"Zero" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... After this was accomplished, all the boats were hauled up beside the tent, and covered with snow, except the two quarter-boats, which were left hanging at the davits all winter. When the thermometer fell below zero, it was found that the vapours below, and the breath of the men, condensed on the beams of the lower deck and in the cabin near the hatchway. It was therefore resolved to convert some sheet-iron, which they fortunately possessed, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... snow was three feet deep on level ground. Then came a cold rain, freezing as it fell, until a thick crust of ice gathered over the snow. The weather became intensely cold, the mercury sinking to twelve degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, and remaining there for two weeks. The storm came on with such suddenness that all who were abroad had great trouble in reaching their homes, and many perished. One man relates that he and a friend or two were out in a hunting party with an ox- ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... story; and it might be true, but he believed it was not. Miss Fonblanque was a lady, and it was doubtless possible for a lady to wander from the truth; but how was a gentleman to tell her so? His spirits for some time had been sinking, but they now fell to zero; and long after her voice had died away he still sat with a troubled and averted countenance, and could find no form of words to thank her for her narrative. His mind, indeed, was empty of everything beyond a dull longing for escape. From this pause, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... evidently unnecessary that the index error should be previously known, and even preferable that its amount should be such as to avoid the needless introduction of negative quantities by positions on different sides of zero. ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... that, at the present rate of decrease, the birth-rate will be reduced to zero within a century. If the birth-rates in England, Germany, and France should continue to decrease as they have since 1880, there would be no children born, one hundred years hence, in these countries. While we do not assert, and probably none of us believes that either or all ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... have brought an umbrella," he said. "I guess it'll rain harder, before it gets through. But it's better than ten below zero, anyhow." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the radiant light of the truth. All our sciences witness to this fact; even the science of numbers. Try to add a column of Roman figures; you will abandon the task, stupefied by the confusion of symbols; and will recognise what a revolution was made in arithmetic by the discovery of the zero. Like the egg of Columbus, it was a very little thing, but it had to ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... industry as exists consists chiefly in working up the raw materials yielded by the herds. Among the Bedouins, blacksmiths and saddlers are the only professional artisans; these are regarded with contempt and are never of Bedouin stock.[1157] In the ancient world, industry reached its zero point in Arabia, and in modern times shows meager development there. On the other hand the Saharan Arabs developed an hereditary guild of expert well-makers, which seems to date back to remote times, and is held ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... taken together is one big zero, for according to my way of thinking there is nothing that can make wholly unhappy an individual ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... armor-proof against unhappiness but by seeing to it that our hearts are not set on anything but doing or being; nothing else is reliably permanent amid the fitful sunshine and shadow of human life. "Make hy claim of wages a zero; then hast thou the world at thy feet." [Footnote: In Maeterlinck's Measure of the Hours, he speaks of a sundial found near Venice by Hazlitt with the inscription, Horas non numero nisi serenas and quotes Hazlitt's remarks thereon: ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... infinite space, and the misery of thought has sunk to rest in the changeless repose of all-embracing Nothing. The absolute, if it were spirit, would still be activity, and it is activity, the daughter of desire, which is incompatible with the absolute. The absolute, then, must be the zero of all determination, and the only manner of being suited to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... out that, in all announcements of the results of drawings, the '0' or 'zero,' which for some reason invariably precedes the number of a Premium ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... crossable to-morrow. So that, except for amusing the enemy, the cannonading may cease at Weissenfels. A certain Duc de Crillon, in command at this Weissenfels Bridge-burning and cannonade, has a chivalrous Anecdote (amounting nearly to zero when well examined) about saving or sparing Friedrich's life on this interesting occasion: How, being now on the safe side of the River, he Crillon with his staff taking some refection of breakfast after the furious flurry there had been; there came to him ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... or six miles he drew his horse down to a walk. Then, feeling the intensity of the cold as the mercury was far below zero, he dismounted, looped the reins over his arms, and walked a while. For further precaution he took his blanket-roll and wrapped the two blankets about his body, especially protecting ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... oscillate rapidly on the dial, and finally subside uncertainly at zero, he thanked heaven that they had indulged in no psychic ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... you don't like it here, Grandpa—" he said, and he finished the thought with the trick telephone number that people who didn't want to live any more were supposed to call. The zero in the telephone number he ...
— 2 B R 0 2 B • Kurt Vonnegut
... points. The consequence was, that the boat, as she was borne down by the tide against them, shipped a sea every moment, which the wind threw against the carcass of the corporal, who was now quite exhausted with more than four hours' exposure to a wintry night, the temperature being nearly down to zero. All the corporal's stoicism was gone; he talked wildly, crouched and gibbered in his fear, when he was suddenly roused by a heavy shock. He raised his head, which had sunk upon his chest, and beheld something ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... air but the roof. I have followed the practice of sleeping in the open air for some time, and in midwinter without discomfort have had the temperature of my sleeping porch fall to six degrees below zero. Of course it is foolish for any one to sleep exposed to rain or snow or to think that there is any benefit to be derived from being cold or uncomfortable. The whole idea of open-air sleeping is to breathe pure, fresh air in place ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... medium will not affect, or will affect only very slightly, the appearances from places close to the object. If the appearances from sufficiently neighbouring places are either wholly un changed, or changed to a diminishing extent which has zero for its limit, it is usually found that the changes can be accounted for by changes in objects which are between the object in question and the places from which its appearance has changed appreciably. Thus physics is able to reduce the laws of most changes with which it deals to changes ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... the camp helped to break the long dull spell of forty-below-zero weather, when two suns shone feebly through ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... a particularly cheerful thing. Those who have never seen one can form but a faint idea of its splendour; especially on a sharp winter night in the arctic regions, where the thermometer falls to forty degrees below zero, without inducing the inhabitants to suppose that the world has reached its conclusion. The billets are usually piled up on end, so that the flames rise and twine round them with a fierce intensity that causes them to crack and sputter cheerfully, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... began systematic measurements of standard surfaces, so varied in design as to bring out the underlying causes of differences noted in their pressures. Measurements were tabulated on nearly 50 of these at all angles from zero to 45 degrees at intervals of 2-1/2 degrees. Measurements were also secured showing the effects on each other when surfaces are superposed, or when they ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... up to you To become the hero; Show us how a man should woo When he wills to win, and do Teach us how to bill and coo With our hopes at zero. Chloe, for a change (it may amuse you), You propose ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... coast. Here there is shelter everywhere." He spoke slowly, and he was thinking swiftly. "It would take five days at thirty miles a day. And the chances are that your husband would not stand it. One hundred and twenty hours at fifty degrees below zero, and no fire until the fourth day. He ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the face of every kind of winter threat, merely to make scientific observations. In March, 1906, Professor Johnson and Dr. Rudolph spent the night at timber-line in a pit dug in the snow to obtain protection from a gale, at the temperature of 5 deg. Fahr. below zero, and fought their way to the summit. But so withering was the gale at that altitude even at mid-day, that a precipitate retreat was made to avoid freezing. The faces of the climbers showed plainly the punishment received. Three ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Crath Carpathian English or Persian Walnut. Last winter, I lost seven out of fifty trees from some cause, after they had gone through the winter of 1950 and 1951, at a temperature of nineteen below zero without injury. It may have been they were caught last fall by a hard freeze in full foliage, early before the apples were all picked; and, again, it may be blight. I hope not. But this I do know, the hickory and black walnut in their ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... thing. I did not want so much to alter the place and use of things as to weight them with a new dimension; to deepen them by going down to the potential nothing; to lift them to infinity by measuring from zero. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... he had done, and justify it by doubling the capital withdrawn. But to his inconceivable horror, the bill of the Canal Company was rejected in the Lords; the shares bought at a premium went down to zero; and to add to his perplexity, the speculator abruptly disappeared from the town. In this crisis he was summoned to meet his ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Twaddle they talked on the stairs: U is the Uncle who 'thought we'd be going': V is the Voice which his niece replied 'No' in: W is the Waiter, who sat up till eight: X is his Exit, not rigidly straight: Y is a Yawning fit caused by the Ball: Z stands for Zero, or nothing at all. ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... shining continuously for more than two hundred hours. On the other hand, the coldest parts of the moon's surface, when the sun has only just risen after a night of three hundred and forty hours, must have a temperature more than a hundred degrees below zero. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... tremendously a little while ago. Your husband was the prime mover. He went in for them largely. Everyone went for them. They held for a bit, then your husband began to sell as fast as he could. And then, of course, the shares went down to zero. People waited a bit, then sold—for what they could get. No one knew who did the buying till yesterday. My dear Nina, your husband has bought the lot. He has got the whole concern into his hands for next to nothing. The gold ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... only to eat bread and butter. It was handed to her, in a marked way, by her mother, and Linda's light-blue eyes flashed with pleasure. Nora felt at that moment that she almost hated Linda. She herself ate resignedly, and without much appetite. Her spirits were down to zero. It seemed far less likely than it did before she left O'Shanaghgan that she could help her father out of his scrape. It was almost impossible to break through these chains of propriety, of neatness, ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... "Zero the emperor what fiddled when Rome was burning," Abe replied. "He's got nothing on you. You would fiddle if Rome, Watertown, and Ogdensburg ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... weather in mid-winter, and then the thermometer went hurrying down towards zero with alarming rapidity. Evening closed in with a temperature so mild that fires were permitted to expire in the ashes; and morning broke with a cold nor-wester, whistling through every crack and cranny, in a tone that ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... famous General Changarnier, who my other neighbor said had one foot in the grave and the other dans le plat. He was so old and thin and bony that if his uniform had not kept him up he would have crumbled together before my eyes, and have become a zero instead of a hero. However, he kept together while dinner lasted, for which I was thankful, and I returned him safely to posterity and to ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... the prisoner. "Get aboard of Blackwings, strike the summit at Zero Hill with her lever hooked back and her throttle wide open, let a strong man hold your head out at the window, and if she hangs to the rail your successor will have the rare ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... his equipment should be as comfortable and complete as though he were going to be a foreman. She knew very well that Jack Frost has no compunctions about sending the thermometer away down thirty or forty degrees below zero in those far-away forest depths; and whatever other hardships Frank might be called upon to endure, it was very well settled in her mind that he should not suffer for lack of warm clothing. Accordingly, the knitting-needles and sewing-needles had been ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... particular storm was attended with any fatal consequences. The snow completely disappeared within a day or two; and even while it lasted the song sparrows, fox sparrows, and linnets could be heard singing with all cheerfulness. On the coldest day, when the mercury settled to within twelve degrees of zero, I observed that the song sparrows, as they fed in the road, had a trick of crouching till their feathers all but touched the ground, so protecting their ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... of 1910 Professor Lake gave me some buds of Persian walnut and I put three buds into a young black walnut tree. During the following February we had a drop in temperature to 25 below zero, something almost unknown in this section of the country, but two of the buds lived through it. After growth started in the spring I cut one out and the other grew into a tree which produced three nuts in 1915. My area for ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... determined to teach the southern tribesmen a lesson they would not forget. In the dead of winter our troops marched against the Cheyennes, then in their encampments below the Kansas line. The Indians did not believe that white men could march in weather forty below zero, during which they themselves sat in their tepees around their fires; but our cavalrymen did march in such weather, and under conditions such as our cavalry perhaps could not endure today. Among these troops was the Seventh Cavalry, Custer's Regiment, formed after the Civil War, and it was ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... Batty Bay. Our habitation, which consisted of a frame of spars, 32 feet by 16, covered with canvas, was, during the month of November enclosed, and the roof covered with snow, from 4 to 7 feet thick, which being saturated with water when the temperature was fifteen degrees below zero, immediately took the consistency of ice, and thus we actually became the inhabitants of an iceberg during one of the most severe winters hitherto recorded; our sufferings aggravated by want of bedding, clothing and animal food, need not be dwelt upon. Mr. C. Thomas, the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... rest, which ought to show itself in the natural selection; but if the development of an extremity needs 10,000 generations, the individual in which the process of the development begins produces 1/10000 of the extremity and the advantage, resulting therefrom is reduced to zero. For an organ can only be of advantage when it performs its functions; and on {106} the first of the 10,000 stages of development the extremity can not perform its functions. Just think of the cetacea! Of the hind extremity, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... met here a telegraph operator named Stanton, who took me to his boarding-house, the most cheerless I have ever been in. Nobody got enough to eat; the bedclothes were too short and too thin; it was 28 degrees below zero, and the wash-water was frozen solid. The board was cheap, being only $1.50 ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the power lever back to zero. The power hum died. The liquids slid back to their natural level, the chair tipped over and lay still, papers fluttered ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... exasperated by a persistent cough. The season was and had been unusually inclement even for that region, where the thermometer sometimes changes fifty degrees in thirty-six hours; and at the time of his release from his room there was a period of successive changes of temperature from thawing to zero and below, a characteristic of the winter climate of Homeville and its vicinity. Dr. Hayes exhibited the inevitable quinine, iron, and all the tonics in his pharmacopoeia, with cough mixtures and sundry, but in vain. Aunt Polly ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... Scotty was busy with the guard. The officer's understanding of English was about zero, and Scotty's knowledge of Arabic was slightly less, so they were ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... eastward and westward, and upon the adoption, for all purposes for which it may be found convenient, of a universal day which shall begin at midnight on the initial meridian and whose hours shall be counted from zero up ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... canning and "pursurving" while all the little darkies knew where wild strawberries, crab apples and black berries grew for the picking. With Mommuh taking in white folks' washing and the dray horse money coming in, Anderson Scales prospered in Madison where he started from zero scratch. He had ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... were so young and walked briskly, their impoverished blood was not vigorous enough to produce a reaction against the sharp wind of the zero night which nosed through their few thin garments and bit into their bodies as if they were naked. They came to a vast department store. Each of its great show-windows, flooded with light, was a fascinating display of clothing for women upon wax models—costly jackets and cloaks of wonderful ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... right by contract, insist upon a supply of fresh air for your workroom with the same emphasis you use in demanding sufficient heat in zero weather. ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... board for the moves of this game of games, a panel for the drawings of this Fine Art, a stage for the entrechats and pirouettes of its graceful adepts, Zero, magical artificer, had been, for the last two nights, sliding at full speed up and down the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... to the skies, to drop to zero again. Once in a fit of despondency he told Driver to pack his bag, as they would be leaving early ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... went out for a week's sledging on March 16, but the temperatures were now becoming too low to be pleasant and touching 40 degrees or so below zero. What tried us more than anything else was thick weather and the fearfully bad light on days when no landmarks were visible to guide us to the depot. Our sleeping-bags also were frozen and uncomfortable, thick rime collecting on ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... It had been a regular gold-mine to me all that open winter, when the ice froze and thawed every week and finally jammed itself clean to the river bottom in the throat of the bend up at Onondaga, and the next day the thermometer fell to eleven degrees below zero, freezing it into a solid block that bridged the river for traffic, and saved my ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... it faired; and the morning was sunny. Wade had become very unwell. He had taken cold from his drenching, and was shivering and feverish by turns. His courage, too, was clean down to zero. He knew we should never see home again, and didn't seem to care whether he lived or not. That is about as bad a way as a fellow can get into ever. I was little better than sick myself; and, while the others went off after ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... zero. "Now we've done it," he said ruefully, looking down at the swirling torrent, "It's a case of ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... experience, we have found that it makes no difference when the piano is tuned if it is kept in the living room. If, however, a piano were tuned upon a warm day in the fall and then allowed to remain in a room in which the temperature suddenly fell to zero, we could not expect it to stand in tune; and much less, if the room is heated up occasionally and then left for an interval at the mercy of the weather. Persons who treat their pianos in this way should have them tuned about four times ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... approach was made to a satisfactory determination of the surface temperature of the moon. From his experiments he inferred that the maximum temperature attained, at or near the equator, about three days after full moon, does not exceed 200 deg. C., while the minimum is not much under zero C. Subsequent experiments, however, both by himself and Professor Langley, render these results more than doubtful, without it is admitted that the moon has an atmospheric covering. Langley's results ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... antero-posterior curve is obtained by fixing the graduated tape at zero on the root of the nose (on the fronto-nasal suture) and passing it over the middle of the forehead, vertex, and occiput to the ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... you live," replied Bluff. "That would be a tough thing, for the people there to climb out near midnight, and the mercury hovering half way down to zero!" ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... term which may mean a great deal or nothing at all; it admits of one's going about idle with the appearance of being fully occupied. Then a few unsuccessful speculations bring him back, at the end of his days, to the point whence he started—that is, zero." ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... and hauled it upon the raft; they killed it, drank the blood, and ate part of the flesh, husbanding the remainder. In this way three other sharks were taken, and upon these sharks the poor fellows managed to prolong their lives till picked up (in sight of the land) in what may be termed the very zero of living misery. Lieutenant Wilson and four seamen survived, and recovered their strength. Order and discipline were maintained upon the raft; fortitude, forethought, a reliance upon Divine Providence, and good ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... plan, and helped as well as he could with the work. They still stayed outdoors as much as possible, but the cold became intense, the temperature going almost to forty degrees below zero, the surface of the snow freezing and the boughs of the big trees about the valley becoming so brittle that they broke with sharp crashes beneath the weight of accumulated snow. Then they paused long enough in the work on the snowshoes to make themselves gloves of buckskin, ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... slowly. If Mary had gone to Washington, why had the servants not answered his ring? It was too early for them to be in bed. Then his spirits, which had descended to zero, rose jubilantly. Hohenhauer! It was against him she was barricading herself. No doubt she would feel herself in a state of siege as long as the man remained in ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... marriage," said Cousin Betty in the girl's ear, without seeming at all offended at the way in which the Baroness had dismissed them, counting her almost as zero. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... to be cool on a December night, with the thermometer at zero, and the ground three feet under the snow," said Cap, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... in a coal-heated brooder house, fed according to experiment-station directions, and reared in poultry houses built from experiment-station designs. From the first they have been practically free from lice and disease. She gets winter eggs. Even in zero weather and at times when feed is most costly, her spring pullets more ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... of the worst winters that had been known— the glass being sometimes from 30 to 40 below zero, and the snow very deep. One great snowdrift completely blocked the east end of the parsonage—it was about fifteen feet deep. The lower room was entirely dark, and we had to make a tunnel through the snow bank to let in the light. Some mornings it was so cold that we could not sit to the breakfast-table, ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... his person, and at night shall also wear a cloth-jacket and trowsers. Stoves are placed on the berth-deck, to dry the atmosphere below. It is a curious fact, that, in March last, at Portsmouth, N. H., with the thermometer at zero, we were deprived of stoves the moment the powder came on board; while now in the month of July, on the coast of Africa, sweltering at eighty degrees of Fahrenheit, the fires are ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... possess the power of turning the plane of polarization without the intervention of magnetism. Oil of turpentine and quartz are examples; but Faraday showed that, while in one direction, that is, across the lines of magnetic force, his rotation is zero, augmenting gradually from this until it attains its maximum, when the direction of the ray is parallel to the lines of force; in the oil of turpentine the rotation is independent of the direction of ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... emphasised by the continuous chink, chink of gold and silver, and broken only by the announcement of events at different tables: "Onze, noir, impair et manque";—"Rien ne va plus";—"Zero!" ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... always possible, however, that there might be another shack—perhaps a crude palmetto-leaf hut, such as the poor whites in the backwoods lived in, somewhere not far away that served them for a shelter when it rained or a bustling Norther came howling down from the regions of snow and ice and zero temperatures. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... on the return of the commissioner by observing again at the St. Francis bridge before mentioned on the night of the 10th of December, with the thermometer ranging during these observations from 11 to 15 deg. below zero of Fahrenheit's scale, there being then near 4 feet of snow upon the ground. The commissioner then proceeded by the Grand portage road, and the road which pursues the margin of Temiscouata Lake and the valleys ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... said I. 'Let me.' But she pushed me away. 'Mustn't waste time.' She gave her orders as business-like as an officer. 'Do your own saddle while I attend to this. Zero can run right away from anything they're riding—from anything at all. Can't you, Zero?' and she gave the horse a quick pat in between unbuckling. He was a powerful, rangy bay, and not winded by his run and his swim. 'He's my father's,' she went on. 'He'll carry you through to General Hooker's ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... common sense for it involves something being made out of nothing, inefficiency producing efficiency and zero extracting 'one' out of itself. This form of selection, though it does not appeal to me under any circumstances, is legitimate enough when it is exercised by a competent body. A university can confer a degree upon a distinguished ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... fine frosty night, with no wind and the thermometer below zero, the brain works with much vivacity; and the next moment I had seen the circumstance transplanted from India and the tropics to the Adirondack wilderness and the stringent cold of the Canadian border. Here then, almost before I had begun my story, I had two countries, ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... summer and the coldest, stormiest winter followed and the workers learned what it meant to travel across country with the mercury ranging from 110 in the shade to 22 degrees below zero; to have a Turkish bath while making a "votes for women" speech or be delayed for hours on a freight or passenger train by a snow blockade. By January, 1912, however, one-third of the counties were organized, many newspapers pledged to help, and headquarters established in the best business building ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Mrs. Bell felt her spirit sink down to zero. She had an insane desire to take Mrs. Butler by main force, and drag her out of the room. Poor Matty's blushes changed to pallor, and her hand shook as she pessed Miss Peters her creamless tea. ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... dangerous things to trifle with. All in vain. More theorems went on to my cuff than into my head. Never did chalk do so much work to so little purpose. And, therefore, it came that Furnace Second was reduced to zero in Professor Surd's estimation. He looked upon me with all the horror which an unalgebraic nature could inspire. I have seen the Professor walk around an entire square rather than meet the man who had no mathematics ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... many spectators, and when the school increased until a mounted field-piece, drawn by four horses, was added to the equipment, the exhibit became quite sensational. Few pupils of that day could ever forget the winter drills on the frozen lake, with the thermometer near zero, as requiring an endurance worthy of ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Cryogen.—A description, with one engraving, of Mr. Cailletet's new apparatus for producing temperatures from 70 degrees to 80 degrees C., below zero, through the expansion of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... lamps lighted and the hut full of people and dogs, a thermometer placed on the net over the fire indicated a temperature of 38°; when removed two or three feet from this situation it fell to 31°, and placed close to the wall stood at 23°, the temperature of the open air at the time being 25° below zero. A greater degree of warmth than this produces extreme inconvenience by the dropping from the roofs. This they endeavour to obviate by applying a little piece of snow to the place from which a drop proceeds, and this adhering is for a short time an effectual remedy; but ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... view of Mount Hood this morning; a rose-colored mass of snow, bearing S. 85 deg. W. by compass. The sky is clear, and the air cold; the thermometer 2.5 deg. below zero, the trees and bushes glittering white, and the rapid stream ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... speculation he had decided that the Caves must be situated in the Inferno Range, a place so particularly vicious that no man, so far as was known, had ever explored it. During the day the heat would boil eggs, and at night the sub-zero cold cracked great scales off the granite boulders. And here, too, lay the Trap-Door City of the ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat
... have that abundant life within us, shall not be dependent for our gladness on the outer world, but like explorers in the Arctic regions, even if we have to build a hut of snow, shall be warm within it when the thermometer is far below zero; and there will be light there when the long midnight is spread around the dwelling. So, dear friends, let us understand what is the main thing for a Christian to endeavour after,—not so much the cultivation of special graces as the deepening of the life ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... a communication from the Secretary of State, dated the 16th instant, respecting the approaching international conference at Washington, D.C., for the purpose of fixing upon a meridian proper to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the globe, and recommend that the sum of $10,000 be appropriated to enable the Secretary of State to meet ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... satisfaction began to spread over his face. His gaze flicked to dials and gauges; he nodded very slightly, and brought both hands down like an organist playing a mighty chord. He watched the gauges. The needles were still, lying on their zero pins, and where lights should have flickered and flashed there was nothing. Paresi glanced at Anderson and met a worried look. Hoskins had his head cocked to one side, listening, puzzled. Ives rose from the couch and came ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... in the Equatorial regions are severe, the temperatures at times descending to as low as 80 degrees below zero. However, our springs, summers, and autumns are mild and nearly twice as long as your seasons, for the Martian year is 687 days long. We grow and mature many crops of necessary cereals, fruits and vegetables during the spring and summer months, so that ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... mixed stock, and due to the fact that an animal in the South never took on tallow enough to assist materially in resisting a winter. The cattle of the North always had the flesh to withstand the rigors of the wintry season, dry, cold, zero weather being preferable to rain, sleet, and the northers that swept across the plains of Texas. The range of the new company was intermediate between the extremes of north and south, and as we handled all steer cattle, no one entertained any ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... contrary, he plundered the whole nation for his own individual advantage. In the patriarchal relation that hypocritically concealed the slavery of the worker, the latter must have remained an intellectual zero, totally ignorant of his own interest, a mere private individual. Only when estranged from his employer, when convinced that the sole bond between employer and employe is the bond of pecuniary profit, when the sentimental bond between them, which ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... calculating purpose that; reduces one's courage to zero," the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my thoughts. "Otherwise imagination might count for much. But the paddle, the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... ink. On second consideration and reading, the message read very differently. 'Cross' was the code name of the station; 'All' meant that his barometer read 30.02 and that his morning temperature was zero; 'My' conveyed the information that his sky was clear, the wind from the south and that his minimum temperature for the night was zero; 'Ink' informed us that the wind velocity at the station was six miles an hour and that he ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... the plasma, and the greater or less amount of proteid in the blood. These errors are quite inconsiderable for the above-mentioned instruments, since here the blood is so highly diluted with water that the possible original differences are thereby reduced to zero. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... impossible. If he sells his shares and his lands, their purchaser will continue all those activities which oppress the poor. If all the rich men take the advice simultaneously the shares will fall to zero and the lands be unsaleable. If one man sells out and throws the money into the slums, the only result will be to add himself and his dependents to the list of the poor, and to do no good to the poor beyond giving a chance few of them ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... I had done the discreet and virtuous thing, and silently moralized, not without self-complacency, upon the folly of carrying through the world expectations which the fact, when seen, could only put out of countenance. "Make your expectations zero," I said ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... experiments. The summer of 1923 was extremely dry. This was followed by warm rains in the late fall and early winter. On January 6, during a period of high wind, the mercury dropped to within a few degrees of zero, official reports recording temperatures of from 6 to 8 degrees above zero at ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... as it flowed from the south, covered with mists rising into the wintry air,—for the temperature was but a few degrees above zero,—had not a particle of ice ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... is zero?" she inquired. "Just now I heard the flaxen-haired croupier call out 'zero!' And why does he keep raking in all the money that is on the table? To think that he should grab the whole pile for himself! What does ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... sometimes arrive abreast of each other so as to render mutual aid, or supply a pressing want almost as soon as it is felt. The coherer in its present form is actuated by waves of comparatively low frequency, which rise from zero to full height in extremely brief periods, and are separated by periods decidedly longer (Fig. 73). What is needed is a plan by which the waves may flow either continuously or so near together that they may lend themselves to attuning. Dr. Wehnelt, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... brass tube is attached the rubber tube, t b, which discharges the cold salt water into a pail placed under it. (See b.) The salt and water as it passes from pail, a, to pail, b, is at a temperature of about zero. The water should not be allowed to waste. It should be returned to the first pail for continual use, or as long as it has freezing properties. As a matter of further economy, it is necessary to limit the rate of exit of the freezing water. This is regulated by nipping the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... raucous buzz, and a squawk box said: "On my mark it will be Zero minus four minutes ... mark!" The voice of Control, ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... in the chart-room ranges from zero to a little above freezing-point. This is a very disturbing factor in rates of the chronometers (five in number, 3 G.M.T. and 2 Sid.T.), which are kept in cases in a padded box, each case covered by a piece of blanket, and the box covered by a heavy coat. In any enclosed ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... out-of-door sports, where it would seem that convention would rest practically at the zero point, the bugbear of good form, although mashed and disguised, rises up to confuse the directed practicality. The average man is wedded to his theory. He has seen a thing done in a certain way, and he not only always does it that ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... are truly congenial in regions in which the plant thrives without the aid of man. A few varieties of native grapes fare badly in the winter's cold of northern grape regions, and the tender Vinifera vine is at the mercy of the winter wherever the mercury goes below zero. In cold climates, therefore, care must be exercised in selecting hardy varieties and in following careful cultural methods with the tender sorts. If other climatic conditions are favorable, however, winter-killing is not an unsurmountable ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... perils he had encountered that day, he had been buoyed up by the thought that he had food sufficient to last him for a day or two, and that he was in no danger of suffering the pangs of hunger. But now his spirits fell again to zero. ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... of the angle of incidence DAQ causes the wave BN, however great it was, to be reduced to zero, (for this angle being 49 degrees 11 minutes in the glass, the angle BAN is still 11 degrees 21 minutes, and the same angle being reduced by one degree only the angle BAN is reduced to zero, and so the wave BN reduced to a point) thence it comes about ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... were much impressed with the vastness and the undeveloped resources of our country. They were also impressed with the climate, as the thermometer went down to forty degrees below zero while they were on Buckskin Mountain. Nature seemed to wish to aid Will in the effort to exhibit novelties to his foreign guests, for she tried her hand at some spectacular effects, and succeeded beyond mortal expectation. She treated them to a few blizzards; and shut in by the ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... earliest childhood, could dance as easily and as gracefully on them as on their feet, whilst fur-muffled mothers sat on benches round the rink, drinking tea and coffee as unconcernedly as though they were at a garden-party in mid-July instead of in a temperature of zero. An "Ottawa March" was a great institution. Couples formed up as though for a country dance, the band struck up some rollicking tune, the leader shouted his directions, and fifty couples whirled and twirled, and skated ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... of screw, if multiplied By angle of rotation, Will give the distance it must glide In motion of translation. Infinite pitch means pure translation, And zero pitch means ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... but he was coming irrevocably. She did not have to see very clearly to know that. The girl before her answered wildly; the professor frowned, and, looking down at his roll-book, slowly and deliberately made a zero. ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... her, but nevertheless he got down and, gave all the grease cups a turn, removed the number plates and put them under the rear seat cushion, inspected the gas tank and the oil gauge and the fanbelt and the radiator, turned back the trip-mileage to zero—professional driving had made Bud careful as a taxi driver about recording the mileage of a trip—looked at the clock set in the ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... degrees, 7 degrees, 6 degrees, 6 degrees; and at Selborne to 7 degrees, 6 degrees, 10 degrees; and on the 31st January, just before sunrise, with rime on the trees and on the tube of the glass, the quicksilver sank exactly to zero, being 32 degrees below the freezing point; but by eleven in the morning, though in the shade, it sprang up to 16.5 degrees,—a most unusual degree of cold this for the south of England! During these four nights the cold was so penetrating ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... contain eight but only eight different vowels, 0 and 4 having the same vowel aw, while 5 and 9 have ai. Both these pairs caused confusion; the first of them was cured by substituting the name of the letter O for the name of the zero cipher, which happens to be identical with it in form,[9] and this introduced a ninth vowel sound ou ( owe), but the other pair remained such a constant source of error, that persons who had their house ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... to two degrees below zero, the ground frozen as hard as brick-bats, and the winds whistled gaily through our tattered tents, our teeth beating tattoo and our limbs shivering from the effects of our scanty clothing and shoes. But our wagons were gathering in supplies from the rich valleys of the French Broad and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... twenty-eight degrees below zero when the doors of the Opera House were opened to permit the citizens of Prouty to hear the World Renowned Swiss ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... favourite, because he had such a good appetite; and it appeared that I was not very likely to stand well in her good opinion, for I also ate a great deal, and every extra mouthful I took I sank in her estimation, till I was nearly at the zero, where Timothy had long been for the same offence; but Mr Cophagus would not allow her to stint him, saying, "Little boys must eat—or won't ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... the shores of the New World, the waves took on better and more imposing shapes, the wind blew more smartly, and at night the stars seemed brighter and more numerous, and the clouds appeared to form themselves into stripes! Yes, this is my first experience of a zero temperature. The air is deliciously fresh: one seems to breathe in freedom with it. Well, perhaps I am a little cold, but that is because I have been waiting an hour and a-half en queue for a permit allowing me to have my luggage examined; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... only as long as the example of these workingmen has not been generally followed. Every day that the consumers' leagues extend and take in larger numbers of the working class, even this slight relief is lost more and more even for the workingmen who belong to them, until it drops to zero at the time when the consumers' leagues have been joined by the majority of the whole working class. Can anybody talk seriously of the working class turning its attention to a means which gives it no aid whatever as a class, and furnishes its individual members this inconsequential ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... directly from the fusion of hydrogen into helium. A pilot model, with a total volume of a little more than one and one-quarter cubic feet, is capable of turning out up to five hundred horsepower, either DC or AC in a wide range of frequencies. The voltage can be regulated from zero to one thousand volts ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... open with the thermometer ranging anywhere between 25 and 40 below zero is no fun. We were taught to shoot, march, skirmish and drill, and we also learned the art of "old soldiering," which means the art of being able to dodge anything in the shape of work. By the way, they ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... solitary arrival is nowhere esteemed the happiest fortune, but in Elgin a kind of ridiculous humiliation attached to it, a greed for the entertainment, a painful unsophistication. A young man of Elgin would walk up and down in the snow for a quarter of an hour with the thermometer at zero to escape the ignominy of it; Lorne Murchison would have so walked. Our young man was potentially capable of not minding, by next morning he didn't mind; but immediately he was fast tied in the cobwebs of the common prescription, and he made his way to each of the points of the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... pocket the little volume that we have before seen in his hands. 'If I only persevere in my system, the certainty that I must win is almost mathematical. I have staked and lost two hundred and thirty-three times. Allowing out of that one chance in every thirty-six, which is the average of zero being marked, and two hundred and four times for the backers of the other numbers, I have the mathematical expectation of six times at least, which would nearly recoup me. And shall I, then, sacrifice that vast foundation of waste chances that ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... too great, since he assumed that it was only fifty miles in length. I may mention that so great has been the influence of Ptolemy on geography, that, up to the middle of the last century, Ferro, in the Canary Islands, was still retained as the zero-point of the meridians ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... believed that October would see him rich. But now the hills were brown with the killing touch of frost; the white of the snowy range was creeping farther and farther over the mountains; the air was crisp with the hint of zero soon to come; the summer was dead, and Fairchild's hopes lay inert beside it. He was only working now because he had determined to work. He was only laboring because a great, strong, big-shouldered man had come from Cornwall to ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... shoulder. "Hey, Frankie—we're five hours out, by the chronometers—look how small the Earth has got...! We're all gonna have brunch in Ramos' vehicle... Know what that goof ball Mex was doing, before? Stripped down to his shorts, and with the spin stopped for zero-G, he was bouncing back and forth from wall to wall inside his bubb! The sun makes it nice and warm in there. Think I might try it, myself, sometime. Shucks, I feel pretty good, now... Frankie, ain't ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... lists, and I then requested him to place against each name (as far as he knew) the annual income of the different appointments held by that person. In the mean time, I performed the same operation on his list, against some names of which I was obliged to place a ZERO. The result of the comparison was an average of nearly 1200L. per annum for the six French SAVANS whom I had named. Of the average amount of the sums received by the English, I only remember that it was very much ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... by a figure infinitely near to zero. Even in us the force is negligible during our first century of life. In our second it develops quickly, and becomes dangerous to shortlivers who venture into its field. If I were not veiled and robed in insulating material you could not endure my presence; and I am still a young woman: one ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... San Antonio, Texas; from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, in every month of the year, in the lakes of Norway, Sweden and Denmark as well as in the North Sea, in all kinds of weather—once in the Red River at Grand Forks, N. Dakota, in a snow storm in zero weather, and I have never yet heard of one person having taken cold from being baptized, but on the other hand, MANY ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... may be almost sure that the other is nearby. I have not seen the butterfly for many weeks, but among the stalks of Chelone I find the webs which shelter its children. These tiny caterpillars will feed on the leaves till winter, then by some witchery of nature survive the frost and snow and zero weather, sheltered only by this filmy, flimsy home, finish their growth in the spring, waxing fat on the young leaves and by late May be ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... more disruptive than the technologies that proceeded it. For Christ's sake, the Vaudeville performers who sued Marconi for inventing the radio had to go from a regime where they had *one hundred percent* control over who could get into the theater and hear them perform to a regime where they had *zero* percent control over who could build or acquire a radio and tune into a recording of them performing. For that matter, look at the difference between a monkish Bible and a Luther Bible — next to that ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... matters would have been managed in the Family Herald. Anne raised expectant eyes to her mistress's face, but one glance at it scattered her golden visions. She softly lifted up the tea-tray and withdrew. Her faith and hope had gone down to zero. She was a very dispirited little girl as she returned to her kitchen. That uncle from Australia was not a rich uncle. Missis would never look so miserable if he was rich. As a poor relation he was no use whatever; and Anne had done nothing for the family she loved. Oh, how very disappointing ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade |
