"Disuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advise that we should go on all-fours. It is just the same with a great human device, the introduction of clothes. They have led to all sorts of new susceptibilities to disease and even tendencies to direct injury of many kinds. Yet no one advocates the complete disuse of all clothing on the ground that corsets have sometimes proved harmful. It would be just as absurd to advocate the complete abandonment of contraceptives on the ground that some of them have sometimes been ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... a baby. Beyond the little stunt he did in his office or his store, and beyond the ability to cross a crowded street, he was no good. He not only didn't know how to do things, but he was rapidly losing, through disuse, the power to learn how to do things. The modern city dweller, bred, born, brought up on this island, is about as helpless and useless a man, considered as a four-square, self-reliant individual, as you can find on the broad expanse of the globe. ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... have seen a white man melt snow in a frying-pan, wash hands and face in it, throw it out, fry bacon and beans in it, then melt more snow and wash his cup and plate in it. There is, however, this to be said anent the disuse of the bath in this country, that in cold weather most men perspire very little indeed, and the perspiration that is exuded passes through to the outer garments and is immediately deposited upon them as frost; and there is this further to be said about dirt in general, that one blessed property ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... individual decoration of a room to them. The material should be plain Holland, white or buff when there are outside blinds, otherwise green or blue. In recent years shutters, or outside blinds, have come somewhat into disuse. This is, on the whole, perhaps an improvement, for they are rarely manipulated with judgment, being either left open or kept shut for continuous periods. In the latter case they darken rooms which, though unused, would have been better for the admission of ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... some out of the way places such as the Highlands and parts of Ireland. Some of these British dye plants had been used from early historical times for dyeing. Some few are still in use in commercial dye work (pear, sloe, and a few others); but their disuse was practically completed during the 19th century, when the chemical dyes ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... sitting up to meals, able to walk up and down stairs with an arm and a stick, and had also walked in the same way in the park. Considering how completely atrophied her muscles were from twenty years' entire disuse, this was much more than I had ventured to hope. She has now left with her nurse for Natal, and I have no doubt that she will return from her travels with her ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... Pernambuco was still undergoing the miserable effects of the long and desultory war it had sustained; all the bands of government had been loosed during that disastrous period; law and justice had fallen into disuse; and had there not been a redeeming virtue in the free spirit that lived on in spite of the evils among which it had sprung, its very emancipation from a foreign power might have been regretted. The negroes who ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... replaced by new ones. The sheriff who pounced down on Billy Boyle's in his official capacity must have fancied he had struck a second Sazeraz, for the lock upon the door was so rusty and rheumatic through disuse that it absolutely refused to respond to the persuasion of the keys produced for the performance of its functions. We cannot help applauding the steadfastness with which this lock resented the indignity which the official visit ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... institutions of the republics and principalities of antiquity that have now gone into disuse, was that by means of which towns and cities were from time to time established; and there is nothing more worthy the attention of a great prince, or of a well-regulated republic, or that confers so many ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... weak; so that, after this has been continued for some time, leaving off the unnatural support produces a feeling of weakness. Thus a person will complain of feeling so weak and unsupported, without corsets, as to be uncomfortable. This is entirely owing to the disuse of those muscles, which corsets throw ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... monotonous vista of the years ahead, saw herself growing older and older, driven always by the stern necessity of accumulating a margin against possible disasters; little by little drying up, losing, by withering disuse, those rich faculties of enjoyment with which she was endowed, and which at once fascinated and frightened her. Marriage, in such an environment, offered no solution; marriage meant dependence, from which her very nature revolted: and in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... quantities of verses on that pedestrian occasion (of course I never make any when I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a certain language once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly forgotten from disuse, with fluency. Of both these phenomena I have such frequent experience in the state between sleeping and waking, that I sometimes argue with myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... that sprang to them, and without a word she went to the kitchen for the milking-pails. The cows had forgotten her. They eyed her with suspicion and were restive. The first one kicked at her when she put her beautiful head against its soft flank. Her muscles had been in disuse and her hands were cramped and her forearms ached before she was through—but she kept doggedly at her task. When she finished, her father had fed the horses and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... dazzling white and deadly cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changes pass without violence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions of boundless space and boundless time. Geology has initiated us into the secularity of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame-school measures, and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes for her large style. We knew nothing rightly, for want of perspective. Now we learn what patient periods must round themselves before the rock is formed; then before ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... by a year's hard work;—and everybody, in short, seemed delighted. Susan was not there, and I had nothing to make me nervous; so that I worked away freely, and got vigorously over the ground. After so many years' disuse of rhetoric, it was a pleasant surprise to myself to find that I could still handle the old weapons without awkwardness. More by good luck than good guidance, it has done my health no harm. I have been at Sir Charles Lemon's, though only to pay ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... flying, he beheld coming towards him a man, who spoke something, but he knew not what. The voice sounded strange and feeble, as if from disuse. Dante loudly called out to him to save him, whether he was a man or only a spirit. The apparition, at whose sight the wild beasts disappeared, said that he was no longer man, though man he had been in the time of the false gods, and sung the history ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... that fell beast, never at peace, Who coming o'er against me, by degrees Impell'd me where the sun in silence rests. While to the lower space with backward step I fell, my ken discern'd the form one of one, Whose voice seem'd faint through long disuse of speech. When him in that great desert I espied, "Have mercy on me!" cried I out aloud, "Spirit! or living man! what e'er thou be!" He answer'd: "Now not man, man once I was, And born of Lombard parents, Mantuana both By country, when the power of Julius yet Was scarcely firm. At Rome my ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... profit, as well as intimate relations with many a fine household and with many grand folks. Money had flowed apace into his pocket of late. His wife had begun to go about so fine that it was well for her the old sumptuary laws had fallen into practical disuse. His son was an idle young dog, chiefly known to the neighbourhood as being the main leader of a notorious band of Scourers, of which more anon, and many amongst his former friends and associates shook their heads, and declared that Charles Mason was growing ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... asserts that "odds" is not an English word; he classifies it as belonging to a language known by the term "slang," of which he declares his utter disuse. And he thinks that when used at all, the word is but an ellipsis for "odd chances." This was not the opinion of the great English lexicographer, who ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... was Faith cutting across lots to come to her! Aunt Henderson put away her loaf cake in the cupboard, set back her chair against the wall in its invariable position of disuse, and departed to the milk room and kitchen for ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... come easily after many years of disuse; he was always embarrassed and self-conscious when he expressed affection. He was afraid of her, too, thought that if he showed too much kindness she might suddenly become emotional, fling her arms around ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... accessories and details remained the same as before; and although this change gradually led to the Early Pointed style in a pure state, with mouldings and features altogether distinct from those of the Norman, and to the general disuse, in the 13th century, of the semi-circular arch, it was for a while so intermixed as, from its first appearance to the close of the 12th century, to constitute that state of transition ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... nothing that could compare with them, and other countries, as far as morning and evening hymns were concerned, were in the same position. Paul Gerhardt's fine hymn, "Now Rests Beneath Night's Shadow", which was written twenty years earlier, had been ridiculed into disuse; Ken's famous morning hymn dates from twenty years later; and none of these are as fine ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... 823 A.D., and for four centuries thereafter, tea fell into disuse, and almost oblivion, among the Japanese. The nobility, and Buddhist priests, however, continued to drink ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... is not sufficient. Spanish, for example, has changed comparatively less than German since the sixteenth century, yet there are locutions as well as words found in early documents pertaining to America that have fallen into disuse and hence are not commonly understood. Provincialisms abound, hence the history of the author and the environment in which he was reared should be taken into account, for sometimes there are phrases that are unintelligible without a knowledge of the writer's early ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
... latter went into disuse many years ago. In fact it never had many soldiers in it, and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... animals and plants, and hundreds of other similar examples could be selected. Another class of similar influences are those produced by use and disuse. Beyond question the use of an organ tends to increase its size, and disuse to decrease it. Combats of animals with each other tend to increase their strength, flight from enemies their ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... the doors of which are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport. The room itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with grey sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk with a three-legged ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... comers and all demands is doubtless, in the language of Uncle Ulick, a mighty convenience, and a great softener of the angles of life. But a time comes to the most easy when he must answer "No," or go open-eyed to ruin. Then he finds that from long disuse the word will not shape itself; or if uttered, it is taken for naught. That time had come for Uncle Ulick. Years ago his age and experience had sufficed to curb the hot blood about him. But he had been too easy to dictate while he might; he had let the reins fall from his hands; and to-day he ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... mental gifts and graces; the poor get a good share of them, but the pity is they get so little chance of exercising them. For many splendid qualities wither from disuse or perish from lack of development. But some survive, as the following ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... last her healthful appetite so asserted itself that she went down to the dining-room. Mr. and Mrs. Muir had not yet appeared, and she strolled into the parlor, opened her piano, and played a few runs. She found it sadly out of tune from long disuse. As this was not true of her voice, she began singing a ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... permission to raise a company, in the vicinity of Harrodsburg, Mercer county, and in four or five days returned with a company of over sixty men, which was admitted into the Second Kentucky, and lettered H, a letter which had been in disuse in the regiment, since the partition of the company which bore Alston into a Captaincy. Lieutenant S.D. Morgan, of Company A, was also authorized to recruit a company, and soon did it. It was admitted into the Second Kentucky as Company I, in place ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... every story of a building four or five courses are thus laid and fortified, a great deal of strength is given to the structure. Another method, which has rather fallen into disuse, is grouting. This is pouring liquid mortar, about the consistency of gruel, upon the work at about every fourth course. The result is to fill up all interstices and cavities, and to delay the drying of the mortar, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... says[158] that this orator also introduced a law that the contest of the comedians at the Chytri should take place in the theatre, and that the victor should be reckoned [Greek: es astin], as had not been done before. He further implies that the contest at the Chytri had fallen into disuse, for he adds that Lycurgus thus restored an agon that had been omitted. This last authority, however, concerns a contest at the Chytri, the Anthesteria, and is only one of many passages which tend to show that [Greek: o epi Lemnai] was held at this festival. The most weighty ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... hinge so greatly upon the perfection of his senses. His power to reason has relieved them of many of their duties, and so they have, to some extent, atrophied, as have the muscles which move the ears and scalp, merely from disuse. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... seeds, and its bearing on the wide dispersal of many arctic and alpine plants (Chap. XII.); (6) some new illustrations of the non-heredity of acquired characters, and a proof that the effects of use and disuse, even if inherited, must be overpowered by Natural Selection (Chap. XIV.); and (7) a new argument as to the nature and origin of the moral and intellectual ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... other side a support has been removed for the contents of the abdomen, and they sag down until they pry the uterus out of place and press it over towards the side where there is less pressure. The broad ligament on one side is stretched from use and on the other side shortened from disuse, and so the uterus remains ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... Jewish law was abrogated. When Babylon replaced Palestine as the centre of Jewish intellect, the works of Philo, like the rest of the Hellenistic-Jewish literature, written as they were in a strange tongue, fell into disuse, and before long were entirely forgotten. The Christians, on the other hand, found in Philo a notable evidence for many of their beliefs and a philosophical testimony for the dogmas of their creed. They claimed him as their own, and the ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... an entrance to a square of houses, and found yourself in the remains of an old farmyard, of which one side was a row of cottages. The rest was old red brick—I think I remember a great dovecote—and a quiet look of age and disuse. But now new buildings are ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Oro, am that giant. Once in the dead days I turned the balance of the world from the right-hand road which now is dull with disuse, to the left-hand road which glitters so brightly to your eyes, and the face of the earth was changed. Now again I will turn it from the left-hand road to the right-hand road in which for millions of years it was wont to run, and once more the face of the ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... whilst the men by themselves {95} occupied those at the western end. The existence of a distinction of this kind in regard to the open seats only, affords strong proof, if proof were necessary, that it was the introduction of appropriated pews which led to the disuse of else long established, and once general, custom of the men occupying the south side of the nave, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... depletion was indicated, and it is no exaggeration to say that about the hospital rooms at times the floors were covered with blood. The reckless way in which venesection was resorted to, led to its disuse, until to-day it has so vanished from medical practice that even its benefits are overlooked, and depletion is brought about in some other manner. Turning to the older writers, we find Burton describing a patient from whom he ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... matches himself against the forces of nature. In the towns he is warmed and fed and clothed so spontaneously and easily that after a time he perforce begins to doubt himself, to wonder whether his powers are not atrophied from disuse. And so, with his naked soul, he fronts the wilderness. It is a test, a measuring of strength, a proving of his essential pluck and resourcefulness and manhood, an assurance of man's highest potency, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... from Faulkner my second pistol. My voice came out of my throat, funnily cracked as if from long disuse. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... barns. Plumage of some species dull, of others iridescent blues and Greens above, whitish or ruddy below. Sexes similar. Bills small; mouths large. - Long and pointed wings, generally reaching the tip of the tail or beyond. Tail more or less forked. Feet small and weak from disuse. Song a twittering warble without power. Gregarious birds. Barn Swallow. Bank Swallow. Cliff (or Eaves) Swallow. Tree ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... The man is now a citizen, a member of society, with developed powers of social sympathy, of social energy. How has he developed these powers? Not by any supposition that the early sex instincts he felt in his boyhood were wholly animal and must be atrophied by disuse, but by gathering and directing them into the right channels. Direction, like control, depends upon ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... more secrecy and privacy than by the ordinary means. Yet it must not be forgotten that the thieves' jargon was invented for that purpose, whilst the Rommany, originally the proper and only speech of a particular nation, has been preserved from falling into entire disuse and oblivion, because adapted to answer the same end. It was impossible to treat of the Rommany in a manner calculated to exhaust the subject, and to leave no ground for future cavilling, without devoting a considerable space to the consideration of the robber dialect, on which account we ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... trying the little he could get at, had gladly denied himself its pleasures, and consorted with the young men he met at the caffe's, or in the Piazza. But when the Vervains came, they recalled to him the younger days in which he had delighted in the companionship of women. After so long disuse, it was charming to be with a beautiful girl who neither regarded him with distrust nor expected him to ask her in marriage because he sat alone with her, rode out with her in a gondola, walked with her, read with her. All young men like a house in which no ado is made about their ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... property, and they were naturally disposed to hand it on to their sons after them. Charlemagne had been able to keep control of his agents by means of the missi. After his death his system fell into disuse and it became increasingly difficult to get rid ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the slightest horror at seeing one another grow old. This chloroformed audience was afflicted with a long and too heavy programme, as is the custom in performances of this kind. They played fragments of the best known pieces, and sang songs from operas long since fallen into disuse even on street organs. This public saw the same comedians march out; the most famous are the most monotonous; the comical ones abused their privileges; the lover spoke distractedly through his nose; ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... during some scuffle with a companion, into this humid cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to an inordinate length—from disuse, very likely; from lack of the usual abrasion against shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of these restless and light-loving creatures, never again to see the sun; to live and die down here, all alone in the dank ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... reward: and the great man uttereth his mischievous desire; so they wrap it up. The best of them is a brier; the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. The world looked upon a continent of inexhaustible fertility, (whose harvest had glutted the markets, and rotted in disuse,) filled with lamentation, and its inhabitants wandering like bereaved citizens among the ruins of an earthquake, mourning for children, for houses crushed, and ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... whether it is destined to be surpassed by a still higher degree of speed, remains to be seen. Many persons are of opinion that the increased facilities of speed which are now within reach of travellers on long voyages will gradually lead to the total disuse of sailing ships for passenger traffic. It may be so, but there are still not a few who would prefer a sailing to a steam ship for a long sea voyage, notwithstanding its so greatly inferior rate of speed. But nowadays everything must be sacrificed to time. "Time flies," is at present ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... step in this securing of privilege was won. Still it went steadily on. Whenever we get a glimpse of the inner history of an English town we find the same peaceful revolution in progress, services disappearing through disuse or omission, while privileges and immunities are being purchased in hard cash. The lord of the town, whether he were king, baron, or abbot, was commonly thriftless or poor, and the capture of a noble, or the campaign of a sovereign, or the building of some new minster by a prior, brought ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... trussed the same way as a pheasant, but the custom of cooking them with the heads on is going into disuse somewhat. The usual way of carving them is similar to a pigeon, dividing it into two equal parts. Another method is to cut it into three pieces, by severing a wing and leg on either side from the body, by following the lines 1 to 2, thus making two servings of those parts, leaving ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... foot involuntarily; more than one hand, jammed against the spit, was covered with blood. These games are dangerous, and latterly the accidents have been so severe that our peasants have determined to allow the ceremony of the favors to fall into disuse; I believe we saw the last at the marriage of Francois Meillant, although there was no ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... as Robert would have called it, when she passed into the waste silent place; for besides the wasteness and the silence, motionless machines have a look of death about them, at least when they bear such signs of disuse as those that filled these rooms. Hearing no violin, she waited for a while in the ground-floor of the building; but still hearing nothing, she ascended to the first floor. Here, likewise, all was silence. She hesitated, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... manuals, and that by imitation. The reform has consisted, in every case, in the renunciation of literary ornaments and of statements without proof. Grote produced the first model of a "history" thus defined. At the same time certain forms which once had a vogue have now fallen into disuse: this is the case with the "Universal Histories" with continuous narrative, which were so much liked, for different reasons, in the Middle Ages and in the eighteenth century; in the present century ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the practical jumble of Antoninus Martyr is the systematic nonsense of Cosmas, who invented or worked out a theory and scheme of the world, a "Christian topography," which required nothing more than a complete disuse of human reason. His assurance was equal ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... the house the farmer led the way, and up to the old Dutch oven that had been built on to the foundation, for the baking of bread, and all family purposes, many years back; but which had fallen into disuse ever since the new coal range had been placed in ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... amusing," replied the interpreter, "that their inability to speak should be regarded by any one as an affliction; for it is by the voluntary disuse of the organs of articulation that they have lost the power of speech, and, as a consequence, the ability even to ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... disuse of certain words on the death of kinsmen, and the Kobong are not the only customs common to ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... by some, that men will think and act for themselves; that none will disuse spirits or anything else because his neighbors do; and that moral influence is not that powerful engine contended for. Let us examine this. Let me ask the man who could maintain this position most stiffly, what compensation he will accept to go to church some Sunday and sit ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... The neighborhood is very still. The streets are almost empty of life, and the cleanness of their stone pavements is largely the cleanness of disuse. The house you are looking at is of brick, covered with stucco, which somebody may be lime-washing white, or painting yellow or brown, while I am saying it is gray. An uncovered balcony as wide as the sidewalk makes a deep arcade around its two street sides. The last time I saw it it ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... a movement of coquetry most graceful in spite of long disuse, and the answering fire sprang into her eyes. She looked very piquant and a trifle diabolical. He pressed his lips suddenly on hers. A moment later something tugged at the long locks his hand caressed, and at the same time he became conscious that the silence which had fallen between them was shaken ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... motley groups in our handsome stores. Could influential people be found to expose the folly and vanity of this practice, and refuse to comply with its demands, others would soon be glad to follow their example, and, before many years, it would sink into contempt and disuse. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... was used to it. He never failed to send the required remittances. "The money belongs to Augusta," he always said to himself. Besides, his own expenses were small. One by one the rooms of his large house had been closed through disuse, and a half-grown boy waited on him in the wing. Dust had settled on the rich furniture ordered years ago with such pride to make a fitting nest for his bride; rust gnawed the mute strings of his daughter's piano; the conservatory had been abandoned; the garden ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... of the peculiarities of the tints and textures of the Flemish school; they being, perhaps, results of intimate combination from grinding, and consequently of a more powerful chemical action among the ingredients compounded. This method has, in a great measure, fallen into disuse, and undoubtedly it conduced to foulness when the colours of the pigments ground were not pure and true, and did not assimilate well ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... Turkey Meadows, it is more probable that some visitors, who detected a resemblance between this section of the country and the Holy Land, were responsible for the christening of this road and also of the Sea of Galilee—which last has almost dropped into disuse. There does not seem to be any particular suggestion of the land of the Pharaohs and present-day Egypt, but tradition explains that as follows: Old Squire Perce had accumulated a store of grain in case of drought, and when the drought came and the men hurried to him to ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... eyes are upon them,[585] his care is for their necessities. In councils, which are everywhere held, the ancient traditions are revived, which, though their excellence was undisputed, had fallen into disuse by the negligence of the priests. And not only are the old restored, new customs are also devised; and whatsoever things he promulgated are accepted as though issued from heaven, are held fast, are committed to ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... that you (I.e. 'The Antiquity of Man.') will be out in October...you say that the Bishop and Owen will be down on you; the latter hardly can, for I was assured that Owen in his Lectures this spring advanced as a new idea that wingless birds had lost their wings by disuse, also that magpies stole spoons, etc., from a REMNANT of some instinct like that of the Bower-Bird, which ornaments its playing-passage with pretty feathers. Indeed, I am told that he hinted plainly that all birds ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... heads appeared at the open window. It makes me smile to think how bewildered they must have been. Picture to yourself your own feelings if, on looking out of your luxurious carriage, you suddenly perceived that the lines upon which you ran were rusted and corroded, red and yellow with disuse and decay! What a catch must have come in their breath as in a second it flashed upon them that it was not Manchester but Death which was waiting for them at the end of that sinister line. But the train was running with frantic speed, rolling and rocking over the rotten line, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... never have fallen into disgrace and disuse, if their daily bread, or material accumulations, had depended upon their efforts in building up the mental, moral, and spiritual attainments, of each other, and bringing their knowledge into more external use, by making the material edifice, the physical body, a purer and more ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... day it would have been impossible to find a prouder or happier ship's company, but with all their feelings of elation they did not imagine that everything would run smoothly after such a long period of disuse, and they knew also that much hard work lay in front of them if they were to carry out the remainder of their program. If the Discovery was free before the navigable season closed Scott had resolved to spend the remaining time in exploring the region to the westward of Cape ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. Columbus[272] found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon[273] conquered Europe by the bivouac, which ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... freshness, there appeared to be little more against him than that he had committed an indiscretion while under the influence of liquor, and had afterward atoned for it in accordance with a code of honor which had not, at that epoch, fallen entirely into disuse. And, after all, what business was it of theirs? Pennroyal, however objectionable in himself, owned a large property and belonged to a good family. In short, society received the honorable prodigal in its bosom once more, and Mrs. Pennroyal reigned the undisputed ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... see how Ancient the Use of the Bow is, and how lately its Disuse began (I mean in relation to the Common-Wealth, as a defensive, or offensive Weapon) and how great the Ancient Fame of our English was in the knowledge of it: However the Glory of it is somewhat still preserved (though in a Pastime) by the Honourable City of London, whose Lord Mayor ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... eyes went to the wall by the door where during these weeks of disuse his own rifle had stood leaning, and his wife smiled as her glance followed his. She was thinking that soon both his arms would be strong enough to use it again, and she was happy that he would need it only ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... lower road. Finding no entrance save a locked wooden door she followed round to the western side, where the business side of the mill had been. It was all still now and silent, and that it had long fallen into disuse was shown by the grey faded look of everything. Grass, green and luxuriant, grew untrodden between the cobble-stones with which the yard was paved. There was a sort of old- world quietude about everything which ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... Alike, then, by his disuse and his use of parliaments, Henry strengthened the royal power, the initiative of all legislation remaining in his hands. To the same end he continued to depress the great nobles and to create a new nobility ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... or Woodkirk group of plays were acted at Woodkirk, about four miles from Wakefield, and they are of a style that may be likened to the times of Henry VI., or Edward IV. Until the Mystery play fell into disuse, the trading companies and guilds seem principally to have maintained them. The mixture of secular with ecclesiastical players helped to change the characters of the English plays and to provoke censure, which began to be levelled at ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... that it formerly was their custom to protect themselves with strips of hemp cloth, limbotung, which they wound many times around their bodies in order to ward off knife thrusts, but this method of protection seems to have fallen into disuse.[133] ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... the liberty of a war-prisoner, a city, or for the restoration of a captured vessel: formerly much practised at sea. It then fell into disuse, but was revived for a time in the seventeenth century. At length the greater maritime powers prohibited the offering or accepting such ransoms. By English law, all such securities shall be absolutely void; and he who enters into any such contract shall ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the forlorn appearance of disuse. The bed had been partly stripped, and the tall-backed chairs, in prim linen covers, looked like seated ghosts with arms a-kimbo. Colwyn's first act was to draw the heavy window curtains and open the window. He then commenced an examination of the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... this Subject: Rhyme, as I have observed once before, has many Enemies because of its Difficulty, when accompanied with all the other necessary Arts of Versification. It is a particular Talent which very few are blessed with, and ought to be esteemed accordingly: But if we give way to the Disuse of it, and even suffer Blank Verse to be brought in Competition with it, Poetry will in a short time be lost in England, as it has been long since in Italy, and, if I mistake not, from this very Cause. They have Blank-vers'd Homer, Virgil, and ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... of the south-east trades, a clean-running breeze that had carried us up from 20 deg. S., and brace and sheet blocks, rudely awakened from their three weeks' rest, creaked a long-drawn protest to the failing wind; ropes, dry with disuse, ran stiffly over the sheaves, and the cries of the men at the braces added the human note to a chorus of ship sounds that marked the end of ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... substantiae secundae or general substances, and substantial forms, doctrines which under varieties of language pervaded alike the Aristotelian and the Platonic schools, and of which more of the spirit has come down to modern times than might be conjectured from the disuse of the phraseology. The false views of the nature of classification and generalization which prevailed among the schoolmen, and of which these dogmas were the technical expression, afford the only explanation which can be given of their having misunderstood the real nature of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... precarious. No critic can separate the actual laws of Solon from those which passed under his name in later ages. Nor do the Scholiasts and Lexicographers attempt to distinguish how many of these laws were still in force at the time when they wrote, or when they fell into disuse and were to be found in books only. Nor can we hastily assume that enactments which occur in the Laws of Plato were also a part of Athenian law, however probable this ...
— Laws • Plato
... long days at Morristown, when that cloud overshadowed us, how wretched was my life. Nothing to do—only to sit with folded hands while others waited upon me. I shudder when I think of that time. No, let me be up and doing, and God grant I may die in harness, and not rust out in miserable disuse." ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... suffered to become obsolete. But what makes a word obsolete, more than general agreement to forbear it? and how shall it be continued, when it conveys an offensive idea, or recalled again into the mouths of mankind, when it has once become unfamiliar by disuse, and unpleasing by unfamiliarity? ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... by language to his children and others, the knowledge of the kinds of food to be avoided, he would have little occasion to use the faculty of voluntary rejection; so that this power would tend to be lost through disuse. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... the same manner; then there would be a distinct case of the transmission of an acquired characteristic. "The precise question," as Professor Thomson words it, "is this: Can a structural change in the body, induced by some change in use or disuse, or by a change in surrounding influence, affect the germ-cells in such a specific or representative way that the offspring will through its inheritance exhibit, even in a slight degree, the modification which the parent acquired?" ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... would be as thoroughly implanted in them as the power to swim or skate, so that, once acquired, they'd never quite lose it. I speak from experience, for I learned to skate and swim when a boy, and I feel that nothing—no amount of disuse—can ever rob me of these attainments. Still further, in early manhood I joined the great volunteer movement, and, though I have now been out of the force for many years, I know that I could 'fall in' and behave tolerably well at ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... on but a school form. It was black as pitch, for the windows were heavily shuttered. I made out by groping that the walls were lined with boxes and barrels and sacks of some heavy stuff. The whole place smelt of mould and disuse. My gaolers turned the key in the door, and I could hear them shifting their feet as they stood ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... the canal, thus occupying an already constructed barrier. Formerly Conde was regarded as a fortress of formidable strength, but its position was not held to be of value in modern strategy. Its forts, therefore, had been dismantled of guns, and its works permitted to fall into disuse. But the fortress of Maubeuge lay immediately in rear of the British line. In rear again General Sordet held a French cavalry corps for flank actions. In front, across the Belgian frontier, General d'Amade lay with a French brigade at Tournai as ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... justice." Even among the ancients announcements were usually made before war was begun. The Greeks sent a herald to carry the news. "Among the Romans the ceremonies of making known the state of war were very punctilious." But formal declarations of war are now falling into disuse; not from any intention of taking the enemy unawares, but because of the rapidity with which news is now disseminated. Still a state is in honor bound to indicate in some way its changed relation. This is ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... and by all possible means to endeavour to lessen the consumption of fine wheaten flour. History does not record how far these resolves held good, and with what hygienic results. An external sign of the patriotic mania for economy in wheat was the disuse of hair-powder, which resulted from the tax now imposed on that article. Thus Rousseau, Pitt, and Nature are largely responsible for a change which in its turn hastened ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of the hereditary predisposition more than anything else that has reduced the formerly wide prevalence of this disease in the European countries generally. A consideration for the future of our horses would demand the disuse of all sires that are unlicensed, and the refusal of a license to any sire which has suffered from this or any ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... the door for her with an old-world politeness which disuse had rendered a little rusty: then, with an air of getting back to business after a pleasant but frivolous interlude, he took up the paper-weights once more and placed the ruler with nice care ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... or condition in a germ-cell, supposed to be essential to the development of a particular quality, feature, or manner of reaction of the organism which arises from that germ-cell. The word is gradually falling into disuse, and "factor" ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the intestine of the host and spreading amongst its hepatic tubes, the introduction of nourishment through the mouth and all the parts implicated in it, such as the whirling cirri, the buccal organs, and the intestine, gradually lost their importance, became aborted by disuse, and finally disappeared without leaving a trace of their existence. Protected by the abdomen of the Crab, or by the shell inhabited by the Pagurus, the parasite also no longer required the calcareous ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... that little made the difference, for let the soldiers on the further side strive as they might, slowly, very slowly, the thick door quivered to its frame. Martin glanced at the bolt, for he could not speak, and with his left hand Foy slowly worked it forward. It was stiff with disuse, it caught upon the edge ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... or depending in rude chandeliers of barrel-hoops from the ceiling, lit up the most astounding diversity of female costume the master had ever seen. Gowns of bygone fashions, creased and stained with packing and disuse, toilets of forgotten festivity revised with modern additions; garments in and out of season—a fur-trimmed jacket and a tulle skirt, a velvet robe under a pique sacque; fresh young faces beneath faded head-dresses, and mature and buxom charms in virgin' white. The small space cleared for the ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... for their growth. Ambitions cannot exist without an aim, nor hope without an object. Just as in certain dark caves of the world, where daylight never penetrates, the fish found there have no eyes, because, from long disuse of the organ, it has gradually lessened and died out; so hope and ambition amongst the moral faculties must equally disappear without an object ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... place, and yet some man many years ago had builded him a habitation here that was half dugout, half log lean-to. The door of the place faced Poison Hole, and was not two hundred yards from it. The hovel had been in disuse long before Buck Thornton came to the range save as a shelter to some of the ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... intrinsically from the labour that has to do with elaborating the material means of life. The precise line of demarcation is not the same as it was in the early barbarian scheme, but the broad distinction has not fallen into disuse. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... introduced into a society of an opposite kind and meet with people as friendly and kind as he himself was originally, he will not at first be able to believe in their sincerity, and the old kindly affections from long disuse will be slow to rouse themselves within him. Now to such a person the imperative mood of the verb to love may fairly be used. He may properly be told to make an effort, to shake off the distrust that oppresses him,—not ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... disobedience to the law of the spiritual life. He who seeks to save his life shall lose it. He who makes this world his all shall receive as his reward only what this world can give. He who buries his talent shall, by the natural law of disuse, forfeit it. Not to believe in Christ is to miss eternal life. To refuse Him who is the Light of the world is to ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... many divisions in the work that it has resulted in developing men for special branches, so that today we have relatively few men who can skillfully operate for instance the engine lathe and planer. Even if there are those who ever had that ability, most of them have lost it through disuse. ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... will be obtained by the help of powerful means. One fallen into disuse, portends you have wasted energies under ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... that an equally clever chemist will be required to work this improved process as compared with those that have, one by one, fallen into disuse, mainly from want of knowledge among the operators. To a certain extent this is so. The natural chemical actions are not so delicate, but an ignorant operator would spoil this process, as he does nearly every other. When a reef is discovered, practice ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... be ascertained, one of the oldest titles was that of Prince of Sibuguey, whose territory was situated on the bay of that name which washes the N.E. coast of Zamboanga Province. The title fell into disuse, and the grandson of the last prince, the present Manguiguin, or Sultan of Mindanao, resides at Dinas. The sultanate dates from the year 1640, but, in reality, there never was a sultan with effective jurisdiction over the whole island, as the title would seem to imply. The Sultan's heir ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... might still be traced of that ancient pile. A massive edifice succeeded, with gate and tower, court and moat complete; substantial enough, one would have thought, to have endured for centuries. But even this ponderous structure grew into disuse, and Sir Ranulph's successors, remodelling, repairing, almost rebuilding the whole mansion, in the end so metamorphosed its aspect, that at last little of its original and distinctive character remained. Still, as we said ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... circles, a curious custom, since fallen into disuse, entitled the Pele Mele, contrived doubtless by some distracted Master of Ceremonies to quell the endless jealousies and quarrels for precedence between courtiers and diplomatists of contending pretensions. Under this rule no rank was recognized, each ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... bones of a man's hand. It looked to him, as he gazed on it with a sort of curious disgust, as though a dead man had come up to the surface of a black tide, and was preparing presently to leap out. On either side stood two long silver candlesticks, very dark with disuse; but instead of holding candles, they were fitted at the top with flat metal dishes; and in these he poured some of his powders, mixing them as before with his fingers. Between the candlesticks and behind the skull was an old and dark ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... at the base of the hill, "that the victory was owing, not to the skill of the commander, nor the valor of the troops, but to a mound and a ditch." This ancient mode of securing a position, which had fallen into disuse, was revived after this, according to the same author, and came into general practice among the best captains of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... anciently it was usual to rate wages, first by general laws extending over the whole kingdom, and afterwards by particular orders of the justices of peace in every particular county, both these practices have now gone entirely into disuse. "By the experience of above four hundred years," says Doctor Burn, "it seems time to lay aside all endeavours to bring under strict regulations, what in its own nature seems incapable of minute limitation; for if all persons ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... diminish the use of this method in the high school, although in the colleges and universities it is still the most popular method. Although it is true that the lecture method is not the best one for continual use in elementary and high school, still its entire disuse is unfortunate. So is its blind use by those who still adhere to the old ways of ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... colour-blind talks about red and green; he did not see them as she saw them; if left to choose for himself he would have nothing to guide him. Was it politics that had caused this atrophy of the moral senses by disuse? Meanwhile, here she sat face to face with a moral lunatic, who had not even enough sense of humour to see the absurdity of his own request, that she should go out to the shore of this ocean of corruption, and repeat the ancient role of King Canute, or Dame Partington with her mop and ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... younger sons in marching regiments, who suddenly step into the family acres. The natives crowded round them, eager to swear eternal friendship, according to an old Polynesian custom, once universal in the islands, but that has fallen into considerable disuse, except when something is to be gained by its observance. A gentleman of the name of Kooloo fixed his affections upon Typee—or rather upon his goods and chattels; for when he had wheedled him out of a regatta shirt, and other small pieces of finery, he transferred his affections to a newly-arrived ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... sheriffs and juries furnished an apology for the irregular, but necessary, interference of a controlling authority. The ancient remedy, by means of attaint, which renders a jury responsible for an unjust verdict, was almost gone into disuse, and, depending on the integrity of a second jury, not always easy to be obtained; so that in many parts of the kingdom, and especially in Wales, it was impossible to find a jury who would return a verdict against a man of good family, either in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... had witnessed the act, and he was cocksure that no higher power existed to see, it; but for all that it worried him. Memories are not dead things but alive; they dwindle in disuse, but they harden and develop in all sorts of queer ways if they are being continually fretted. Curiously enough, though at the time he perceived clearly that the shifting was accidental, as the days wore on, his memory became confused about it, until at last he was not ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Note 2. The disuse of this custom in England really dates from a rather later period. 'Sister' has somewhat resumed its position, but 'Daughter' and 'Niece,' in the vocative, are never heard ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... ideals of her own, which she pursued regardless of the course in which they led her; and these ideals were far from ignoble. To beauty of all kinds she was passionately sensitive. As a girl she had played the piano well, and, though the power had gone from long disuse, music was still her chief passion. Graceful ease, delicacy in her surroundings, freedom from domestic cares, the bloom of flowers, sweet scents—such things made up her existence. She loved her husband, ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... all went into the well warmed and lighted crimson drawing room. And Claudia sat down before her grand piano, and tried its keys. From long disuse it was somewhat out of tune, certainly; but her fingers evoked from those keys a beautiful prelude, and her voice rose in that simple, but ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Terminer, so as to proceed with the trial at once; that all the prisoners should be arraigned the first day; that the King's counsel might privately manage the evidence before the Grand Jury (the practice of allowing any advocates to appear before the Grand Jury has long fallen into disuse); that the murder of the King should be precisely laid in the indictment, and be made use of as one of the overt acts to prove the compassing of his death; that any act tending to the compassing of the King's death besides the one laid in the indictment ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... words belonging to many oriental languages in Latin characters. Unfortunately a uniform system of transcription, applicable to all tongues, seems not to be practical at present. It was attempted in the Sacred Books of the East, but that system has fallen into disuse and is liable to be misunderstood. It therefore seems best to use for each language the method of transcription adopted by standard works in English dealing with each, for French and German transcriptions, whatever their merits may be as representations ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... paid, and the sermon still preached, or has it fallen into disuse now that it is unpopular to believe in witchcraft and diabolic possession? Have any of ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... are captured by trained falcons, is of the highest antiquity. Pennant mentions that the Saxon King Ethelbert (who died in 760) sent to Germany for a cast of falcons to fly at cranes (herons?). As this sport has now fallen into disuse, I must refer my readers for particulars to Blaine, Daniel, Freeman, Harting, Captain Dugmore, and to occasional articles by one or two modern falconers in the columns of ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne |
