered about so haughtily by a man I had never seen or spoken ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... kind of fellow we call a charlatan, advertising cures in ways nobody knows anything about: a fellow who wants to make a noise by pretending to go deeper than other people. The other day he was pretending to tap a man's brain and get quicksilver ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... gracefully doubtful? And in that case, do the Baltimore nominations, with their innocent unconsciousness, supply his political needs? It is not easy to answer these questions. We begin now upon the views of a Pennsylvania Oppositionist; and quicksilver defied not more utterly the skill of Raymond Lullius than the doctrines of the Philadelphia school perplex the inquiries of sharply defined New England minds. The rudimentary state of Republican principles may nowhere else be so clearly seen as in Pennsylvania. Four ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... body from side to side. "Great Gawd! Great Gawd!" he repeated over and over. There was a flickering look about the eyes that made Brent catch his breath. It seemed for just a passing second that they had been converted into little balls of trembling red quicksilver; that was the only thing to which he could liken those eyes just then—red quicksilver. But this passed so quickly that it might have been a reflection from the lamp. At any rate, Dale was continuing: "Why, Brent, I can't go to jail! ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... 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 ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... spoken of stock-raising. Dairying is a profitable industry. Poultry farming a little uncertain. If interested in mining there is much to explore. Just in this county are found gold, silver, copper, asphaltum, bituminous rock, gypsum, quicksilver, natural gas, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... 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 as flashing water in the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Creek and Bridge River were formed. While some of the miners contented themselves with making wing-dams, turning streams from their natural courses, and scraping about the mud and gravel of the exposed beds for the pure, free gold, picking up nuggets at sight and capturing the "dust" with quicksilver, others, looking for bigger game, climbed the high mountains, tore the moss from their sides to expose the rock, and pounced upon every piece of "float" which would indicate the possible existence of a "mother lode" somewhere near at ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... wholesome, healthy. Christopher knew the quality of that health—hearts that pumped like machines—obedient muscles under satin skins. One of the women whirled in a series of handsprings, like a blue balloon—her body as fluid as quicksilver. If he could only borrow one-tenth of that endurance for Anne—he might ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... sizes, industriously stretching their peacock necks to crop the tiny leaves that fluttered above their heads, in a flowering mimosa grove which beautified the scenery. My heart leapt within me, and my blood coursed like quicksilver through my veins, for, with a firm wooded plain before me, I knew they were mine; but, although they stood within a hundred yards of me, having previously determined to try the boarding system, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... I felt that must be the true solution of it all!" cried uncle Phaeton, squirming about pretty much as one might into whose veins had been injected quicksilver in place of ordinary blood. "The outlet! Where the surplus waters drain off ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... bearing all, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, preached the crusade of the Holy Sepulcher till at last his words of fire burned through dull understandings, into cold hearts, and steel-clad Europe quivered like a million globules of quicksilver, then massed beneath ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... he thought. "Beauty and gift and a divine despair. Everything ready to make the great artist. And then the heart of a woman, which is like quicksilver, to reckon with. I spoke bravely about her forgetting, but I have doubts. Sometimes I wonder if it be possible for a person with a fine and generous nature to become a really great artist. Perhaps it is necessary ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... also from the two last countries (to enter into a nomenclature that's like the catalogue of an auctioneer for monotony of names and unconnectedness of things), figs, raisins, dates, oils, soap, wax, wool, liquorice, iron, wadmote, goat-fell, red-fell, saffron and quicksilver; wine, salt, linen and canvas from Brittany; corn, hemp, flax, tar, pitch, wax, osmond, iron, steel, copper, pelfry, thread, fustian, buckram, canvas, boards, bow-staves and wool-cards from Germany and Prussia; coffee, silk, oil, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... usual, marched in before him, arching his back. The King took a long step, and quite thought he had the tail under his foot, but the cat turned round so sharply that he only trod on air. And so it went on for eight days, till the King began to think that this fatal tail must be full of quicksilver—it was never ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... was the first discovered in the Sierra Nevada, which soon revolutionized the whole country, and actually moved the whole civilized world. About this time (May and June, 1848), far more importance was attached to quicksilver. One mine, the New Almaden, twelve miles south of San Jose, was well known, and was in possession of the agent of a Scotch gentleman named Forties, who at the time was British consul at Tepic, Mexico. Mr. Forties came up from San Blas in a small brig, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... to the attack of Fort Omoa, Accordingly, on the 16th of October, they stormed and carried the fort: taking, and carrying away, the register-ships, on board of which were about three millions of piastres; as well as two hundred and fifty quintals of quicksilver, found on shore in the fortress. From the advantages of participating in this brilliant enterprise, Captain Locker had been thus deprived by want of health; and his second lieutenant, singular as it may seem, by an ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... men and women dressed in many-coloured costumes, caused the Nile to disappear entirely over an extent of many miles, and presented under the brilliant Egyptian sun a spectacle dazzling in its changefulness. The water, agitated in every direction, surged, sparkled, and gleamed like quicksilver, and resembled a sun shattered ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... naturalist: and one would think that an history of the birds of so distant and southern a region as Carniola would be new and interesting. I could wish to see that work, and hope to get it sent down. Dr. Scopoli is physician to the wretches that work in the quicksilver mines of that district. (* This work he ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... tell me all about it and possibly I may be of service to you. I have helped a good many young men through adventures that looked difficult enough beforehand. Perhaps you may have heard of me. I have more names than one, but the name of Quicksilver suits me as well as any other. Tell me what the trouble is and we will talk the matter over and ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... 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 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... names under heaven, stroking it with his hand and praising it for the delicacy of its steering: saying, 'O my moonbeam, if thou wouldst save the life of thy master, or restore the five senses of the Princess Melilot, thou must surpass thyself to-day. Listen, thou heaven-sent limb, thou miracle of quicksilver, and have a long mind to my words; for in a short while I shall have no speech left in me till the thing be done, and the deliverance, from head to feet, ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... through Creation's veins Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains; Taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi and They change and perish all—but ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... seams. In the body of the machine are contained thirty wheels of unique work, with two brass globes and little chains which alternately wind up a counterpoise; with the aid of six brass vases, full of a certain quantity of quicksilver, which run in some pulleys, the machine is kept by the artist in due equilibrium and balance. By means, then, of the friction between a steel wheel adequately tempered and a very heavy and surprising piece of lodestone, the whole is kept in a regulated forward movement, given, ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... nothing is so good as the white of eggs and quicksilver. A thimbleful of quicksilver to the white of each egg; heat until well mixed; apply with ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... 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
... from the Canon's Yeoman's Tale in Chaucer, that many of those who professed to turn the base metals into gold were held in bad repute as early as the 14th century. The "false chanoun" persuaded the priest, who was his dupe, to send his servant for quicksilver, which he promised to make into "as good silver and as fyn, As ther is any in youre purse or myn"; he then gave the priest a "crosselet," and bid him put it on the fire, and blow the coals. While the priest ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... much valued in certain countries of Asia as Eastern cotton and silk goods were in Italy, France, Germany, and England. Certain Western metals and minerals were highly valued in the East, especially arsenic, antimony, quicksilver, tin, copper, and lead. [Footnote: Birdwood, Hand-book to the Indian Collection (Paris Universal Exhibition, 1878), Appendix to catalogue of the British Colonies, pp. 1-110.] The coral of the Mediterranean was much admired and ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... afternoon, Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, And in the porches on my ears did pour The leperous distilment; whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man, That quick as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body; And with a sudden vigour, it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood: So did it mine; And a most instant tetter barked about, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... you—avast—if you had as much calomel in your corpus as I have at this present speaking—why you would be a lad of more mettle than I take you for, that is all.—You would have about as much quicksilver in your stomach, as I have in my purse, and all my silver has been quick, ever since I remember, like the jests of the gravedigger in Hamlett—but, as you say, where the devil is the end ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... sailing from Canton in the beginning of December, and arriving at Batavia in the middle of January. The company has in the first place a duty of four per cent. on all the goods brought by the Chinese, which are gold, silks of all sorts, tea, anniseed, musk, rhubarb, copper, quicksilver, vermilion, china ware, &c. For which they receive in exchange lead, tin, pepper, incense, camphor, cloves, nutmegs, amber, and many other articles, on all which the Dutch fix their own prices, and consequently ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... bustling in from his laboratory a few minutes later, half frozen, but burning with enthusiasm over some experiments he was making with quicksilver, he brought his coffee to my warm corner, and I at once simulated the deepest interest in his account of his morning's work—though I confess I have never taken any great interest in science, and from what he seemed to expect the quicksilver to do I did not feel ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... unrolls in an interminable ribbon along the depth of the valley; the treeless mountains, hollowed out like ancient craters, lift their overhanging precipices; lakes sleeping in the midst of the pastures, behind curtains of pines and larches, glitter like drops of quicksilver; and on the horizon the immense glaciers crowd together and overflow like sheets of foam on a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh—a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush—this the light dust-cloth—which retains no breath that is breathed ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... he not have deceived us? Did you suspect him sufficiently to observe him? Did you examine the ball before it was put into the pistol? May it not have been one of quicksilver or clay? Did you take notice whether the Russian officer really put it into the barrel, or dropped it into his other hand? But supposing that he actually loaded the pistols, what is to convince you that he really took the loaded ones into the room where the ghost appeared, and did not ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter, was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was; and there it had abided for now some sixty years or more. And this it was, this same unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him; this it was, that kept him a great part ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... last of these parts, it loses its hold by a new division, and so on in infinitum, without any possibility of its arriving at a concluding idea. The number of fractions bring it no nearer the last division, than the first idea it formed. Every particle eludes the grasp by a new fraction; like quicksilver, when we endeavour to seize it. But as in fact there must be something, which terminates the idea of every finite quantity; and as this terminating idea cannot itself consist of parts or inferior ideas; ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... are raised abundantly. There are mines of gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, lead, tin, and all ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... Conemaugh, two miles away, are conspicuous. Amid the general wreck, beneath one of these heavy iron tanks, a looking glass, two feet by one foot in dimensions, was discovered intact, without even a scratch on the quicksilver. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... nearly as great a degree as if intended for immediate consumption; putting it into jars; filling up the jars completely with a broth or jelly prepared from portions of the same meat; corking the jars closely; incasing the corks with a luting formed of quicksilver and cheese; placing the corked jars in a boiler of cold water; boiling the water and its contents for an hour; and then allowing the cooling ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... has gone, I may be able at last to catch and fix a likeness of her," I said: "in this case a recollection is better than the changing quicksilver reality." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... smite and pass on—a wall without end. It seemed to him that he had become light and ethereal; that it was he that was in motion; that he was being driven with inconceivable velocity through unending solidness. The wind was no longer air in motion. It had become substantial as water or quicksilver. He had a feeling that he could reach into it and tear it out in chunks as one might do with the meat in the carcass of a steer; that he could seize hold of the wind and hang on to it as a man might hang on to ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... the author working with the director, the picture was almost sure to be a success. At least, the hopes of all—including those of Mr. Hammond, who had already put much money into the venture—began to rise like the quicksilver in a thermometer on ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... contained in the letters which were broken open. The plan they pursued, as I have heard, was very simple. Six or seven clerks of the post-office picked out the letters they were ordered to break open, and took the impression of the seals with a ball of quicksilver. Then they put each letter, with the seal downwards, over a glass of hot water, which melted the wax without injuring the paper. It was then opened, the desired matter extracted, and it was sealed again, by means of the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... arisen my mission now. Mercury—the quicksilver of commerce—so recently come to tremendous value through its universal use in the new antiseptics which bid fair to check all human disease—was being produced in Nareda. The import duty into the United States was being paid openly enough. But nevertheless Hanley's agents believed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... how he whipped the little boys, but was a perfect coward when a tussle ensued between him and white boys of his own size. On such occasions he always took to his legs. William had other charges to make against him. One was his rubbing up pennies with quicksilver, and passing them off for quarters of a dollar on an old man who kept a fruit stall. William was often sent to buy fruit, and he earnestly inquired of me what he ought to do under such circumstances. I told him ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... 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 satisfaction equal ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... cinnabar (an ore of quicksilver) are worked by the Borneo Company, but the exports of the former ore and of quicksilver are steadily decreasing, and fresh deposits are being sought for. Only one deposit of cinnabar has so far been discovered, that was in 1867. Antimony was first discovered ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... examined, the sand in which the gold is there deposited would, no doubt, be found to contain particles of a much larger size;[23] and even the small grains might be collected to considerable advantage by the use of quicksilver, and other improvements, with which the natives are ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the creature's name—twisted itself round so sharply that the king only hurt his own foot by stamping on the floor. For eight days did he pursue the cat everywhere: up and down the palace he was after it from morning till night, but with no better success; the tail seemed made of quicksilver, so very lively was it. At last the king had the good fortune to catch Minon sleeping, when tramp, tramp! he trod on the tail with all ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... existence. I was pleased to find many old acquaintances there, from the mines of Pennsylvania; Massachusetts and New York were also very well represented. I had no idea before, that the mineral wealth of Austria was so great. Besides the iron and lead mines among the hills of Styria and the quicksilver of Idria, there is no small amount of gold and silver found, and the Carpathian mountains are rich in jasper, opal and lapiz lazuli. The largest opal ever found, was in this collection. It weighs thirty-four ounces and looks like a ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... 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 ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... "The rest with me like shape, like garments wore, And dived with me in that quicksilver stream, Such mind, to my remembrance, then I bore, As when on vain and foolish things men dream; At last our shade it pleased her to restore, Then full of wonder and of fear we seem, And with an ireful ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... far as to make castings of iron pots, tankards, balls and the like out of their minerals, and we firmly believe all that is wanting here is to have a beginning made; for there are in New Netherland two kinds of marcasite, and mines of white and yellow quicksilver, of gold, silver, copper, iron, black lead and hard coal. It is supposed that tin and lead will also be found; but who will seek after them or who will make use of them as long as there ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition, the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, a quicksilver, which consumeth the flesh, and drieth up the ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... empty canvas and quested on over the sea in the hope of wind-ruffles on the water. But all was glassy calm, each great sea, of all the orderly procession of great seas, heaving up, round-topped and mountainous, like so much quicksilver. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... 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, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was the exact opposite of his brother. He, on the contrary, had to be watched and tended, for his veins seemed to run quicksilver. One would have been justified in saying that he went out to meet the misfortune which was so surely awaiting him. Whenever it was possible he gave his nurses and attendants the slip. He planned dangerous games, and incited the children of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... white and clear, As slowly, poisedly it falls by The dark green foliage and floats near. But Celia, apart, is pensive and must sigh, And Anais but faintly pursues the game. An encroaching, inner flame Burns in their hearts with the acrid smoke of unrest; But gaiety runs like quicksilver in Rose's breast, And Phillis, rising, Walks by herself with high and springy tread, All her young blood racing from heels to head, Breeding new desires and a new surprising Strength and determination, Whereof are bred Confidence and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... second it 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 ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... rear of the line of guns. I saw his eye going watchfully from one point to another of his charge; his head making quick little turns to right and left to see if all were doing properly; the horse a statue, the man alive as quicksilver, though nothing of him moved but his head. I was sure, very sure, that he would not see me. He was intent on his duty; spectators or the whole world looking on were nothing to him. He would not even perhaps be conscious that anybody was in his neighbourhood. I don't know whether ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... are a dirty people. They never use soap, and their skins are enamelled with dirt. When water is thrown on them, it rolls off their backs like globules of quicksilver on a marble slab. To them bathing has a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... went down the ten thousand steps that led to her palace. The lion had reached the centre of the earth before she stopped in front of a house, lighted with lamps, and built on the edge of a lake of quicksilver. In this lake various huge monsters might be seen playing or fighting—the queen did not know which—and around flew rooks and ravens, uttering dismal croaks. In the distance was a mountain down whose sides waters slowly coursed—these were the tears of unhappy lovers—and nearer the gate were ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... admixture, mated with a Russian fur trader called Shpack, also known in his time as the Big Fat. Shpack is herein classed Russian for lack of a more adequate term; for Shpack's father, a Slavonic convict from the Lower Provinces, had escaped from the quicksilver mines into Northern Siberia, where he knew Zimba, who was a woman of the Deer People and who became the mother of Shpack, who became the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... I do not own it if it is possible that I shall lose it. And so with profound meaning our Lord speaks about 'that which is another's' in comparison with 'that which is your own.' It is another's because it passes, like quicksilver under pressure, from hand to hand, and no man really holds it, but it leaps away from his grasp. And if a man retains it all his days, still, according to the grim old proverb, 'shrouds have no pockets,' and when he dies his hands open, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... space, with an heterogeneous inmate, the cycle of whose actions revolves within itself. Besides which I should think that I was confounding metaphors and realities most absurdly, if I imagined that I had a greater insight into the meaning and possibility of a living alcohol, than of a living quicksilver. In short, visible surface and power of any kind, much more the power of life, are ideas which the very forms of the human understanding make it impossible to identify. But whether the powers which ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... O Strassburg in the Franco-German beer shop at the prow of the corner where the three streets met were just marching away. I thought I caught, in the weaving gray line that flowed along like quicksilver, a glimpse of the boy who was so glad because he was about ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Irish diamonds; two of those—with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very orderly, of course; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, for which we will hope the best; and you shall make Derbyshire spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and—Quicksilver there's enough of in you, without ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... in the ditches: nothing is so likely to attract a shock of lightning as a prong carried on the shoulder with the bright steel points upwards. In the farmhouses the old folk would cover up the looking-glasses lest the quicksilver should draw the electric fluid. The haymakers will tell you that sometimes when they have been standing under a hedge out of a storm a flash of lightning has gone by with a distinct sound like 'swish,' and immediately ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... the sand. In other cases this was blown carefully off from a sheet of paper, but a few of the miners, who managed matters in a more extensive and thorough manner, effected the separation by means of quicksilver. They mixed it with the sand, added a little water, and stirred it about until the gold amalgamated with the quicksilver, converting it into a little massive, tangible, and soft heap. It was then put into a buckskin cloth, through the pores of which ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... there might likewise be wings on his feet. To enable him to walk still better (for he was always on one journey or another) he carried a winged staff, around which two serpents were wriggling and twisting. In short, I have said enough to make you guess that it was Quicksilver; and Ulysses (who knew him of old, and had learned a great deal of his wisdom from him) recognized him in ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... its name before it passes. This new feeling was so fresh, so unsatisfied and light of foot. It ran and was not wearied, anticipated him everywhere. It put a girdle round the earth while he was going from New York to Moorlock. At this moment, it was tingling through him, exultant, and live as quicksilver, whispering, "In July you will ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... 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
... departed 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 ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... 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
... creeps in to a community. You cannot embody an idea in a form or in an external association without immediately dragging it down, and running the risk of degradation. It is just like a drop of quicksilver which you cannot expose to the air but instantaneously its brightness is dimmed by the scum that forms on its surface. A church as an outward institution is exposed to all the dangers to which other institutions ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... began again in a little while, whitening the water; the depth of it blackened to the cloud but the surface frothed like quicksilver under the steady patter. The awning was up and they were safe against a wetting, but Peter saw the girl shiver in the slight chill, and looking at her more attentively he perceived that she might recently have been ill. The likeness to her mother came out then in spite of her ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... toward him. He seemed to be drawing her soul to his unconsciously. Tingling in every nerve, athrob with an emotion new and inexplicable, she drew a long slow breath and turned her head away. A hot shame ran like quicksilver through her veins. She whipped herself with her own scorn. Was she the kind of girl that gave her love to a man who did ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... claims; I know all about lodes, ledges, outcroppings, dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels, tunnels, air-shafts, "horses," clay casings, granite casings; quartz mills and their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and how to clean them up, and how to reduce the resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the bullion into pigs; and finally I know how to screen tailings, and also how to hunt for something less robust to do, and find ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... fickleness that I am sometimes inclined to keep a diary of my mind, as people do of the weather. To-day you see it temperate, to-morrow it may again blow politics and be stormy; for while I have so much quicksilver left, I fear my passionometer will be susceptible of sudden changes. What do years give one? Experience; experience, what? Reflections; reflections, what? nothing that I ever could find—nor can I well agree ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... in the old age of the literary character was the plan which a friend of mine pursued! His mind, like a mirror whose quicksilver had not decayed, reflected all objects to the last. Pull of learned studies and versatile curiosity, he annually projected a summer-tour on the Continent to some remarkable spot. The local associations were an unfailing source of agreeable impressions ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Josette?" she said, going to a mirror, from which the quicksilver was peeling, and which presented her features to ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... to thrust such impudent youngsters outside the palace, but the boys slipped through their fingers like quicksilver, and entered a large hall, where the emperor was dining, ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... beside him. His gaze wandered from the brook to the forest of hemlocks bristling from the opposite bank, their shaggy tops touched with silver. Beyond lay the wilderness—a rolling sea of soft hazy timber hemmed in by the big mountains, flanked by wet granite slides that shone like quicksilver. ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... white hair, which brought out the clear salmon tint 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
... nurse was making an attempt to capture and silence the noisy little fellow. She might as well have tried to pick up a ball of quicksilver. Tag slipped through her fingers like an eel, scurrying from one end of the cot to the other, and barking ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... morning. Sunday, the rain came down as if determined to drive the quicksilver entirely out of my poor friend. Mr. Jaffrey sat bolt upright at the breakfast-table, looking as woe-begone as a bust of Dante, and retired to his chamber the moment the meal was finished. As the day advanced, the wind veered round to the northeast, and ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... some of us in our youth must have drunk from some poisoned cup, something which turned our blood into quicksilver. I must live, or I must die. I must have excitement every hour, every second, or break down. There are others too—many others. No wonder that that idiot of a man in Harley Street talked to me gravely about my heart. ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... saw scores of mules treading the liquid, muddy mass for amalgamating purposes, driven about in a circle by men who waded knee-deep while following the weary animals. As these huge vats contain quicksilver, vitriol, and other poisonous ingredients, the lives of men and animals thus occupied are of brief duration. The mules live about four years, and the men rarely twice as long if they continue in the business. This result is well ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... lightly. "I fancy when one is too happy, the jealous gods run the quicksilver of our little spiritual barometers down for a moment, merely to remind us that ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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 them. Some ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the trail wound, a quarter of a mile brought them to the dancer's cabin, by which time her moist breath had coated her face frostily, while his had massed his heavy mustache till conversation was painful. By the greenish light of the aurora borealis, the quicksilver showed itself frozen hard in the bulb of the thermometer which hung outside the door. A thousand dogs, in pitiful chorus, wailed their ancient wrongs and claimed mercy from the unheeding stars. Not a breath ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... a sigh. "Well, it's better than working in the quicksilver-mines. At all events, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... dancers; they have far more quicksilver in their feet than their English cousins. Perhaps the very best waltzers I have ever danced with were English girls, who understood the poetry of the art and knew how to reflect not merely the time of the music, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... to speak improperly; since we are turn'd cracks, let's study to be like cracks; practise their language, and behaviours, and not with a dead imitation: Act freely, carelessly, and capriciously, as if our veins ran with quicksilver, and not utter a phrase, but what shall come forth steep'd in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... constituents were a "sulphur" and a "mercury," the father and mother of the metals; gold was supposed to have attained to the perfection of its nature by passing in succession through the forms of lead, brass and silver; gold and silver were held to contain very pure red sulphur and white quicksilver, whereas in the other metals these materials were coarser and of a different colour. From an analogy instituted between the healthy human being and gold, the most perfect of the metals, silver, mercury, copper, iron, lead ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... partakers, and by which or in which those Christians are enabled to search all things, even the deep things of God. No person is here spoken of, but reference is made to the philosophic principle, that can only act immediately, that is, interpenetratively, as two globules of quicksilver, and co-adunatively. Now, perceiving and knowing were considered as immediate acts relatively to the objects perceived and known:—'ergo', the 'principium sciendi' must be one (that is, homogeneous or consubstantial) with the 'principium essendi quoad objectum cognitum'. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... dancing," she said apart to Anne. "I haven't danced since I was sixteen—but I love it. The music seems to run through my veins like quicksilver and I forget everything—everything—except the delight of keeping time to it. There isn't any floor beneath me, or walls about me, or roof over me—I'm floating amid ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... said Mr. Merryweather. "You all have quicksilver in your heels, I believe. Seven and ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... the 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 ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... firmly grasped hands could render us; now sixteen thousand miles effectually divide us; and whilst I sit silently wishing you ages of health and mortal happiness, the mercury of my thermometer stands lazily at freezing point, whereas your own sprightly quicksilver rushes up to 92. All things tell me of our separation. We sailed, as you will find by referring to your pocket-book—for you made a memorandum at the time—on the 14th day of November last from Cork; sighted Madeira—about thirty miles abreast—in eight days, and out ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... shrieking wind, when the black clouds had been flying over his head, and the roar of the angry sea had filled the air with thunder. And these things had stirred him—one of nature's sons—in many ways. Yet none of them had sent the warm blood coursing through his veins like quicksilver, or had stolen through his senses with such sweet heart-stirring impetuosity as did the presence of this tall, fair girl, walking serenely by his side in thoughtful silence. Once, when too near the edge of the cliff, she put her foot on a fir-cone and stumbled, and the touch of ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sun was at this time out of my reach, since the sextant would not measure double the altitude. Observations of the stars were, in like manner, uncertain, in consequence of the boisterous weather we had had, and the unavoidable agitation of the quicksilver. My last observation of Antares placed us in latitude 34 degrees 4 minutes; so that we were still 115 miles ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... we three would lie by the hour, flat on the rocks, chin in fist, watching the comedies and tragedies and the strange chancy life of the pools. And they were absorbing enough to keep even Carette quiet, although her veins seemed filled with quicksilver and her life went ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... malkontenta. Query demando. Query 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. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... represent the ingenuity, and deceptive or imitative 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 zeal of men by a most rueful ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... understand our terms. I suppose, there are few of the keywords of the New Testament which have lost more of their radiance, like quicksilver, by exposure in the air during the centuries than that great word Grace, which is always on the lips of this Apostle, and to him had music in its sound, and which to us is a piece of dead doctrine, associated with certain high Calvinistic theories which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... dripping from the water percolating at their heads, to distribute the fine silt of crushed, muddy ore evenly over the plates in the steady downward slant. Already the bright plates of copper, coated with quicksilver, were ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... 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
... what 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 me the fruit that, ere it's plucked, will rot, And trees ...
— Faust • Goethe
... encouraging appeal, in the midst of which Loman, knowing full well every one had heard every word, became completely disconcerted, and let the ball go through his fingers as if it had been quicksilver. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... long but Perkin, who was made of quicksilver, which is hard to hold or imprison, began to stir. For, deceiving his keepers, he took him to his heels, and made speed to the sea-coasts. But presently all corners were laid for him, and such diligent pursuit and search made as he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... together, and were fortunate enough to meet with four Indian canoes laden with excellent bread. The Indians ran away and left their possessions, and Raleigh's dreams of mineral wealth were excited by the discovery of what he took to be a 'refiner's basket, for I found in it his quicksilver, saltpetre, and divers things for the trial of metals, and also the dust of such ore as he had refined.' He was minded to stay here and dig for gold, but was prevented by a phenomenon which he mentions incidentally, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... becoming of great importance. A continuous copper belt, the largest yet discovered in the world, exists under her soil, and while a comparatively small depth has been so far attained, the profit has been considerable. One of the largest quicksilver mines in the world is at New Almaden. The value of the output of the borax mines is over a million dollars a year. There were mined in California in 1907 over fifty different materials, most of them at a value of ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... 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
... And he, whose thou 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 my ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... thinking of something else. I reckon perhaps he likely was, for he was splendidly educated, with rows on rows of books in his cabin, and a cyclopediar six feet long. The mate said he knew everything in it up to R, not to speak of working lunars in a saucer of quicksilver, and reckonizing squid ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... 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
... 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 ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes |
